Eating With the Seasons: February!

Queenoa
Feb 11, 2018
3 min read

About a year ago I went to an incredible lecture with Noël Graupner (highly recommended) where she spoke about Ayuvada and eating with the seasons. It was all fairly new to me. She defines Aurveda as; "an adaptogenic system of healthcare, combining lifestyle, diet, exercise and behavior along with medicine to decrease mental, emotional, and physical stress, thus enhancing immunity, building natural energy and improving one's quality of life."

Needless to say, it was a badass lecture. What I was most infatuated with was the breakdown of seasonal foods and how it effects our bodies. Ayurveda breaks down the year into three seasons, winter, spring, and summer with fall being a transition season. As I looked more into the breakdown of their seasonal foods, I got a little confused because of some of the content. One of Aurveda's winter seasonal fruits is peaches which in the United States can only be found in the summer. This got me doing some research and here's what I found,

"Our Ayurvedic seasonal lists classify foods from around the world, as well as locally, according to the qualities needed to balance the extremes of that season. Some of the foods on the Ayurvedic lists represent their original harvest times in their indigenous regions. Foods harvested today do not always represent the season that they were originally harvested."

While I completely agree with eating with the seasons, I'm not quite sure how I feel about following the original cycles of these foods by their indigenous origins BECAUSE that may not be what is best for us currently. A lot of foods are not in their original form and have progressed in different ways while traveling to different areas (google what corn used to look like, you'll totally be shocked). If these foods aren't being grown locally in season, that means they're shipped from far or frozen. ALSO, another awesome positive of shopping within season is that food is actually cheaper when it's in season because of availability.

Why eat seasonally? It's just one step closer to aligning yourself to the natural cycles of the earth. There's a reason the earth produces certain foods during certain times within certain locations. We are given what is necessary for our bodies to nourish during those times.

I've prepared a list of some of my favorite foods that are in season both February and March and included recipes that I have cultivated for each food.