Sustainable Sunday: know your seasons

I'm going to be real with you. I did not go to a farmer's market this week. Between attending a wedding in Saratoga Springs (hi, Kacie!) and enjoying the general merriment of New York, it just didn't happen. As a matter of fact, I had every intention of hitting up one of the markets in Brooklyn today but got stuck in a metropolis of goodness called Eataly for over two hours. More on that later.

Since I have no recipe for you on this Sustainable Sunday we'll steer ourselves in another direction. It's not easy or realistic for everyone to shop at farmer's markets. People work on the weekend, they sleep in, they don't live close by. So how can we make sustainable food choices in the grocery store? It's all too easy to pick up the tomato in January or the peach in December without a thought to how far it travelled to get to your hand or how early it was picked in order to survive the journey.

It's good to know what's in season where you live as well as the typical products of your area so that you are more likely to choose seasonal produce in the store which, most importantly, tastes better than the alternative.

Here are some resources to help you figure it out:

Peak Season Map by Epicurious
What's in Season? by Real Simple
Sustainable Table
Seasonality Chart (mainland only)
Hawaii people: I didn't find a tool online that I felt was super accurate for us. Maybe I'll develop one?

Happy shopping!