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There are two words that make me die inside: seasonal and local.
Invoked like a mantra on menus, healthy living listicles and grocery displays, they’re well intentioned but have come to represent eating vegetables as a lifestyle statement rather than something you do because they’re delicious. These two words slam the door on people who don’t have access to local produce or who want to enjoy a lime in their gin and tonic in February.
This is not the time to be slamming doors. According to the Agriculture Department, 52 percent of the vegetables Americans eat are tomatoes and potatoes, mostly in the form of French fries, potato chips, ketchup and tomato sauce on pizza. We eat about half of the daily recommended allowance of fruits and vegetables, according to government estimates. My restaurant, Dirt Candy, has been serving nothing but vegetables since 2008, but no matter how many articles I see about this being the Era of the Vegetable, most of the people I’ve met in the fine dining world who actually care about vegetables are journalists and their editors looking for fresh headlines.
People will embrace vegetables if they’re fun and inclusive, not complicated and exclusive. Make broccoli as craveable as fried chicken, and you’re on your way. And to make vegetables fun, you must remove the angst surrounding them, largely embodied in those two words: seasonal and local.
For the most part, your local grocery is not selling local produce. Don’t panic. Eating local is great, and it’s wonderful to support your local farmers, but I think you do that by creating demand for vegetables rather than by location-shaming shoppers.
Worried about how your groceries affect your carbon footprint? Me too, but I don’t have the money to move. No matter what time of year it is, if you live outside of Florida or Southern California, every single lemon, orange or nectarine you’ve ever eaten in your entire life has probably taken an airplane trip to your mouth. Want a local lime? Move to Mexico. Do you like olive oil? That’s mostly coming from Spain (via Italy) on ships. How about broccoli in the dead of winter? Or garlic? Grapes? Celery? Live outside California, and that’s coming to you via thousands of miles of asphalt.
Your local grocery is also probably not selling seasonal produce. Walk into a Publix, or Ralph’s, or Whole Foods, or even your corner deli in winter, and you’ll see pretty much the same display of produce you see in the middle of summer. If you’re like me, you’re haunted by the idea that somehow they’re inferior, and then you feel insecure and wind up buying cereal instead.
The fact is, we live in a post-seasonal world. The vast majority of our fruits and vegetables comes to us on trucks and planes from faraway farms, and everything is always in season somewhere. Make your peace with it. Technology has birthed an endless stream of horrors, like 24-hour cable news and people crossing the street while texting, but it’s also given us the ability to live in Queens and enjoy an orange any time of the year, and that’s a beautiful thing.
All too often, the phrase “seasonal and local” has become co-opted by the forces of snobbery, and while farmers’ markets are wonderful things, there’s no good reason to ignore the piles of grapes at your grocery in February just because someone once told you they’re inferior to the amazing grapes they get at a little farm stand on Nantucket.
If there’s one vegetable that people feel most passionate about eating only in season it’s tomatoes. I even take my tomato dish off the menu when the weather turns cold. But tomatoes don’t have to be eaten in season to taste good. You just have to approach them the right way.
When I crave tomatoes between November and March, I know it’s time to make tomato confit, or as I like to call it, A Big Mess of Winter Tomatoes. I buy a couple of pounds of tomatoes, cover them in olive oil, then roast them until they have golden spots and have collapsed a bit. Not only do I wind up with tomato-flavored olive oil that’s absolutely delicious, but I’ve also got quarts of flavorful tomatoes that I can serve on pasta, on toast with whipped feta, on bagels with cream cheese. I can turn them into a delicious tomato soup, or into a coconut curry sauce for fish, tofu or rice.
So forget what you’ve been told about what vegetables to eat when. Winter tomatoes exist, and if you approach them differently than you’d approach summer tomatoes, they can blast even the strongest seasonal affective disorder to shards.
Recipes: Roasted Winter Tomatoes | Roasted Tomato-Coconut Sauce | Roasted Tomatoes and Whipped Feta on Toast
