It's the season for the farmer's markets and the time to take advantage of nature's medicine cabinet. It is now that I am an adult I understand my father, who always made sure we ate so much of the seasonal foods that we were sick of it. His rational was that "if your body doesn't need the vitamins, you wouldn't want to eat it". And you know what - I think he was right.
Back in the day and country where I was growing up, we didn't have year round ready-available-anything-you-wish. Strawberries came in May/June, watermelons in August/September, and if you missed it - you missed it. Frozen foods were a novelty too, plus no one was really a huge fan of a soggy defrosted berries. The only true way of preserving the fresh foods without canning was to dry them, and as kids we made sure to secretly snatch a few pieces from the drying racks for "later" . Secretly, because mom and grandma were very aware of the amounts they were preserving for winter, but we dared anyway because that was our favorite kind of candy. The kids of today are really lucky to have it not only ready and available, but with some serious fun added. Have you heard of Funny Face Cranberries? If not - waste no time and go check out those games and movies. What a better way add some beneficial fun for kids?
Now that the harvest is here, we played around with those cranberries and some recipes and let me tell you - when kids are allowed to be creative then can come up with some really awesome tasting stuff! ( *and they will eat it too, no problem, because THEY made it, and their friends will eat it too. This is a very interesting "side-effect" I noticed : no matter the taste, if one kid made it , another will eat it and say it was "amazing" too)
I'll share the recipes in another post, make sure to check back for school lunches and all around fun ideas. Until then, here are some facts about foods you see at the markets every time, that you may have not known about:
