Fall was officially at our proverbial door on September 23rd and that means  a whole new round of in-season veggies to choose from.  Most of the vegetables this time of year are heartier than their Late Spring/Summer counterparts and rightly so!  There’s nothing like a hot, filling (not to mention delicious) meal on a cold evening using locally sourced and seasonal ingredients.  Makes me toasty and rosy cheeked just daydreaming about it.  But other than filling bellies, what’s the benefit of eating seasonally and locally?

For one thing, the money you spend on your veggies stays local benefitting the farmer who labored and the community at large. Then of course there is the issue of pesticide and herbicide regulation.  When you purchase non local food, it typically travels thousands of miles to reach your store from countries like Mexico and Chile that are not required to meet our FDA regulations.  That means that chemicals  banned from use in agricultural production in our country are still used on food imported elsewhere for us to eat.  Kind of crazy, right?  Then of course there’s the
environmental ramifications from pollution due to the excessive travel.

Regardless if you care about this or not the actual point of this post is to discuss what gorgeous veggies will be in bounty this time of year.   There are lots of them that I’ve cooked with before and some that I haven’t.  My goal for the next couple of weeks is to use as many of these vegetables as possible in recipes that challenge my cooking skill and spark my taste buds.  The vegetables that made the list for this little challenge are as follows:

I’ll post updates about the dishes I make and will be accepting any and all recipes you may have that requires these ingredients.  If you have a recipe you’d like to share just email it my way and I’ll give it a whirl!