What to eat in May and June: Asparagus of course
Asparagus is one of our favourite UK seasonal vegetables and we greet the first local spears in the grocer’s shops with joy each May. We love to eat as much as we can until mid-June when it disappears from our shelves.
These days it doesn’t disappear though as you can find imported asparagus on supermarket shelves nearly all year round. Please don’t buy this out of season asparagus. It has come from Peru or Mexico and has a high carbon footprint. This is because it has to be air freighted as asparagus loses flavour and texture after it has been cut and of course, South and Central America are many miles away. Peruvian asparagus is also grown in irrigated beds causing severe water shortages in a very dry region.
Winter Growing Tips: Garlic
We get through plenty of garlic in our cooking here at Season Well.
That’s why we like to grow our own supply, as well as foraging fresh wild garlic when it’s in season. Now, in late Autumn and early winter is the time to be planting your garlic for a crop next summer.
Garlic is easy and cheap to grow, and you don’t even need a garden as it can grow in pots. You just have to be patient as it’s a slow grower!
Continue readingChristmas Party Season
It’s the week for Christmas work parties. They have had to go online this year with many people choosing quizzes and activities to do together via Zoom.
If you are a lone worker or entrepreneur, a sessional worker or a tiny team then you may not have a Virtual Christmas Work Party to go to. No need to feel left out you can join our party. We’re doing a special party on Friday 18th December just for people like us who are a tiny team. Come for Cocktail and canapes making with us and a good old-fashioned sing-along with Shared Harmonies. Get your ticket today for less than the price of a take-away curry and kick off the festive season in style. https://bit.ly/SeasonsHarmony
Must be booked by Thursday 17th so we can send you our recipes
Party season is looking very different this year. Many of us are facing a Christmas of being separated from our loved ones. After months of working from home it’s difficult for us to connect and celebrate with people we are used to seeing every day, whether that be family, friends or colleagues. We are here to help you celebrate in a fun way together online.
We can help bring the Christmas Party to you with one of our interactive online sessions. You get creative with seasonal goodies, have fun together and get party snacks too!
Here at Season Well we have done lots over the months to help keep people entertained, inspired and active at home. We have shared recipes, run cook-along tutorials and given food growing and foraging tips on our Facebook and Youtube pages. We’ve shared recipe and ingredient inspiration through our Instagram posts. We have run virtual cooking tutorials for families through our Healthy Holiday programme with Lemon Balm CIC and Leeds Community Foundation. We’ve been a guest cook in the Great British Food Festival Zoom Cook Alongs, run cook alongs for groups and facilitated a Zoom Cocktail and Canape Celebration session for graduates from the School for Social Entrepreneurs.
Now we’d like to help you celebrate through Christmas Party Season. Just because you can’t get to a bar or restaurant with your teammates, this doesn’t have to stop you getting together and having fun. You can meet up and have festive fun together without leaving your own home. If you can’t get to a party we help a party come to you. We have some fabulous mocktail ( or cocktail) and canape sessions planned. We will get you all making your own party snacks and drinks to get your Zoom party started in style. All our recipes are designed using local, seasonal produce which is easy to get hold of. We can even supply you with our own homemade cordials, using locally picked, wild ingredients.
As a social enterprise, we are passionate about enabling people to eat more sustainably for their well being and the wellbeing of the planet. We are also committed to improving the physical and mental wellbeing of those we work with. And what helps you feel great? Getting together with friends over lovely food and drink. Any money you spend with us goes back to our social purpose of enabling everyone to enjoy seasonal, sustainable food no matter what their background.
We also work with another wonderful social enterprise Shared Harmonies who can facilitate a fun Christmas sing-along session to keep you in the party mood.
Have a look at our festive packages to help you celebrate your virtual Christmas party. Prices from £190 per session. Contact us to discuss how we can help you celebrate and be merry.
Healthy Holidays: Cooking with Children
We’ve just finished our first week of the Food and Fun Healthy Holidays Activities at Meanwood Community Centre. We are working with Lemon Balm and the project is funded by Leeds Community Foundation
We’re giving out free recipe kits and craft activities for children to do at home. We’re also videoing our cooking sessions so families can cook along at home.
Here’s our recipe from today: Guacamole and Flatbreadwith Veggie Sticks.
We know avocados aren’t local or very sustainable as they require a lot of water to grow in hot countries like Mexico, Peru or in California. They are also flown in to the UK which makes their carbon footprint very high.
However, we are getting our food from Fare Share and Food Revival who save surplus food from going to waste. In our view, it’s better to eat the avocados rather than let them go to waste. If you do like guacamole then maybe just limit yourselves to avocados as a treat rather than having them every day.
The chives we used came from our gardens so no carbon footprint there!
Happy cooking and happy eating! Do get in touch if you would like to get our recipe kits over the summer holidays.
Summer Cooking: Cooking with children
The summer holidays are here…..although it’s hard to notice the difference this year! Now is the time for summer cooking with children.
Continue readingLock down Cooking 2: Seasonal Spinach
People are enjoying a lot more home-cooking during this COVID 19 Lockdown period. Mostly because we are at home more but also because we can’t go out for meals. We’ve taken this opportunity to inspire you to get cooking with the great seasonal fruit herbs and vegetables we have available both in the shops and markets and even by having a go at growing your own.
Continue readingGrow your own dinner: Seasonal Stir-fry
If you want a truly local, seasonal dinner then this beautiful stir fry recipe uses spring ingredients you can easily grow: pak choi, radish and spring onion.
What to eat in May: Rhubarb, rhubarb and more rhubarb
It’s May and a time of abundance for rhubarb. It’s the only UK fruit that is around right now so it’s time to make the most of this seasonal beauty.
Bright pink forced rhubarb has disappeared from the shops now but rhubarb is springing forth in allotments and gardens around the country and people are saying “what can I do with all this rhubarb?” Once you’ve stewed some to have with yoghurt and had a couple of rhubarb crumbles some people get stumped with what to do next.
Continue readingCook-along Recipes
Whilst we are all stuck in our homes during the Coronavirus pandemic Seasonwell is trying to lift your spirits with some live cook-along tutorials on our Facebook page
Posted by Season Well on Friday, April 3, 2020
We’re also hoping to help you feed yourself healthily with what seasonal produce is available and using what you may already have in the cupboard.
I don’t know about you but we have really limited our supermarket visits since the lockdown as we’re just not finding then a pleasant place to be. Now is the time to be using your local shops and market, use what’s growing around you and use up what you already have in your cupboards.
Posted by Season Well on Tuesday, March 24, 2020
So far we have cooked with Kale and Wild garlic ( see past posts for those recipes). Today it’s time for rhubarb. We are lucky enough to have some growing in our allotment. If you aren’t so lucky then do you have neighbours with an allotment (you could barter for toilet rolls maybe!) Or maybe you are near to a community garden like Incredible Edible Aireborough who have rhubarb growing. Or think about getting a local fruit and veg box delivered.
We’ve made a healthy Rhubarb flapjack, using a recipe we got from our friend and colleague Jenny from Active-Eat.
Rhubarb Flapjack
Ingredients:
150g rhubarb ( approx 1.5 stalks)
zest & juice 1 orange
2cm piece fresh ginger root
300g porridge oats
2 medium bananas
200g dates ( de-stoned)
75g raisins ( or sultanas)
75g mixed seeds ( sunflower & pumpkin)
2 tablespoons maple syrup
Equipment:
Shallow, square or rectangular baking tin, greased and lined with baking paper
Large mixing bowl
Large spoon or spatula
Food processor ( or large knife and chopping board)
Measuring spoons
small saucepan with lid
Instructions
- First, make the rhubarb compote. Chop up the rhubarb into 2cm chunks and place in the pan with the finely grated zest and juice of the orange and grated ginger. Cover and simmer for 5-10 minutes until the rhubarb is soft and can be mashed with a fork. Leave to cool a little.
- Use a food processor to mash your dates into a chunky paste- you will need to add a splash of water
- Mash the 2 bananas until smooth
- Mix the date paste and the mashed bananas with the oats then add the seeds and the raisins
- Put half the oat mixture into your lined tin and press down so you have a firm layer
- Spoon over the rhubarb compote and spread to make a layer on top of the flapjack mix
- Dot over the remaining mixture then use your spatula or the back of the large spoon to gently smooth it so you have covered the rhubarb layer
- Bake for about 40 minutes at 180°C
- Slice whilst still a little warm and leave to cool