About This “Seasonality” Thing, Then…
Those who are more frequent visitors here may have gleaned that I’m a bit of a foodie. As such, “seasonality” is something I hear discussed a lot on foodie shows, with commensurate mentions in cookbooks and food ‘zines.
By “seasonality”, I mean the concept of eating food according to the season and acquiring it as close to the source as possible, for those that can’t grow or raise it themselves.
Seasonality also plays a starring role in books such as Joanne Harris’s Chocolat and Frances Mays Under the Tuscan Sun, or — going back further — A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle.
I also mention it From time to time, I also mention its influence upon The Wall of Night series, for example:
Celebrating the Seasons in “The Gathering of the Lost”
Seasonality is one of my things, but I must admit that the Covid lockdown here gave it a boost, with the fruit that friends and family usually helped consume soon becoming an embarassment of riches.
And the more you do, in that respect, the more tends to arrive on your doorstep and this year feijoas (known as pineapple guava, I think, outside of NZ)) figs,walnuts, but most significantly, quince have all duly arrived.
All of which is quite wonderful in some ways. However, dealing with the bounty is also a significant amount of work, even in the very modest quantities I’m dealing with — which has got me thinking that I can see why the human race embraced the industrialization of food production and preservation. 😀
Because, dear readers, experience is teaching me that in order to fully embrace seasonality in all it’s glory, one either needs A Great Deal Of Time, or a small army of helpers fully deployed.
Certainly, if I were to get any further into it, I would either need to switch to writing books about food (and even then I might still need that small army in order to have any writing time!) or give up writing altogether: O-o.
As I have no intention of doing that, seasonality will always have to stay within bounds — although as the photos may indicate, there are compensations for some degree of seasonality, here’n’there… 😀