Do your menus change with the seasons?

[Tesha]

My husband was laughing the other night about how some foods
just don't make it to the table in the certain seasons.

I'm not sure if it's the temp- I mean we have AC (it was over 90 AGAIN today... whew!)
I'm not sure it's availability - I mean we can have anything at anytime these days.

What do you think? Are you a seasonal cook - and what's just simply off the menu in August?

[elleng]

1. Beef stew!

[Monique1]

2. This year I am a seasonal cook

It is too hot to bring any heat in the kitchen plus my electric was way too high. Actually, I just don't have an appetite in this heat.

[Tesha]

5. it tastes so much better in January, doesn't it!

[Warpy]

3. You bet I'm a seasonal cook

if only because the summers here are brutal and I don't do anything in the oven unless it's calm and I can use the solar oven and I do as little as possible on the stovetop or in the toaster oven.

That leaves multi meal cooking and lots of salads, heating portions up in the microwave. I also eat fruit in the summertime, skipping it out of season. Oh, and yogurt, lots of yogurt.

Winters are for soups and stews, posole, chili, lentil loaf, and baked goods.

[Tesha]

6. Its not only the cooking of food either...

I prefer my food cooler to the touch in the summer.

[hippywife]

4. Sometimes.

It just depends on what we have a taste for and how hot the temps are. (105 today! Ugh!)

But I definitely am where produce is concerned. I just can't justify the expense of buying substandard produce just because it can be made available out of season. They just don't have the wonderful flavor they should have and I know that land in emerging countries is being gobbled up to grow these things year round to the detriment of the native population and their food cultures.

[Tesha]

7. Like corn...

I never want just a serving of corn in the winter - it can't compare to the
memory I have of fresh-from-the-field cob corn. Or tomatoes - I have a tiny garden
pumping out wonderful tasting real fruit - not that stuff they have in the stores
in winter.

But some foods, like... say Osso Bucco, just don't appeal in the summer. I could still make it, but it just doesn't interest me.

know what I mean?

[hippywife]

9. I do know what you mean.

I don't care for heavy meals in the spring or summer at all. I think out bodies still want to eat seasonally even if we don't do it consciously, ya know?

[The empressof all]

8. I tend to serve food that is good at room temp in the summers

Light pastas with sauce made from pureed fresh tomato, garlic and basil from the garden

Quinoa salad with lemon, green chick peas, corn and spinach in a walnut basil lemon dressing (It's whats for dinner tonight.)

I also do a lot of rattatoille alone or over pasta in the summer.

I don't do hearty stews or soups in the summer.

[Lifelong Protester]

10. For the most part, yes. Especially produce.

I would have to say that stews and such taste better to me in the winter. In summer it is a lot of cold or room temp things.

I only eat corn on the cob in summer when it's fresh here.

Off the menu for August: My favorite Bulgarian spicy tomato soup with homemade dumplings (from a Moosewood cookbook), chili, my savory onion bread pudding, pumpkin risotto, baked macaroni and cheese, French style with bleu cheese mixed in, Italian 'sausage' with peppers and tomatoes, over hard rolls (I have 'sausage' in quotes because I use fake... I cook and eat a mostly vegetarian diet).