If It’s In Season, Get Eatin’

This month is all about those beautiful seasonal fruits and vegetables. There are so many fresh garden goodies readily available and we are here to tell you how to eat them right! Don’t go wasting seasonal fruits and vegetables by cooking them the ol’ fashioned way…get into the groove of summer and fire up that grill!

Tip 1: Garden Fresh

First things first, buy a handful of herbs, veggies, and fruits so your kitchen is always brimming with at-your-fingertips goodness. If you got it, eat it. Hit up your local farmer’s market and select your seasonal favorites!

Tip 2: Clean and Simple

You don’t have to cook everything…When they are seasonal & garden fresh, those fruits and vegetables practically do the work for you.

Utilize the juices from other fresh fruits to enhance the flavor of a casual summer fruit salad. Squeeze a little fresh fruit juice on a fruit salad to ditch those unnatural sugars. Who needs them when you’ve got nature’s best? (Great for picnics and outdoor parties).

Another way to keep it simple? Add a wee bit of olive oil to enhance the already crisp flavor of your table vegetables. Or put together a classic salad using natural oils, juices, and seeds. Mmmm.

Tip 3: Burn Baby Burn

Try charring your veggies! By blackening those beauties over a flame, you can completely alter the flavor of your dish. The smokiness adds depth to any meal!

Just sprinkle some olive oil overtop the vegetable of your choosing, like peppers or eggplant, and continually churn them over that open flame on your grill. When they look nice and charred, carefully pull and scrape off the burnt skin to reveal a soft delicious core underneath.

Finally, slice up your vegetables, drizzle a bit more olive oil overtop, add herbs like basil and parsley, and you’ve got some great eatin’.

Tip 4: Getting Grilled

We want you to grill everything from proteins to vegetables to FRUITS! Yes, that’s right…we want you to grill your fruit. Who doesn’t want rich smoky sweetness?

Take some sweet or tart fruit, like pineapple, and toss it on the grill. First peel off the rough outer layer of your pineapple and cut it in half. Add a little sugar if you’d like, wrap it in tin foil and throw it on the grill, turning every so often. When it’s ready, you’ve got yourself a serious summer sensation.

Extra Tip: To Salt or Not to Salt?

Eggplant is definitely a feature vegetable on our summer ingredients list. But the big question is, to salt or not to salt? Most people have always added salt to eggplant prior to cooking in order to remove bitterness. But salting your eggplant might not have the same result as is believed.

A large majority of the eggplant we buy today has been bred to eliminate it’s original bitterness. So what does salting actually do? Well, it helps firm up those soft eggplants, by removing some of the existing moisture in the vegetable. So if you’d prefer firm eggplants to soft or soggy, then keep salting!