Ms. D (our household’s food procurement officer) was baking a pumpkin pie this morning, and I asked if canned pumpkin was available all year round. She said just about everything was available all year long these days. Which prompted me to wonder what foods were only (widely/readily) available at certain times of the year.
I’m not talking about things that are clearly prepared/packaged for a specific holiday like Valentine’s candy, Christmas cookies or King cake. My wife observed that the Solo brand fillings for kolachkes were more available around xmas. And I wondered how hard it would be to find a turkey other than in November-December or a corned beef around St Pat’s Day. I suppose some fruits and veggies are more widely available at certain times of year - but it seems like we are able to get just about any produce all year round from hothouses and Mexico/South America.
So what would you suggest as a foodstuff or ingredient that is not readily available the year around.
Mallomars: " A Seasonal Favorite. Reminiscent of S’Mores, Mallomars cookies feature round graham crackers topped with marshmallow and covered in pure dark chocolate."
So … I’m looking at the ingredients and am not seeing anything that is “seasonal”. Please explain.
I use Italian plums to make plum dumplings. At least in Ohio, they seem to only be available during their harvest season, July-September. And even then, only in smaller food markets. I don’t think their demand is enough to get them shipped in from wherever they might be grown year-round.
Both apricot and plum dumplings, with a potato-based dough, are an Austrian specialty called knoedel – respectively, marillenknoedel and zwetchkenknoedel. (The words are Austrian dialect, so expect alternate spellings.) Tough to get 'em even here in Boston.
BTW, I think that Mallormars are seasonal, at least in part, because the thin chocolate coating melts on grocery store shelves. You pretty much only find them in New York City, AFAIK.
Yeah - I had to google them as well, and it said they were available in cooler months due to chocolate melting.
Corn on the cob is probably a good one. I think I have OCCASIONALLY seen it available other than when we would think of as harvest season here in the midwest. And when I looked once, I saw it is grown in every state of the union. So you might see SOME from Florida. But I bet it is infrequent enough to fit this discussion.
If possible, would you suggest the “season” for the product you suggest? What is “sloe gin” season? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone order/offer sloe gin after one of my earliest drinking experiences with sloe gin fizzes back in GRADE SCHOOL in the 60s!
We keep a keen eye out on the shelves in fall for the mallomars to appear so we can snap up a few boxes before they go away again.
Corn on the cob is a good one too, I mean you can get corn on the cob out of season, but it may as well be labeled something different because it isn’t remotely as good.
I agree with the corn but dissent on the terminology:
You know they call corn-on-the-cob, “corn-on-the-cob”, but that’s how it comes out of the ground. They should just call it corn, and every other type of corn, corn-off-the-cob. It’s not like if someone cut off my arm they would call it “Mitch”, but then re-attached it, and call it “Mitch-all-together”..
Around here, mirlitons (aka chayotes, vegetable pears, and other names) are absent from produce shelves outside of November & December. Baked mirliton casserole is a staple on holiday tables in southern Louisiana.
Another local one is satsumas – grown locally and harvested in November & December. You’ll see them in New Orleans-area groceries between late November and late January. Many other citrus fruits are grown overseas and shipped to the local groceries to ensure year-round supply, but satsumas are not.
Yet another local one – local crawfish (never say crayfish around here ). The crawfish season is long-ish and weather-dependent, running from February through July or August. Peak is about mid-March through June. There is a local ethic to buy locally-sourced crawfish and avoid crawfish harvested overseas. In practice, packaged crawfish (typically tail meat) from southeast Asia are available year-round. For social crawfish boils (cf. South Carolina low-country boils), however, crawfish are purchased live and are invariably locally sourced.
There’s a local-ish variety of plum around here which is available only for the five or six weeks it’s in season, and at no other time. It has different hyperlocal names, but in Luxembourg we call them “quetsch.” There’s about three weeks where the stores are bursting with this kind of pastry:
There’s even a quetsch festival which has been going for decades:
Makes a great brandy, too. But that you can get year-round.
We can get pomegranates here most months, shipped up from, say, South Africa in the off months. But they’re pretty crappy. The really, really good Italian ones are available only from October to December.
I want to suggest those fried canned “onion ring” things, that people spread over their green bean and mushroom soup casserole for Thanksgiving. They might be hidden somewhere the rest of the year, but they are on a big display along with other Thanksgiving food items for about a month.
). The crawfish season is long-ish and weather-dependent, running from February through July or August. Peak is about mid-March through June. There is a local ethic to buy locally-sourced crawfish and avoid crawfish harvested overseas. In practice, packaged crawfish (typically tail meat) from southeast Asia are available year-round. For social