I don’t think it used to be a while ago. But we used pumpkin as a supplement in one of our former dog’s diet, and we could buy canned pumpkin year round. We did have to stock up before the holidays, because they would often sell out then.
I think that’s true for many produce items where the local ones are only available for a limited time but the imported ones available at other times of the year. I like peaches and in the summer, I get excellent ones grown in the United States. In the winter, peaches are available from Chile and elsewhere but are usually disappointing.
We give our dog plain canned pumpkin along with his kibble. A can lasts about six days, so every year we buy 60 cans between Thanksgiving and Christmas. After that, it’s either limited to one space on the lowest supermarket shelf at double the in-season price, or it completely vanishes. Pumpkin pie filling is available year-round, but it has too much sweetening and spices for dogs.
Pomegranates and persimmons are one of the autumnal seasonal joys. They do not keep, they travel poorly. Like apricots, in July. Here in New England, local apples varieties start appearing in September but by January they are gone. My co-op has about twenty varieties of apples right now.
And then cranberries. Available frozen perhaps, but fresh only in fall and early winter. Ditto chestnuts.
I visited two groceries near Chicago tonight and confirmed lychees as well as the following:
Chestnuts, longans, rambutans, passionfruit, figs, mamey sapote, mangosteens.
Pawpaws! A friend has trees and gave me some. They aren’t sold in stores because they need to be picked ripe then eaten within a few days.
But they sure are cool. They are the largest edible fruit native to North America. They taste like a combination of banana, pineapple, and mango.
I’m currently stratifying some of their seeds. Assuming I get them to germinate, I’ll be planting them around our house and they should have fruit a few years after I’m gone.
It depends on where you’re looking. Almost anything, you can get somewhere, but maybe not from your usual grocery store. Aldi, in particular, considers a lot of things to be seasonal: For instance, most baking supplies can only be found there in the winter.