Foods in season in August- Food For Kids Podcast

Joanne (00:22)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. So it's the start of August already and as usual, it's the monthly rundown of what seasonal foods to buy in August so you can explore some foods with your children while they're at their best and hopefully save a bit of money and environmental footprint at the same time.

Okay, so we're in August now, and the next month or so is a bit of a high point in the fruit and veg calendar here in the UK. This is when the range of colours and flavours really feel like it's at its widest. We've got all the summer fruits ripening now and there's still plenty of vegetables coming in strong. So if you want to cook what's in season, this really is one of the easiest months to do it. So let's start with the foods that we grow lots of here in the UK and that you should be able to find either local or at least UK grown versions.

First up with our UK crops is courgettes. Courgettes are coming in thick and fast now and we're starting to get into that time of year where gardeners start making jokes about them. So if you've got a plant in your garden this year, you may already be at that point where you can't quite keep up and there are lots of memes online about people leaving courgettes on neighbours' doorsteps and running off. If your child isn't keen on the texture of just courgette on a plate with other vegetables, then they're great added to things as they're cooking, especially grated, like sauces and stews because they kind of melt away a lot. They're also brilliant in risotto for the same reason. We love them in our house if you slow saute them with olive oil and garlic until they're very soft and then mash them a little bit and add lots of cheese or nutritional yeast if you're dairy free so that you end up with this kind of cheesy paste. It's great stirred through pasta or piled on toast.

If your child likes baking, a courgette loaf or muffin is a great way to use them up and get them involved because when they're grated, they basically disappear to almost nothing and they add great moisture to bakes without really adding any noticeable courgette flavour. You can also add them to smoothies for the same reason. And don't forget that if you have small young courgettes, you can actually eat them raw. They're quite crispy and good for dipping.

The next food I'm going to highlight is blackberries because although they're not really around until the end of the month, they're one of the classic signs that summer is tipping into autumn. By the back end of August, you might see them in the hedgerows near where you live. be available in the shops now and the price should be getting slightly lower than they were a couple of months ago. If you can spot some on sale during August, September or October, you can also freeze them a few at a time in a single layer on a tray and then decant them into a bag in the freezer to keep for the winter when they're not so easily available.

Green beans like French beans and runner beans are in full swing now and you're more likely to find them from UK growers in all the shops and markets. I'm not personally a fan of runner beans, which I know is kind of a sacrilege for a veg grower, but I've always preferred the texture of French beans. You can get children involved with prepping green beans by pulling the strings off the sides of runner beans while you're prepping them, or snapping the ends off French beans. My favourite way to eat green beans is to steam them for a few minutes, either in the microwave or a steamer, and then saute them with very, very ripe chopped tomatoes that sweat down with lots of garlic. You can make a more child-friendly version of them by steaming them until they're just soft but still a bit al dente and then serving them with a little pot of ketchup or another favourite dip and kids can dip them in. Their shape makes them great for dipping. They're also really good air-fried or oven-baked. You can even put breadcrumbs on them.

Raspberries are also in peak season now. The early raspberries are finishing, but the autumn fruiting ones are just getting going. Apart from being great to snack on, raspberries are a lovely fruit for children to mash with a fork and stir into something they like, like yogurt, ice cream or porridge, because they break down so quickly and colour everything bright pink. They also have a surprising amount of fibre. Don't forget Kate Hall's advice about freezing berries as snacks too obviously being careful for choking for little ones. I'll put the link in the show notes for her video about that.

And as well as the blackberries and the raspberries, other berries such as strawberries and blueberries are all at peak season now too.

Spinach is still in season. If you grow it, you might find that the hot weather of midsummer has slowed it down a bit or made it bolt, but commercial growers do keep it shaded enough to keep it going through the middle of summer. Spinach leaves are great to stir into pasta sauces or soups right at the end. They wilt down in seconds and can be a really easy and gentle way to get something green in without a strong flavour. If your child likes smoothies and doesn't mind the green colour, adding in some spinach is a really good way to get it to completely disappear into the mix. You can barely taste it and it makes it go bright green.

Sweet corn is at its absolute best for the next few weeks through August into October. if you see whole cobs in the shops with the leaves around the outside, they can be fun for your child to learn about how they grow. Taking off the leaves and the stalk is called shucking, S-H-U-C-K, shucking. And there's an article on my website about getting children involved with harvesting corn, but also with shucking corn from the shops. It's a really fun way to explore it. Did you know that the little tassels that come out the top of the cob are where the cob is fertilised? Each one of those little tiny strands is called silks and it connects to an individual kernel on that cob, which is why sometimes you'll get cobs with empty white kernels if the plant didn't get good fertilisation.

Corn on the cob is best cooked as soon as possible after harvesting because the sugars in it start to turn to starch as soon as they're picked, so beware of cobs in the shops that look old and dusty. Frozen ones are always a better bet if you don't know how long a cob was picked for. We get our homegrown ones straight into boiling water for a few minutes right after we've picked them. But barbecuing them is also good for a nice smoky char. If your child isn't keen on the tinned kernels, the novelty of eating a corn on the cob with butter and nibbling like a big mouse might be enough to help them take just a few bites.

Broccoli is still great through the summer. Don't forget that as well as steaming or stir frying broccoli, it stands up really well to roasting. If you cut it into small florets, toss it with a little oil and a pinch of salt and bake at a high heat for about 20ish minutes. It goes crispy at the edges and has a nutty, gnarly flavour. Sometimes children who don't like steamed broccoli can enjoy the roasted version and you can also sprinkle or coat them in garlicky crumbs.

We talked about summer squashes last month with all their unusual shapes and colours and they're a great kind of mystery vegetable for getting children curious. There are lots of great recipes out there for stuffing squashes and that can be quite a lot of fun. If you stuff a small one for your child as an individual portion with a filling that you know they like, like bolognese or cheesy rice, then even if they more or less only eat the filling and hardly any of the squash or even none of the squash, they'll still have enjoyed the fun presentation of it being inside a squash shape and built some familiarity with the shape of the squash too. They may eat a little bit of the squash while they're spooning their filling out, but even if not, it makes the meal a little bit more fun and different and the grownups can try the squash too.

Tomatoes are of course in peak condition though, it's the height of the season. I did a whole episode last week on using up tomatoes, so I won't go into detail here. I'll just link to it in the show notes, but make the most of them. It really is the best time of year for tomatoey joy.

Watercress is in season now too. It's got quite a peppery bite so it might not be a hit raw with every child but some children might be happy to literally just bite it as an experiment to see how peppery it is. They can have a glass of water by the side to wash it down if they're not sure. They can even grade it out of 10 for pepperiness, comparing it to another type of leaf But for other people who can cope with a little bit of heat, a handful of watercress stirred into mashed potato, blended into a soup or mixed with cream cheese or egg mayo on a sandwich is delicious and it's an absolute nutritional powerhouse. So definitely worth trying to fit in.

Okay, so that's it for the foods that are really abundant in UK gardens and farms. Now we would normally have a section of imported seasonal foods, but between now and October, quite a few of the foods that we import are possible to grow here too. So gardeners who grow their own, who are listening, might have some and farmers markets and greengrocers might have some UK commercially grown ones too. But while they can grow here, they're still more likely to be imported in your mainstream supermarkets because of the climate where they come from. So the next few items will be foods that are in season wherever they come from, but you may be able to find locally grown ones if you look around a bit.

The first on this list is aubergines. If you do spot British grown ones, they tend to be smaller varieties and often different colors than the standard dark purple shiny version that we recognize from the emoji. In Asian supermarkets, you can often get white, creamy or speckled varieties that are shaped more like a large chili or purple or speckled ones that are rounder than the familiar emoji aubergines but the standard purple Mediterranean ones are also in full swing now, so you should be able to get better prices on them. They're an acquired texture for lot of adults as well as kids, but I like them best sort of melted down in a slow pan or in the oven with oil and garlic and then stirred through pasta or blended into a dip like Baba Ghanoush which is great for things like pitta fingers or toast.

Peppers are now also available from UK farms, but definitely more available and cheap in imported bags. The big family packs will have more reds and oranges and fewer green ones now so you can stock up. You can freeze pepper strips for cooking with later if you have too many. And it's quite a good time to get stocked up on the cheap ones, get them in the freezer for later in the year. I'll link to a video in the show notes from Kate about how to do that. Peppers are great for snacking too. You can cut strips for dipping like in the episode last week about summer snacks, which I'll also link to in the show notes. And children are often really surprised to know that the green ones aren't a different type of pepper. They are just a red or orange pepper that hasn't ripened up yet. That's why they taste different. It's a different level of ripeness. So you might be able to get a curious child to try a bite of all three traffic light colours to compare the flavours and rank them in order of preference.

Figs are coming into their short but intense season now. They do grow here and if you've got a tree in your garden or nearby, then you will be picking them now through into September. The ones we get in the shops in the UK are mostly from the Mediterranean, North Africa or Western Asia. And if you've only had dried figs before, then the fresh ones can really be a surprise. They're very soft, sweet and extremely juicy. You can eat them raw with ham or cheese or roast them with a little drizzle of honey. You can eat the skins too if they're soft. They're a completely different experience to the dried ones.

And then finally in this group is peaches. They are at their best now, soft and fragrant and sweet and coming towards the end of their outdoor growing. Biting into a juicy peach and having the juice run down your chin is a glorious thing. A good way to help children to explore peaches is to cut one open and let them look at the texture of the stone inside and how the different colours vein throughout the flesh and they can compare a slice of fresh peach to a tinned one and see which they prefer.

And finally, now we've got that shorter list of standard seasonal foods that we always have to import because they need a hotter climate all year round. So that's our pineapples, which are available year round because of the way they're stored, as well as bananas and plantains.

Watermelons can be grown here in small quantities, the vast majority are imported, but they are also at peak freshness now too.

So that's my roundup of August seasonal foods, full of flavour and one of the most generous months for fresh produce in the UK. So hopefully this gave you some ideas of things to pick up on this week's shop. Why not rope your child in to help with the shopping and find a couple of items on this seasonal list? As always, you can get a free list on our website. I'll put the link in the show notes, or you can buy one of our child-friendly printables for less than a pound each to stick on your fridge or take with you to the shops.

Thanks for listening today. Next week, like every month, I'll give you five family-friendly ways to eat some of these seasonal foods. I hope to see you on the next episode, and in the meantime, happy eating.