Foods in season in July – Food For Kids Podcast episode 11

Joanne Roach (00:14)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. So it's the start of July and as promised it's the monthly rundown of what seasonal foods to buy in July so you can hopefully save a bit of money and the planet a little bit while trying something different at its best and exploring some foods with your children.

Okay, so we're in July now and this is the time of year when the variety of fruit and veg really starts to open up. It's been very warm through June and we've had the longest days of the year now, so a lot of the crops are producing in earnest. If June was the beginning of the excitement, then July is when the choice gets noticeably broader, including the start of things that need a lot of heat to ripen.

So let's start with tomatoes because even though we used to see them in the shops all year round, this is actually when the UK grown ones that are grown without so much artificial heat and light indoors begin to appear more. So we're getting the first tomatoes that have ripened on the plant in the natural sunlight, which often means that they're more full of flavour, more kind of tomato-y for want of a better word. If your child isn't a big tomato fan, it might be worth trying them again now in season. Sometimes a truly ripe tomato can win someone over. And you can also do a bit of a taste test with different varieties. Cherry ones, plum ones, yellow ones. If you can find one of the super sweet ones, that might give them something different to try out. And talk about the differences in sizes, colours and tastes. So that's tomatoes.

Blueberries are now well into their stride and July is a really good month for UK grown ones. If you didn't manage to find any in June, you're more likely to come across some now. They're one of those fruits that kids often will happily eat by the handful but if yours isn't keen you can try baking them into muffins or sprinkling a few on porridge or cereal. If you want to try something different, can toss a handful into a salad, especially if there's something like a mild cheese in there, or if you put something like couscous or something like that with blueberries on and something like lemon and herbs. It sounds a bit odd, but it does work really well together and it's also quite a good way to show children that fruit doesn't always have to mean pudding. Blueberries freeze well as well, so it's a good time to buy a few extras if you see them on sale in big punnets and keep them for later in the year.

So courgettes. Courgettes are really starting to produce now. If you grow them yourself you might already be at the stage where you've got a few baby ones ready more or less every couple of days but we haven't quite got to the stage where we're inundated by them. So because of this the shops and the market should be lowering the prices from now on. They're pretty versatile. You can grill them, roast them, grate them into muffins or fritters or spiralise them into noodles. They've also got quite soft skins when they're young so you don't need to peel them.

Alongside courgettes we're also starting to see the first of the summer squashes like patty pan squashes. If you haven't seen them before they're the ones that look like little brightly coloured flying saucers and their unusual shapes can be a good talking point. You can stuff them or you can slice them into rings and roast them with a bit of oil and seasoning. Children can help brush the oil on and lay them out like puzzle pieces to fit onto the tray before you roast them. That's quite a nice job for them to do.

French beans are really coming in now. These are the ones that are also quite often labelled as fine beans. So you can start looking out for UK grown ones now because they start to appear more in the shops, whereas out of season they tend to come from North Africa and the Mediterranean. If child isn't keen on them plain, can also try tossing them with a bit of oil and maybe some salt and pepper or even some breadcrumbs and either bake or air fry them. That little bit of crunch on top can make them feel more like a snack. Mangetout and sugar snap peas are also producing now so the price is lowering in the shops for those. These are great raw which makes them a good snack and lunchbox option or you can stir fry them quickly to keep that crunch.

So cherries, we're getting towards the tail end of the cherry season. They've been around since mid-June but they won't be here for much longer so enjoy them while you can.They're usually picked ripe so they don't keep long but they're a lovely snack if you happen to come across them. Don't forget the stones are a choking risk for very little ones so always remove them.

Okay, broccoli. Broccoli is still going strong especially the calabrese types with the big green heads. If you listened last month, you'll know that the stalks are edible too, just slice them thinly. If your child isn't mad keen on broccoli as florets, you can also add a little handful of cooked broccoli into blended sauces like, you know, pestos or pasta sauces and the texture of blended cooked broccoli is completely different to eating it plain.

By the end of July, fennel also starts to be around. It has a mild aniseedy flavour when it's raw but when it's roasted or cooked it becomes lot sweeter. You can slice it really thinly and add it to a tray bake with say potatoes and chicken or sausages or you can try it grilled in wedges. The fronds, the little fluffy green tops are edible too and they can be used a bit like herbs, they'll add that sort of fennely flavour onto your salads. Children might be interested in how different it smells when it's raw versus cooked so get them to come in and give it a smell before you put it in the oven and then afterwards. It's one of those ones that changes a lot with heat.

New garlic is also in season now. This is the fresh garlic that hasn't been dried out yet, so it's sometimes called wet garlic and it has a milder, less pungent flavour than when it's been stored. It's easier to peel and chop because the skins haven't dried so much, so it's quite a bit easier for children to have a go with prepping. So if they find the smell of regular garlic a bit overpowering, but they want to help, then this is a good time of year to get them involved.

And then finally for the UK grown section, Globe artichokes. So these are massive thistle type plants and what we eat is the closed thistle head before it flowers. So they're really quite hard to find in the shops, but you might be able to find them at a market or a greengrocer. They're a bit fiddly, they're not a weekday evening food, but they can be fun as like a project to do together and explore. If you look up videos of which bits to cut off when you get it back from the shops and then you boil or steam them and then as well as the heart that you're used to that we get in jars of oil we can also eat little bits of each of those petals so you can have something like melted butter or lemon yogurt in the middle of the table or like an aioli or a garlic mayo and then you peel one petal at a time off and then you just scrape the soft bit off the base of each petal with your teeth. It's a really unusual thing to do, but it's really fun to do together. It's messy hands on food and that's sometimes the most fun and really good at building up children's confidence.

OK, so that's the homegrown stuff. So let's move on to a few seasonal imports that are still going strong.

Pineapples are still in peak season. If you want to try a change, could try slicing them into long thin sticks instead of chunks. Sometimes just changing the shape can make a food more interesting to children.

Apricots are another imported fruit that's in peak season now. They're soft, sweet and slightly tart and best eaten within a couple of days of buying them. You can eat them raw, can roast them with a bit of honey or slice them into yoghurt or cereal. It's quite fun to compare the texture of the fresh ones to the ones that are dried that we're to getting in packets all year round.

And finally, okra or okra. Although we can grow it here in the UK, it's not usually ready until a bit later in the summer, so most of what we see in the shops now is imported, it's often used in stews or curries but if you want to try something a bit different you can slice it into very thin discs toss it with a bit of oil and bake it like little crisps

So that's the roundup for July, a really colourful fresh month with lots of vegetables at their peak. So hopefully this gave you some ideas of something to pick up on this week's shop. You can get a full list from the link in the show notes or on one of our printables.

Next week I'll bring you five family-friendly ways to eat some of these foods. But before then, I've got an interview with a dietitian about sensory issues with food, so I hope to see you for that. And in the meantime, happy eating.

00:00 Intro

00:31 Seasonal Foods in July

06:49 July Imported Fruits and Vegetables

07.47 Summary and outro