Foods in season in February- Food For Kids Podcast episode 72

Joanne Roach (00:13)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. It's the start of February now and the darkest, shortest days are behind us. So it's time to start looking forwards towards spring. So here are your February foods to add to your shopping list and get kids to explore. I give you this list of seasonal foods every month because they will normally be a bit cheaper and a bit better for the planet, but also because they often taste better in season. So it's a good way to help kids to explore fruit and veg when they taste their best.

February can feel a bit tiring sometimes because January is a very long month. And by the time we get to February, we've often really had enough of winter. But you can start to see bulbs coming up now of snowdrops and crocuses and the birds are singing a bit more. You might get one of your commutes in part daylight at least, and the world just seems a little bit more hopeful that spring is coming.

There isn't much new that's growing outside, but the soil will soon start to warm up and there is bit of promise in the air that something is coming. But while we can start sowing new plants now, they won't be ready for some weeks to come. So in our kitchens, we're still eating the winter fruits and veggies from previous months. So let's start with what's in the shops that was grown in the UK right now.

Joanne Roach (01:28)

Because it's still cold and short days, we'll have a short list of things that are outside in veggie patches and fields to be harvested, then it's back through some of those winter favourites that were harvested in late autumn but that store well through the winter, and finally we'll see what imported seasonal foods we can get from warmer parts of the world. It won't feel much different to December and January, but these winter staples are still really tasty and at their best, so they will make some nice comforting meals and some opportunities to explore with kids.

At this time of year most of the brassica family with their thick leaved greens like Brussels sprouts, kale and cabbage are still proudly standing fine in veggie patches everywhere, although if you have a veg patch you probably want to net some of them because there's somebody else who agrees that they're delicious when there's not much else around and that's pigeons. Pigeons can strip a bed of cabbages or kale in a day, so it's worth covering them up. I talked about Brussels sprouts in the last couple of months, but different types of cabbages can pretty much be eaten in every month of the year and this is the season where the thicker-leaved, larger and slower-growing ones come into their own. But soon we will have spring cabbages which are more sort of rugby ball shaped and have pointier slimmer leaves. In the summer cabbages are more loose-leaved and still pointy shaped.

But you can always buy a seasonal cabbage and they're so much more than a steamed or boiled side dish to a roast, although they are perfect like that. You can shred them into mash for colcannon or bubble and squeak. You can cut them into quarters and roast them or pan fry them and then you get a lovely char on the cut ends. You can use big outside leaves to wrap fillings in and bake. You can stir fry cabbage. And of course you can ferment it into sauerkraut or kimchi, which involves a lot of hands-on rubbing and squeezing with the salt or the spice paste, which can be fun for kids to dip into helping with. If you have a whole Savoy cabbage and your kids come and help you strip off the outer darker leaves, they can see the obvious difference in colour and thickness and texture between the outside leaves that do all the protecting from the cold and the thinner, less crinkled, paler leaves in the middle that are being protected from the cold. Those big outer leaves can be fun for children to practice their scissor skills on too, to cut the leaves up into shreds.

Other brassicas like cauliflower and broccoli are still around, although out in the veggie patch it will be more of the small, spear shaped types like purple sprouting broccoli which are just starting to get going now, so I'll cover those in more detail in the next couple of months when they're coming into their own. But you can still find regular UK grown cauliflower and broccoli in the shops.

I also covered kale in more detail last month, but it's still going strong in February. So look out for different types in the shops. If you haven't tried crisping up slightly oiled and seasoned leaves in the air fryer or the oven, they really are tasty and it's an unusual crispy way to try them for kids. If you do an online search for kale chips recipes or kale crisps recipes, you'll find some nice things to add to them. You can also find some chard around that's withstood the cold. And if you live near a produce shop that stocks collard greens, they're also really good in this cold weather. Both are lovely as greens as a side dish, but they're also great with potatoes in curries. And finally, on leafy things, you can still get some chicory too, which I covered in more detail in our November episode.

The root vegetables are still holding up and are still really affordable. Parsnips, carrots, swedes, celeriac and turnips are all still available everywhere and they last really well in the kitchen and are super comforting. This is a really good time to pick up a couple of something, while they're cheap, to just explore with kids, even if you think they might not want to eat them. They can peel or grate them or try making different things with them just to see what the differences are while they're cheap.

Carrots are particularly great for comparing in different ways because they're so good raw, so you can cut some batons to dip in a favourite sauce. You can grate some and taste it raw on its own or mixed with shredded white cabbage for coleslaw with a dressing. Or you can mix grated carrot with some lemon juice and sultanas for a sweet little salad. And then you can steam a couple of carrots until they're just soft to see how much sweeter they become when they're cooked. And then you can even cook them to really soft and mash them with a little butter to see what the difference is there. It's quite fun for kids to see how one food can be really different if it's prepared in different ways and carrots are so cheap that it's a good one to use for playing with.

Some other winter hardy veg that we've mentioned before but that are still going strong in February are leeks which are bulking up more now and Jerusalem artichokes which are coming to an end and getting ready to start sprouting soon when the soil starts to warm up. We also talked about rhubarb in the January episode, but rhubarb will really begin sprouting in earnest now as the days warm up, so the forced pink rhubarb will be joined by the regular slightly more green stems soon.

And of course we still have plenty of storable foods to bring out of cold store and buy including storage friendly varieties of apples, winter squashes and main crop potatoes which are the thicker skinned, floury ones that store well in winter and they make great mash and chips. And as usual, you can get cultivated mushrooms pretty much all year round. So that's the list of UK grown foods. No new surprises, but still a lot of tasty seasonal choices.

And now for a few foods that are imported but are at their seasonal best right now.

Citrus fruits are still brightening up our dark winter days, so lemons, blood oranges, clementines, grapefruit and regular oranges are all super tasty and affordable right now. You can also still get stored varieties of sweet potatoes in different shapes and colours too. And don't forget that plantains and bananas are available all year round as well as pineapples because of the way they're stored and shipped. If your children have not eaten plantains, if you can find them in the shops with them, they can compare them to bananas. They're usually slightly larger and thicker skinned. When they're raw plantains are less sweet than bananas and have a lot more starch. But this means that they generally hold up better when you cook them. And although they are brilliant for desserts, they can also be used as a side dish to a savoury main meal. Ask your kids to help you search online for a recipe to try.

Joanne Roach (07:46)

So that's the February roundup of seasonal food. It's coming to the end of winter, but because it is still cold, it's still really nice to give our bodies and souls those comforting winter hug type meals, but with a bit of citrus brightness thrown in to tide us over until the spring. Hopefully this will give you some ideas of what to pick up in your next shopping trip and see if your child can pick out three of them to find in the shops for you to build their familiarity. If you want a written list to work from, as always, you'll find a link to the list on our website in the show notes or you can get one of our child-friendly fun printables to download and stick on the fridge.

In one of next week's episodes, I'll share five family-friendly ideas for cooking with some of these February foods as we come to the end of winter, but I'll be back with another non-seasonal related episode in between, so I hope you'll join me then. And in the meantime, happy eating!

00:00 Introduction

01:27 UK grown February seasonal foods

06:48 Imported February seasonal foods

07:45 Summary and outro