July seasonal foods – fruit and veg in season in the UK. Food For Kids Podcast

Joanne (00:00)

In today's Food for Kids, we find out which fruits and vegetables are in season in July and how to help your child to explore them.

Joanne (00:21)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. It's the start of July now and as usual, this is the monthly rundown of what seasonal foods to buy this month so that you can hopefully save a bit of money, help the planet a little bit and maybe explore some different foods with your children while they're at their best.

OK, so we're in July now, and this is the time of year where the variety of fruit and veg really starts to ramp 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 our UK grown seasonal foods for July.

So let's start with tomatoes because even though we're used to seeing them in the shops all year round, this is the time of year where we start to see the UK grown ones that have been grown without as much artificial heat and light So we're getting the first tomatoes that have ripened on the plant in natural sunlight, which means often 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 black ones, if you can find one of the super sweet varieties that might give them something to try out. You can talk about the difference in sizes colours and tastes. If they don't want to eat any tomatoes then they could try smelling them, smelling vine ripened or local or homegrown ones to see if they can see the difference with those and those pale out of season fridge ones might be quite an interesting experiment for them. Okay, so that's tomatoes.

We're also seeing the start of homegrown cucumbers so if you grow them yourself it's time to start finding some pickle and salad recipes to be able to keep up with them or you might be able to find some local ones to buy too.

In the June episode we talked a lot about berries and they're definitely everywhere now so that's raspberries, strawberries, well as things like blackcurrants and redcurrants, as well as blueberries. 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 are one of those fruits that many kids 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 their cereal. If you want to try something different, you can toss a handful into a salad. They go especially well with shavings or chunks of mild cheese or marinated tofu. Or you can also put them onto something like couscous with 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 you can keep them for later in the year.

Also from last month we've still got all of the salad leaves, lettuces and spinach, although some of them may struggle in midsummer with the heat in a veg patch, they'll still be easily available in the shops. And the potatoes are now in full swing with both the salad potatoes from the last two months and the beginnings of the bigger, fluffier maincrop potatoes that will store to feed us through the winter.

Next up is 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 every couple of days or so, but you might not have quite got to the stage where you're inundated by them yet.

But because they're producing fast now, the shops and the market should be lowering the prices from now on through August and September. Courgettes are pretty versatile. You can grill them, roast them, grate them into muffins or fritters, spiralise them into noodles. They've also got quite soft skins when they're young, so you don't need to peel them. But if your child isn't keen, you can peel them and then grate the insides or blend them into sauces to add fibre and vitamins without any noticeable taste.

Alongside courgettes, we're also starting to see the first of the summer squashes like patty pan squashes. If you haven't seen those 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 the tops off, scoop them out and 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 they can also lay out the pieces like puzzle pieces to fit into the tray before you roast them. That's quite a nice little job for them to do.

French beans are also coming in in July. These are the ones that are also quite often labelled as fine beans. So you can start looking 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 your child isn't keen on them plain, you can also try tossing them with a bit of oil and some salt and pepper, or even some breadcrumbs and cheese and either bake them or air fry them. That little bit of browning and crunch on top can make them feel more like a snack.

Mange tout and sugar snap peas are also producing now so the price for those is lowering in the shops. They're great raw, which makes them a good snack and lunchbox option, or you can stir fry them quickly to keep that crunch.

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 little ones, so always remove them.

Broccoli's going strong now, especially the calabrese types, which is the familiar supermarket ones 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 on the side of their dinner, you could also add a little handful of cooked broccoli into blended sauces, especially things like pestos or pasta sauces. Or they might like roasted florets if they like gnarly roasted bits and they can dip them into a favourite condiment.

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 a lot sweeter. You can slice it really thinly and add it to a tray bake with potatoes and something like 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 add that sort of fennel-y flavour onto salads. Children might be interested to see how different fennel smells when it's raw versus cooked. So you could get them to come in and help prep it or even just pop in and give it a sniff before you put it in the oven and then smell it again afterwards. It's one of those aromas that really 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 out as 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, this is a good time of year to get them involved.

And then finally for the UK grown section, globe artichokes. So if you're not familiar with them, these are massive thistle type plants. And the bit that we eat is the closed thistle head before it opens and flowers. They're really quite hard to find in the shops, but you might be able to find them at a market or a greengrocer. So I thought I'd mention them because they're a bit unusual and quirky. They're quite fiddly, but they can be fun as 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 or roast them, and you can eat the heart, which is the bit that we're used to getting in jars of oil, but you can also eat little bits of each of the petals. You have something like melted butter, lemon yogurt, or a garlic mayo in the middle of the table. And then you peel one petal at a time off and dip the base end into the sauce. And then you just scrape the soft bit off the base of each petal with your teeth and chuck the rest of the petal in a bowl. It's a really unusual thing to do, but it's quite fun to do together. It's a bit like when you peel whole prawns. It's a messy hands-on food. And that's sometimes the most fun and good at building up children's confidence. So even if they don't like the taste or they don't want to join in, they might enjoy peeling the petals off and handing them out to other people. And that still builds familiarity and you get to model trying unusual foods.

Okay, so that's the homegrown fruit and veg in July.

Now let's move on to a few seasonal imports that taste great in July.

Pineapples are still in peak season. If you want to try a change, you could try slicing the fresh ones into long, thin sticks instead of into chunks. Sometimes just changing the shape of a food can make it more interesting to children. And with a long, thin strip, they can nibble from one end to the other like a mouse.

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 but you can also roast them with a bit of honey or slice them into yogurt or cereal. It's quite fun to compare the texture of the fresh ones to the ones that are dried that we use to getting in packets all year round.

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

As with the previous months, melons and peaches are around too and of course there's always bananas and plantains.

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 you up on this week's shop. Why not get your child involved in looking for something on the list? As always, if you want a free list you can get them on my website, I'll leave a link in the show notes, or can get one of our child-friendly printables with veggie and fruit characters on it to stick on your fridge or take to the store with you.

In one of the episodes next week, I'll be bringing you five family-friendly ways to eat some of these foods. And then I'll be back with an August list, of course, next month. But before then, I hope to see you on the next episode. And in the meantime, happy eating.

00:21 Introduction

01:10 UK Grown July Seasonal Foods

08:52 Imported July seasonal foods

10:08 Summary and outro