What a Food Label Doesn’t Tell You

Saving the Season Before It’s Gone

Knowing where our food comes from — and carrying the harvest forward

The peak produce season is nearing its end, and another year seems to be moving far too quickly toward winter. Farmers market tables that only weeks ago overflowed with tomatoes, peppers, peaches, beans and summer squash are beginning to change. Some crops are disappearing altogether, while apples, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, pecans and the foods of autumn are taking their place.

But the abundant season is not quite over.

There is still time to bring home an extra basket of vegetables, another bag of fruit or perhaps a few pounds of something that was particularly good this year and put some of it away for the less abundant months ahead.

For generations, that was simply part of the rhythm of the year.

Families knew there would be a few precious weeks when peaches were everywhere, tomatoes seemed endless and beans came out of the garden faster than anyone could eat them. The abundance wasn’t expected to last. People ate what they could fresh and found ways to save the rest.

Somewhere along the way, many of us became separated from that rhythm.

Modern grocery stores are remarkable places. We can walk through the doors in January and often buy foods that our grandparents would never have expected to see in the middle of winter. Produce travels across states, countries and continents to reach us. Packaged foods can remain on shelves for months. Refrigeration, transportation and modern processing have made an enormous variety of food available almost every day of the year.

And because of that convenience, it is surprisingly easy to forget that food has a story before it reaches the shelf.

A food label can tell us quite a bit. We can read the ingredients. We can check calories, sodium, sugars and nutrients. We may find a country of origin or a certification.

But there are questions that don’t fit neatly into the small rectangle on the back of a package.

Who grew this? Where was it grown? What variety is it? When was it harvested?

How was the soil cared for? How far did it travel? How was it processed before it reached us?

Sometimes the Person Who Knows the Answer Is Standing Behind the Table

Walk through a farmers market and the distance between the person eating the food and the person who produced it can suddenly become only a few feet.

You pick up a tomato and wonder what kind it is.

Instead of turning the package around looking for information, you can ask.

The farmer may tell you not only its name but that it is especially good for sandwiches, that another variety makes better sauce, or that this week’s tomatoes are sweeter because of the weather.

You might discover that the peaches in front of you are nearly the last ones of the season.

You may learn that the green beans will continue for another few weeks if the weather cooperates.

The person selling peppers may tell you that some varieties freeze beautifully.

A grower with more tomatoes than they can easily sell may have a box of ripe or slightly imperfect ones that would be perfect for sauce.

Those conversations are difficult to print on a label.

They are also one reason farmers markets, farm stands, CSAs and local producers matter.

Food becomes more than something we purchase.

It becomes connected to a place, a season and a person.

The Seasons Begin to Make Sense Again

Spend enough time around growers and markets and something else begins to happen.

You start noticing the calendar.

Not the calendar hanging on the wall, but the one growing in the fields.

Strawberries appear and then disappear. Blueberries arrive. Peaches follow.

Tomatoes begin slowly and then suddenly seem to be everywhere.

Peppers keep producing long after you think the plants should have given up.

Apples begin appearing as summer fades. Sweet potatoes are dug. Pecans begin falling.

The foods themselves tell us where we are in the year.

Our grandparents and great-grandparents understood that calendar because they had to.

When something was abundant, there were really only two choices.

Eat it now or find some way to save it.

And that may be a lesson worth learning again.

Bringing a Little of the Season Home

Preserving food doesn’t have to mean turning the kitchen into a miniature food-processing plant.

Sometimes it is remarkably simple.

Perhaps you bought more blueberries than you can eat. A few bags can go into the freezer and months from now become muffins, pancakes or a warm fruit sauce on a cold morning.

Maybe rosemary or another herb is growing faster than you can use it. Drying some of it means the summer garden can still flavor dinner long after the plant has stopped growing.

An abundant crop of tomatoes might become sauce. Peaches might become preserves.

Green beans might be frozen. Apples might become applesauce, apple butter or dried slices.

Families today also have another preservation method that earlier generations did not have available in their kitchens: home freeze-drying. It requires specialized equipment, but it has added another option for people interested in storing seasonal foods for longer periods.

And then there is canning, perhaps the preservation method most closely associated with putting up the harvest. Rows of jars cooling on the kitchen counter are almost an icon of harvest season.

But canning is also one area where nostalgia should never replace food-safety science. The old handwritten recipe card may be treasured, but safe processing methods have changed as researchers have learned more about foodborne illness. Tested recipes and current guidance from sources such as USDA, the National Center for Home Food Preservation and university Extension programs should be the foundation for home canning.

We can preserve the family tradition without preserving unsafe practices.

Ask One More Question at the Market

The next time you visit a farmer, there is another question worth asking:

What do you have too much of today?

That simple question can sometimes lead to the best preservation opportunities.

Perfect-looking produce usually earns the best spot on a market table. But farming does not produce identical tomatoes or flawless peaches.

There may be tomatoes with a blemish that makes no difference whatsoever when they are turned into sauce.

There may be peaches that became ripe a little faster than expected.

There may be cucumbers, peppers or beans that arrived from the field in greater quantities than customers are buying that week.

Growers sometimes sell these as seconds, utility fruit, canning tomatoes or simply bulk produce.

That doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with the food. It may simply mean that it needs to be eaten soon. For someone willing to freeze, dry or preserve it, that can be an opportunity. The grower sells food that might otherwise be difficult to market. The customer can sometimes buy a larger quantity economically. And good food has a better chance of ending up on someone’s table instead of going to waste.

The Part of the Food Story We Take Home

Perhaps that is the part of this conversation that interests me most.

Knowing where our food comes from doesn’t have to end when we leave the farmers market.

We can carry part of that season home with us. A bag of frozen blueberries in January is more than frozen fruit. It is a little piece of June. A jar of peach preserves opened in February remembers summer. Tomato sauce made during the abundance of August or September carries that harvest into a completely different season. Dried herbs keep the garden in the kitchen long after the garden itself has gone quiet.

For earlier generations, preservation was often necessary for survival. Most of us today are fortunate enough to have other choices. But the old habit still has value. It teaches us to recognize abundance. It encourages us not to waste food simply because more will appear on a supermarket shelf tomorrow. It helps us understand the natural seasons of the foods we eat.

And perhaps most importantly, it restores one small piece of the relationship between the family eating the food and the people and land that produced it.

A food label can tell us a great deal. But it cannot tell us everything. Sometimes the rest of the story is waiting at a farmers market table.

And sometimes we carry that story home, put a little of it away, and open it again months later.

The abundant season may be drawing to a close, but there is still time to save a little of it.

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Coming Soon: Preserving the Harvest in the Learning Center.