Cooking with What Grows Here: A Northwest Seasonal Kitchen

Cooking in the Portland metro is easier when you cook with the calendar instead of against it. The growing season here is long and mild, so the best-tasting produce is often what is growing a short drive from your kitchen, from the Willamette Valley out to the Columbia Gorge.

Shop the season, not the recipe

Start with what looks good and build the meal backward. Spring brings asparagus, peas, and the first tender greens; summer fills counters with berries, tomatoes, and zucchini; fall delivers squash, apples, and roots that keep well into winter. When you plan around what is actually ripe, you spend less and the food tastes like more.

Use the markets close to home

Farmers markets across the metro, u-pick farms out in the valley, and roadside stands along the gorge all put you face to face with the person who grew the food. Ask what came in this week and what is about to end, because that is your shopping list. Buying a little more than you need on a good week is what fills the freezer for January.

Build simple plates around vegetables

You do not need complicated recipes to eat well here. Roast a tray of whatever is in season with a good glug of oil and a generous pinch of salt until the edges caramelize, then finish with lemon or a splash of vinegar. Toss the same vegetables with pasta, fold them into eggs, or pile them on toast with something salty. A simple dressing of oil, mustard, and vinegar makes almost anything taste finished.

Preserve the overflow

Late summer is generous, and the honest response is to put some of it up. Freeze berries on a sheet tray before bagging them, simmer a loose tomato sauce, or quick-pickle the cucumbers and beans you cannot get through. You do not need special equipment; a pot, a few jars, and a free afternoon cover most of it.

Keep a few winter standbys

When the rain settles in, lean on storage crops and the freezer. Squash, potatoes, onions, and cabbage keep for weeks, and dried beans and lentils stretch a meal a long way. A pot of something simmering is often the whole answer to a gray evening.

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