Spring Foods In Season: The 8 Best Spring Foods In Season+ How To Use Them
Spring Foods In Season: Spring foods are bursting with fresh ripe flavors and textures, not to mention antioxidants, minerals, flavonoids, and key nutrients your body loves.
The days are getting longer, the air is getting fresher, and everyone seems to be in a good mood. This changing of the season marks a time for all things to come alive and experience renewal.
Spring Foods In Season, In nature, springtime brings abundant growth in the form of all plants, flowers, and delicious colorful spring foods.
For our bodies, it means leaving behind the heaviness of grounding foods and embracing all things light and fresh.
Spring Foods In Season, All animals are inherently attuned to the environment and are meant to eat the foods that grow around us. In spring those foods include a wide array of veggies and fruit that will make you feel nourished while also gently cleansing and resetting your digestive and immune systems.
Instead of avoiding or eliminating anything in your eating plan during this springtime, simply eat more of the fresh spring foods and allow them to gradually crowd out any lingering rich or heavy foods.
Spring Foods In Season, To help you embrace the season, I’ve put together a list of my favorite spring foods and how to use them.
Most of these require minimal cooking so they’re also great for those of you who are busy and don’t have much time for food prep.
Spring Foods In Season, Of course, what’s in season for you will depend on where you live, and you may have already had access to some of these foods year-round due to importing, but trust me when I tell you that eating the local seasonal variety will taste and smell much better. Their level of freshness and bioactive compounds will also benefit your body in a much deeper way.
Enjoy These 8 Best Spring Foods:
1. Arugula
Spring Foods In Season, Leafy greens like arugula, spinach, and lettuces are the ultimate spring foods.
Spring Foods In Season, Rich in vitamins like A, K, and folate, plus chlorophyll, fiber, and even water, these leafy greens will help reduce inflammation while also hydrating and detoxifying your body.
How to eat it: Just toss raw greens in a bowl with other veggies, nuts or seeds and drizzle with some extra virgin olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar or citrus juice. Chop or tear them into bite-sized pieces to enhance the texture of your salad. Try my Hummus and Quinoa Superfood Veggie Bowl and play with the proportions if you like more greens.
2. Artichokes
Spring Foods In Season, Available in both spring and fall, artichokes are rich in folic acid, vitamin C, B-complex vitamins, and many minerals. These nutrients help lower cholesterol, ensure healthy pregnancies in women, reduce free radicals, and ensure optimal metabolic cell function.
How to eat them: There is an art and science to the basic way of cooking an artichoke, I like to boil it for about 20 minutes then peel off and eat the leaves (well, use my teeth to scrape the bottom edible part of the leaves) after I dip it in garlic-infused extra virgin olive oil.
3. Asparagus
Spring Foods In Season, If you love asparagus, then you know it’s a spring food. Asparagus is abundant in vitamin K (which you need for blood clotting, heart and bone health, cancer prevention, and many other functions), as well as copper, selenium, B vitamins, and many other important nutrients. Asparagus can improve your overall health.
Spring Foods In Season, Asparagus is delicious simply sautéed with garlic and sea salt in some butter, ghee, coconut oil, or even a little vegetable or chicken stock. Just be sure not to overcook it! You want it to remain vibrant green and retain its shape as it softens a bit but stop cooking before it gets too wilted. About 10 minutes should do it!
How to eat it: Check out my guide to cooking asparagus in the oven here, and learn how to make asparagus in the air fryer here.
4. Beets
Spring Foods In Season, Beets are both a spring food and a fall food.
Spring Foods In Season, Some foods give you a clear indication of what part of you they’ll benefit and that’s the case with beets. Their deep and juicy color lets you know they’re great for your blood and circulation. They can lower blood pressure, boost your stamina, and support detoxification all due to being a unique source of phytonutrients called betalains.
Spring Foods In Season, I used to think that I didn’t care for beets, then I found that I just don’t like pickled beets. When prepared correctly, beets are delicious!
How to eat them: so many options. You can juice them or add them to a smoothie, roast them as a side dish, use a julienne veggie peeler to shave them into salads, spiralize them or make them into borscht!
5. Carrots
Spring Foods In Season, We’re all familiar with this classic vegetable but when they’re in season locally carrots are absolutely delectable. This spring food is rich in vitamin A and other antioxidants, they’re great for maintaining healthy hair, skin, and nails, and are therefore considered an “anti-aging” food, plus they’re a powerful cancer-fighter.
How to eat them: I love to eat them raw and you can play around with many different ways of chopping, slicing, or shredding them onto anything from salads to sandwiches or tacos. You can even spiralize them as an alternative to zucchini to make healthy “pasta.” They’re also the perfect travel snack and are great dipped into nut butter.
6. Mint
Spring Foods In Season, Mint might just be the most abundant of all spring foods.
Spring Foods In Season, This powerful herb grows like a weed and sometimes doesn’t get enough credit for its powerful healing properties. Mint contains an antioxidant called rosmarinic acid, which can relieve seasonal allergy symptoms (the not-so-great side effect of spring!), the menthol it contains is a natural decongestant, and it can also soothe an upset stomach.
How to eat it: Mint is a delicate herb so it’s better not to cook it. I love adding it to water or iced tea for refreshing natural flavoring, it also makes a great edible garnish, and can be chopped and added to fruit salads.
7. Spring Peas
Spring Foods In Season, Peas typically have a very short growing season of just a few weeks and that makes them all the more special. They contain a wide variety of vitamins and minerals including vitamins C and K, and several B vitamins, plus manganese, phosphorus, and protein. This makes them an excellent anti-inflammatory food.
How to eat them: You can eat sugar snap peas straight out of the pod for a light snack, add them to salads, smoothies, stir-fries, noodle dishes, and basically anything! Fresh peas make a great kid snack and you can also cook and puree them into baby food.
8. Strawberries
Spring Foods In Season, Is there anything better than biting into a fresh, ripe, fragrant, and delicious strawberry in late spring/early summer? This decadent and sexy food is a healthy indulgence because it is among the top five sources of antioxidant-rich fruit in the U.S. Despite being a fruit and containing fructose, strawberries can actually help balance blood sugar, and the polyphenols they contain will support immunity, healthy cell renewal, and many other functions.
How to eat them: Aside from eating them raw, you can freeze them (just cut the stems off before freezing) and add them to smoothies, you can melt dark chocolate over a double-boiler to dip them into and then freeze with a chocolate coating for dessert. You can also put them on your chia pudding or oatmeal, or make a quick jam by chopping them up and simmering in a bit of water with a cinnamon stick and then adding some vanilla extract and maple syrup at the end.
Also Read:
Work Spring Lunches: The 8 Easy Spring Lunches To Pack For Work
Spring Breakfast Ideas: The 10 Best Breakfast You Can Make At Spring
