September on a Plate: Eating Well Without Making It Complicated

There is a strange idea that eating well requires a complicated shopping list, seventeen little pots of seeds and something expensive with the word “superfood” printed on the packet.

It really doesn’t.

Sometimes the best thing we can do is look at what is growing around us and eat more of it.

September is particularly good for that.

We are sitting in that lovely overlap between summer and autumn. Tomatoes, courgettes, runner beans and sweetcorn are still around, while apples, pears, potatoes, beetroot, carrots and leeks are beginning to make themselves very useful.

In other words, this is not the month for complicated food.

It is the month for proper food.

Start with what is in season

There are several good reasons for eating with the seasons.

Seasonal produce is often plentiful, which can make it better value, particularly if you shop around rather than automatically reaching for the beautifully packaged option in the supermarket.

It also reconnects us with something we have become rather good at forgetting: food actually comes from somewhere.

A potato covered in soil is not an inferior potato.

An apple with a slightly wonky shape has not failed its entrance examination.

And a carrot does not need to be perfectly straight to make a perfectly good dinner.

Here in Wales, that connection between food, land and season feels particularly appropriate. We talk a great deal about wellbeing as though it is something we have to purchase, but some of its foundations are remarkably ordinary: decent food, movement, rest, daylight, company and time outdoors.

A cheap September dinner

One of my favourite approaches is what I call the one-tray philosophy.

Take potatoes, carrots, beetroot, courgette and onion. Chop them roughly, add a little oil and whatever herbs you have, then roast the lot.

That can become dinner on its own, a side dish, the filling for tomorrow’s lunch, or the beginning of a soup.

Add beans or lentils and you’ve got something more substantial without spending very much at all.

And this is where eating well becomes realistic.

You don’t need a cupboard full of specialist ingredients.

You need a few ingredients that can do several jobs.

Save a little September

There is another old habit worth rediscovering: preserving what is plentiful.

Freezing berries, stewing apples, making chutney from surplus vegetables or simply batch-cooking soup is hardly revolutionary. Our grandparents would probably be amused that we’ve rediscovered it and given it lifestyle terminology.

They just called it not wasting food.

There is something satisfying about it, though.

Food waste goes down, the freezer gradually fills and on a miserable November evening you’ve already got something homemade waiting for you.

That’s wellbeing too.

Not perfection.

Not dieting.

Not punishment for eating something you enjoyed yesterday.

Just looking after ourselves a little better with what we’ve got.

Naturism has always encouraged me to strip away some of the unnecessary complication we place around life.

Perhaps food deserves the same treatment.

Eat what is good.

Eat what is growing.

Waste less.

Share when you have plenty.

And don’t worry if the carrot is wonky.

What simple, inexpensive meal always makes you feel properly fed and looked after?