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# Cooking by the market, one season at a time
- URL: https://almanac.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/cooking-by-the-market-one-season-at-a-time/
- Published: 2025-09-21T07:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-09-21T07:30:00.000Z
- Description: One bag, one stall, every Saturday. Cooking from what is there taught me the year better than any calendar.
- Author: Tomás Rivera
- Tags: Seasons, Kitchen, #budding, #Import 2026-10-02 18:03

I stopped planning meals around recipes and started planning them around a market stall. Every Saturday morning I walk to the market with one bag, buy whatever looks best that week, and cook from it until the next Saturday. It is cheaper, it tastes better, and it taught me the year in a way no calendar ever did.

## The rule of one bag

One bag forces choices. I cannot buy everything, so I buy what is cheap, plentiful and at its best, which is almost always the same thing. When asparagus is two euros a bunch, it is because there is too much of it, and there is too much of it because it is May. ((The price board is the most honest seasonal chart I know. When something is expensive, it is either early or far from home.))

![October: the whole front of the stall turns orange, and dinner does too.](https://almanac.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/10/mkt-squash.jpg)

October: the whole front of the stall turns orange, and dinner does too.

## The year at the stall

- **Winter:** cabbages, leeks, roots, citrus from the south, and the long patience of stew weather.
- **Spring:** the first thin asparagus, wild garlic, new potatoes, radishes, and a sudden hunger for anything green.
- **Summer:** tomatoes that taste of tomatoes, courgettes in quantities nobody needs, peaches, beans.
- **Autumn:** squash, apples, mushrooms, the last peppers, and quinces that make the kitchen smell like a perfume shop.

The rhythm is the point. By the time I am tired of courgettes, the stall has moved on, and I am glad to see the first apples.

## The man at the stall

The stall belongs to Vicente, who grows most of what he sells on a small farm outside the city. In the first year I asked him every week what was good. Now he tells me before I ask, and sometimes he puts something in my bag I did not choose. "Try this," he says, and walks away before I can argue. That is how I met chard, kohlrabi and a strange, knobbly lemon that turned out to be a citron.

![The first strawberries in May. I always buy too many, and I am never sorry.](https://almanac.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/10/mkt-berries.jpg)

The first strawberries in May. I always buy too many, and I am never sorry.

> Cooking with the seasons is not a diet or a philosophy. It is just buying what is there.

## What changed in the kitchen

Cooking from a bag instead of a recipe made me a better cook. I learned five ways to use a cabbage and three ways to keep a glut. I learned that a tomato in January is a red, watery disappointment, and that a tomato in August needs nothing but salt. I learned to think in ingredients first and dishes second.

It also made the week calmer. The decision about what to eat is mostly made on Saturday morning, in the sunshine, with a coffee, instead of at six on a Wednesday evening in front of an empty fridge.

🥬

Ask the grower what they would cook this week. They eat their own vegetables every day and they always have an answer.

## The leftovers

Every Friday there is something left: half a squash, a few bruised apples, some tired herbs. That is what the Sunday soup is for, and whatever survives the soup goes into a jar with salt. Nothing goes in the bin, and the next Saturday starts with an empty bag again.

#### Isn't the market more expensive?

For things in season, it is usually cheaper. For things out of season, it simply does not have them, which saves money too.

#### What if I don't have a market nearby?

Look for a box scheme from a local farm. It is the same idea, delivered.