Eating Seasonally: Fresh Sheet Fridays

The idea to eat seasonally and locally is a style of living that has been making it's way through our national community in big loud splashes and other times in quiet small family voices like yours and mine.  It has awakened a desire to be responsible for our food on a scale of planning and preparing that goes beyond just a week or three weeks in advance, but 3 months, 6 months, even a year or more.  It is recreating a bond between us as consumers and the actual growers of our food.

It has also kindled an interest in the arts of canning, cheese making, foraging, fermenting, preserving, charcuterie and being a creative cook in the kitchen.  These techniques used to be passed down from family cook to family cook but that has not happened for many families for 1, 2 or even 3 generations back.  The good news is we have each other!  I mean that sincerely.  The recipe sharing, food talking, combination experimenting, online kitchen community is really amazing.

Fresh Sheet Fridays will be a way for other food talkers out there to share their own post from the previous week that highlights a seasonal ingredient.  It could be used in a canning project, or served fresh in an amazing dish, or dried and preserved for enjoying when the ingredient is no longer in season.  It will be up to you!  There are a few requirements:

1. The post has to have been written during that week's roundup timeframe.  
2. The content of the post has to be your own work.  If you are basing your work off of another's original content, please Link With Love.
3. The content of the post has to be about the use of a seasonal ingredient - please do not post about using a commercially processed product.  The Fresh Sheet ingredients for my area (Washington and Oregon states) will be updated the first of every month and clearly displayed on Delectable Musings sidebar.  Depending on where you live you may have access to seasonal stuff sooner or later than I do and to ingredients unique to your part of the world.  Feel free to share about goods not listed as long as it is seasonal for you.
4. The post must have a link back to Fresh Sheet Friday.  Be sure your link back is to this page that explains the Fresh Sheet Friday roundup.  Once you add your link post a comment.  You are much more likely to draw in a reader if you post a descriptive comment about your link.
5. And last, but NOT least, if you don't blog about food but still wish to share, please do!  Post a comment in that week's roundup that shares your tip or recipe or technique.

If any of these requirements are not met I will have to remove your link.  If that happens to you I hope you will understand.

"I can pickle that!" -- Portlandia 

The first month of Fresh Sheet Fridays will be April, 2012.  So on April 1st (no foolin'!) I will get a list of Pacific Northwest seasonal ingredients displayed here on Delectable Musings.  Then on Friday, April 6th will be the first Fresh Sheet Friday roundup!