This week on Foodie Underground I’ve got an easy recipe for Beet and Carrot Fritters, because we can never have too many root vegetable recipes. Especially this time of year as the winter winds down and we start to get sick just at the thought of them. But don’t worry, all that seasonal spring bounty (asparagus! radishes!) is just around the corner.

Speaking of which, I wrote an essay for Paste Magazine recently looking at what it takes to eat in season and locally. I spent a week really keeping track of everything that I cooked and ate, and the resulting essay is titled What If You Really Just Ate in Season?

Here’s a little excerpt:

When it comes to what we eat, we’re influenced not just by our personal tastes, but by our friends, food and diet trends, and the media. Eating might be a simple act, but how we navigate around it certainly isn’t. Do we buy this or that? Do we avoid one ingredient or another? Does this product have negative health effects? What about that one over there?

We talk a lot about eating in season, and eating locally, but as my mother has written on the wall above the stove, “Talk does not cook rice.” It’s one thing to talk about things, it’s another to do them.

So I decided that instead of screaming out, I would look into what I was eating. For one week, I would commit to eating in season.

But what does that even mean? Technically, tomatoes are in season in Australia right now, but that doesn’t mean that I should eat them. And it’s important to note that we can’t talk about eating seasonally without talking about eating locally. Eating “in season” means eating what’s in season wherever you live.

You can read the full essay here. And then go make the beet fritters!