Each step narrows the next: knowing what is cropping stops you buying on impulse, three ingredients stop you hoarding recipes, and cooking the same day is what makes a price comparison mean anything. Ending with a written note turns a one-off experiment into something repeatable in a different month without starting from zero.
Step 1: Pin down your region's current harvest
Before you plan any cooking, pin down what your region actually grows right now — not what the supermarket labels 'seasonal', since that word usually means in season somewhere on the planet, not within a day's drive of your kitchen. Check a regional grower's harvest calendar, a farm shop's chalkboard, or ask one vendor at the market what came in this week. If you are in the UK in June, that list is strawberries, broad beans, peas and new potatoes; in California in October it is squash, apples and chard. Write your three best guesses on the strip before step 2. What people skip: they assume they already know, then discover the thing they cooked in March was cold-stored or flown in. Ten minutes of checking here is what makes the rest of the sequence work.
Step 2: Buy three things, not a week's worth
With a shortlist from step 1, go to the market — but treat the stalls as a correction, not a shopping trip. Vendors only carry what is cropping near you, so their table overrides any calendar. Go early on a market day, buy from a stall with a grower's name on the sign, and keep quantities small: one bunch, one squash, a punnet of something. Three items is the number that forces a dish; five becomes a fridge of good intentions that wilts. Ask the vendor how they cook the thing you do not recognise — that answer often becomes your method in step 3. A common failure here is buying a full week's veg and calling it seasonal shopping. You are buying ingredients for one plate, so let the three items be slightly odd: a herb you never use, a root you usually walk past.
Step 3: Search methods, not shopping lists
Now that three real ingredients are on the counter, search — 'seasonal June recipes', then add your oddest item: 'broad bean June recipe'. Searching at this point rather than before matters because a recipe found first becomes a shopping list you cannot fill, while a recipe found now has to fit what you already own. Read two or three results and steal technique instead of following one exactly: how long to blanch the beans, what acid cuts the sweetness of the squash, whether the herb goes in at the start or the end. Searching 'braise' or 'griddle' plus your vegetable often returns a better method than a named dish. People collect recipes and cook none of them, or pick one needing eight more ingredients. Choose the version with the fewest additions, then commit to it.
Step 4: Cook now, compare prices this week
Cook it the same day you buy it, or the comparison in this step is guesswork. Keep the receipt, note roughly what each item cost, and check the imported equivalent on a supermarket shelf that same week — same week matters, because comparing local August tomatoes to imported January ones proves nothing. Work out cost per portion rather than per impressive-looking pile. A useful surprise is that imports often win on raw price, which is exactly why the note is worth making: the local version usually needs less salt, less stock, less cooking, and you throw less of it away. That is where the real margin sits. The usual slip is doing this from memory a fortnight later, or treating the exercise as a verdict on local food rather than a record of what you personally paid and got.
Step 5: Repeat next season, write one line
Next season, run the same sequence again — market, three items, method, receipt — but this time compare it against something written down. Start the diary with a cheap notebook or the back of this strip: date, the three items, the dish, cost per portion, and one line on what you would change. When the next season arrives, read the last entry before you shop, then pick three items cropping now and reuse the technique that worked in step 3 — a griddle method that suited summer courgette usually suits autumn squash. The diary is not really a recipe book; its value is the pattern, showing which months you cook well and which you default to something bought. Where people fall down is copying whole recipes in. Write only the single change you would make, or the page fills and you stop.
A phone reminder or a todo app disappears the moment you dismiss it, leaving no trace that you ever meant to cook anything. This strip stays taped inside a cupboard door, gets visibly shorter each time you cut a finished step off, and remains there until the last line is gone. Keep the finished strip with the diary so next season's version has something to compare against.