And speaking of fresh, seasonal food, I'm very excited about a resource I just read about on the Garden Punks blog. It's a handy Eat Local tool from the Natural Resource Defense Council, which tells you what produce is in season in your region. It even breaks California down into Northern and Southern and distinguishes between the early and late parts of each month.
For Southern California in early March, I should be eating: asparagus, avocado, beets, broccoli, grapefruit, lemons, tangerines, turnips, spinach and, of course, kale. The tool seems great for menu planning. It tells you what will be on sale at the store, or in the stalls at the farmers' market, before you leave your house.
The Eat Local tool is nice, but I will say it's fairly incomplete - for early March in Arizona (no distinction between regions of AZ), it tells me "No fresh, local produce available in Arizona at this time." Well that is totally contradicted by the amount of produce available at my local farmers markets and in my own garden. Really, no produce of ANY KIND available in the whole state of Arizona in March? Clearly someone is not doing their research.