Late summer and into the fall is a bountiful and colorful harvest time at the farmer’s market. It’s a great time to stock up on your favorite produce and spend an afternoon preparing and preserving some goodies for the winter.

Make tomato sauce and ratatouille

When the nightshade vegetables hit the market in the late summer, stock up on tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers and make your own sauces (unless you are avoiding nightshades for health reasons!). Cook a big pot of sauce with tomatoes, garlic and basil or make ratatouille with of tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and zucchini. Freeze in portion sizes and use throughout the winter for making stews and sauces to top your zoodles.

Apples to applesauce

Apples are the perfect fall food and provide prebiotics and polyphenols. So in addition to making a whole apple your go-to snack with some almonds or cashews, make apple sauce (especially if you have young kids, they love it and you can control the added sugar!), apple crumble with nuts and cinnamon, or even some apple chutney to spice up your Paleo dinner.

Ferment and last forever

Pickling, canning, and fermenting is all the rage these days. These old preservation techniques allowed people to eat vegetables through the winter when nothing would grow. Most importantly the process infuses the food with lots of good bacteria, or probiotics, which helps support the immune system (important as we head into fall and winter) and boost digestion. The late summer bounty is perfect for fermenting – cucumbers, carrots, green beans, zucchini, peppers (fermented hot sauce!), and more. Read more – Heal Your Gut with Fabulous Fermented Foods.