Dismayed by the state of a food culture where food travels “an average of 1,300 miles from where it is produced and changes hands six times along the way”, Nabhan decides to eat local. He draws a 200 mile circle around his home, and aims to source four out of five meals within it. He resolves to live each season as it comes.

He calls this food philosophy ‘coming home to eat’, and the book chronicles his adventures. As Nabhan lives in the Arizona desert, it’s a very different set of foods. We’re talking agaves and cactus fruits, mesquite, things I have not had the pleasure of sampling. Nabhan also pushes the boat out a little, bringing home roadkill rattlesnakes to his long-suffering loved ones, sampling caterpillars and liberally experimenting with whatever he finds.

Most interestingly, he draws on his experiences as a seed-saver and ethnobotanist to explore traditional and heritage foods. Among the elders of the native tribes are those who remember preparing all kinds of desert foods that are no longer eaten. The author seeks them out, learns from them and tracks down the food. There are some wonderful stories of feasts and foraging walks, and many mysterious foodstuffs. How about swamp potatoes, which are picked by wading out into a swamp and plucking them loose from the bottom with your feet so that they float to the surface? Or the ellusive ‘sand food’? Learning from native American cuisine, Nabhan concludes that “thousands of plants animals were historically esteemed as foods across the continent”.

The book touches on biodiversity issues, the problems of GM corn, pesticides and chemical additives, and on the prevalence of adult-onset diabetes among some of the local tribes. But this isn’t a book about what’s wrong with our food – it’s about what we’re missing, a celebration of all that’s out there to be discovered. Nabhan writes with great enthusiasm about what he finds, describing the cooking rituals and the tastes of the desert, and the colourful characters that show him the ropes. It is rich and poetic, and as someone who enjoys food I can’t help but share his joy in meals “one step removed from sunlight.”

Naturally the Arizona desert is a long way from my own context, but the book has inspired me to look more closely at local food. I know a couple of foods that were historically grown and have fallen out of favour, but I don’t know the local specialities. Are there any endangered Bedfordshire delicacies that I should know about? What might I find within a 200 mile circle? After a week in desert in the company of Gary Paul, I’m intrigued to find out.

• Gary’s website

• Local Food: How to make it happen in your community

It’s more fun too. I can understand that this wouldn’t appeal to everyone, but I love cooking and I like the challenge of using what’s in season, learning new things and experimenting.

There’s plenty of reasons to eat seasonally before you even get to the environmental benefits of fewer food miles. And as always, it’s about eating more seasonally, being mindful. It doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing decision. So this month, you are not exclusively limited to the following, but might like to consider more of them:

Swede, potatoes, parsnips, turnips, beetroot, sprouts, carrots, red cabbage, kale, cauliflower, celery and leeks. Apples, quinces, pears and nuts are available too.

Wild foods include chanterelle and chickweed, honey fungus and oyster mushrooms.

If you’re foraging, there should still be plenty of varities of mushroom available, including puffball, honey fungus and oyster mushroom. If wild mushrooms aren’t your thing, perhaps hazelnuts, walnuts and sweet chestnuts are a better starting place.

How to tell a sweet chestnut from a conker? The chestnuts are almost triangular and pointed, and come in twos or threes in a green burr that’s much spikier than a conker pod. You can split them and roast them, or for a traditional recipe, steep them in hot water, peel off the skins, and then fry them up with sprouts and bacon. If you’re really keen, they can even be ground up to make a gluten-free flour.

Stock up on  aubergines, cauliflower and courgettes while you can, before they’re over for this year and replaced with new season artichokes, brussel sprouts, and celeriac. Red and white cabbages replace the green summer varieties. Marrow, carrots, onions and spinach are still in season, and so is squash, beetroot, and of course pumpkin. Marrow, there’s something I haven’t cooked very often…

It’s also mussel season, if you want to go foraging along the seashore. Landlubbers might want to go looking for nuts, hazel, chestnut and walnut. Elderberries and juniper are also about, if you know what to do with them.

• www.eattheseasons.co.uk

• BBCgoodfood

Lots of saladstuffs too, lettuce, cucumber, celery, radish, spring onions. Beans and peas are about, and so are beetroots, cabbage, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, peppers and potatoes. Look out for pumpkin any time soon as well.

Foragers will be harvesting berries of the black, bil, elder, rowan, sloe and hawthorn variety. If you know what you’re looking for you can also find hops, walnuts and hazelnuts, and marsh samphire. There should be puffballs, chanterelles and parasol mushrooms around too, for those with a good field guide to fungi.

The main crop of carrots, potatoes and onions are being harvested and stored, and tree fruits such as apples and plums arrive towards the end of the month.  Look out for raspberried, loganberries and gooseberries too.

Foragers will be hunting wild mushrooms, many of which are at the best in the summer, including cep and chanterelle, fairy ring champignon, and the giant puffball. Hazelnuts are also in season, early blackberries are out, and wild strawberries if you can find them. (I can’t.)

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I’m aware that I’m writing this from a UK perspective. It’s harder to factor in the US because it’s so big and varied! The produce listed here will be more relevant to the north of the country. Eat the seasons has monthly listings for the US.

Mike and his family live very compactly, growing an extraordinary amount of food from a very small garden. He is the author of The Edible Container Garden, which is a great guide to doing permaculture with just a balcony or a back yard.

Aubergine, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, courgette, cucumber, leek, lettuce, onions, peas, potato, radish, shallot, sweetcorn, tomatoes.

Loads of fruit available too, with apples, blackberries, blackcurrants, cherries, pears and plums.

Foragers will be on the look-out for seaweeds such as sea lettuce, laver, beanweed, kelps and wracks. Many cultures eat seaweed regularly, but despite being an island with plenty of coastline to harvest it, it’s never established itself on the British dinner table. However, I’m told seaweeds are at their most nutritious at this time of the year, so there’s no better time to try it. Check out Fergus Drennan’s advice on seaweeds here, or Michael Guiry’s seaweed site.

Landlubbing foragers will be after the blackberries and wild cherries, and of course wild mushrooms.

On the vegetable side, asparagus continues, and beans, cabbage, mushrooms, beetroot, onions, new potatoes, spinach, lettuce. Look out for courgettes and cauliflower by the end of the month.

Your herbs should be good right now too, basil and oregano, chives, mint, parsley, and dill.

If you’ve been paying attention to the hedgerows, the elderflower is out and ready for home-made champagne. Look out for wild strawberries too, and nettles are still good at this time of year.

Nevertheless, there’s still plenty to enjoy. The spinach in the garden is still growing wild, and chard will be too. Rhubarb is everywhere, and look out for gooseberries too.

Cabbage, cauliflower and lettuce are in season, onions and peas. There are also new potatoes, carrots to enjoy by the end of the month, and as any conoisseur will tell you, asparagus.

If you want to enjoy the bounty of the fields and woods, look out for morels and St George mushrooms. I was pleased to find the latter growing on the lawn. I’m sure your mother told you not to eat random fungi, but you can learn to identify them – there are about twenty different poisonous mushrooms, some of them common, some very rare. A good field guide will tell you all you need to know.

Nettles, dandelions, wild garlic and hop shoots are also there for the picking, and I was introduced to ‘jack by the hedge’ last week – a delicious garlic-tinged leaf found in hedgerows.