If there's a month when eating well is cheapest and easiest, it's June. Everything that's pale and rubbery in winter is now in season: tomatoes that smell before you cut them, young courgettes you don't need to peel, the first real cucumbers, green beans, new potatoes, cherries that last two weeks and not a day longer.
Market rule number one: buy what looks best THAT day, not what's on your list. Let the list say "vegetables for three lunches" and let the market decide whether that's courgettes or green beans. That's how you cook seasonally without thinking seasonally.
Rule number two: half the market dies in the fridge drawer. Wash leafy greens and wrap them in a kitchen towel as soon as you get home — they'll last twice as long. Tomatoes never go in the fridge. Don't wash cherries in advance. Courgettes and cucumbers in the drawer, but eat them within three days — after that they're soup.
Now three combinations that make themselves in June. One: young courgettes on a grill pan, yogurt-garlic dressing, a slice of bread — dinner in fifteen minutes. Two: green beans with new potatoes and an egg — one pot, one pan, done. Three: a tomato salad that's actually a meal — tomatoes, cheese, olives, red onion, good olive oil and bread to catch the juice.
Cherries? Cherries are not planned. Cherries get eaten.
June teaches you something no plan can on its own: that good eating isn't a fight against ingredients but a collaboration with them. When an ingredient is in season, half the work is already done — your only job is not to ruin it.
And yes — everything in this piece goes into the plans we build in June. Season isn't marketing, season is an ingredient.