Three must-haves for your early autumn shopping basket

Let’s consider the idea of autumn while the sky is still blue at clock-off time. Rush home, put some music on and turn to your seasonal shopping basket of grapes, red capsicum and tomatoes.

You can bring joy to your healthy kitchen with seasonal delights. Cooking and shopping seasonally makes sense in Australia where the cost of fresh produce can fluctuate dramatically depending on the weather and how far the food needs to travel before arriving at your local store. As well as helping you save money, eating what’s growing means your ingredients will be at their nutritional and flavoursome best. Whatever the weather, there's sure to be tasty produce to liven up your meals.

It’s easier to muster up enthusiasm for autumn while it’s still blue-sky weather. As the mornings become cooler but the evenings are still warm and bright, here are my favourite early-autumn ingredients.

Grapes With mangoes, peaches and nectarines on their way out, turn to grapes – red, green, seedless or full of pips. Pick up a kilo bag and pop a bunch in the freezer for a snack on a hot afternoon. Grapes are high in FODMAPs, but if you have IBS you don’t have to miss out – grab some end-of-season berries instead.

Red capsicum Because no one likes the green or the yellow, right? Chop them into a stir fry or stuff strips into a fajita. They offer up Vitamin C and beta carotene (which converts to Vitamin A) in a colourful package. A quarter of a small capsicum is a low FODMAP portion.

Tomatoes It’s not too late for tomatoes. Pick the last few cherry tomatoes off your own vine or look for Roma and Gourmet at a reasonable price. Try the Kumato Tomato, billed as a ‘darker shade of delicious’ by its growers. This sweet tomato changes colour as it ripens, from green to brown to dark red. Make a quick pickling liquid of white wine vinegar, a big squeeze of honey, yellow mustard seeds, garlic and sea salt and gently warm it up on the stove. Pour over sliced tomatoes, cover and leave on the counter for an hour. Then plate up your tomatoes, whisking a little olive oil with some of the pickling liquid to drizzle over.