Delicious Foods We Should Be Eating Year-Round

When it comes to food, sometimes breaking the rules can lead to delicious good times. If you can't get enough of seasonal dishes traditionally reserved for particular holidays, I'd encourage you to improve your quality of life significantly by enjoying them more often during the year. Whether you live for Thanksgiving stuffing each year, crave crispy latkes in the middle of summer with Hanukkah still months away, or think often of guzzling eggnog but could skip the Christmas fuss, there's no hard and fast rule that prohibits you from eating and drinking as you please 365 days of the year.

While some ingredients might have been scarce during a certain historical period and others may not have been available at all, circumstances have probably changed since. The modern age has provided people with much more flexibility where food is concerned, allowing you to make many traditionally seasonal dishes at other times during the year. Be your own food boss when you forgo tradition in exchange for culinary freedom — and bliss. Read on to understand where some of the holiday food traditions we hang on to come from, then decide to forge your own path if that's your kind of thing. How could you go possibly regret year-round pumpkin pie, sweet-tart cranberry sauce on the reg, and Hoppin' John whenever your heart desires?

Let's consider the role of Thanksgiving stuffing — or "dressing," as some of us like to call it. Whether cooked directly inside the turkey or baked separately as is more common now, this side dish of seasoned bread chunks soaked in stock along with aromatics is one that most of us live for. I certainly look forward to second and third helpings of stuffing more than I do any other food at Thanksgiving. Whether you make your stuffing with cornbread, incorporate sausage, or add fruit, this dish has been around since the Middle Ages even though it didn't become a Thanksgiving tradition until the 1830s. Oyster stuffing, shoved beneath the turkey's skin, gained popularity later in the 19th century. While we don't know whether stuffing was served at the first Thanksgiving, turkey and rice were around, so it's entirely possible that cooked fowl was served with some type of rice dish alongside.

Whatever the exact origins of stuffing, there's certainly no reason to deprive ourselves of this incredibly flavorful dish for 364 days each year. Since food safety issues have encouraged many cooks to prepare stuffing separately from the bird anyway, stuffing can and should be enjoyed whenever you feel like eating it. I find that stuffing is a great dish to prepare when you have leftover bread along with a handful of other veggies and ingredients you want to use up. Since it's so easy to prep, we should be eating this delectable dish way more often. You heard it here first.

If you want to eat stuffing every other day like me, then you definitely need to add this delightful apple-herb stuffing recipe to your repertoire. Incredibly fragrant and ridiculously hearty, this dish is perfect for weeknight comfort.

Like latkes, sufganiyot — aka jelly doughnuts — are traditionally enjoyed during Hanukkah as one of the fried foods meant to commemorate the miracle of the temple oil lasting for eight days. And similar to my feelings about impeccably fried latkes, I am a strong advocate for eating as many jelly doughnuts as possible all year-round. Sufganiyot are round yeast doughnuts piped with sweet jelly and fried to golden perfection, which makes them ideal eaten with coffee alongside for breakfast or as a devilishly good afternoon snack. Enough said.

Doughnuts can definitely be a regular food. Don't wait until Hanukkah to make this sufganiyot recipe from Epicurious. Soft, pillowy dough filled with jelly is crucial for maintaining mental equilibrium all year.

The turkey may be the main attraction at the Thanksgiving table, but those perfect sides sure make everything, look, smell, and taste more bountiful and festive. One side you're likely to find as part of any holiday spread is the ubiquitous dish of cranberry sauce, which only ever seems to appear on this November holiday. While sugar wasn't easy to get in the Northeast during the 1600s, cranberries were certainly around. According to Martha Stewart, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe people may very well have eaten these vibrant red berries crushed and served with meat, not in the form we now recognize at our own Thanksgiving tables. Even so, by the Civil War, cranberry sauce made by cooking berries with sugar and water had become widespread.

Closely associated with Thanksgiving, I often wonder why we don't serve cranberry sauce at other times, too. Its sweet, tart flavors have the magical ability to balance the heartier, more savory flavors of most meats and veggies, which makes it ideal for enjoying with foods other than turkey, amiright? There's no real reason now to reserve cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving alone, especially when you'd be just as thrilled to have a heap of it alongside roasted chicken or any variety of roasted seasonal vegetables. Let's bring this vibrant side out more often as an easy way to add a delicious twist to any meal.

This cranberry sauce recipe from Serious Eats is easy enough to encourage you to make it every chance you get. The tart flavor of cranberries is perfectly balanced by citrus notes along with warm cinnamon.

A buche de noel or Yule log is a traditional Christmas dessert with origins dating back to pre-medieval times. Prior to the advent of Christianity, the Yule log was burned to celebrate the winter's solstice and welcome new spring air. The tradition carried with the beginnings of Christianity as people burned logs on Christmas Eve. Bakers in Paris began baking the cake version of the Yule log around the 19th century as a symbolic treat. Made with sponge cake and garnished with meringue and marzipan, the ingredient components of the cake were available as early as the 1600s.

While buche de noel is enjoyed widely during Christmastime, there's certainly no reason to save this sweet, tender cake for only once year. While you may not choose to decorate it with traditional holiday symbols at other times, everyone should enjoy sponge cake, marzipan, and meringue whenever there's a hankering for such charming confections.

This buche de noel recipe from Bon Appetit is tried, true, and scrumptious. Whether you spend time preparing one for Christmas or in the middle of July, you'll be delighted by the airy sweet cake and adorable garnishes.

I love kugel and I'm not Jewish, so I know there must be others like me out there. This traditional Jewish casserole made with egg noodles or potato is a little sweet, a bit savory, and tastes like a dream. With German origins dating back hundreds of years, you can find countless variations of this delectable dish. Often served on Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest as well as other religious holy days such as Passover, kugel is a specialty that happens to taste just as amazing on other days. As such, I encourage you to eat as much of it as possible.

This crowd-pleasing recipe from Food Network is a great place to start if you're wondering how you should go about incorporating more kugel into your daily life.

While some seasonal foods may have legitimate reasons for showing up only once a year, there's no culinary rule that dictates you must adhere to tradition. As such, I urge you to enjoy dishes you love year-round, starting with the delicious ones here. Go get what's yours, rule breaker! Feeling emboldened to embrace your favorite seasonal foods regardless of what the date is? Throw caution to the wind and you shall be rewarded with more tasty dishes you can incorporate into your everyday menu. While it's nice saving some dishes for that special time annually, don't forget to have fun reinventing those very dishes for other hungry moments from January to December.