Yes, you can savor this salad in winter | CNN

Reilly Meehan has never known a life that didn’t revolve around seasonal produce. Now a private chef whose social media posts are devoured by more than 1 million combined followers on Instagram and TikTok, Meehan grew up in Santa Cruz, California, in a home surrounded by wild blackberry bushes and a backyard peppered with peach trees and vegetable plots. With all that produce ripe for the picking, “I was frequently out there harvesting and bringing ingredients into the kitchen and whipping things up with it,” Meehan recalled. “I feel like I had a cook’s intuition from very young. Whether or not it was actually edible is a totally different story! But I at least was trying.” His first clue that the culinary world might offer more than a hobby arose at age 11, when Meehan entered a homemade, lattice-topped peach pie featuring that homegrown fruit in a baking competition at the Santa Cruz County Fair. As Meehan walked away with a big blue ribbon for first prize, he beamed — and planted a seed that he’d water years later. His culinary career started in earnest at age 15, as a prep cook at his dad’s brewpub, The Seabright Brewery, in Santa Cruz. “I’d help out as a