Garbage Soup!

Yesterday was a good day! I took home my first batch of work 'compost' today and began cooking. I missed the first 2 gallon bin dump (we have a little plastic 2 gallon bin that we put all our veggie cuttings in at work...it sits in the middle of our prep table and we empty it into the compost bags as it fills up), but I caught the second, so I went home with about 2 gallons of castoff veggies in my little sack. Worksite trash journal for today read something like: jicama peels, papaya peels and cut aways, papaya seeds, thyme stalks, green onions, basil stalks, mint reject sprigs, red cabbage reject leafs, zucchini spirooli leftovers...except that my take home batch was missing the jicama peels and some of the papaya, and the thyme stalks. So from this I made: a garbage goulash--kinda like a fish-head stew for vegans; green onion, red cabbage, onion, and zucchini omelet; mint tea; and a ziplock bag of precut stirfry. I also planted the papaya seeds and about six of the green onion roots. What I did first when I got home was I brought out several bowls and sorted the cut veggies into separate containers. So the green onions got their own bowl, the basil got it's own bowl, the mint as well, and the red cabbage and zucchini shared a bowl. I chopped the six green onion heads I wanted to replant and went out on the porch and potted them. Then I took the mint sprigs and poured water over them because Juaquin suggested we keep the mint enzymes alive by making sort of a sun tea out of them, only, 24 hours later, I think we decided it would be much better boiled, because the water didn't take up as much of the minty flavor as we would have liked. Then I made a ziplock bag of about half of the green onions, red cabbage, and zucchinis and put that in the fridge, and froze about half of the basil stems. I picked out the papaya sees I wanted and planted them outside as well, and put the papaya peels in the fridge for future brainstorming. Then I began the goulash. The goulash, or fishless fish head soup, I put together by tossing the remaining zucchini, basil stalks, green onion half-stalks (roots and all), red cabbage, and a collection of other leftovers from the cupboards and fridge that included: 4 tiny hawaiian style hot peppers, about a half cup of buckwheat groats, about a half cup of flax seed meal, some sesame oil (1 Tbsp), coriander, curry powder, red pepper seeds, and two kumquats. I poured water over it enough to submerge all the contents, and then set it on medium hi to boil. Once it boiled, I stirred it a little and reduced the heat to medium, and then, once most of the veggies had softened, to low. I let it simmer for about an hour and a half. Viola! Delicious garbage goulash! What really made it great was that yummy buckwheat flavor, and the presence of those lovely green onion roots, which looked just like baby squids with their little roots poking out of the goulash in sprays of white. I loved this so much I decided to see if anybody else out there makes a garbage goulash. I found this one, this one and these two. Here's a pic of someone's garbage soup on flickr:
I also found a link that called the plastic morass of oceanic human trash debree that floats near my stomping grounds here in the Hawaiian islands. Coincidentally, they label it a "garbage soup". Maybe if we reuse more of our refuse disgusting environmental tragedies like this one can be averted...or maybe we should go and souper-scoop the flotsam and recycle it in some interesting ways.
Here's a link to an article on the real, non-vegan, but fully thrifty and garbage concious fish head soup.