The weekly sort...

So in order to make amends for not having posted for a little while, I brought home two bags of kitchen compost from my work, and sorted them all out last night. The kitchen was covered for a while from counter to counter. The draw amounted to: lime rinds, butternut squash peeling and seeds, thyme sticks, mint stalks, basil stalks, papaya peels, olive pits, date pits, six blueberries, a bunch of only slightly bruised cherry tomatoes, six or seven collard greens, tons of collard green stalks, tons of bok choy bases, yellow and red onion peels, banana peels, papaya seeds, onion chives, cilantro sticks, strawberry leafs, a couple of pieces of mushroom, shitake/mixed gourmet mushroom water, and some green onion roots. So I took the butternut squash peel and innards, separated them from the seeds, and boiled them in water for a while to soften things up. Then I put it all in the blender and made what I'm hoping will be a nice soup base. It has little chunks of peel still visible, because i chose not to fully puree it, and has a beautiful look to it. I also experimented with pureeing the mint and the papaya. I poured the mint puree over the papaya puree, and i am thinking that mixing these two with the squash will make a really excellent soup. The collard stalks are like, better than carrot sticks for munching on, they've become a favorite of a few people at work. I also was looking at some Ethiopian Gomen recipes earlier and thinking I might make some with the stalks. I took the Won Bok bases, which I had tons of, chopped them up into bite sized pieces and boiled them for a while last night too. I dunno, they would make a nice quiche base, or a great wonbok and parmesan patty. I was also thinking about using them as part of a casserole. I am going to try and plant some of the butternut squash seeds and papaya seeds. The papaya seeds I planted last time are growing like gangbusters! No such luck with the date seeds, alas. I saved the olive pits, so I may try growing with olive pits too. Some of these seeds take a very long time to germinate. I also love the papaya seeds as pepper spice, though i haven't tried them dry for this yet, only wet. The onion skins and banana peels went into the natural dye freezer bag. I saved the bases of the lettuce heads because I admired the pretty star pattern they made, and thought it would make a nice natural elements stamp project.

One thing to watch out for, I found out, is staying up too too late while making my garbage lab experiments. I ended up freezing two glass jars filled with squash soup mix. DOH! Thereby busting both the glasses. I rinsed off the brick hard contents though, so hopefully they are safe again now. The other giant calamity that arose, happened after I bagged up the mushroom water that we'd used at work to soak mushrooms to plump and hydrate them up for a gravy we do. There was a pinprick hole in the gallon bag I used, and drip drip drip, thirty minutes later everything in my bag was soaked--my camera, my cell phone, the title to my car, my journal, you name it and it was soaked. Terrible.

Next time I'll blog on strawberry leaves and their uses...