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...

Thoughts on the Garbage Garden

My new plan is to harvest the plastic gallon jugs from work, cut them in half, cut holes in the bottom, and use them as sorely needed new planters for my garbage garden. I haven't thought of a way to recycle something to make plant labels, but I think I'll prowl around work and think of something for that too. I also told one of my co-workers, Tiff, to bring in her pots and I would give them plants for their garden from my seeds. One of the things I love about work, is everything has that Ohana feel. In Hawaii, there is a tradition of including many many people in your ohana, or family. The last roomate I had, a %100 Hawaiian woman, talked a lot about growing up with Calabash cousins--kids from the neighborhood that their family 'adopted' and fed and and entertained as one of their own. At work, from the very beginning, things have had a family 'kine' of feeling. My boss used to pick me up on her way to work every day when I lived down the road from her. When my feet used to hurt me a lot, she brought in an old pair of arch supports for me. When my co-workers got married and I mentioned wanting to find a box to paint for their wedding gift, she brought me an old wine box to use. She always feeds us at lunch, and we always tend to be willing to stay late in the evenings. We joke that she is our 'work mom'. It is with work that we celebrated the wedding of two of our co-workers, and with work that we celebrate thanksgiving. With work we celebrate the holiday season as well, and if we stay extrordinarily late, you can count on the boss taking you out for dinner, family style. I think a part of functioning in a frugal and environmentally concious world, has to do very much with our willingness to cooperate and see each other as family.
I found this Purdue University link on garbage gardening, with some helpful tips about how to sprout things a bit better. Up till now I've just been plunking things down in soil and watering, and hoping for the best. It's good to know some timeframes on the seeds, and to hear some advice on getting these seeds to sprout. Here's a book I found on the subject as well, and another website, that mentions the viability of planting mango and kiwi seeds, and one site that talks about how a landfill in the city of Austin, gives away free recycled glass to the people of Austin, who want to use it for landscaping. It works really well for planting desert plants like aloe and century plants. It also works well when used as a drainage bed beneath a garden plot, and as a liner for a so-called french drain. I think it's really cool that the landfill gives away recycleds to people, making an easier inroad to appropriate reuse. I wonder if Oahu landfill does any similar programs, and if not, how we could get one started.
On the subject of landfills, I also found this site that discusses how a landfill in Australia is run. Very intense sorting facility compared what Oahu has. I would love to see something like this here. I also found a link on a landfill in Israel, which they recently turned into a public park. It's nice to see innovative solutions like these.

A garbage stew by any other name...

So this week's stew was not as big of a hit as the other week. This week I used carrot heads, cabbage heads, a small amount of green onion roots, zucchini slices, zucchini stems and zucchini peels, and some cilantro roots, then added buckwheat and oregano and red pepper for seasoning. I stewed it overnight as before. The results? Sort of watery and much less savory. I think that the last batch was such a success because it used sesame oil and curry powder, and more onions, and flax meal. These additions really brought out the flavor of the buckwheat. The kumquats from last week were also a nice addition. I think that the next soup I make will have more of the original ingredients, and will also use some kind of citrus flavoring (probably lemon or lime juice).


It's interesting to think back on garbage craft through the ages. This is not a new concept at all. My Norwiegen immigrant grandmother had a 'scraps' drawer beneath her cutting board kitchen island, where she swept all kinds of scraps and later made them into stews. My mother grew up wearing dresses that her mother sewed for her out of flour sacks. It's also cool to look at the words other places and cultures put on things. Opala in Hawaii. Rubbish in England, etc. I found an interesting British blog today called "The Rubbish Diet" this woman's project is cutting down her waste to zero, by 'thinning' the weight of her bin little by little. What was really great to see at this site was an excellent new name for garbage goulash aka kitchen sink soup. The best yet. She calls it, Wizard Soup. That's absolutely savage!

So what else did I make this week? I had many many thick slices of zucchini left over from the spirooli noodles we make out of zucchini at work (did I mention I work at a raw vegan place?)...we use these spiroolied noodles to make an excellent raw pad thai. FYI- The spirooli gadget works by way of a sort of cleat or flower-frog like panel--a panel covered in spikes, which can be rotated and pushed on with a hand crank. On the other side of this cleat you lodge the vegetable you desire to be spiroolied. The other end of the vegetable gets cut into noodles as you crank on the handle and the vegetable is spun, cheese slicer style. through a narrow blade. So anyhoo, I saved the bases of the zucchini and am going to use them in a zucchini cheese casserole.

I also took most of the zucchini peels and blended them with some water, then froze it as soup base. Here is the before and after of that..

As for the garbage garden, it's coming along. I thought I'd post a few pics this week to show it off a bit. This week's new contributions were several cilantro roots, a couple of parsley roots, a slew of avocado seeds, and more green onion stubbies. The papaya seeds I set out to dry should also be just about ready this week for planting. Two things I need to make happen: I need more pots, and I need to make some labels for the plants, because some of the seeds I plant fail to grow anything, and then I forget what was what. Another thing I learned this week was: next time I should really freeze the papaya skins. I ended up throwing the whole gallon bag of them out because I'd planned on using them as a facial care product, but a week in a gallon bag, I figured it must have grown a few bacteria that would not be very healthy to put on my face. Freezing should fix this problem. I lost the lime rinds to the same cause. I didn't grate them in time, and didn't want to risk injesting their bacteria a week later, when I realized I still hadn't purchased a spice grater.

In the column towards the good this week though, I began a compost pile out on Juaquin's porch, where I was able to put the leftovers from this week's bag. I am going to try and get some worms for it very soon. I also was able to add some red onion skins to the dye ingredients bag I've got going in the freezer.

Zucchini Peels and Papaya Skins...

So I've brought home and 'processed' two bags from work since my last writing.
The contents of the two bags that I sorted out as being potentially useful were:
lettuce leftovers
papaya skins and seeds
apple seeds
onion roots
avocado peels
onion skins
lime rinds
lettuce heads
daikon slices
thyme
basil stalks
thyme stalks
carrot peels
banana peels

And here are the categories I sorted them into:
for use as a fabric dye
for medicinal/tea use
for use as a beauty concoction
future stew or sauce base
garbage garden participants
spice/seasoning rack

So I'm gradually amassing a large plastic bag full of onion skins and banana peels for a future dye project...and I'm collecting avocado peels for their use as a parasite cleansing medicinal tea...and I'm keeping the lime rinds until I get a grater and can grate them into a tiny jar and keep that for seasoning purposes (mm coconut milk curry)...the papaya skins are facial material, though I may grind them up soon and use them for a shampoo base...the carrot skins I blended up and use as a facial...the garbage garden will be made up of green onions, papayas, apple trees, and a lettuce head experiment (I'm gonna see if the lettuce heads will grow at all..kinda overly optimistic, I know)...I've already had great success with potting and growing the last batch of green onions, though the papayas from last time never sprouted....so this time I'm drying the seeds out on the porch before i plant them...this also makes them useful as peppercorn like seasoning, as in papaya seed dressing...mm.

Mexican and Michoacan ideas for Avocado Peels

Tonight I made a carrot face mask, baked zucchini chips, spinach soup base, avocado seeds to plant, avocado peels for parasite tea and facials...froze thyme, basil stalks, lime rinds

According to a site I found on Michoacan medicine, you can boil the peel of an avocado in 1⁄2 quart of water, and drink a cup daily before breakfast, for two weeks to get rid of intestinal parasites. I've heard that a lot of us have these wormies in our guts, even here in the 'first world' and walk around not knowing it. Vegetarians and meat eaters both. There are different opinions on the presence of these parasites and it's ok-ness for your health. There was a girl in my massage class that had gone to energy healing school. In one of her healing treatments she discovered that she had some parasites and was of the philosophy that getting rid of them would be really great. A friend of mine that practices the primal diet tells me that many practicers of the diet (which eschews the eating of daily portions of raw meat and milk) believe that parasites are indeed good for your body, up to a point of saturation. They believe this to be true because parasites should only eat dead tissue, and by doing so they help you to maintain better health. I dunno. I think I lean towards trying a parasite cleanse though. Worms in my gut are not a pretty idea, healthy or no. An added benefit of avocado peel tea is that it supposedly gets rid of menstral cramps. Also it is said that the peel of the avocado can help to alleviate headaches. Apply it like a headache plaster on both temples, holding in place with a handkerchief
tied around the head.

Another thing I discovered on this site is a medicinal use for avocado seeds, which you can soak in alcohol as a cure for rheumatism. To prepare the infusion, soak three seeds in 1⁄2 quart of alcohol; then add 1⁄2 quart more and let the mixture sit for one week. Then rub the affected part with the concoction and cover the area completely with a piece of flannel.

Here are some brainstorms I had about other things I could do with the avocado peels:
use as fertilizer
make candle boats
make regular miniature sailboats
use as a plant pot
make avocado wax (by boiling the peel?)
use as a face /elbow/knee scrub
sew together once dried, to make a textured bath mat
make it into a soup bowl by covering the inside with self-dry clay, or just by using while still fresh
chia island or organic kitchen sprout bowl
a turtle island for a pet turtle (that i don't have)
pumice soap
use the peel to texturize a box or a faux leather purse (could make the 'purse' out of cardboard)

and for the avocado seeds?
a bottle cork
a table cloth weight (when tied to a table cloth like a large heavy bead or sinker)
squeeze for oil

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.