Kale Stalks and Collard Stalks...

...are the new carrot stick. I brought a ton of these home from work and have been snacking on them a lot this week. Excellent. Simple. Very healthy. Very overpriced at the grocery store (the whole leaf that is). Also planning on making some stir fry out of it. Other finds include: mushroom water (yes, i finally safely made it home with intact gourmet mushroom water), papaya peels and seeds, won bok outer leaves, and mint stalks. Planning on making a nice mushroom rice dish with the water, grinding up the peels and concocting a face mask out of them which I will try and freeze so that it will keep longer, drying out the seeds for later planting and use(dried papaya seeds grow just great btw), and stuffed wonbok? I've also been thinking that the next thing I want to do is to begin making vegetable prints using interesting transecting cuts of the veggies I bring home. Such great geometrical patterns in so many veggies. Onions, lettuce, Won Bok, pineapple peel, green onion roots, avocado peels, and coconut husks all come to mind. Also, I looked up the uses of strawberry leaves as a tea and medicinal, here are some of it's uses.

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...

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.

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.