I’ve been reading some other food blogs lately and it occurred to me, after reading one girl’s where she posts what she’s thrown away every week, that this isn’t a bad idea. I very often have things that go a bit funny before I get to use them (AGH I HATE not being home to prepare things!), and it drives me insane. Given, all my food that I don’t use ends up in the compost, but that doesn’t make me feel better for not having eaten it. I wish I had chickens, because then I could feed the bad stuff to the chickens and eat the chickens later, and it would be coming full circle. As it is I take the food to the compost at the college and they just use it to plant shrubs and things, which seems a bit beside the point as it is a dead end rather than a circle.
Anyway, I started thinking about what I’ve composted recently. I’ve been doing better this year than last year, though I still end up composting greens whenever I get them. I just don’t seem to eat them at all unless there is someone around encouraging me to eat them. And for some reason I flat out won’t eat a salad unless I have people over for dinner. So in the past week or so, I’ve composted the remains of a salad, lots of tomato skins, some peaches that went rotten… ends of green beans and okra and zucchini and eggplant, pepper tops and veins, garlic and onion skins. Mostly things that can’t be eaten, unless I had gotten to the peaches sooner. Oh, and some grapes that I accidentally left in the car all day, where they promptly turned to mush and fermented. And an end of a loaf of bread that turned green. And, alas, a lot of edamame and basil that I didn’t get time to process before the former dried out completely and the later shriveled up and turned black. *heaves a sigh*
WHEN will I have time to actually live my life? Can someone please tell me?
On the upside, there is almost never any actual trash in my trash except cat litter. And beer caps. And the plastic wrappings from meats. That’s really about it though. So that makes me feel a bit better.
Now, to get those chickens…
Fish In the Water is a farmer-to-be so-called foodie writer living on the beautiful rural Eastern Shore of MD.
There’s always a gap between our intentions & the realities of our lives. I compost more shoulda-eaten stuff than I want to, too. Worse than having to compost unused basil, this AM I discovered that I still had a cup & a 1/2 of pesto I’d made but hadn’t finished that’d started to mold. Can’t even compost that.
Yay for The Frugal Girl! She started Food Waste Friday, and encourages others to participate. She considers vegetable and fruit “waste” non-existent, since she adds it to her compost.