Reusing vegetable scraps

A few experienced cooks in our group - thank you Mitzi and Ayliffe - have introduced us to a new way to reuse our vegetable scraps by turning them into a delicious soup stock. This is especially great for us Michigan people in the winter, when every time we add scraps to our compost buckets we know that eventually we have to put on the high boots and track it back to our compost piles. Right now, the end of February here in Michigan, the boots will have to be pretty high to get us there without getting our legs snow covered. So any time I can keep the scraps inside for reuse is a bonus for me.


The recipe is so simple it boggles the mind that I have never come across it before. Basically, you take any clean vegetable scraps, like a broccoli trunk or carrot shavings, and put them in a gallon freezer bag. Once the bag is full, you take the frozen lump and put it in a stock pot and add 12 cups of water, 2 bay leaves and 12 peppercorns. Put it on your smallest burner and simmer about 2 hours, taking care not to let it boil. Then you pour this stock through a colander and into a large bowl, and then through a strainer. In a blender, mix a 28-oz can of stewed Roma tomatoes with a can of navy beans and some of the broth (I do this is 3 segments). Add this and the rest of the stock back to the pot, and you now have the best stock you've ever tasted. You can make this into vegetable soup - the recipe is on our Recipes page. This is a wonderful recipe to make on a cold winter day - the entire house smells fragrant. What's also interesting about this stock is that, because each bag is comprised of a unique set of scraps, it will never taste the same. This freezes well.


Ahhhh......

Homemade Compost

We started collecting our food scraps about 1 1/2 years ago. We threw all of our fruit and vegetable scraps, egg shells, tea and coffee leaves and sometimes a paper towel or two into our compost bin in the backyard. Sometimes we put in discarded plant material (but not weeds), leaves and grass. We never stirred it, mixed it, or did anything else to it like you are supposed to if you are a master composter. In fact, as the winter progressed and our bin got fuller and fuller, I was beginning to wonder if we might need to get with the program and do it the right way. I just wasn't seeing any evidence of the black gold we were supposed to harvest.

So I was surprised and relieved when Tom took down the sides of the bin, dug beneath the top layers, and pulled out some lovely compost (do the words 'lovely' and 'compost' go together?). The picture above shows the compost beneath the current top layers, and the picture below shows it on its way down to our lasagna gardens.

Now that I know that this works - particularly when using the dump-and-leave technique - I am re-energized and re-committed to our food scrap recycling process. It's nice to know we aren't dumping our food and plant waste into our water system, but instead are using it in our yard. I love it when it all comes together like this!

Composting

It has taken us a while, but we finally have our composting routine down, so I thought I would share it with you. The composting bucket, pictured above, is kept under the counter, and is pulled up when we're making meals. We toss any food scraps in it, with the exception of meat and dairy. While in Wales this summer, we also learned that you can put any paper towels or napkins in there too. Once a day, or once every other day, we empty this bucket into the bigger bucket in the garage (this one is just a reused kitty litter container with a snap lid). Then once a week we take the garage compost bucket out to our compost bin at the corner of our yard.

You'd be amazed at how much less garbage you take out every week if you compost and recycle paper and plastic. We are down to 2 bags a week. And somehow the compost doesn't smell...