A Week of Winter Compost

This time of year I wish I could be cozied up by a roaring fire, thumbing through garden catalogues, dreaming about spring gardens, but the reality is that I’m living every suburban mom’s life: balancing cooking, cleaning, carting kids, and, in my case, composting.

In other words, life is busy, and I love it all, but spare time is sometimes in short supply.  Therefore, I present a week’s worth of winter compost buckets.  Maybe it’s the gloomy grey skies and chilly temps outside, but I think all these scraps are pretty, in a quirky kind of way…

I’m not one for avocados in the winter, but they perfectly complemented the Roasted Beer and Lime Cauliflower Tacos as well as the Black Bean and Roasted Butternut Squash Tacos. Sometimes we need choices and these were two great ones.

Some things become classic for a reason, and this meal is our quintessential Sunday Supper: roast chicken, mashed potatoes, shallot gravy and pan-roasted Brussels sprouts. I make it often, but it definitely tastes best eaten on Sunday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the bottom of the bucket above…What’s Sunday Supper without dessert? Especially during Lent? My middle boy loves lemon pound cake (five eggs) so we each had a thin slice for dinner and the rest went back to the dorm to fuel a huge college appetite. Aren’t the spent stock blossoms from my bouquets around the house pretty even when they are destined for compost?

If your regular old meatball recipe has gotten stale, steal this idea: add a few ounces of chopped prosciutto to the meat mixture, bake, add sauce and spaghetti and get ready to swoon. The best part? My Whole Foods sells “cooking prosciutto” for just $10/pound and it’s really just the dried ends of the pricey “good stuff”.  Here’s a recipe to try if you are intrigued.

One of the things I love about the South is the way friends and neighbors look out for each other with the gift of food. In this bucket you can imagine a meal lovingly prepared for an inspiring family who is coping with cancer complications and mitochondrial disease. I felt blessed to provide this meal and offered the best comfort food I know: two lemon roasted chickens, garlic mashed potatoes, pan-roasted green beans, all homemade Caesar salad, and my favorite weeknight dessert, Banana Poppyseed Cake.

 

I’m pretty sure I could eat this meal once or twice a week if my family would concur: Kale Quinoa Salad (with dates, onions, and bacon instead of almonds) and Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower. It’s healthy, filling, and really yummy.

 

Lemon & Onion: A Perfect Pair

Have you ever noticed that my compost bucket contains onion skins or lemon halves and oftentimes both?  (Eggshells too, but that’s another post.)  Why?

Most days I make hot lemon water as a “tonic” before my morning cup of tea.  It’s very simple.  Add the juice and half of a lemon (or a quarter if it’s quite large) into a 12-ounce mug  lemon.  Add about two tablespoons (or to taste) unfiltered apple cider vinegar plus about a tablespoon of raw honey.  I often add a few thin slices of fresh peeled ginger and/or fresh peeled turmeric root.  If I’m battling a cold I use all those ingredients and also add in about a quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper.  It’s definitely an acquired taste, but addictive once you’re used to it.

And the onions?  They are the one ingredient I always have in my pantry and the majority of my recipes include one.  In fact, when I’m creating a savory recipe I typically start with or add an onion at some point.  I still laugh when I think how opposite my sister and I are in this regard.  She said she always looked for another recipe if the one she was reading started with  “chop an onion …”

But why would lemons and onions be a perfect pair you ask?

Well, you know that chopping onions on a cutting board leaves the board and the knife with a distinctive pungent smell.  Even after washing with hot soapy water that smell can still linger, BUT if you scrub the cutting board with a piece of lemon, the citrus neutralizes the smell.  You can then wash as usual and the oniony smell is gone.  Rub it on your fingers to remove that distinctive onion aroma too.

Then toss the peels and the skins on your compost pile as usual.

 

 

Composting Valentine’s Day

Confession: I love all the hearts and flowers and corny cards associated with Valentine’s Day.  Instead of thinking of it as a money-making holiday created by the candy and greeting card industry, I much prefer to remember it as the Catholic feast of Saint Valentine, a Roman priest martyred for marrying Christian couples.

I’ve got plush heart pillows on my soafs and pretty hearts hanging in my windows and of course a sparkly red wreath on my door.  Of course I’ve already made heart sprinkled sugar cookies and spent an entire episode of Downton Abby (just started season two) putting candy in mini bags with pretty red ribbons for my girl’s ballet pals.

So I made these lovely little Linzer tarts (tortes?) for my loved ones this weekend.  They are essentially a crisp almond meal cookie filled with raspberry jam.  I’ve got my own secret recipe but this one is similar. There is minimal compost from cookies naturally, but they are so pretty I had to share.

The cookie-making bucket looked like this.

What you can see (clockwise from the top):

• brussels sprouts trimmings (really questionable quality sadly)
• shallot skins & stem ends
• eggs (for the cookies!)
• carrot sticks (left over from lunchbox)
• blueberries (left over from lunchbox)
• In addition to the Linzer tart cookies, I also made a some quickly seared hangar steaks with this sauce paired with roasted brussels sprouts and fingerling potatoes.

Here is the bucket for both Valentine’s Day family dinner and Sunday Supper.

What you can see (clockwise from the top):

• lots of egg shells
• lemon halves
• bits of wilted salad greens
• tea bag
• orange peelsshallot skins & stem ends
• espresso grounds
• WhatI made with all of that:

Valentine’s Family Dinner

• Scallops with Fresh Linguine
• Caesar Salad with homemade croutons
• Sunday Supper
• Rich Vanilla Pudding with Strawberries & Lizer Tarts

My middle boy was a bit under the weather so our intended meal with friends and family was cancelled.  A sensible idea but when I cancelled dinner I didn’t make the meal… which resulted in hungry mouths at  seven wondering “what’s for dinner?”

Frittatta to the rescue.  These never used to be in my rotation since I made my fair share of quiche and scrambled eggs, but quiche needs a crust and scrambed eggs really screams breakfast.  Enter the frittatta.  Made in my ten-inch cast iron pan with eggs, milk and whatever bits and pieces I have on hand, this meal is fast, fresh and super easy.

The Sunday frittatta included smoked salmon and shallots sauteed  in butter and some    almost old mozzerella.  A quick simmer on the stove and a minute under the broiler and dinner was served along with a quick Caesar spin-off, some sesame bagels and more Linzer tarts of course.

Hope your heart was happy this weekend.

 

Can I Compost: Date Pits

Last night I was making this truly delicious salad and I had a small handful of date pits.  Trash or compost bucket?

Ordinarily I do not compost pits from stone fruits or seeds from vegetables like squash, peppers, cucumber, etc.  The pits are rock hard and take years to break down, but the soft seeds tend to germinate immediately, take root and send up volunteers all over the garden.

Date pits are a bit different. Not too hard, not too soft, pliable, but still a really big seed.  Hmmm… I had to do a bit of research.  This info reminds me a bit of the old Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood “field trips” that fascinated me when I was five (and when I was the mom of five year olds). It’s definitely worth reading if you are interested in where and how your food is grown.

My verdict was: compost. I’m pretty sure I won;t be growing a date palm in my garden!

Here are the rest of my kitchen scraps for the day.

 

What you can see (clockwise):

• yellow onion peels and stem ends
• strawberry tops (lunch box)
• carrot peels (lunch box)
• Lacinto kale stems (especially in a salad I’m not a fan of the big stem crunch)
• apple peels (sautéed in butter and topped breakfast pancakes)
• garlic skin
• lemon half (morning hot lemon drink)
• lime & mandarin orange halves (salad dressing)

But back to the dates… and the salad… my daughter refused to eat it because she is not a date fan, but guess what?  Neither of us could not stop eating.  It’s really a keeper.  Give it a try.  And if you do, substitute bacon for almonds (I was out of nuts) and be prepared to reach for seconds.

 

 

Toss It Tuesday: Pea Shoots

Aren’t these gorgeous?  Local, organic pea shoots.  I scooped them up in the grocery and couldn’t wait to get them home.  I planned my whole dinner around them because they were just enticing. So fresh, so fabulous.

I roasted some small red beets.  You can do it too because they are infinitely better than the pre-cooked beets you can now find in the refrigerated cases.  Individually wrap each beet in a bit of foil and bake for about an hour at 400 degrees.  This method bakes and steams at the same time for perfect earthy goodness.  Cool, unwrap, and working one at a time, rub off skins gently with a paper towel.  Full disclosure: your hands will get bright pink, so work carefully with the paper towels or slip on some plastic gloves.  Slice your ruby red jewels into quarters and they are ready to eat.

For the salad I put a handful of pea shoots in a small bowl, added the sliced beets, some crumbled feta cheese and toasted pecans.  For dressing, I sloshed on a quick vinaigrette of sherry vinegar, dijon mustard, and walnut oil.  It was gorgeous.  (This picture does not do it justice because it was late in the evening. and there was no natural light.)

The salad was absolutely delicious; all the right notes of fresh, earthy, creamy, crunchy.  Whatever, with some crusty bread, it was a simple, satisfying meal.

About an hour later, my daughter complained of a tummy ache.  Then my husband felt a bit off.  Soon after, I joined them in feeling not terrible, but not good.  Nothing worsened, but we all agreed that all signs pointed to the pea shoots as the source of our ick. This episode kind of confirms my standard gut feel not to buy sprouted seeds.

So, on the compost pile they go. I kind of hate to toss them; they are still so pretty, but I like the idea of them quickly cooking away in the bottom of the compost pile.

Just so you know, the next time pretty, perfect pea shoots catch my eye at the market I am walking quickly by.

 

A Bonfire and A Dutch Baby

What did you do with your Christmas tree this year?  Remember – I am catching up on posts – we took this down weeks ago!  Typically we pay a Boy Scout to recycle ours as a fundraiser, but this year no Scouts knocked on our door.  They always wince when they see the twelve foot tree so maybe it was for the best.

Everybody always asks “Why such a big tree?”  Well, I was allergic as a kid and never had a living tree until I was 21. We’re talking an artificial white tree with velvet bows arranged just so.  Quite lovely and very memorable but not exactly real.  Even the “kid tree” decorated with candy was plastic and white.  It was Florida in the 70’s and my parents defined hip.  Since then, my husband and kids have made up for my lost years by going BIG.

This year’s tree barely made it in the front door.  It was a monster, twelve feet tall and almost as wide. Let’s just say it had so much character the guys at the tree lot were thrilled to see it go to a good home.  Taking it out was a bit of a conundrum so we just did what any sane people would do; snipped off the lower branches, sawed it in pieces in the house and carried it out back to the fire pit.

Can I say it is downright SCARY to see how quickly a brittle tree is consumed by flames?  I always scoffed at the idea that a tree could catch fire in the house but I feel compelled to say keep your tree watered well and never leave the lights on when you aren’t home!

Taking Just a few branches from this year’s twelve foot Christmas tree. Brittle evergreens burn fast and hot.

We usually roast some hot dogs on sticks followed by marshmallows over the embers but this fire was too hot and quick.  We opted for espresso (from my new Christmas toy) and an apple Dutch Baby.  We were still on vacation and it was great!

Apples and espresso grounds and eggshells, oh my.  Random banana peels too.

If you’ve never had one, a Dutch Baby is a fast, easy to make, puffy crepe-like pancake prepared in a cast iron pan, often with sautéed fruit.  It’s pretty to easy to eat the entire pan in one sitting.

A “Dutch Baby” pancake. Serve this with a little heavy whipping cream or some good vanilla ice cream … heaven.

I’ve almost memorized the simple Joy of Cooking recipe, but you can use this similar one.  Instead of preheating my pan in the oven, I sauté the apples in butter with a tiny bit of sugar, then add some extra butter so the pancake does not stick.  Give it a try on a lazy Sunday and see if it doesn’t put you in a holiday mood.

 

Coffee Please, For Compost

If you’ve never considered them, coffee grounds are a great addition to your compost pile.  If you are a home brewer, you can simply toss the used grounds in their paper filter right onto your pile.   If you’re more of a drive-thru kind of coffee drinker like me, your local coffee shop will gladly give you their used coffee grounds.  I often see the brewed grounds bagged up and free for the taking at my local Starbucks.  Now, if they’d trade me a free drink for taking those grounds off their hands that would be even nicer, but sadly I pay for my coffee habit.

Every day my routine goes something like this:  (me) I need coffee.  (practical me) It’s not good for you.  It makes you jittery.  (whining me) But I love Iced Hazelnut Machiattos.  (scolding me) They’re expensive.  AND they’re made with crappy milk.  (petulant me) I want one.  I’m already in drive-through.  (realistic me) **sigh**  Now, run this scenario every day around three o’clock if I’m out and about.  Last summer this conversation involved a salted caramel frappucino, a terrible drink that’s bad for me.  Did you know you could have SIX KRISPY KREME DOUGHNUTS instead. of that drink?  Whoa.  I would MUCH rather have six doughnuts than one sugary drink.  Hence, my current iced milky coffee habit.  Lots less calories and added sugar.

But in the summer I crave something frozen, coffee, and sweet.  Years ago, I perfected a great “pseudo-cino” recipe but it’s more like a bottled frap and while satisfying, sometimes it just doesn’t get the job done.  Enter the  Coffee Banana Date Smoothie that I found on Pinterest.  What a cute blog!  What an awesome drink!  I’m totally hooked!  And, I the end result is I get good espresso grounds to add to my compost! I think we can call this a win-win for everybody but the coffee shop.

The coffee grounds:

The newly addictive drink (note the knock-off cup and green straw, haha).

Wondering why used coffee grounds are good for your compost pile?

• Even though they are brown, grounds are considered a “green” compost additive, meaning they’re a source of nitrogen.
• Coffee grounds are high in nitrogen (20:1 ratio), which gives the bacteria in your pile the energy it needs to break down your scraps.  Manure, which is a great jump starter to break down organic matter, has the same carbon ratio.  Most home gardeners (myself included) avoid manure and animal products since they attract rodents and can harbor dangerous bacteria and pathogens.  Coffee grounds are a good substitute.
• Brewed coffee grounds are relatively pH neutral (beans are acidic, but the acid is water soluble so it brews out).
• Worms seem to be drawn to coffee grounds, which helps to aerate and further break down your scraps.
• Grounds help to enhance soil structure.

The next time you indulge your coffee habit, remember to pick up some used grounds!  But be responsible.  If you decide to perk up your compost with substantial amounts of coffee grounds, be sure to layer it with equal amounts of grass clippings and leaves.

 

Back To Buckets

Summer is in full swing and that means lots of fruit and veggies at every meal, as well as lots of scraps in the compost bucket.

You know how some buckets are just a great mix of color and texture?  This is not one of them.  In fact, I put it on the deck, left it overnight and then photographed it this morning after the ants and slugs began to make a meal of it.  Not pretty, but authentic I guess.

 

What you can see (clockwise top to bottom):

• ants on watermelon chunks, these were very pale and not very tasty
• lots of banana skins, six to be exact
• squishy grapes and grape stems
• the curly stem on the watermelon rind, it was very cute and piggish
• eggshells (for banana bread)
• past-its-prime peach, turned inedible overnight
• past-its prime apricot, turned inedible overnight
• more eggshells (for waffles)
• spent William Shakespeare rose

In addition to cheese waffles for breakfast and “leftovers” salad for lunch (arugula, chicken breast, garden tomatoes) I baked up two kinds of banana bread.  Yes, two kinds.  It was rainy, plus I had time AND inclination.  Here are the pans waiting for the oven to heat.

I was thinking that the Double Chocolate Banana Bread (on the right obviously) would be my favorite, but surprisingly, Jacked Up Banana Bread with walnuts and bourbon was my top choice.  This might be because I increased the butter and doubled the bourbon, but it could also just be that my initial intentions were for banana goodness as opposed to chocolate goodness.  That said, the chocolate bread is nearly gone.  I’m not the only one in the house nibbling …

 

 

 

Toss It Tuesday: Cherries and Pie

The grocery store checkout racks are filled with magazines featuring pies on their covers this month so, succumbing to the subliminal marketing messages, I’ve been craving one.  Normally, I’m not a pie fan.  I’d much rather eat my fruit raw, swirl it into a smoothie or bake it into a pound cake, but the pie allure is strong.   When my farm share last week included local sour cherries I could see the writing on the wall.

But, and it’s a big but, LOCAL sour cherries?  Remember, I live in Georgia where cherries don’t just grow on trees.  You’ve got to get them from Michigan or Washington.  But somehow, thanks to the perseverance of my farmer, there they were.  Beautiful, local cherries.  Just making plans for them made me feel so virtuous.  I mean, when my grandmother got food from the store it was ALL local.  She would not have thought twice about the origin of her cherries.  She would probably have thought, “great, cherries are in season,” bought them and baked her pie.  But, in today’s weird food climate, find these beautiful local gems was kind of like winning a gold medal.  I bought two more pints and planned my pie.

Every single day for a week I woke up planning to make that pie and every single day something else took precedence.   Life is funny that way.  I kept the magazine with the recipe I wanted to try right on the kitchen counter to remind me.

Finally a stretch of spare hours….  I excitedly pulled the containers from the fridge and tipped all those beautiful bright jewels into the colander and alas, they were more delicate than I realized.  Many had not survived the week.  I had killed the local cherries from neglect.  My grandmother would never have kept her cherries waiting.  She knew the fragility of real produce.  In one week I went from proud locavore dropping hints of my virtue into any conversation I could, “Did I tell you I found love gorgeous local cherries?  Yes, local!”  to food heathen unworthy of nature’s bounty.  Shaking off the food guilt, I rolled up my sleeves to redeem this situation.   I set to work to pit the little beauties and would make it work.  No time to waste adding up the cost of this very expensive Toss It Tuesday.

As an aside, have you ever pitted tart cherries?  They are TINY.  The fruit is hardly bigger than the pit, especially when you’ve got to pare away little bruised bits.  Especially when your cherry pitter broke last year, you never replaced it, and are now working with a paring knife.   But really, who cares?  Local.  Sour.  Cherries.  My virtuous stock was rising again.  I kept waiting for someone to call so I could say I was making a cherry pie with local sour cherries and an interesting almond crust.  The phone was silent.  I was being punished for wasting my treasure.

Look how pretty this fruit is!  That’s lime zest on top.  I didn’t follow the recipe exactly.  By now you may have guessed I never do. You were supposed to infuse the sugar with the zest, but I got carried away with the colors and it was really zesty.

Sadly, I was two pounds short of three pounds.  Even if every cherry was perfect I would have been short.  Throwing off the local medal of honor that no one but me knew or cared about anyway, I amended  my pie plan and hauled from the fridge an industrial size plastic container of sweet cherries purchased at my local Costco, shipped from the not so local state of Washington, onto the counter and continued pitting.  They were quite gorgeous too.  Giant, probably like the orchard them came from.

 

Here they are, local and industrial, mixed together in a baptizing bath of organic sugar (i.e., evaporated cane juice) and organic cornstarch that balanced everything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the crust with made with butter and almond meal.  Doesn’t it match my countertop exactly?

Limey cherries happily snuggled in the nutty crust.  The recipe does not call for butter but have you ever made a pie without it?  Not my personal favorite.  Plus, I’d already veered from recipe authenticity.  I added some chunks of grass-fed goodness.

 

Didn’t it turn out well?  It looked exactly like the magazine cover.

 

 

We ate it before I ever took another picture.  I promise it looked exactly like this.  Possibly prettier.  And it was delicious.

When the blueberries ripen I’m making this one too.  How about you?

P.S.  Full disclosure: I did not put all the pits into compost, only the cherries.  I just liked the “cherriness” of that “Toss It” photo.

 

Father’s Day Weekend Fun

Perfect weather set the stage for a perfectly enjoyable Father’s Day Weekend … Saturday yard work, dinners on the deck, and … not much else.  Delightful.

I keep missing the perfect light in which to photograph the vegetable garden, but it’s coming along quite well.   I’m crossing my fingers and hope it’s not a curse to repeat that my neighbor mentioned the garden “looks better than it ever has.”  We might be able to harvest green beans and cucumbers this week.  All the afternoon rain showers have been a garden blessing.

Here’s a peek at the child-sized handful of ripening blueberries we greedily picked from our three recently planted bushes.  Although they are barely knee high now, local blueberry experts (i.e. friends and neighbors) assure me they are going to be producing more berries than we can possibly eat.  I dearly hope that is true.  I also dearly hope the neighborhood deer do not discover these delicacies planted in plain view.  Shhhh!

Did you ever rush to plant something in the fall to give it a head start, prep the soil well, baby it against the cold, and rejoice in the spring to find it happily growing away?  Have you also done this and realized you left out a giant important step?  Why do you ask?  We carved out a new planting bed in the front yard (perfect full sun area for some as yet unplanted columnar apple trees) and put in some lovely foundation shrubs but utterly forgot to put down a weed barrier to prevent unsightly Bermuda grass from reclaiming the land.  What a mess!  Picture my lovingly tended front lawn (thanks to my devoted son), nicely shaped trees, tasteful annuals (pink pentas, blue salvia, and white vinca), and the new bed choked with quickly spreading Bermuda.  Acrgh!  With the help of a family friend, my husband tackled the thankless job of raking back the mulch, putting down weed barrier, and re-mulching.  Much better now.  Alas, no photos.  That is what your imagination is for.

All that work killed our appetite for cooking (besides, I had already whipped up cheese waffles for late breakfast).  Thanking my stars that my family loves a good carb-fest, I pulled out all the stops for this calorie laden extravaganza.

Do you need a close up of that bread?

It actually was as delicious as it looked.  I’ll share the recipe because I found it by accident while I was searching Pinterest for something I’ve now forgotten.  I was out of sun dried tomatoes so I added extra garlic, butter and cheese.  No one complained.

All we needed to round out the meal was a simple leaf lettuce salad dressed with a simple vinaigrette (a tablespoon of mustard, a whole lemon, juiced, and as much olive oil as you want to take out the pucker, about a third of a cup, salt & pepper),

Drinks were my new favorite, Palomas or grapefruit soda and tequila.  As you can guess I didn’t really measure, but if you’re one of those who do, here’s a recipe.  I didn’t bother with salt and I used a soda from Trader Joe’s.

Compost bucket?  Since it was a lazy weekend I just kept piling, so you can’t really see all the banana skins from the overripe bunch I broke into chunks and froze for smoothies.  Eggs were for waffles, lemon for vinaigrette, watemelon for snacking, and teabags for our summer staple.

Oh, and for actual Father’s Day, we had a twist to our day, and hence a complication for dinner … but it was actually a gift and we ended up with luscious last-minute lobster roll sandwiches our way: challah hot dog rolls with the tops sliced, buttered, and gently broiled, then filled with chunks of butter-and-lemon laced sweet broiled lobster PLUS chunks of roasted wild Alaskan cod.  The cod makes the sandwich feel decadently full, while the lobster sweetens the cod and tricks the taste buds into thinking you’re eating double the crustacean.  Ours was a happy dad.

Hope your weekend was lovely too.