Inevitable

Yep, I bought myself a little tub, and I have a rolling composter on the way from Peaceful Valley Farm Supply. I don't know what I'm going to do with the compost quite yet, but I do know that no one will have to eat Kitchen Scraps Soup any time soon.

Somewhere a few months back I came across a Mario Batali quote about part of his success being due to his Italian food-frugality. He mentioned that nothing goes to waste, and they put all of their kitchen scraps to use in stocks. I'm a saver. All it took was a little bit of encouragement, and my compulsive side and my cheap side quickly blanket-rolled my practical side and stuffed it in a neatly-labeled Zip-loc.

Already guilty of harboring the dismantled carcasses of more than a few roast chickens in my freezer, I immediately began saving every little snip, stem and leaf. Dead tomatoes, broccoli stems, onion tops, chard bottoms, the woody stalks of asparagus. In addition, I saved the dregs of bottles of wine for reduction sauces of the future, and all of the egg yolks left over from my dubiously successful Angel Food Cakes. (Custard, anyone?) I'm also storing a nice vertical selection of organic tomato sauce from the summer before we moved here. That was over a year ago. We left the skins on the tomatoes, and every time I think about opening one up, I'm afraid it will taste bitter and we'll waste pasta trying to eat it. But I digress.

Compost is the ultimate saver's dream. So, I cleaned all of the limp produce out of the fridge and mixed it with its frostbitten counterparts from up north. Now I just have to wait for the composter to come. Hopefully nothing explodes or takes over the Earth before then. When it finally becomes dirt, maybe I'll just throw it on my little garden. Provided the gophers leave me something to throw dirt on by then.