Scraps in the Kitchen

Driving into town for our morning at the Y last week, I heard an NPR story about composting. Okay. So if the good people of San Francisco can do it because it's the law, I should be able to manage it voluntarily. A hundred years ago, when I lived in Vermont, composting was easy peasy. I either had a backyard garden myself or I could take any food scraps I accumulated to the section of the Intervale dedicated entirely to compost. It didn't hurt that I knew half the people working at any of the farms or businesses scattered throughout the Intervale, that it is a beautiful place with a path snaking down along the river, and that it is right within the city limits of Burlington.

Since leaving Vermont, I have given up on composting food waste. First, suburban living, then apartment living, then bear-country living provided me with an ample supply of excuses. Then, we moved to Camp Chingachgook.

Several years ago, our camp invested in the Earth Tub, an industrial green machine that stews and chews kitchen waste into rich, delicious nourishment for the beautiful things camp grows. It sits right outside the dining hall, closer even than the dumpsters. All acceptable scraps and the special biodegradable napkins used for camp meals go into the tub. Campers collect and weigh their food waste, separating out the compostables into tubs at the cleanup station.

Whenever our little family eats at the dining hall, I feel a little glow of pride as we toss our modest heap of apple cores and half-chewed carrots into the bin.

Of course, most meals are consumed at home. And prepared at home. The cabbage middles, pumpkin guts, watermelon rinds and slimy spinach all end up in the trash. Why, you ask, with such a fabulous composting opportunity just a short walk through the woods, would you glut a landfill with such things?

While we have avoided most of the pitfalls of the sub-prime mortgage mess, not having ever taken out a mortgage, the answer can be found in our own real estate crisis. It takes place in our kitchen. This delightful little room, the smallest in the house with the exception of the bathroom, happens to work several full-time jobs. It is our foyer and parlor, as the front door opens right into its counter-space. It is our mudroom, our coat closet, our mail dump, our dog-leash storage area. It houses flashlights for evening walks, stacking bins for scarves and mittens, and hooks for a wide variety of headgear.

Because our camp has a dumpster for every kind of reusable material and because New York has a bottle law, our kitchen is also our recycling headquarters. This means each odd corner serves as one of six distinct recycling areas. The seventh, for beer bottles, is in the stairway, because, really, it's just too much.

On occasion, I actually cook in the kitchen, too.

The thought of adding a compost corner to this jumbled mess makes my brain hurt. Not a single inch of counter goes unused. Toby installed extra shelf space on the high walls for cereal and bread, and the few inches of space under our island shelters shoes. No tub the Container Store sells will mash into the narrow gap between the stove and sink. I keep wondering how others with small kitchens and small children have solved the compost conundrum.

Hearing that NPR story made me realize that if some hidden pantry has not magically revealed itself in the past 10 months, I'm probably out of luck. So, just yesterday, I hauled out a big plastic bowl, set it on my counter, and topped it with a dinner plate. Into it I dumped the breakfast eggshells, the lunchtime pear cores, and the dinner stems. It's in the way, sure, but it is also right in my workspace where I will actully use it. I figure I can trot over to the compost bin once a day and dump it before the fruit flies discover its bounty.

In just two days, I have filled the mixing bowl twice to the brim with kitchen waste. The sheer quantity of what goes uneaten is stunning. The weight of the bowl under my arm as I cross the bridge and approach the dining hall is enough to remind me how important it is I keep feeding the camp garden and not the landfill. Perhaps the next task, however, is learning how to feed my family more efficiently so we are not wasting so much to begin with.