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.

Sick Day Souffle

A second round of bronchial distress forced me to keep Eliot home from preschool yesterday. He stayed with Toby in the morning while I dragged myself to my first ever mammogram. Toby headed back to work after I returned, Eliot and mommy both took too-short naps, and we grumped and dragged through the afternoon. Cough, hack, blow, fuss. We hauled ourselves out into the blustery afternoon to force a few scouring breaths of autumn air through clogged lungs. By dinnertime, I was feeling dizzy and listless, itchy-throated and headachy. As we put on jammies and settled down to read, Eliot looked at me and said, "Let's have a sick day again tomorrow."

My boy got his wish. We stayed home for the second day, and he was ecstatic. No school, no swim lessons, no supermarket, no car seat. He stayed in his underpants, jammie top, and fleece slippers till 3:30 in the afternoon. We piled up blocks, made ferryboats travel around the living room rug, forced Snow White into a string harness to rock climb up a 3-foot dowel balanced in a flowerpot. We read at least 15 books before lunch. We dug through a small mountain of French Toast at 10:00 in the morning. We napped until nearly dinnertime.

Toby walked into the wreckage at 5:30. My big plans for a Canadian split pea soup supper had long since been abandoned. I had barely managed to clean up from lunch, let alone start scrubbing potatoes and mincing garlic for yet another meal. We considered heading over to the dining hall -- always a nice backup -- but really, how awful would it be to spare Eliot's classmates his germs, only to inflict them on our fellow staff members and the kids from a visiting school? We figured we could just heat up something from a can for dinner. Same as we did for lunch.

But Toby had a package under his arm. A belated birthday gift from Aunt Nancy and Uncle John in Dallas. Eliot tore it open, and found one of the greatest sick-day birthday presents a boy and his mom could wish for. Silicone baking cups! A kid-friendly cookbook! A project! "Let's cook dinner," Eliot said. It's on, baby.

We dug out eggs, some frozen chunks of ham I had put in the freezer for just such an occasion, and a little wilted spinach. Eliot was a champ, whisking his eggs and asking, "Are they all mixed up?" He made sure every cup had an fair number of ham bites, and included himself in the rotation. "I am testing them to make sure they are good for cooking."

With a steady hand, he poured the egg mixture into the cups. I was amazed at the care he took to do this job well. With the addition of a few slices of apple and toast, dinner was on the table in twenty minutes. The mini fritattas barely lasted five. Eliot finished all three of the ones he had grabbed and started making covetous glances towards Toby's plate.

Of course, no culinary task with a three-year-old ends smoothly. The mixing bowl and apron reminded him of baking, which made him crave something sweet, and the rest is history. For the allergy-inflicted, even the simple act of baking cookies takes an added degree of artistry. Oat flour, almond butter, coconut oil melted in the microwave, and vegan chocolate chips. No recipe. We've had enough practice by now to be able to whip up something delicious without too much effort, and thank goodness for that. Because, by this point in the evening, I was feeling ready to fall over, and the dishes were piling up, and, needless to say, I was a little sick of the kitchen. But I stuck with it, Eliot mixed and poured some more, and a fabulous bedtime snack greeted us with the beep of the oven timer.

We all may be sick around here, but that hasn't slowed down our appetites. I can guarantee you these cookies won't last the night.

Wetlands Hike

On a whim, we met up with our 11-year-old neighbor on Sunday afternoon at the center green. A scattering of girl scouts wandered around with compasses to finish up their badge day activities, but otherwise, camp was quiet. Blustery fall in the Adirondacks. It was a year ago this month that George Painter brought Toby and me out to interview, and wooed us with the rusty golden tapestry draped over the hills surrounding camp.

After a few turns on the bike, Eliot grew bored and Fenway needed to run. So, with Eliot's big buddy in the lead, we ducked into the woods. A trail between the staff row and the horse's paddock leads into a damp, muddy wedtland made up of the beaver-dammed waters of Butternut Brook. Soon after the trail begins, it narrows and becomes navigable only by a track of boards built up above the swamp. Through the cattails and marsh grasses we clomped.

Behind me and ahead of Toby, Eliot hopped easily up on the thin boards and began to hike, his walking stick tapping along beside him. Never mind the slippery footprints, the angles and occasional yawning gaps between 2x6's. He refused a hand and walked with nearly as much confidence as any of us, barring the four-footed Fenway. On one particularly nerve-wracking bridge over a leg of the creek, Eliot shooed away my offer to help. There, suspended on a few open boards several feet above murky water, my son simply grabbed hold of a drooping rope handrail and sauntered right across. He never even hesitated. Never, like his mama, looked down at that water too far below and felt his knees go wobbly.

Past the thick, wet brush which probably houses any number of mallards, turtles, frogs, and insects, our little hiking party tromped. We made our way to a plywood platform jutting out into the center of a small pond. On all sides, beavers have built up thin ridges of mud and sticks to contain the water. Eliot scooted down on his tummy and lay with his stick swishing in the water, the ripples catching and reflecting flashes of bright autumn sunlight. A lone dragonfly hovered near for a moment before dipping and rising again, off into the tall grass.

A Reason to Celebrate

Last week's fret-fest over my son's possible descent into juvenile deliquency consumed as much of this family as the virus we were hosting. On the back of the school reports came the necessity of cancelling Eliot's birthday party due to the particularly tenacious chest cold that took up residence at Casa Hettler.

Lest my son succumb to some self-fulfilling prophecy, I decided it was time to turn my sour mood around. Having already bought a wide selection of finger foods, hung crepe paper in three shades of pink, and crafted 50 paper flowers, it seemed a shame not to celebrate. So, once Eliot was feeling better, we called on our camp pals to show up for an impromptu, soggy-day, indoor soiree.

On just a few hours notice, a vivacious assemblage of camp neighbors clad in fabrics of fuschia and bubble-gum descended. We munched on fruit and cake, blew out candles, and played a round of pin-the-crown-on-the-princess. Decked out in his fancy tutu and pink socks, Eliot hopped onto his new, oversized train and tooted it around the living room. Everyone applauded. He basked, for that one, brief afternoon, in the combined attention of a half-dozen adoring friends.

Then, on Friday, Teacher greeted me at the playground gate with the announcement, "Eliot was our bell-ringer today. He was a great helper." As Eliot flung himself in my arms, Teacher said, "Great job today, Eliot. I am so proud of you."

That is four whole sentences of praise, all spoken in the general vicinity of my son. Hooray! Just today, Teacher thanked me for the snacks and made sure Eliot remembered his birthday crown. Seems things are settling down in the land of preschool. On this beginning of our camp kid's fourth year, I am looking forward to enjoying the friends who live right through the woods, the new skills our son is practicing, and the countless ways we can celebrate this funky little home called camp.