"composting" news and stories

The meal is done: Dishes hit the sink; plastic bottles and tin cans go into the recycling bin. But the scraps from dinner and cooking prep -- egg shells, garlic skins, vegetable stems and cheese rinds? A few counties in California have come up with a simple, smart solution for utilizing those, too.

"You put a small bin on your kitchen counter, divert all your organic waste into it, and then just dump it in the larger bin outside when it's full. The rest is taken care of," says Sarah Rich, co-founder of Foodprint Project, a traveling advocacy group and educational panel on urban agricultural. The larger bin is picked up at the end of the week during regular garbage collection. "You don't need to be a gardener yourself in order to make good use of your food scraps," she says. Foodprint Project was formed early this year to evaluate the viability and potential of local food in urban areas. So far, they've hosted panels in New York City and Toronto, and this coming January, they're headed for Los Angeles.

If you look at a landfill, most of the waste is food -- it'll decompose, sure, but then what? Where does all that nutrient-rich soil go? That was the thinking behind the Central Contra Costa Solid Waste Authority's new Food Scrap Recycling Program, which started in September 2007 and is expanding this month to California's Walnut Creek area, along with existing areas: Lafayette, Orinda, and Moraga in Contra Costa County.

Mothers have lamented wasted food since the dawn of time, but Idaho-restaurateur Dave Krick is solving the problem of unwanted leftovers with the help of some very unusual partners: worms. He's got 200,000 hungry Vermont red wigglers in the basement of his two side-by-side Boise restaurants, Red Feather Lounge and Bittercreek Alehouse. Every day, the worms do his dirty work, converting almost 100 pounds of unwanted leftovers and garbage into a gardener's black gold: nutrient-rich compost.

"One of our goals is to eliminate our garbage by 2012," Krick told the Associated Press.

Aperitifs. Photo: Darren // DA Creative Photography, Flickr

• Bypass strong cocktails and strong wines in favor of aperitifs, a tasty way to prep one's palate for dinner.
• All about composting.
• Kansas City teen James McCausland balances a construction career with a passion for baking.
• A critic loves the wine tasting and elegant cuisine at Capital Grille.
• The world of K.C. food blogging is expanding; here's a close-up of one snarky blogger.
  
• A spotlight on local farmers' markets.
• Recipe: Asian Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken and Crisp Wontons

Microplaned garlic. Photo: YumSugar

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

If you're not prone to scrapes and slices, you might want to try scraping that garlic (and not your knuckles!) against a Microplane.

Forget lemon and lime. How about garnishing your summer drinks with strawberries?

Go Green! San Francisco becomes the first United States city to require composting.

Sometimes a classic garden salad is just what the tummy needs.

Jacques Pepin discusses his way to achieve a beauteous boiled egg.

Korean Beef Kebabs -- a tower of seasoned meat and green onions.

Does roasting a whole animal make you squeamish?

It was while I was in high school that my family started a compost pile. My parents had composted religiously during the early, idealistic years of their marriage (they even kept chickens for a brief time), but as they moved from Santa Cruz to Chicago to Los Angeles to Portland, composting (and livestock) fell by the wayside. When we restarted the family composting program, we all had a lot to learn about what could go into the sink-side bucket and what items were still trash.

If you've been thinking about starting your own compost pile, but don't know how to go about it, Jonathan at Wasted Food has got the poop on backyard composting, via an interview with Brian Rosa, North Carolina's composting guru. They talk bins verses piles, composting with worms and how to ensure that your compost pile is the most successful one on the block.

Fall is a terrific time to start a compost pile or bin, as you can add all the leaves and bits of organic material that you clean out of your yard to the mound. If you make the time to turn it regularly over the winter, you'll have amazingly nutritious soil for your spring and summer vegetable garden.

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