Advice on Composting

"Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources."

- William James, The Energies of Men, Science (1907)

I’m not cooking at all lately. One handedness has rendered me rather clumsy in the kitchen. Sure there are the berries on granola in the morning, the occasional piece of toast. Simple stuff. But, year over year, my cooking is down exponentially.

Instead, I’m dealing with the other side of the food process: compost. The extra corporal digestion of food into dark brown nutrients. The continuation of matter: nothing created, nothing destroyed. It’s a remix.

How I’ve never managed to compost before is a true wonder. There was a municipal green bin pick up in Toronto when I lived there as a young adult, over a decade ago. In my Cambridge apartment I trekked food waste downstairs to a communal bin. But now that I’m in charge of the full cycle, I’m a bit embarrassed by my historical habits. It turns out you can’t just dump a full, nitrogen-rich bin on top of the pile and expect it to break down without being smelly. Composts must be managed. Browns and greens must find an uneasy balance.

When we moved in, just a little more than a year ago, there was a classic, black compost bin in one corner of the yard. The bin was barely a quarter full, so we decided to move it. Digging up the poorly decayed matter felt akin to rifling through someone’s garbage, looking for traces of how they lived. It was a voyeuristic act. The old owners loved avocados and often forgot to remove their stickers. There were bits of plastic food containers littered throughout the pile. I judged them harshly at the time.

Now I find my own nearly finished compost reveals its own secrets. There are sometimes rocks, large chunks of wood, and yes the occasional fruit and vegetable sticker. How these items got in there I don’t know. But by the time the usable parts are chewed up by ants and earthworms and microscopic bacteria, these alien parts become apparent and can be easily picked out. My judgement of others has now waned. I’m far from the perfect composter.

But you don’t need to be perfect. The earth will make magic with your half mixed matter. The aim is one-quarter kitchen waste, so-called greens. These are nitrogen rich remnants from the bottom of the refrigerator, or the heads of chopped up carrots, piles of used coffee grinds. The usual rule is to avoid putting meat into the bin. But otherwise, most kitchen waste can make its way into the backyard rather than the garbage. When your garbage bin shrinks, it is a marvelous feeling. The compost pile is the literal midas touch, turning garbage into gold.

Then there are the browns, the carbon sources, which compose the other three-quarters of the bin. The browns are found outside, not in the kitchen. In truth, we struggle a bit to have enough of these since our drought-tolerant southern california landscaping means more succulents than fallen leaves. Still, the ficus hedge along our back wall, towering over 12 feet tall, supplies ample brown material. We trim the hedge, then let the leaves brown in a pile before they are added to the bin.

So begins the three pile system I've established, as seen from left to right in the image above. When I first appointed myself Chief Composter last year, I felt ill equipped for the job. New library card in hand, I waited impatiently for a guidebook, Composting for Dummies to become available. I devoured the short tome, emerging with a clear system.

First, the leaves would wait patiently in a pile, turning to brown overtime and beginning the composting process. When I added a full container of kitchen greens to the second, center pile, I would scoop up three containers worth of these leaves, and add them on top. Once the big black bin was nearly full, I began turning the pile to introduce oxygen, raise the pile's temperature and speed up the process. You don't really need to do this--but if you do, things will move faster from food to dirt.

Once the middle bin was full, I would begin shoveling out half composted matter from the bottom of the pile, where an opening is often located on most upright compost bins. These shovelfuls go into the third spot, an upright turning bin. In this final resting place, the materials shrink and are easily turned regularly by simply spinning the bin. I leave the compost to mature here a while, and by the time I've filled the big center bin again, it's done.

To be honest, I struggle to get my bins up to a high temperature, probably because I don't turn them enough, or add my browns and greens in a golden ratio. But it doesn't matter. With this system, I have finished compost in about 4 months. I also have a lot less garbage. Good enough for me.

Composting Resources:

You don't need anything but a place to put a pile in a corner of your yard to get started, and in truth a big pile leads to faster, hotter decomposition. But here's what I use and recommend.

- A compost crank / aerator is very helpful for easily turning over a pile and adding oxygen on a regular basis. After contemplating their high price for a month, I splurged and bought this one. This crank is excellent as the reviews suggests, and makes turning a pile far more enjoyable. The same company also offers this cheaper version, which is similarly well reviewed.
- A small compost bin for your kitchen counter, to store scraps before you take them out to the yard. I have used this one for years and like it. I don't use compost bags inside because they don't break down well and are unnecessary. Instead , I rinse out the bin after emptying it with the gardening hose on a high pressure setting, let the bin soak, and dump the water on the pile (since your pile needs some moisture anyway).
- A big compost bin for outside, if you don't want to simply make a pile. I use this one and an older model similar to this one, but there are lots of other models available. You can also try building one, in a three step system like the one I described.

Composting Tips:

- You can add paper towel and it's a great source of carbon (browns), since it's made from trees. Just don't add too much because it's very very high in carbon.
- Add some messy pot water from the sink to your pile rather than using fresh water from the hose. Also, if you have an coffee machine that captures drips below, add these nitrogen rich waters as well. You can also add tea bags.
- If you live somewhere cold, you can still compost. Just know the pile will only be decomposing in the warmer months.
- Just try it! It's fun and rewarding and -- despite my complex exposition -- pretty darn easy.

What are your thoughts on composting? Leave me a comment! Would be very happy to hear your tips.

Gardening lessons: On aphids + disgust

Raising and killing your own animals for meat is seen as a revolutionary act. An engagement with a food system that’s become foreign and a remembrance of where meat comes from. Less emphasis is put on the raising and eating of your own veggies and fruit. But the act is just as revolutionary.

I’ve gardened every year of my adult life -- at least to some extent. But gardening on a daily basis, in a climate that allows it year-round, with enough land to produce a significant part of my diet, has surprised and challenged me in unexpected ways.

It all began with the aphids.

This spring has been a bad one for aphids. I bought some organic broccoli from the farmers market a few months ago. My husband cooked it up in a soup. Suddenly, I noticed these little bugs floating along the surface of the soup: cooked aphids. We had trouble finishing lunch.

I remembered being at my friend Megan’s place a few years back, when she pulled a package of tea bags out of the drawer only to discover they were infested with moth larvae. I decided against having tea. But she made an impassioned argument for using them anyway: why did it matter if there were some bugs in there, if those bugs weren’t harmful? Didn’t we eat bugs accidentally all the time? Weren’t bugs used as food coloring in Frappucinos (before the outrage, that is)? Wasn’t it just added protein?

Why couldn't I just change my mind?

These same aphids showed up again and again in my stressed patch of cold-season crops this spring. It was an unseasonably warm February in Southern California, and my greens were bolting with abandon. One morning, I saw a swarm around a cauliflower plant. Damn it! The aphids were taking over.

I fought back with religious applications of a neem oil, soap and water mixture. Planted marigolds. And prayed for ladybugs. Eventually, the outbreak was brought under control.

But every time I went to eat the greens, they required three or more 10 minute soakings to loosen the bugs. Given the drought, and the time commitment involved in triple washing, my attitude towards aphids started to soften. Maybe this was just a part of life: people ate bugs. Just as I ate kale from my backyard garden, so too I ate aphids.

Maybe, as one online commenter put it, aphids are just walking vegetable juice -- the vampires of the garden.

A second challenge to my sensibilities arose reading my favorite garden book, Pat Welsh’s Southern California Organic Gardening. A passing reference claimed Finns pissed on their vegetable patches as a form of natural fertilizer. I was intrigued, and mentioned it to my mother. Ever a strong advocate for sanitization, she was shocked. This was a bad idea.

Or was it? It turns out, there are significant arguments in favor of using rather than disposing of urine in clean water (which then has to be processed in a wastewater treatment facility). But waste goes beyond the toilet bowl. Today I encountered a recipe for tomato fertilizer that used seeming garbage from around the home: human hair, egg shells, wood ashes, coffee grinds. As a coffee-drinking, hair-growing, egg-eating, fire-making lady, I had these ingredients lying around. So I mixed up a batch of homemade waste-based compost tea.

Slowly, daily food production in my own backyard is changing me. It’s challenging my strict sense of disgust, eroding it slowly through repeated exposure. And it’s making me rethink what’s disgusting in the first instance: little harmless bugs, or little harmful pesticide applications?

Meyer Lemon Marmalade for the Solstice

"It is a slow-everything movement in need of a manifesto that would explain what vinyl records and homemade bread have in common. We won’t overthrow corporations by knitting — but understanding the pleasures of knitting or weeding or making pickles might articulate the value of that world outside electronic chatter and distraction, and inside a more stately sense of time. […] It’s an attempt to put the world back together again, in its materials but also its time and labor. It’s both laughably small and heroically ambitious."
— Rebecca Solnit

It's not popular to admit, but I don't like Christmas. The excess consumerism, the cutting down a tree, the family politics, the expectations and disappointments. Not to mention the historical inaccuracy of it all. I am the grinch, the Kranks and scrooge.

Every year, I try to get assent from my family to quit christmas. Since my younger sister loves gift giving like nothing else, inevitably my efforts fail.

So, rather than buying presents, I tend to make them. With mixed success. One year, I made a t-shirt for said sister, ironing on a decal photo of her and the cat. She hated it. In hindsight, I can see why—I am not a budding clothing artisan. Another year, I made batches of chocolate truffles. They were time consuming, and unstable, melting as you rolled them up in your hands. We ran out of time and cut the list of recipients in half. Once I made DIY teabags, putting loose leaves in bags and making my own labels. I probably appreciated my dorky art more than my extended family members.

I once read in a microeconomics textbook that christmas leads to a net welfare loss because most people don't want or need most of the presents. The economist author advocated we all just buy shit for ourselves. And despite my dislike for economics, the argument rang true: I'm not quite sure 'it's the thought that counts.'

There's a freedom in being an adult. You can decide which traditions you'd like to keep, and which you'd like to toss. This year, our first year alone, we're not celebrating christmas. Instead, we're celebrating the winter solstice on December 21, the shortest day of the year.

What said celebration entails? I'm not quite sure. So far, we've gone on a hike in the woods and dragged back a fallen tree branch for our living room. I've adorned it with LED lights. We'll probably have a big fire on the 21st, and burn the log. Make some fresh pasta. And yes, there will be some presents. Some will be donations, others will be homemade. There will be books and boardgames. A manageable amount of presents.

It's quite magical that right when the skies are darkest, bright sunlit lemons, oranges and grapefruits ripen. The citrus season. Before moving to California, I couldn't fathom what this was like. Now, with two full grown orange trees, producing at such a pace we can barely keep up, I get it. Rather than cutting down a fir tree to stick indoors, I can wander out to see the bright globes hanging like ornaments. They are my solstice trees.

When I told my grandfather we had orange trees in our backyard, he didn't believe me. Couldn't fathom it. He had never heard of a meyer lemon, let alone tasted one. He grew up in Winnipeg, Canada. It's was so cold there, you had to plug in your car when you went shopping.

My grandparents left that frigid city behind, moving to Toronto more than 60 years ago. I joke now, he stopped too soon: should have kept driving. The air got warmer across the border. He could have had citrus trees.

So I made meyer lemon marmalade, to send to my grandparents — so they could try a meyer lemon, at least one preserved in a jar. It's the closest I can come to mailing some sunshine home at this darkest this time of the year.

These little glowing jars of light.

Meyer Lemon Marmalade

Lightly adapted from Hitchhiking to Heaven, which has excellent photos on how to slice and dice those lemons, which I describe below. If you don’t want to use the pectin, there is also an excellent recipe there that doesn’t require it.

Pro tip #1: I recommend a steam canner because it uses way less water/energy and is easier.

Pro Tip: #2 The cardinal sin of jamming is walking away from the stove. Somehow I ignored this fact, burning a giant batch of marmalade and nearly ruining an antique pot with its black, sticky goo. If you end up with a horribly burned cast iron pan, cover all the burnt parts with a 1/4 inch of baking soda. Set aside. The corners of the burnt material should start to curl, allowing you to slip a wooden/plastic spoon underneath. Repeat as necessary until all burnt bits are removed.

Makes around 7 half pint jars

2 1/2 pounds Meyer lemons (around 13)
7 cups water
4 + 3/4 cups sugar
1 Pomona’s pectin box: 1 + 1/2 teaspoons pectin; 2 teaspoons calcium powder

Day 1

1. Wash and chill lemons in fridge.

2. Cut each lemon in half from tip to tip. Cut a notch from tip to tip in each half, to remove the pith.

3. Hold each lemon half over a bowl and use your thumb, running it along the notches, to remove the seeds. Some juice will also fall out. (You can see the lemons halves with notches cut out in a photo above.)

4. Thinly slice each lemon half. Put them into a large bowl. Add the 7 cups of water.

5. Strain the extra juice into the bowl. Put the seeds into a metal tea ball or another tea strainer. Put this in the bowl as well. Put the bowl in the fridge overnight.

Day 2

1. Put the lemons in a wide pot on the stove. Add the seeds in their strainer.

2. Cook on medium heat, simmering until lemons are soft enough to break with a wooden spatula.

3. Sterilize your jars while the lemons are simmering.

3. Add 4+1/4 cups of sugar. Add 2 teaspoons of calcium water (to make, follow Pomona’s box instructions.) Bring to boil. Cook until 220 degrees F on a candy thermometer, 20-30 minutes. This happens when enough water cooks off (remember: water boils at 212 F). Stir occasionally to keep from burning.

4. Once at 220 F, hold for 2 mins, then add the last 1/2 cup sugar with the 1+1/2 teaspoons of pectin mixed in. Stir to combine. Cook for 2 more mins then turn off heat. Take out seeds.

5. Fill jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Process for 5 minutes.

On Women and Weight, or Notes on Injury and Grace

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.

- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Women are supposed to hate their bodies. Universally. As if our only value came from our looks.

In popular memoirs by women (Poehler, Fey, Kaling), there’s inevitably a section on “what part of my body I hate.” The reader is supposed to follow along, nodding, feeling recognized and recalling their own hated body parts. Particularly their size, their thighs, their waistlines. But I don’t recognize myself in these passages. I just feel like an outsider, while being sad that so many women feel such malice towards their own earthly vessels.

In my late teens, many of my close girlfriends came under an evil spell. One by one, they began hating their arms, their stomachs, the fat around their faces. I don’t know if it was coming of age in the early 2000s, my socioeconomic circle, the pressures of gender in north america, or some other factor, but eating disorders struck my friends like a plague. I can vividly recall sitting at summer camp and being instructed by a friend that if I tapped my stomach and it jiggled for longer than a second, I had becometh fat. The implication? Action would need to be taken.

The prescribed action involved all sorts of contortions in calories, intake and output, scales and measurement. It was a complex process that labeled the world as good and bad. My friends were at war with their bodies.

I was not taken with these rituals. To start, my stomach tended towards inflammation and was rather bad at converting food to fat. My reaction to this was not learning which foods to avoid (milk would have been a good place to start, given lactose intolerance), but rather, a philosophy that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But mostly, I developed a healthy relationship with food and my body—one based on a complex blend of 13 course dinner parties, fast food during finals, and a unifying creed from my grandfather: “everything in moderation.”

Thus I have never dieted. And only just bought my first scale. Today, I eat more based on ethics and health than my body’s subsequent appearance. And generally, I adore food.

But, in the back of my mind, I had a feeling that my third decade would bring about bodily changes. There is a cultural belief that metabolism slows around 30—afterwards, the pounds start accumulating. In my case, the concern was diabetes, an illness on both sides of my family. Slowly, my relationship with my body began to shift this year. For the first time, I began to worry about weight, seeing myself in the two-dimensional form.

Unexpectedly, the changes to my body as I approach 30 have proven more complicated than added pounds or increased diabetic risk. Instead, this year has brought injury after injury, inflammation after inflammation. I’ve responded with vitamins, bed rest and healthy food. But, the latest round involves losing the use of my dominant, right hand for the next 6 to 9 months, just as I start a new job where computing is my primary task.

Despite my last, negative post, injury and illness can be magical events. Both inside and out, my little corner of the world has transformed.

When I hurt myself, I experienced my body’s endorphin system in a way I never had before. I've also learned just how competent my left hand can be — perhaps because I’m left-eye dominant, a fact I never knew before. The body is replete with hidden codes to break down foods, to respond to threats, to protect itself, to change and heal. Yet so often we focus only on our narrow, outward two-dimensional conceptions of ourselves. Our conscious parts. Our looks. Our weight. Our bodies as identity. Our bodies, our selves.

In Michael Pollan’s book “Cooked” he presents research that shows we are so much more than that singular organism. Our gut is full of microflora, working to process food. Fed by foods with bacteria and fiber, these bacteria work with us to digest food that nourishes us. We are not alone in the body, and the way we treat our body extends well beyond our narrow conceptions of self. When we harm our bodies in the way we eat—whether depriving it, or feeding it inflammatory foods—we harm these organisms too. Since hurting myself, I’ve had to look inward at my gut health, trying to boost its efficacy after antibiotics and painkillers.

Injury also brings new insight into our relationship with the social world. In the past month, I’ve learned about humanity, simply walking around a city with a badly bandaged hand. Sometimes, people invade your privacy and flatten you into your injury. This act is much like seeing a woman only for her youth, weight or beauty. It’s hostile and limiting.

But other times, people surprise you with their generosity and grace. A homeless man helped me open a door, when I struggled to do it myself. An older woman sat next to me on a plane and commented first on my headphones, not on my injury. Later, she instinctively held out her hand to catch my many pills when she saw I couldn’t handle them alone. My best friend quit work early to buy me cookies, listen to my woes and humor my sudden need to drink tons of turmeric tea two nights in a row. An internet friend wrote a kind post about me as I awaited surgery, afraid and hungry. She didn’t know I was injured and this small act brought me such joy, masking my fear. My family wrote emails and called with their support and worry, sending me little presents to lighten the day. My parents helped water proofing our home and installing a washing machine. And my partner has given me unwavering support from emergency room to today, with everything from pills, showering, reading, writing, driving, cooking, cleaning and infinitely more.

All the things I just can’t do right now, and won’t be able to for months, other people are stepping in to aid. Suddenly, my self extends beyond my body, to a community of support. I am not my weight, my injured body, my drugged mind. There are little creatures in my gut and big people in my community, all trying to help me heal and recover.

On the good days, I am left with gratitude — for a greater understanding of my body's mysterious depths, for humanity’s kindness, for my access to medical care, and for life.

You have seen your own strength.
You have seen your own beauty.
You have seen your golden wings.
Why do you worry?
– Rumi, You Worry Too Much

On Injury and Ignorance

What is it like being injured?

Until you find yourself disabled, it’s not something you think about. Without my right hand, how would I put on a bra, take off a shirt, tie up my hair or my shoes? How would I drive a car, bike to work, edit long articles? I simply wouldn’t — more accurately, I couldn’t.

My hand went through a window 3 weeks ago, and in an instant, life went from normal end of summer to abnormal hospital visits, two times a week physiotherapy, and disability offices. Most days I don’t leave the house. When I do its an onslaught of questions from strangers: what happened to your hand / how’d you do it / is it bad / sounds painful / etcetera. Strangers don’t realize this is the fifth time this hour I’ve been asked. That I’d rather not relive the horror with them. That I’m much more than one broken hand. I was just trying to buy some shoes without laces! At one point, a woman deigned to pet my cast. Do people treat people with permanent disabilities this way? It must be exhausting.

Suddenly, I understand why my advisor kept her terminal cancer secret until the very end. People disappoint you. Illness brings your relationships into sharp relief. You would be surprised who’s truly there for you, and who quite simply is not. One acquaintance wrote to me, after I explained my condition: "I hope it isn't affecting your work too much." Let's see: 5 to 6 opiates a day, chronic nerve pain even at this dosage, and an inability to use my right hand period. I’ve already dropped a class I was supposed to be teaching in January. It’s a good day if I manage a few emails. Mostly, I online shop.

But then there are those strangers who equally surprise you. Who don't pry, instinctively know what kind of help you need, who are genuinely empathetic. Old people more often than not fit this description. They’ve lived long enough to know what the body can do. They’re less afraid of illness. They get it.

And cooking? Haven’t done that. Everything falls to my partner. We got seven day pill cases, with 4 compartments each, because I can’t open pill jars. So he wouldn’t have to be constantly ferreting me vitamins and drugs at every hour of the day and night. So he could relax, at least a little bit. A few nights ago, we watched the movie Take Care on netflix and laughed and laughed and laughed. If you want to understand what injury is like, check it out. That’s what it’s like.