My New Kitchen Paradigm (March 3 Garden Project)

So there’s this interesting thing going on in my kitchen right now.

I’m composting.

Because I am gardening and have access to a compost pile, I am now dutifully collecting all my kitchen scraps.  I throw them into bags and containers and pop them into the freezer.  Next time I’m headed over to the March 3 garden, I take them over and dump them on our compost pile.  Truthfully, the chickens eat most of it , but whatever they leave will be soil for our garden next year.

So I find I have this interest, this reverence for even the scraps.  I mean, it seems so precious to be saving kitchen scraps.  What used to go into the garbage without a thought is now saved with great care.  When I’m prepping dinner, I am almost equally interested in the pile of trimmings as I am in the part of the plant that’s headed to the table.

In February there was this planting party.  The March 3 gardeners convened, bent over seed trays in the dining room, and planted tiny seeds.  We were giddy and dreaming of spring and summer bounty, home-grown bounty.  Beats me why we planted cress.  I think it was just because we had some leftover seed packet of cress, so in it went.  It’s a green; we must want it.

After time in the greenhouse, our seedlings went into the ground and sure enough, our cress grew well.  We had planted a lot of it.  A lot.  And when we tasted it, well, words like fiery, spicy, horseradish, and wasabi came to mind.  And not in a good way really.  Arugula can be fiery and I like that.  Cress, not so much.  And there was a lot of it!

So rather than feed it all directly to the chickens, I harvested an armful and took it home.  Must be something to do with it that I will like. Quick google search and it sounds like potato-cress soup is in order. It’s simmering now.  I can tell you the greens are already a lot “calmer”.  This soup is going to be delish!

But enough about the beautiful, curly greens.  Check out these tough, worthless, but beautiful stems:

I am here to tell you I am not going to use the words “circle of life” in this little story, but…what am I supposed to say?!  It feels right to plant, harvest, eat, feed chickens, feed compost pile, eat chicken eggs, and, someday, spread our compost back on the garden.

Hmmm…just feels right!