Crazy About Composting

I am crazy about composting. Each time I toss veggie scraps into the little ceramic compost crock on my kitchen counter, I am thrilled that every little morsel is going to good use.

We need good topsoil – the planet is desperately in need of it, which is why in countries like Sweden, composting is mandatory. It’s amazing to realize that topsoil is the earth’s skin and we are entirely dependent on it for our food supply. Over the past fifty years, much of the healthy soil that we used to have, due to intensive/conventional farming, has been rendered devoid of all the nutrients it needs to give us beautiful and healthy food. This is why so many of us now have to take a plethora of supplements. The crazy amount of veggies that you virtuously devour, are likely devoid of many of the minerals and vitamins that their ancestors possessed.

The best way that we can create the highest quality topsoil imaginable is to compost. All those scraps decompose into odorless brown gold. If you have a garden, you’ll be able to grow veggies bursting with goodness, and if you don’t have a yard, you’ll find someone who’ll take your compost in a jiffy.

So which compost bin is the best? I get asked this question weekly and I have honestly tried almost every model on the market. There are pro’s and con’s with all of them, however the Ecomposter is my current favorite and hard to beat for all it’s incredible attributes. It’s a bizarre looking globe on legs, which looks like something from outer space (in a cool way.) First and foremost nothing can get into it – so no more nasty furry surprises for those of us who have a few pesky friends running around our neighborhoods. Little finger like tubes direct oxygen right into the deepest recesses of the actual compost, which considerably speeds up the process. You’ll get good, rich compost in just 4-6 weeks. When you’re ready to get the compost out, you just roll the big green ball to the area of your yard where you want the compost, unscrew the lid and empty it out. It’s made of recycled plastic and is just fun to spin around every time you walk past it.

My husband and our stray cat Zoom were extremely cynical at first. My husband had had his fill of strange bins, “digesters” and worm towers appearing weekly in our yard, and Zoom was very partial to my old big black bin because of the hole in the back that had become the backdoor for a extended family of rats. After a few weeks, my husband was delighted with the new “space ship”, as nothing can get into it. Zoom, however, has abandoned his perch above the old bin. He has to content himself with chasing the sassy squirrels.

Now that I’m juicing daily (totally inspired by Kris,) I can empty the dregs, along with the paper filter, straight into the compost bin and know that this time next year, all that shredded carrot and beat mush, will be fertilizing my heirloom tomatoes – heaven!

Happy Composting,

Sophie Uliano

Practical Magic

Although I love yoga and have been practicing for 13 years, I am not here to tell you how wonderful it is and how you need to do more of it.

I *am* here to tell you about the value of having some sort of practice. I define practice as “What you do with regularity, even when you don’t feel like doing anything else.” I firmly believe that incorporating some sort of practice, or activity, into your normal routine – whether it’s yoga, running, knitting, cooking, walking, drawing, cleaning, or anything else you can absorb yourself in – is one the best ways (if not THE best way) to help you feel a little calmer, a little clearer, more able to deal with whatever life brings.

Scientists estimate that the average person has 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those 60,000, I’d wager that only two or three are actually worth listening to. Having a practice gives your mind just enough activity to keep it occupied so that you can start to hear the voice that comes from somewhere much deeper than your mind – your innate wisdom. Whether you call it your gut instinct, your inner voice, or your women’s intuition, we’ve all got it. We probably all have stories of very specific times when we actually heard it loud and clear. The problem is that for the most part it gets drowned out by those 60,000 other thoughts. Doing your practice is like giving a hyper kid a Rubik’s cube – suddenly things get a lot quieter.

When you start creating space in your life for your intuition to rise to the surface, the inevitable dramas we all experience lose some of their power to rile you. Your life won’t magically turn into a fairy tale. But bumps in the road—whether they’re small, like traffic, or big, like losing your job—won’t have as much power over your state of mind. When you have a bad day, if you have a practice, you’ll know exactly what to do to help yourself get back on track. How many people can say that?

Here are some tips for figuring out what your practice is going to be and how to make it a part of your life:

What makes you feel better?
Is there something you do that always makes you feel better – even just a little bit? It could be something formal, like a yoga class, or something you do on your own, like gardening or knitting. Anything that makes you feel more relaxed is a great candidate.

What’s calling to you?
If you can’t think of anything you’ve already tried that’s a good practice candidate, is there something you’ve always told yourself you’ll do when you’ve got a little more time, money, or moxie? Anything that’s been making your ears perk up when you hear it mentioned in conversation? If it’s something you don’t know how to do yet, start by just familiarizing yourself with it. You don’t need to be a master – that’s why they call it practice.

What can you feasibly fit into your regular life?
You may feel at one with the world on the ski slopes, but if you only get to go skiing once a year, it ain’t a practice. You don’t have to do something every single day, but you want to be able to do whatever it is that soothes your soul on more days than not.

Start small
Whatever you choose, you do not have to do it for 2 hours every morning for it to “count.” Beware of using whatever you do to feel better as an excuse to feel worse. (I’ve been down that road, and I can promise you, it’s not fun.) If you choose gardening, watering for 10 minutes counts. Some days you’ll be able to do more of your practice than others. That’s ok.

Some practices are for emergencies only
I had a very deep chocolate chip cookie practice once. I went through a capital-T, capital-B Tragic Breakup that had me chowing cookies like my life depended on it. Yoga also helped me make it through that particularly rough spot, but even it couldn’t convince me that getting out of a bed was a good idea. Only the siren call of chocolate, butter, and sugar could do that. Luckily my dependence on cookies started to wane along with my heartache.

Edible Schoolyards

Photo by Lindsay Morris

One of the most inspiring elements of the food renaissance underway on New York’s East End is the viral spread of edible schoolyards. From Sag Harbor to Amagansett, and from Riverhead to Southold, teachers, concerned parents, farmers and precocious students are erecting greenhouses near playgrounds, bringing food into the classroom and putting gastro-literacy on equal footing as reading, writing and arithmetic.

The pioneering Ross School in East Hampton has been serving its students mind-blowing farm-to-table meals for years. Some people still think it serves the best lunch in the Hamptons. And the Hayground School in Bridgehampton had integrated cooking into its curriculum even before it built its urban-rustic part-cafeteria-part-classroom in honor of restaurateur and school founder Jeff Salaway.

Photo by Lindsay Morris

But now a growing number of public school districts on the East End are following the lead. A network organized by Bridgehampton School district teacher Judiann Carmack-Fayyaz meets monthly to share ideas. In attendance recently were several farmers, a local greenhouse manufacturer, several school administrators and the local coordinator of HealthCorps, Dr. Mehmet Oz’s health and nutrition activism group. It seems great minds think alike.

“Kids will learn about food from the perspective that it’s the central part of the planet,” said Tim Bryden, director of Project MOST, an after school program in Springs and Amagansett that supports the Seedlings effort. “And to be respectful of things that grow.”

Longterm chef Bryan Futerman, whose daughter was enrolled in Project MOST, sees a foundation and a way to create jobs in the community. “It’s a Victory Garden, really,” Futerman said, referring to millions of small plots that sustained America during World War II, but which make similar sense in a shaking global economic climate.

Brian Halweil is the editor of Edible East End, and publisher of Edible Brooklyn and Edible Manhattan. He writes about the things we eat from the old whaling village of Sag Harbor, New York, where he and his wife, yoga instructor Sarah Halweil, tend a home garden and orchard.