Meat Eater to Plant Eater – December’s 30-Day Life Challenge

Posted on January 2, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

As of today I am 32 days without eating meat. I started this challenge (as with all my challenges) as a way to improve the quality of my life by diving head first into a focused 30-day life experiment. As a hardcore carnivore, I entered December with the bias that a meal wasn’t really a meal unless it had meat as the centerpiece. Why have just a cheese pizza when you can have buffalo chicken pizza? Why have just a salad when you can have it with grilled chicken? Why have just a veggie wrap when you can have roast beef? The list goes on. The point of this 30-day life experiment was to recalibrate my diet by eliminating meat and taking the time to focus on all the other areas of nutrition. In doing so, I touched the tip of the iceberg as to what it’s like to be a vegetarian in a world dominated by meat and industrialized food. I learned a lot about myself in doing this experiment, many of which may seem obvious to a lot of people but regardless, I had to learn these things for myself. Feel free to leave comments on my findings below, here are a few of my takeaway lessons from being vegetarian for a month:

Vegetarianism is not synonymous with being healthy. Beer, chocolate chip cookies, soda, and cake are all allowable within the realm of vegetarianism. Every time I ate a cookie or drank a beer I thought to myself, “Hey, that’s vegetarian! Awesome.” I had this previously conceived notion that being vegetarian meant restricting your diet to only salads and veggie burgers when in fact it simply means that you just choose not to eat meat. In reality vegetarianism a pretty simple concept.
Vegetarianism is not synonymous with environmentalism. You can still be a vegetarian and be incredibly unhealthy for yourself (sweets and processed foods) and for the environment (fruits and salads from South America shipped to Boston?!). You still have to make good decisions about what foods you choose to eat, how it was grown/processed, and where it comes from. More and more I started to notice how much of our produce comes from California, Mexico, and South America. This has an incredibly bad impact on the environment when you consider the use of fossil fuels for transportation and storage. Why do we eat lettuce from California or Argentina? We eat them because the incentives our government has in place makes this extremely convenient and cost effective. Just because we CAN get food cheaply from Mexico doesn’t mean it’s a good decision, especially for the environment, which is a consideration I knew existed before this month’s challenge but it came to the forefront very quickly for me.
We live in a meat-dominated food culture. I knew that meat was everywhere, but I had no idea how pervasive it really was until I cut it out of my diet. Every time I went out to eat I had to scour the menu for meatless options. Unless you’re an environmentally progressive restaurant, most menu items include meat with very few examples of veggie-only meals aside from salad appetizers. Everything seemed to involve chicken, beef, or turkey in some capacity. My friends would even look over the menu for me, pointing out different things I was allowed to eat as a vegetarian. This highlights the fact that going meat-less is indeed a minority behavior and you have to work hard while you’re eating out in order to get a good meal. It reminds me of a situation that happened a few months ago. Sarah and I went on a double date with two of our friends (one a vegetarian and the other a vegan). We weren’t really thinking so we chose to eat at a barbeque place. There was one entrée out of dozens that was meat-free (obviously) but we definitely put our friends at an inconvenience and didn’t even consider the fact that not eating meat was an option. This month put me in their shoes and now I better understand what it’s like to be a vegetarian in a meat-dominated culture.
Vegetarians are a minority who most people just dismiss as granola, crunchy, or just plain silly. At times I definitely felt discriminated against by choosing to exclude meat from my diet. Some people already knew about my experiment but those who didn’t know I didn’t tell them just so that I could see their reactions to me becoming a vegetarian. I had people tell me, “I have a great idea for your blog, EAT MEAT you idiot!” or “That sounds stupid, why would you do that” or “Just eat meat dude it’s good for you” or “You can’t be an athlete and be a vegetarian”. I was called various names (all in jest by friends and family) but the point remains that only a handful of people (a few of my liberal college friends and a few family members) outright said it was a great idea and immediately saw the benefit my vegetarian experiment. I think this is mostly because it’s just easy to ignore the reality that the meat industry has changed over the past 20+ years. The way meat is currently produced is less healthy and sustainable than traditional farming. It’s just that as the consumer going to the grocery store we didn’t notice the shift. You have to go pretty far out of your way to educate yourself about the food you’re eating. The more I educated myself about food and the more I talked about it to friends and family the more I felt people thought of me as a silly, crunchy, granola city-boy who’s too good for meat. That’s not the case in reality but I definitely had recurring moments of that feeling.
The industrial food industry is frightening. I spent a lot of time reading articles and blogs about industrialized food as well as the popular book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”. It has been crazy to learn how drastically it has changed over the past few decades. The killing of animals is not my problem. I could without a doubt put a gun to an animal’s head, pull the trigger, and feel great about eating it, that’s not my issue. It’s simply the practices by which industry has them raised, slaughtered, transported, and stored for our convenience that I have an issue with. Using capitalism to drive our food chain has led us to in effect remove food from its natural state. Cows that have evolved to eat grass but are now fed corn which they cannot digest well. Why? Because corn is subsidized by the government. There are many authors and bloggers who can do this topic justice but my main point is that our current industrial system of food has vast negative implications that we’re only starting to see.
Eating healthy and sustainably in 2011 is incredibly confusing. Should you eat organic even if your food comes from Venezuela? Or should you eat local even when it happens to not be organic? What does “free range” really mean in practice (if anything at all)? If we outlaw antibiotics on animals to be considered organic are we then ok with sick animals simply being shot instead of treated? Should you be vegetarian (no meat), pesce-vegetarian (includes fish), pollo-vegetarian (includes chicken and turkey but no red meat), flexitarian (meat sometimes), fruitarians (fruit, nuts, seeds, don’t harm the plant), vegan (no animal products), and the list goes on. All of these considerations stressed me out mainly because it’s incredibly difficult to eat healthy food that’s not highly processed, that was raised humanely, and that didn’t travel 2500 miles to get to my plate. It definitely makes shopping super difficult which is why most people (including myself) simply ignore the issues and rely on convenience instead (still including myself).
Veggie burgers are the bomb, the end.

Distilling all of the things I learned about food and what it means to my life I’ve realized that many of the confusing and scarier issues goes away when you eat locally grown food that’s minimally processed. The fewer ingredients the better and if you don’t know what an ingredient is then you should probably avoid it. Easier said than done though considering I’m not willing to give up things like the occasional Snickers Bar or Soda. Practically speaking, I plan to improve the quality of my nutrition by joining a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) to get local vegetables and I hope I can find one for meat as well so I can stop worrying about whether or not my meat is healthy for me to be eating. Check out the link above and put in your zip code to find a CSA near you.

I’ve been training just as hard as ever so part of me wants to go completely vegetarian just to show people that not only is it possible, but I might also perform at a higher level athletically because of it. To my surprise, I didn’t crave meat even once throughout the whole month. I thought I’d have mouth-watering temptations but that wasn’t the case at all, it was pretty easy once I figured out that my body wont tolerate three meals a day of beans and soy. Moving forward, I will definitely continue to eat meat. However, my perspectives have changed over the past 30 days. I just plan to eat far less meat considering I’ve proved to myself that meat does not have to be the centerpiece in order for it to be considered a legitimate meal. Meatless Mondays is something I plan to keep consistent because even having just one day without meat can have tremendous benefits on your health and the health of the environment. I still plan to tweet and blog about various veggie-lifestyle things so if you have any comments or cool recipes then please forward them along. I’m psyched to start my next challenge.

Olive Garden, Panera, and Otto’s Pizza (Otto’s Wins)

Posted on December 30, 2011 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

The past few days at work have been pretty slack so we’ve taken a few extended lunches out in town. Early in the week one of my coworkers brought in a $25 gift card to Olive Garden so thanks to her generosity we engorged ourselves with never-ending soup, salad, and bread sticks (also a glass of wine, Tuesday is the new Thursday right?). For a full meal and a glass of wine with a tip we ended up paying about $12/person, not a bad deal.

Had four or five breadsticks, two bowls of minestrone soup (pasta, beans, tomatoes, and other veggies), a few plates of salad, and a glass of wine. Definitely went into a coma when we got back to work.

Going out to restaurants has been interesting as a vegetarian. You try and comb the menu for the one or two items that don’t have meat as an ingredient. For example, at Olive Garden I definitely could have gotten almost any pasta dish and been fine. However, as for the soup/salad/bread combo I only had one choice of soup out of five possible soups. It has definitely become clear to me that we live in a culture that favors meat over veggies. The vegetarian is indeed the minority (even at an “Italian” restaurant).

Another day we went to Panera for lunch. I had brought my lunch (Anne’s Pasta, loaded with Frank’s Red Hot, Mmmm delicious) but I decided that it would be good for my vegetarian challenge to go out to lunch again and to relive what it means to be a vegetarian in the USA. Again, almost everything on the menu had meat in it. There were a few sandwiches (out of dozens) that were veggie-only and only a few of the soups were veggie. Here’s a picture below:

Tomato, mozzarella, and pesto sandwich with french bread and brocolli and cheddar soup.

This is something I probably never would have ordered eating out. When standing in line I thought to myself “Eh, I’m not much of a soup guy”. But why not? I think that just by default I go for the meatiest meal on the menu, something with grilled chicken or three choices of meat, then throw on some bacon and call it good. It sounds bad but having soup and bread for lunch isn’t something that I would have seriously considered before this month. It ended up being delicious, filling, and warming. If anything, this month has helped me expand what I might add or have for a meal besides meat. Meat doesn’t need to be in every single thing that I order but in the past that’s been the case. Why order a veggie pizza when I can order veggie pizza with buffalo chicken on top? Why does my pasta always need grilled chicken? Why are my sandwiches always Italians with double meat? I think from now on having a veggie wrap or a bowl of soup for lunch will be a totally reasonable choice for lunch.

One day after work I headed out to Harvard Square to feed my outdoor gear addiction at Eastern Mountain Sports (safety gear only, anchor building stuff and a new med kit #100TC). More often than not while I’m out in Harvard Square I’ll stop by Otto’s Pizza. Not only is the pizza delicious with a 50/50 selection of veggie pizzas but it’s also based out of Portland, Maine. So every time I eat there I feel like I’m supporting my motherland by eating great pizza, that’s a pretty solid feeling to be supporting Maine economy by scarfing pizza. I largely prefer Otto’s over Upper Crust (also in Harvard Square), it actually tastes better, there’s more of a selection, and it’s more convenient. Otto’s is right next to the T whereas Upper Crust is a bit farther removed from the center of the square. So why walk the extra quarter of a mile out of the way when you can eat at Otto’s instead?

Otto's Pizza - Vegetarian Pizzas on Top, Carnivore Pizza on Bottom.

Left - Roasted Tomato with Ricotta and Basil. Right - Three Chese Tortellini with Tomato Sauce.

I asked the two guys working there if I could take a picture of their store to put it on my blog and they said absolutely. Then they immediately launched into questions about my blog like what I’ve done so far, what was the hardest/easiest one, and what I’m planning to do in the coming months. We brainstormed a few new ideas and spent a good 5-10 minutes talking about it. They copied down my blog’s name, so shout out to the two guys from Otto’s in Harvard Square, if you’re reading this, feel free to leave me some suggestions for future challenges.

Later on in the week I got pizza again but from a the suburbs of Boston. It was definitely less gourmet than Otto’s but it still hit the spot. I’ve definitely copped out a bit this month just getting pizza when I don’t feel like making my own food or getting a veggie salad/wrap. Again, being vegetarian is not synonymous with eating healthy :) This place was owned by a local family so again I feel good about putting money back into the local economy. However, there’s a line between eating local because the company is local and eating local because the ingredients are local. I doubt the ingredients from this pizza place in suburbia are local ingredients. Ideally I’d like to spend my money on a local businesses who use local ingredients, but given the choice I think I’d rather spend my money at a Mom and Pop shop that gets their ingredients from Star Market vs a massive chain restaurant who probably does the same thing.

Cheese Pizza at a local Mom and Pop shop. No idea where the ingredients came from but I like the fact it's a locally owned small business.

Only a few more days left in my vegetarian challenge. It definitely took a few weeks for my body to adjust to my new food group (vegetables) all in all it’s been a great experience. A lot of people have asked me what my meat-snack at 12:01 on New Years will be. Honestly I haven’t even thought about it at all, I haven’t craved meat one bit. I think it was mostly just habit that kept driving me toward meat, not necessarily having a craving for it. Sure I like hamburgers, steak, and bacon as much as the next carnivore, I just haven’t felt any cravings this month. So from my first-hand account, I’ve found that it is indeed possible to not only live as a vegetarian but to also workout and lead an active lifestyle as a vegetarian. This sounds obvious but I just had to prove it to myself more than anything.

Next month’s challenge starts on Sunday and I honestly have no idea what I’m going to choose. I’ve got 4-5 concepts floating around in my brain but I haven’t picked anything yet. Either way I’m excited to see what the next 30-days will bring.

My First Vegetarian Christmas

Posted on December 27, 2011 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

One of the first things my Mom said to me when I told her I was going to be vegetarian for the month of December was, “Well, what about Christmas?”. I grew up in a family that was more carnivore than omnivore with meat, pasta, and potatoes as our main staples and my Mom would make sure to add in a veggie or two. Even if we had a salad I’m not sure any of us would have eaten it. That was just the culture of my family and we’re not unique in that by any stretch of the imagination. Holiday dinners always included a turkey, chicken, or ham. The thought of not having meat as the centerpiece of a special family meal was something that I had to come to terms with and many friends and family (myself included) found it hard to understand. A Christmas dinner without turkey?!?!

I headed up to Maine for Christmas and I knew I would be in for a vegetarian adventure. Come to think of it, I think I only know two vegetarians from Maine, neither of whom still live there (one is now in Boston and the other in San Francisco). Immediately after arriving at my parent’s house we traveled north to visit some extended family. We stopped at a gas station in northern Maine (one of the only places to get food in the area) and planned to grab some snacks (they had a diner there too but we didn’t have that much time). Normally I wouldn’t notice this type of thing but here’s a picture of some questionable (or not so questionable) food:

Pierre's Jumbo Flamebroiled Bacon Cheese Burger (location, almost Canada), yikes. I would have in the past said that this food is questionable AT BEST, but after taking a step back to think about it, I'm sure it's just plain terrible for you. I can hardly imagine tracing this food back to its source.

While at the gas station I almost bought a bag of beef jerky. Normally when I’m traveling I’ll nom nom nom on some beef jerky while I’m driving but I picked up this package and slowly realized that beef jerky is indeed made of beef; bummer, no jerky for me this Christmas.

Beef Jerky in the same gas station as the picture above.

It was interesting being home (in a house of carnivores). I ate a lot of cereal, eggs and toast because breakfast foods are typically vegetarian anyway unless you go for bacon and sausage which is usually too much effort for me anyway. When we were young our parents made us salads but we just simply wouldn’t eat them so they resorted to sneaking in one veggie at every meal. From talking with friends of mine from home, this is pretty typical. Even at dinners with our extended family my Mom used to make salads but they would go relatively untouched. That is simply the culture that we lived in: meat, potatoes, pasta, and some veggies here and there, I can’t ever really remember eating a salad on its own while growing up, even when one was staring me back in the face.

I made a bunch of eggs for various meals (technically vegetarian but vegans would argue otherwise). I tried to check out where the eggs from came from (besides Shaw’s) but their origins where nowhere to be found on the carton which was a bit disconcerting.

12 Fresh (by what standard) Grade A Eggs (from where?). I was unable to find out any information on the box about what farm (or not farm) these eggs came from, no luck.

I did some searching online and was still unable to find out where these eggs came from. I was only able to find where they were distributed from (Minnesota) which is largely not the same thing considering they are labeled as a product of the USA. Using “USA” as your farm of reference could really mean a lot of things, I wish they would be more specific. The Shaw’s website is largely ambiguous about a lot of things as well. They make sure to leave no trace of where its food comes from or what kind of food they carry. They offer a lot of recipes and information about the differences between organic, free range, and grass fed, but they neglect to say anything about their supply chain (I’m sure that they’re probably better off as a business for doing so).

We grew up eating local potatoes harvested from my grandparent’s farm, and we even had a 50lb bag of potatoes in our kitchen this weekend (12 of which I took back to Boston with me). When my parents were growing up they used to get 2-3 weeks of school vacation in August to go pick potatoes on the farms up north. We had around a dozen baked potatoes in the fridge to munch on all weekend which were delicious. My brothers cut them up, heated them in the microwave and chowed down while I just ate it with the whole potato in one hand and a bottle of ketchup in the other (again they were baked not raw, I’m not THAT much of a hick). However, for dinner we decided that we would try out a new local dish. The “local” potatoes were from Mars Hill in Maine and we were just interested to see how they tasted.

"Naturally Potatoes" (in a box and highly processed).

41 ingredients in these "naturally" (different than natural?) potatoes.

Most of the ingredients in these potatoes I couldn’t pronounce and have no idea what they are. The only one I decided to look up was Titanium Dioxide because it seemed relatively obscure. Titanium Dioxide is a pigment found in paint, plastics, papers, ink, toothpaste, sunscreen and processed foods. It’s used to make products look white, I’m not sure why it was used on potatoes considering potatoes are already white naturally. I tried the pre-mashed potatoes and they tasted fine, but they were nowhere near as tasty as the local baked potatoes we had in the fridge.

For Christmas dinner I decided to make a salad. I had come up with an idea earlier in the week but forgot (or was too lazy) to send it to my parents to pick up at the grocery store before Christmas (all the grocery stores were closed by the time I got there). So I had to improvise with a bag of salad we already had. I added some walnuts and dried cranberries to spruce it up a bit with some dressing made from scratch.

Unfortunately, the dried cranberries came in a bunch of bags within a larger bag as a "snackpack". Also, this picture has a nice butt shot of my younger brother in his pajamas, OWNED!

For convenience, the craisins came in 6, 1oz baggies. So I opened each bag and dumped in the dried cranberries. I have to admit that a package of packages is quite bizarre.

Next was the pre-washed bag of salad. It was distributed from California but I’ve learned that bags of salad can often be grown in Mexico, so honestly, who knows where they came from. I checked out the website for Fresh Express but again like Shaw’s there wasn’t any info.

Iceberg, Romaine, Carrots, and Radishes. I'm glad that industrialized food also includes organic veggies but it becomes confusing when you then add in the concept of carbon footprint. Eating veggies is good for your body, yes, but is eating veggies from Mexico good for the planet, no.

In theory eating local food is the way to go, but in practice it actually seems to be very difficult. At the end of the day do I really care where my food comes from? The answer is yes. However, in reality I’d still probably still end up buying the lettuce from Mexico (or oranges from Argentina) anyway, I would just think twice about it and probably do it less often. Eating local has become very confusing, you have to go way off the beaten path in order to join something like a CSA (community supported agriculture) in order to get good local food. My parents commented on how that’s how it used to be at the supermarkets back in the mid 1990′s. All of your produce was local (at least where I grew up in Maine). It’s just that the farm labels were slowly removed over the next decade or so and replaced with industrialized fruits/veggies from other states, countries, and continents. The supermarkets look exactly the same today as they did in the 90′s so not many people noticed the transition (tricky industrial food people).

The following is an image of my first Christmas dinner as vegetarian (will it be my last? I’m not sure yet). All in all it was pretty tasty. I had a couple helpings of the same plate pictured below; salad, pumpkin bread, green beans and potatoes. Also a few glasses of cabernet sauvignon from California. It’s interesting to note that the makers of wine pride themselves on where it comes from. Where and how you grow your grapes can make or break your brand. Now if only farms took the same pride in where fruits/veggies/meat came from.

My first vegetarian Christmas dinner.

Here’s the Christmas turkey (location is again unknown). It smelled amazing but honestly I didn’t really have a craving to eat it. I expected that I would have to try really hard to restrain myself from devouring the turkey but that wasn’t the case at all, I was somewhat indifferent to it. I was plenty full with my salad, potatoes, pumpkin bread and wine that I was content not having any turkey.

My first Christmas dinner without eating turkey. I thought the turkey would mock me more than it did, I was honestly pretty indifferent about it.

Only two of us touched the salad: me because I’m vegetarian, and one of my brothers because he felt bad that no one else was eating it. I don’t want to paint a picture that we grew up with an unhealthy lifestyle. That’s not the case at all. Out of all of us we are fit, athletic, played varsity sports, some college sports, hike/bike/climb/etc, one is in the military, we are in good health, and the list goes on, we just don’t eat a lot of veggies. It’s definitely been a learning experience for me. In the past I took the “if it’s not broke don’t fix it” attitude to my diet but I’m starting to see the light. If I take anything away from this month’s challenge it’ll probably be a diversified diet including more veggies/fruits as meals and snacks and also a larger appreciation and respect for those who are vegetarian, but particularly local vegetarian.

Worm Compost Follow-Up and My First Horticulture Experience

Posted on December 24, 2011 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

It’s been four months since I started my worm compost bin back in August’s Life Without the Landfill Challenge. I decided that Christmas would be a good time to open up the bin to see if some of the compost (read: worm poo) was usable to plant some plants for Christmas gifts (and contrary to the beliefs of my building’s management company in Boston, no I’m not planting marijuana). I’ve kept the bin in the cupboard in our pantry and at the end of every week I’ve transferred my food scraps from the tupperware in the kitchen to the compost in the pantry. The smell has been largely non-existent except for a slight increase in earthiness when you’re in the pantry (not exactly a bad thing). No rodents, no flies, no nothing (yet, knock on wood). My worms were pissed off a few times and tried to escape when I opened the lid but that was because I hadn’t added moist newspaper shavings in a long time (>4 weeks, should add every 2-3 weeks) so the compost was too dry. If the compost is too wet or too dry the worms will freak out and start climbing the walls of the container. Just adjust the moisture level by adding damp or dry newspaper shavings and wait a week. Worms are pretty resilient and slow to adjust so don’t think that they’re going to die immediately or that your fix will take place immediately, cover it back up and revisit it in a week or so to see if the worms are happy again (happiness = worms are chomping your food underneath the newspaper shavings).

A group of worms chomping on my most recent food scraps.

For the past 2 weeks I’ve added food to the same side of the compost so that the worms had a chance to travel from one side to the other in search of food. This meant that one side would be largely free of worms. I’ve learned that with vermiculture composts you’re not supposed to turn to the compost as you would with an outdoor compost. With inside worm composts, this would mix the food in with the newspaper and the worm poo which isn’t a good thing because you’ll have to pick it all out later when you’re ready to use your compost. The worms typically hang out within the newspaper shavings, eating the shavings and the food scraps (they don’t travel around in the compost below). Generally you are supposed to have 4-6 inches of moist newspaper shavings on top of the worms and allow the compost to grow from the bottom up. When you’re ready to add food scraps to the compost you peel back the newspaper layer on one end of the compost, add the food (chopped up in small pieces so as to be easily digested by the worms), and then cover the food thoroughly with the newspaper layers. Covering the food with newspaper keeps the smell down and keeps unwanted flies and rodents from coming to check things out.

Here's a handful of rich worm compost from the bottom of the bin.

Here's a pile of worm compost. I had to pick out a few worms here and there but largely one end was free of worms. I also had to pick out some newspaper shavings because when I first started the compost in August I had been turning the compost and not layering it with newspaper as I should have been.

Seeing as though I’ve never planted anything before, I decided that I would use my first horticulture experience as an opportunity to build my confidence. So I bought an Amaryllis bulb that’s apparently “guaranteed to bloom” and a piece of Lucky Bamboo that’s relatively indestructible. The Amaryllis bulb was a Christmas present for family and the Bamboo was a present for my apartment. Pending a successful trial with these two “idiot-proof” examples, I plan to put up more greenery in the apartment such as an aloe vera plant that will help with burns and whatnot. I bought them both from Pemberton Farms on Mass Ave in Somerville, MA near Davis Square. Pemberton Farms is awesome, full of good, local food, beer, coffee and wine, all things that I love. However, don’t be fooled, Pemberton Farms is not a farm, it is a company that sells organic food which can be a very different thing. They simply have the image that you’re buying directly from a farm in Vermont, instead you’re buying from a company who happened to incorporate in Vermont. Oh well, they have lots of great local food, overall it’s a win, I highly recommend checking it out if you live in the area.

Amaryllis bulb (left) and Lucky Bamboo (right). I mixed in the compost with some potting soil and then covered the top 1.5 inches or so with straight compost. The nitrogen in the worm-poo will act as a natural fertilizer for the plant. The bamboo doesn't really need soil it just needs water, but I read that using soil is fine so perhaps the extra nitrogen will benefit the growth.

So far so good with the compost experiment. I was skeptical, my roommates were skeptical (and nervous), and my family/friends have been waiting to see if it would actually work out. Looks like the experiment has been a success. As a result, I’ve been throwing away far less stuff. Prior to the compost, a majority of what I tossed in the garbage was excess food. Now the only food scraps that I throw in the trash is egg shells and moldy cheese. I’ve learned you can’t put things like avocado shells in the compost. I’ve had shells in there for 4 months and the worms still haven’t even come close to digesting them. I also didn’t chop them up into small bits so maybe that would have helped.

A new layer of food scraps after potting my new plants. Just peeled back the 4-6" layer of newspaper, dropped in the food scraps, and recovered with the newspaper.

The food scraps covered back up with newspaper. Time to go back into the pantry cupboard.

If you’re interested in building your own indoor compost there’s a ton of free information online. To see how I built mine, check out my instruction guide, “Compost Construction for City Slickers” it’ll cost less than $20 and take up less than an hour of construction and then less than 2 minutes/week (having a power drill will be helpful).