Anyone have any recs for a countertop/under the sink compost bucket? I’m also open to suggestions against such a thing. Basically, we’re trying to streamline our disposal of compostable items in the winter months (when both the compost pile is frozen and our curbside organic waste pickup is paused).
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You have curbside organic waste pickup and you’re asking for advice!!! So jealous.
FWIW, I have found that any compost bin kept inside, even if there’s a charcoal filter in the lid or whatever, gets rank pretty quickly. The best option is to dump it daily into an outdoor compost bin – not pile, or the birds & animals will have a field day – and wait to turn it until spring comes.
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Yeah I have a compost bin out the back. It’s never that cold here and compost is kind of self warming anyway so freezing isn’t an issue.
In the winter the indoor one doesn’t attract flies is all. But it’s emptied every couple of days.
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This is what I do as well. Even then, I keep an apple cider vinegar fruit fly trap behind it.
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We have something like this under our sink for compostable scraps:
It’s handy with the foot pedal. We line the bucket with newspaper and just dump the whole thing on the outdoor pile each week through the winter. Makes clean up easy. Ours doesn’t really smell. In the summer we might get fruit flies if we leave it too long, but pretty rare. It’s mostly coffee grounds and vegetable peels in there.
When I lived in the city and couldn’t have a pile outside, I had a vermicomposting bin. That took a little more attention, but also worked well.
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It sits on my counter, the lid does a decent job containing any odors for a couple days if I’m lazy, and it cleans up easily.
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I tried to do a Worm Composting Bin. The pour little critters starved. I could not generate enough food scraps. I set them free.
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It depends on how often you empty it. We had a compost bucket supposedly meant to keep stink down for a while.
But we tended to take things out daily or during meal cleanup anyway. So it wasn’t worth the counter space. And it only worked as well as the ice bucket my grandma used anyways. Even the better sealed one gave us fruit fly issues, which are kinda a seasonal thing here.
We have a yard pile for compost, and no dedicated local pickup or dumping option.
Never had an issue just tossing stuff in the frozen pile, it just kinda does it’s thing come a thaw. But we aren’t doing bins or anything particularly intense. Just a pile behind the shed we mix/rotate every once in a while. Mix in ash/charcoal, yard trimmings, hose it down occasionally. Might work better if we had poops to mix in there, but live stock are a no go on this block.
This is one of those things I feel people over think a bit. In general, things know how to rot on their own.
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Thank you @anon67050589 , @ClutchLinkey , @Wayward , @DukeTrout and @Ryuthrowsstuff !
The ground freezes pretty dang hard up here and very soon we’ll have a few feet of snow covering everything, so I suppose my quest is focused on finding something that I can toss scraps into and empty every few days. More of a short term storage thing. I’m don’t think I want to compost under my sink after reading about the fruit flies!
It seems like the solution is to gather scraps and grounds and dump it into the organic waste bin until things warm up in 6 months (the service leaves the bins with customers over the winter and they’re pretty big). The bears aren’t asleep yet and I don’t want to encourage them into my neighborhood🤦🏻♀️.
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That’s ridiculously impractical. I mean depending on the key you may never press one of the skewers piano keys to activate rotation and the food will burn.
Back to the drawing board!
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Tomato soup. Using my mother’s recipe which has been an exercise in interpretation of non-standard units of measurement in a recipe!
Tomatoes, carrots, onion, celery and basil from the garden. Some oil, bacon, and chicken broth too.
Tastes good though! Perhaps not quite as good as mother’s though.
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mom always made it better!
did ya have a grilled cheese sammy with it?!
warms me bones, it does!
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Perhaps tomorrow when the bread is ready. It takes almost 24 hours to make!
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Braising some black cod tonight. It’s in the miso marinade as we speak…
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i made my signature Guinness Stout bread today. my major accomplishment for the day. hope your bread works out for the perfect grilled cheese sam to go with (what sounds like a perfect sopa tomate like mamcita would make) your soup.
i made toast with the Guinness bread, slathered in a rather “special” butter and a schmere of marmite for the mum and me. she says (my mum) that this was my best batch of bread. it varies each time just a little bit, because the only actual measured ingredient is the bottle of beer to start, everything else is by feel. I reckon that’s what you were “interpreting” from your own mum’s recipe in measures uncommon. best cooks do things by all the senses rather than measures, no?
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The ingredients included “two tins of tomatoes” (what size tin?) and four carrots (clarified later to mean four of the biggest carrots in the world). And the usual hodgepodge of ounces, cups, and pints which always strains my brain. I ended up getting the ratio of tomatoes to broth all wrong but is still came out okay.
Beer bread sounds awesome right now.
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It turned out really well. Seared then poached in an old-school fish poacher with soy sauce, mirin ginger, garlic, and oolong tea.
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miso coating on fish is a treatment to be explored on all types of catch.
yours looks especially savory and I think I might try that on some snapper or grouper, then fry(?)
miso coated salmon with wilted greens and rice is the way I was introduced (when I lived in the PNW).
still good! do it up!
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That looks fine. Thanks
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