We don't have a garbage disposal here in Sharjah, which, to be honest, is kind of a pain. If you grew up with a garbage disposal, you know what I mean. If you've never been without one, have you ever stopped to think about how nice it is to be able to wash bits and pieces of food right into the sink, especially when you're dealing with awkward solid/liquid combos like breakfast cereal in milk, or soup with vegetable chunks? If starving children in Africa aren't enough incentive to clean your plate or bowl, the thought of having to fish out chunks of cornflakes with your bare hand and dump them into the trash might be.
Even so, I always felt bad throwing food into the trash can. I'm not just talking about table scraps - consider all the food refuse you produce in a day: orange peels, onion rinds, bread crusts, egg shells, etc. We tried a compost pile for a while, in several ways, but it's so hot here that the pile just kind of sat there and sweated, and we were worried that the stuff could be an attraction for small animals.
Enter the Bokashi bin. I'm not sure where Jeremy heard of it, and I'm not going to go into the details in my own words (here's a Wikipedia blurb if you care to read more), but suffice it to say that this indoor system of composting was invented by the Japanese. OF COURSE. Throughout the day, we throw our peels, rinds, crusts, shells, scraps, whatever into a bowl on the counter. At the end of the day, or every other day, we add the scraps to the Bokashi bin and compress it with a re-purposed potato masher. Then we sprinkle it with a layer of Bokashi bran.
Here is our bin, untucked from its home under the sink, with the Bokashi bran in the background:
And here is what the inside of the bin looks like, with a few weeks' worth of kitchen scraps happily moldering away (I don't think it's literally mold. I can't remember what the white stuff is, but if it is mold, it's the good kind).
Kind of gross, right? Well, a little. The bin has a very tight lid so I never smell a thing unless I open it to add more scraps. Even then, the smell isn't of rot or decay or spoilage - it's more like...yeast, or beer. It's not like I want to go around smelling it all day, but it's not as disgusting as you might think.
Oh, and the liquid you drain from the Bokashi bin every few days can be used to clean your drains (?) and, in a diluted form, feed your plants.
Has anyone else tried this Bokashi stuff? We can't pronounce our Bokashi experiment a success yet (we have to wait a few weeks to bury the stuff under the soil in the garden) but it definitely feels good to be putting our food scraps to good use.
Even so, I always felt bad throwing food into the trash can. I'm not just talking about table scraps - consider all the food refuse you produce in a day: orange peels, onion rinds, bread crusts, egg shells, etc. We tried a compost pile for a while, in several ways, but it's so hot here that the pile just kind of sat there and sweated, and we were worried that the stuff could be an attraction for small animals.
Enter the Bokashi bin. I'm not sure where Jeremy heard of it, and I'm not going to go into the details in my own words (here's a Wikipedia blurb if you care to read more), but suffice it to say that this indoor system of composting was invented by the Japanese. OF COURSE. Throughout the day, we throw our peels, rinds, crusts, shells, scraps, whatever into a bowl on the counter. At the end of the day, or every other day, we add the scraps to the Bokashi bin and compress it with a re-purposed potato masher. Then we sprinkle it with a layer of Bokashi bran.
Here is our bin, untucked from its home under the sink, with the Bokashi bran in the background:
And here is what the inside of the bin looks like, with a few weeks' worth of kitchen scraps happily moldering away (I don't think it's literally mold. I can't remember what the white stuff is, but if it is mold, it's the good kind).
Oh, and the liquid you drain from the Bokashi bin every few days can be used to clean your drains (?) and, in a diluted form, feed your plants.
Has anyone else tried this Bokashi stuff? We can't pronounce our Bokashi experiment a success yet (we have to wait a few weeks to bury the stuff under the soil in the garden) but it definitely feels good to be putting our food scraps to good use.