- Emily Stoll
- Wednesday, May 27, 2020
After spending a little more time at home, I find I'm examining my daily habits under a microscope. I am much more aware of items that I may be wasting - whether it be food, paper goods, cleaning supplies or beauty products. My ultimate goal is exploring new ways to conserve.
Through all of this chaos, I can share with you that I have found a tiny victory - turning some food scraps into fresh produce. It's a small experiment that is truly rocking my world.
Until this point, planting was not in the cards for me. Any sort of flowers, herbs or vegetables that made their way into my house or backyard quickly ended up in the trash. Yes, the green thumb that I was searching for didn't seem attainable.
Cue my last trip to the grocery store. After washing and wiping down items, I came across one of my favorite pieces of produce - green onions. I always like having them on hand to add as a garish on top of dishes, and I had a question pop into my head. How do I make these green onions last?
So, I decided to try something new. I chopped off the bottom parts of the green onions before wrapping and storing them in the refrigerator, but instead of throwing away the bottom parts, I held onto them.
Then I put water into a plastic cup, filling it about halfway.
Grabbing the cup, I placed the bottom parts of the green onions in the water, and the cup received a special spot on my kitchen table - underneath a coaster, of course. At the time, the initial experiment seemed pretty anti-climatic. There was nothing else to do but wait and see what would happen.
To my surprise, the green onions started to grow...
... a little bit at a time...
...until they started to look like a miniature version of the green onions that I bought at the grocery store.
A little more than a week after I started this little experiment, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was a success! I had managed to grow new green onions by putting grocery store scraps in a cup of water on a kitchen table without any sun. My only action - besides staring at the cup throughout the day and offering words of encouragement (please grow... PLEASE GROW) - was changing the water in the cup daily.
Following a few victory laps around the kitchen table, I started to wonder... if I can turn food scraps into green onions, what else can I do?
Turns out, there's a whole book dedicated to this subject, titled No-Waste Kitchen Gardening. It's available in eBook format on CloudLibrary, and I found out green onions are just a stepping stone. Next stop... turning my food scraps into:
- Carrots
- Potatoes
- Avocados
- even Melons
With this encouragement, I feel a little bit better about overcoming my fear of planting. Now, I just need to find a nice spot for these green onions in my yard. Wish me luck!
Well, this little experiment also made me hungry. I couldn't wait to figure out how to use some of my extra green onions. After making a little pit stop in the Walker Local and Family History Center's digital collection, I came across the Heavenly Southern Recipes: Miller Cemetery Project. There was a recipe for corn bread salad by Shirley Trotter, which included green onions.
The recipe - and so many others - sounded delicious, but would I be able to make it? Quickly checking the pantry and refrigerator, while holding my breath, I determined the recipe was a "go." Yes, I had all the ingredients, so let's get cooking.