Ancient Carved Pumpkins = Worm Food

Halloween day pumpkins were carved at work. I brought home two works of pumpkin art and lit them so they glowed all Angry Birds that night. By November 1st, the candles were spent and I began ignoring the pumpkins.

I continued ignoring them even while they gradually deflated and leaked pumpkin juices. I gotta tell ya, those of you out there thinking keeping worms would be "hard," preparing food for worms cannot get any easier.

After Thanksgiving, I thought the pumpkins were rotted "enough" to make the worms lick at their tiny lips. And then I let them stew in the California sun through the first few days of December. Yes, yes, I spoil the worms.

You might wonder why that one pumpkin on the left look like it's covered in dirt. Easy answer: it is! Let's all give thanks to the "gardener" who blows around loose top-soil from my "garden patio" every Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. with a leaf-blower. Yeah, that helps plant growth in my "patio", like, totally.

Saturday, December 3rd, I went outside with a bin lid and spatula to scoop the piles of deflated carved pumpkin up in order to feed them to the worms. I'll tell you right now, I was a little grossed out by the texture of the pumpkins. The fact that I could fold them in half with a plastic spatula caused slight spasms.


I managed to shovel the folded pumpkins onto a bin lid, brought the pumpkin mush into the apartment, and fed each of the five worm bins an equal portion of pumpkin without throwing up once.

Worm Food, 082011

Normally, I take an overview shot of the food I am going to give the worms and post that image with an itemized list of what the worms were fed. This time I give you a play-by-play of what the worms were fed.

A whole pineapple, minus the parts I saved for me.

I did remove the label and the plastic attaching said label before dumping the pineapple rind, core, and top into a worm bin.

3 cups of whole, old, wrinkly cherries.

About 2 cups of vegetable remains from when I cooked: orange bell pepper, carrots, and onions.

The pistachio shells from Todd's nut breakfast.

About 2 cups consisting of a few onion remnants, furry avocado peel, and something unidentifiable at the bottom of the container. Whatever that sludge was, the worms got it for lunch.

A 2-cup container of primarily cherry pits and stems along with an avocado pit and skin.

This bin contains grocery bag of banana dubes and a shiny bag of coffee grounds, both from Bill. I gave the worms the dubes, but only a small portion of the grounds.

Worm Food, 073111

While I decided against feeding the worms the stuff in the glass bowl (I thought it was too olive oil-y), they did get everything else in the photo and some stuff not shown:

• an old, whole avocado
• some onion peel
• basil leaves
• half a cantaloupe
• half a honeydew
• toast
• garlic
• stale tortilla chips
• cherry pits and stems
• unrecognizable goo
• half a pineapple
• celery bunch
• limp green onions
• rosemary
• chives
• Honey-Nut Cheerios

Worm Food, 071711

There wasn't too much to feed the crew, but enough to spread around:

• 5 limes
• 1 orange
• 1 plantain
• leftover half of a twice-baked potato with butter
• leftover calabacitas
• 2.5 nasty onions
• old cherries, stems, and pits
• husks and cobs of 3-5 ears of corn
• tomato ends
• basil stems and grody leaves
• red onion skins and ends
• Honey-Nut Cheerios

Somewhere around here a bag of hair is, as Nate put it, "crawling around."

Worm Food, Corn Growth, and OC Registers 070911

I didn't have much food for the worms the weekend of July 9th. Turns out, they didn't need much so it worked out ok.

Most of the bins had food leftover. Like this bin with the germinating kernels of corn. There were three in the bin, each of them sprouting like mad.

The pile of OC Registers is getting out of control. How long had I been receiving them by the 9th? I'm not sure, but I need to cancel this shit as the pile is even bigger now.

Deciding to chop of some of the papers, I came across an article in an edition about how OC Food Banks' shelves are sparse. It was a good reminder that food banks usually get the most donations in winter months and are sparse in summer.

Here's a list of kitchens if you have anything to donate: OC Food Banks/Kitchens.

Worm Food, 070411

Normally I feed the worms once a week. The weekend of the 26th, I totally slacked and only fed Number 5, which, looking back on was a mistake as it was so humid in the bin. Between June 19th and July 4th, I only had this much food to give the crews. It's pretty paltry.

It turned out to be a good thing I had minimal food since many of the bins didn't need too much food.

I fed the worms:

• half a red onion
• old cherries: stems, pits and all
• ancient nasty pineapple pieces
• mushrooms
• carrot peels and tips
• onion skins
• old cherries, old cherry pits, and old cherry stems
• tiny cloves from a garlic bulb as well as the papers
• celery ends
• corn cobs (3)
• juiced limes
• some Honey Nut Cheerios

That left me with Nate's hair and a partial bag of Cheerios.

Orange County Register

Because I'm a sucker for helping high school students in Santa Ana, I agreed to an 8-week subscription to the OC Register, four dailies from Thursday to Sunday each week. Two weeks in, I have 8 newspapers I haven't even removed from their stupid orange bags except the first Sunday copy, the one with the coupons.

Is there one single coupon I'd use in there? Of course not because I'm the turd who doesn't buy into brand labels.

While I'm all about supporting youth and their high school education so they can do their thing and get the basics of education, I'm not sure that my $20 subscription really does anything but provide me with worm food and a huge pile of glossies I feel obligated to haul to the recycling center.

Maybe the kid I am sponsoring with my 20 will devise a way of really making my contribution work. This "let's sell newspaper subscriptions" thing is seriously antiquated.

Worm Food, 061911

The worm food this week includes the stuff in the photo above:

• two tomatoes
• two weird peaches
• mutant cherries
• once-fresh basil, thyme, and sage,
• a large Glad container of tomato-half, peach-quarter, potato peels, onion skins
• Tupperware of cut melons and pineapples as wells as some Navel Orange

The photo below is additional worm food:

• Ali's bread leftovers
• dried apricots
• dried figs/dates
• crystallized ginger

Not pictured above were the only things remaining after feeding:

• the bag of Honey-Nut Cheerios
• Nate's hair

Worm Food, 061211

Sunday, June 12th, I had quite a bit of worm food going on. I had cleaned out my museum-like pantry, and piled the contents up on the paper cutter:

• a bag of Honey-Nut Cheerios circa May 2010,
• ancient crystallized ginger,
• pretty old dried apricots,
• some old-ass figs or dates or something,
• half a Lindt chocolate bar
• what remains of Ali's bread and
• Nate's hair

In the forefront of the photo is a:

• bowl of salad I mixed and never ate,
• big* Glad container of salad mix
• 2-cup bowl of cut fruit that rode in my backpack a couple days
• mid-sized* Glad container of cherry pits, cherry stems, pineapple core, and melon rinds
• big Glad container of orange and lime peels and pulp
• big Glad container of more orange peels and melon rinds
• big Glad container of pineapple peels and more melon rind/seeds and pulpy stuff

Everything but what was on the paper cutter was fed to the worm bins Adam, Eve, The Offspring, Number 4, and Number 5, leaving me a pile of dirty dishes.

*big = 8-cup, mid-sized = 6(?) cup

Worm Food, 060411

My worm food collection was primarily from my own kitchen, now that the apartment craziness has quit and coworkers seem to have forgotten that they could save worm food in the freezer.

I had Nate's hair and Ali's bread left from last week, plus four 8-cup Glad containers of goods.

The worms were fed

• the majority of Ali's bread
• the last two ancient onions from last week
• some basil stems and leaves
• some new onion skins
• a couple gluten-free lasagna noodles
• carrot peels
• corn cobs, husks and silks
• lettuce "bones" and outer leaves
• turnip peels
• parsnip peels
• celery root peels, and
• little garlic cloves and skins

That left me with all of Nate's hair and just a few of Ali's sandwich rounds.

I'll be honest, I'm a little more freaked about Nate's hair than I thought I'd be. I'm not sure if I should just dump it into a worm bin as is or if I should *eek* take scissors to chop Nate's hair up and disperse it among the five bins. This coming weekend, I'll have made a decision on the hair.

And if you're wondering about what that thing was in Number 5, I have no answer. By the time I got around to feeding the worms it was getting toward twilight and by the time I fed Number 5 I had a hard time distinguishing any one thing from another. Chances are though, it was a peeled banana. If I find that thing intact this weekend, I'll seriously stroke out.

What the Hell is THAT?

Feeding the five crews Sunday, I was proceeding as usual and when I came to it I fed Number 5.

Note: the crew is laid out pretty randomly and Number 5 was probably the third to be fed, not the last. I need better names for these crews. I have an idea on how to name them, but that's for later discussion, or not.

Anyway, I popped the lid off Number 5 and saw the Papa John's box lid was looking normal. Pulling that off, I saw that things below were normal. No excess moisture, not too dry, no fruit flies, no weird unknown bugs, no mite bloom. Perfectly normal. I do have to say that I wish I hadn't been in what must have been a rush when prepping this bin for Number 5 as the paper is so clumpy. It really should've been a little drier and thus not so clumped before being placed on the first story. It doesn't really matter since the worms are eating it, it's just annoying when I'm digging around in there, turning chunky wads of paper.

So I dug up the left side, put in some of Nate's straight-cut paper to use as napkins before topping with soggy banana peels and strawberry tops.

After I covered the left side, I dug up the right side, added in some of Nate's paper, including the note he'd left on the Target bag designating the bag's contents Worm Food, and put in soggy bananas and pistachio shells as well as some weird thing I couldn't identify. What is that thing?

Rolling on, I covered the right side and topped Number 5 off with additional slightly damp newspaper. I had this paper left from when I prepped second stories for other bins. As much as I'd like to, it's impossible to document every single thing that happens with the bins. Ok, scratch that. It'd be possible, but insanely time consuming, to document every single thing that happens with each of the bins.

Now let's step back a minute. Back to when I fed Number 5's right side. I mentioned a weird thing I'd fed them.

For real.

What the hell is that? What is that thing?

If that thing is gone when I feed Number 5 next, I'll be confident if was an uneaten peeled banana.

If that thing is still in the bin when I feed Number 5 next, I am going to be completely horrified.

What's Left of the Worm Food 052911

The photo above was taken after feeding the worms Sunday, depicting what was left from the piles of food.

I fed the five worm bins

• all of Cang's El Pollo Loco tortillas, 4 or 5 bags of 2-3 tortillas each, I forget exactly
• the four ancient whole bananas from my freezer
• all of Bill's banana dubes, about 6
• all of Nate's straight-cut paper
• the entire bag of soggy banana peels and pistachios and strawberry stems
• the equivalent of an entire melon's inedible bits
• the equivalent of half a pineapple's inedible bits
• crusts from two slices of pizza
• about a pound of ancient baby potatoes
• an ancient partial garlic bulb
• an ancient onion

That's a lot of old not-for-human-consumption waste. Imagine shoving all of that into a garbage disposal or filling a garbage bag.

Worm Food as of 052811

I had quite a collection of worm food ready to feed the worms. Check it out:

This gallon bag of banana peels, strawberry stems, and pistachio shells was removed from the work freezer 052711 to sit on the floorboard of my truck overnight by accident. Oops. My truck smelled slightly banana-ish that next day. But I guess that's better than the normal Camel smell.

The week before, I received a Target bag of straight-cut paper from Nate along with a Ziploc bag of the hair from his most recent haircut.

For a second I thought that was Spook!

A few days ago, I received this big bag of Oroweat Sandwich Thins from Ali. From what I can tell, they aren't even bad. Turns out Ali and his wife purchased Sandwich Thins simultaneously and these are the extras. I considered eating some of them, but passed. Bread age isn't as easy to tell as apples.

And since my skewed apartment shit became somewhat straight-lined, I was able to contribute melon rinds and innards, pineapple "skins" and core. Under there somewhere is a couple of slice-sized pizza crusts.

Approximately two weeks ago, I brought home the majority of worm food from the work freezer, a pile of Cang's El Pollo Loco tortillas and a few of Bill's banana dubes. Those black bananas are those that I found since in my own freezer. I'm guessing the bananas are circa June 2010.

Oh, and I nearly forgot, there is this bowl of 3-month-old onions, garlic and potatoes in my pantry.

Oh, what?


What's that?


The hair?


Yeah, it's Nate's.


You want a closer look, you weirdo?

At first I wasn't at all freaked, except for the split second when I thought Spooky had somehow closed himself in a Ziploc within a Target bag. But after opening the Ziploc and finding it was just a mass of hair and Spook was ok, I chilled.

Then I realized the hair was attached to Nate's person just a few days before.

And I got the creeps too. Just a little bit.

Phone Book Phenomenon

Once upon a time, but really just a couple days ago, I received a new phone book, the Orange Central Coast Yellowpages.

"But WormWranger PoopHarvester, there are three phone books in the image," you say. I find that baffling too because I stole only one. The third? It's a phone book phenomenon.

But each one came in a yellow bag that looked like this:

If you look carefully, you can see that it says,

"Please recycle your outdated phone books. Recycling information can be found at http://corporate.yellowbook.com/recycling/"

and that is pretty handy for folks who don't have worms or neighbor friends with worms.

A couple days before that, I had received another phone book. The Verizon Superpages.

"But WormWrangler PoopHarvester," you say, "there are two phone books in that image."

Of course there is, I stole that second phone book from my immediate neighbor.

What makes me scratch my head though is how I wound up with three of these phone books (with an ad for a DIVORCE lawyer emblazoned across the spine -- how uplifting). They're those on the bottom of the stack:

The other two were gifted to me by Lori, the neighbor in the next building. I don't steal from her. But I do have her boyfriend's cat. The third phone book? Another phone book phenomenon.

So these three phone books, the superpages, came in bags that say:

"To order directories or to stop delivery of this directory call 1-800-888-8448."

That's cool for folks who have the internet phone book and don't have worms or friends with worms yet.

Two months before this surge of phone books, I found a book of white pages in an orange bag outside when I was walking my neighbor's boyfriend's former cat, not in front of my door like those books above, but just inside the community gate, near my slider. Had I not been the Worm Wrangler, I would've ignored it.

But I picked it up.

And look at what was under the bag:

Go ahead and click the picture to check. It's a real $20!

I could've rushed out and bought

• 20 songs on iTunes (I didn't because I don't have a portable music playing device and use Pandora -- thanks Chuck!), or
• 6.5 gallons of gasoline (of course I bought gas but it was already in the budget), or
• the majority of The Les Halles Cookbook (I didn't because Amazon is unrelenting about selling entire books), or
• a box of golf balls (haven't lost all of the ones from my last box yet)

Instead that 20 sat on my desk here for quite some time. I think that was the Worm Wrangler above, making arrangements for me to score that balance.

The moral of the story? Start a worm bin of your own because then you'll tend to pick up phone books and there might be a $20 phenomenon underneath it.

And now I have a total of 12 phone books. Figure that out.

Really, the book was probably placed on top of the strategically located $20 for the resident drug dealer. But my phone book story is way cooler than that.

Kimberly's Phone Books Made a Second Story for The Offspring

Back in September, I talked about the food offerings Kimberly made and mentioned that Kimberly's phone book offerings would require another post. Now's the time to button down what seems to be the hardest button to button as it's taken me so long to get to it.

Of course, I was reminded of this by the fact that sometime a couple weeks ago Kimberly gave me a bag of shredded paper from her straight-cut paper shredder. Thanks Kimberly!

I love Kimberly's paper as it's so, so fluffy, and not at all compacting when wet. When I tell her so, Kimberly reminds me that the shredded paper I love comes from a shredder from WalMart, which causes my sphincter to constrict just slightly*.

Here's the stack of two phone books, right there with Kimberly's Post-It declaring them worm food. Thanks again, Kimberly!


I peeled the front and back covers as well as glossy middles from the meaty paper sections of the phone books so I could take those glossies to OCC for recyling.


And so you'd be absolutely clear, here's some of the phone book meat, complete with Kimberly's Post-It attached.


When I got down to the last bit of meaty phone book middle, I chopped the Post-It up with it, yielding a 10-gallon bin full of shredded newspaper. Now you know it takes two large phone books and a 3x3" Post-It to yield a 10-gallon bin of shredded paper.


Then Spooky climbed inside the bin to pack the paper down because we work as a team. Spook's like a mama cat, lookin' out for a nice nest, but with him it's all about...well, him, and his personal comfort. Spooky likes paper.


Over the next couple days, Kimberly's phone book shreds were marinated in tap water, drained, and made into a second story for The Offspring September 12th, 2010. It's like a born-on date but better than Budweiser. That might be because I don't drink beer.


Just so you know, I had supplied The Offspring's second story with leftovers from an Ethiopian recipe (primarily cabbage and potatoes) I had tried as well as melon rinds and old pineapple bits, about 5 cups. I didn't bother looking for dirt.  There's enough in the unwashed vegetable peels I feed the worms anyway.


Since I began harvesting The Offspring's first story December 12th, those worms are now operating primarily on Kimberly's phone books, with additions from other sources as necessary, including part of the new batch of Kimberly's paper!

I now wonder if I should get a kitchen balance to measure the mass of food I actually feed a worm bin. So far, I've been doing it by volume, even though it's said worms eat their mass in X amount of time. That'd be one way of deducing my worm poundage per bin too. Hmm...

*I'll save you the grief of reading the deluge of reasons why I don't shop at WalMart. I'll just say,

• When Kimberly's shredder dies, I will personally go out and buy her a new straight-cut shredder from another vendor.  Note To Self: Get some ads up on this blog for funding.
• WalMart: The High Cost of Low Prices

.......................................................................................................
In other news:

• I fed the worms all of Bill's doobs over the weekend;
• The original Bill's Banana Peel's bag and bag of Tony's rice are long gone now;
• I'm enrolled in Korean 2 and it still sucks being the slow kid. The other kids laugh when I answer in English, but I don't do it to make a joke. I figure an answer in English is better than none at all. It's a weird thing, but I have serious difficulty when it comes to speaking in Korean, like I'm doing something wrong and Mrs. Sorenson won't give me a smiley-face hand stamp if I speak Hanguk
• Compels me to provide a grant to my elementary school with a specific clause that the money can only go toward minority or half-breed kids and those with a primary language other than English cannot be brainwashed into speaking English-only with Chutes and Ladders and smiley-face stamps in SPEECH THERAPY. Yes, I realize I need to hone that a bit.
• Ali's liquid diet lemon halves are way long gone by now, but I'll give you a visual on that
• Tony's squash plants grown impromtu from poop have suffered a drowning death with all the rain in December. Please, let's take a moment and bow our heads.
• Tony has sprinkled some of his latest poop in various areas of his giant outdoor domain; I'll be bugging him and Clare for photos
• And yes, I WILL get Clare's previous photos up one of these days