Dear Kitchen Gardener,

How do like them love apples?  Aren't they beauties!  Well, not beautiful in the conventional, airbrushed, Gourmet magazine kind of way.  The beauty, for me, is being able to enjoy my own reddish tomatoes in late October in Maine after the first light frost. 

True, they may not make the cut for tonight's starting salad team, but they'll do just fine simmered in a sauce or slow-roasted to bring out their latent sweetness.  They may well be our last sauce tomatoes of the year. 

It's been quite a run for us this year, tomato-wise.  I can't even guess how many cranks I've given on my food mill (my new favorite kitchen gadget) over the past 6 weeks.  All of this brings me in a round-about kind of way to the theme of this month's newsletter: one person' trash is another person's pleasure or, if you prefer, one person's waste is another person's taste.  Yes, I realize those may not be expressions you're accustomed to hearing, but they're ones deserving some consideration. 

Tomatoes like mine would end up in the waste bin if they dared infiltrating the ranks of the picture-perfect, red, round globes that grace the shelves at the local supermaket.  They would be deemed an eye-sore and most likely a health risk in our bacterophobic culture. For me, though, I see them and think "pasta al pomodoro" and "Superbowl Chili".  With nearly 20 bags of them in our chest freezer, we'll be thinking lots of different things right through the winter, all of them tasty.

In this month's round-up of articles and videos, we take a closer look at trash, treasure, waste, and taste.  Barbara Damrosch's latest article encourages us to go gleaning in our own gardens.  You might be surprised at what you'll find.  3000 miles away, in Portland, Oregon, a group of people from a nonprofit effort called The Portland Fruit Tree Project is thinking similar thoughts.  A short video follows them as they go on an urban fruit gleaning mission, something my family and I have been doing this month with our neighbor's apple trees.  Our neighbor sees apples with blemishes, we see apple sauces, crumbles, and pies.  In a world still very much in the grips of hunger and malnutrition, work like this should be taking place in every community where neglected fruit trees and underharvested crops can be found. 

You know this already, but I think that we, the organic kitchen gardeners of the world, have an important role to play in changing people's perceptions about food.  We know better than anyone else that there's really no such thing as trash when it comes to the garden.  What doesn't make the grade for the table is always a welcome addition to the compost pile where it awaits magical transformation into next year's pleasure.   

Warmly,

PS: 2008 has just been named the International Year of the Potato by the United Nations.  If you have a clever idea how KGI might celebrate potatoes next year, don't be shy in sharing it. 

PPS: And don't be shy in general.  I'd love to hear from you on what we're doing right or what we might do differently. You're also invited to comment on our articles and share some of your own knowledge or lack thereof, as the case may be.  That's what the comment form is for at the bottom of each page!