First, the after: Tasty brown rice bowl of soft boiled egg, carrots, tender pumpkin shoots, dressed with an improvised garlicky nuoc mam. Yummy, healthy, non-controversial.
Then, the before: Where does one get pumpkin shoots in NYC, you ask? Um, yes - I had noticed some unfamiliar looking, but quite vigorous and very juicy sprouts emerging from ... the compost bin.
Yes, I ate from the compost bin (not sure whether that is better or worse than eating from the garbage can - and I apologize to folks who have had to do it, not by choice).
On digging to investigate, turns out they were emerging from last Halloween’s decorative pumpkin - originally destined for a Thanksgiving pie, but never made it with the busyness of the holiday season, and it went bad, and was relegated in whole to the compost bin...
So, a Google search later, apparently all parts of a pumpkin plant are edible; indeed, the leaves and shoots are delicacies in some cultures. I tried a little leaf tip, and it was mild and nice, and sooo ... rice bowl. And, and - I don't actually LIKE eating roasted squash seeds in their shells, and it's such a pain in the butt to shell them - so now, maybe I will just save the seeds and sprout them for shoots to eat! Lightbulb moment!
Contrast the little pumpkin shoots with the “Compost Cookie” from Milk Bar ...
...in this period of work from home, Zoom snack hours have become the way to maintain office morale, and that little individually wrapped cookie arrived with its comrades by messenger in its pretty hot pink trimmed tin box, as perfectly corporate as corporate could be - all sweetness and sugar and empty carbs, devoid of nutritional value, fluffiness and emptiness and lightness, like nothing is amiss at all in the world.
The two ends of the spectrum of my current diet.
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