Woo hoo! We have an urban garden!
No updates for a while (we’ve been crazy busy around here), but we’re back with an exciting one: urban garden! That’s right folks, we’ve gone all in with our greening plan and have created an urban garden on top of our super urban 50+ foot storage container. Various tomatoes, peppers and herbs make up what we expect to be a very productive garden. We are estimating about 600 pounds of usable produce that we will be using in our kitchen over the course of the summer. There are plans in the works to create some really awesome salsa and, perhaps, spicy jelly that we will be sharing with our customers.
The compost we are producing from our kitchen waste is going into the garden to enrich the soil and we are excited to announce a second composting project utilizing worms is showing great potential. Speaking of the worms, we believe this type of composting might be a better year round solution as we can closely control their environment and bring them inside during the colder months. We’ll assess over the next few weeks and decide if we can scale up this arm of the composting project.
All in all we’re pretty happy with where we are in the project and hope to be able to share some stunning pictures of veg heavy vines soon. In the meantime, take a look at the shots we took yesterday of the fully assembled garden. Progress sure is beautiful, no?!
Composting project update
So here are our hard-working compost bins. Nice, right? They are doing a great job breaking down all that we have thrown at them, but we’re finding the process is a bit smellier than anticipated. The thought around here is that we haven’t put in enough “browns” (paper and the such), so we’re increasing the mix to see what happens. It’s really all just a giant science project right now and even if we don’t get perfect compost on the first try, it’s what we learn from it that’s important. We’re not going to lie, though; we want perfect compost the first time.
Speaking of our wonder bins, we need your help with something. As you can see, we’ve named one, but we thought it would be nice for you, our reader(s), to name the other. If you’ve got a name that you think is totally killer, post it in a comment here or send it to us in an email. Either way works, but it might be more fun to post and see what others think of it. We’ll let you know once we have chosen a name and will post a picture of our newly tagged pal.
Green Initiative: the composting project
Any of you who have been following the progress of our green initiative know that we have been working toward composting our organic waste. Well folks, we took our first steps this past Friday (March 26) when we installed two elevated composting bins out in the lot behind our kitchen. We filled one of the two with shredded paper from our offices, ripped up cardboard from packaging, coffee grounds and a whole bunch of fruit and veg scraps, spun it a couple of times and left it over the weekend to start the process. When we opened it this morning, we were greeted by a steaming mass of mother nature’s chemistry at work.
The total volume inside the container had dropped by a 1/4 or so, with internal temperatures well above those outside. It was obvious that a great deal of the liquid contained in the food scraps had been pressed out and decomposition of the smaller pieces had already begun. None is of this is probably at all exciting for experienced composters, but for us newbies it’s wicked awesome! We’ll be posting pictures of the bins and the progress (should you care to see) of the compost in the coming days along with a little contest that we’ll elaborate on later.
Catering Ninja? What the What?!
What began as a bit of inside humor has become our new blog name. Why the hell would we choose this? Well, mostly because we think it’s funny and we likes to be funny. It does, however, have some basis in the reality of who we are. We started referring to our drivers as catering ninjas a while back because 1. they dress in all black and 2. they often make their deliveries unseen and unheard. One minute there is an empty table and the next a full set up of food, drink and whatever has magically appeared. We pride ourselves on as being as unobtrusive as possible while providing the excellent service you have come to expect from us. As for why we have started a blog, well that will take a little more explanation. Follow me to the next paragraph.
Our website is wonderful and provides a tsunami of information about our product, prices, etc., but not a deep insight into who we are as a company. We think it is important for people to know what it is we believe in and feel passionate about. We like to have fun, we love what we do and we think this attitude translates into the product we produce. Food and our relationship with food is very personal and intimate and we take the trust people place in us when they order very seriously. When you purchase something from a restaurant, caterer or whomever, you are purchasing more than just a product; you are investing in those who have produced it. And that’s how we see you; as investors.
Alright, enough yapping. As we move deeper into this experiment, we will keep you updated with the goings on here at Sugarplum, post things from elsewhere on the interweb that we think are of interest, and in general expose you to the random thoughts floating through our brains. We hope you find it interesting/entertaining/whatever and you share some of your thoughts with us. Or least let us know you’re out there. You are out there, right?
