Typically when creating from scraps you will find me designing a patchwork or appliquéd dress, or maybe piecing together a collage artwork (to see some of the creations inspired during the last year, read “Sowing the Seeds” , “Painting with Flowers” and “Chaos and Creativity”). . But during this extended Manila quarantine I learned a way of creating from scraps that was totally new to me…growing vegetables from our kitchen scraps and experimenting on simple dishes using what we re-grew.
I’ve never been a whiz in the kitchen (faaaaaar from it!), but finding easy recipes online that utilised the ingredients from our garden was a lot of fun. In addition, it really drove home the point–in a less esoteric and much more practical way–how cyclical creativity can be, and how innate it is in the natural world.
 
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Experimenting with what grew in our urban garden also allowed us to enjoy dishes we hadn’t tried before. When we first planted the squash seeds from leftover kitchen waste, they yielded squash blossoms rather than the fruit, so I found a simple recipe online for squash blossoms omelet with parmesan. This turned out to be delicious for breakfast 🙂 (another delicious discovery was fried squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta cheese).

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It was only when our next batch of planted seeds produced a squash fruit that we prepared traditional soups like sinigang and squash with malunggay.

Trying out different uses for the leaves and flowers in our garden was interesting too–we made tisanes from herbs and flowers (read “Kitchen Tips: Alternative Teas”), salads from various leafy greens like kamote tops, red leaf lettuce or different herbs, and even used the aromatic leaves from our lemon tree as a wrap when grilling chicken (one of our favourite dishes).
 
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A post shared by Tippi Ocampo (@tippiocampo)

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A post shared by Tippi Ocampo (@tippiocampo)

As I continue to learn from our ‘adventures’ at home,  I’ve gained a much deeper respect for the creative process of nature and the abundance of renewable resources around us. Hopefully this is something that I can integrate into my fashion design or art in the near future…what do you think? 🙂

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