Meet the Composter: Rose Tucci

Rose Tucci and family

Rose Tucci prides herself in putting very little in her Back to Earth Compost Crew bucket, and considers herself to be an “ends-to-stems” cook. She uses stems, peels, rinds—even bones—in creative ways and attempts to use every bit and get further use out of just about any item. It’s not about saving money, but about producing as little waste as possible. Rather than tossing orange rinds or banana peels in her composting bucket, she creates with them!

Rose does a lot of cooking and makes a variety of homemade items like tea, bone broth, from-scratch salad dressings, and natural cleaning products. In the early days of the pandemic, when people were scrambling for cleaning supplies and disinfecting wipes, Rose didn’t understand the panic, as she makes her own cleaning products out of vinegar and citrus peels.

“Kitchening” is therapeutic for Rose. She dries out bones and uses them to nourish her houseplants. Rose makes vinegar out of strawberry stems for use in her homemade salad dressings. She saves peels of citrus in jars for many purposes. She also dries out orange rinds and banana peels in the oven to make tea, face masks, and more.

Rose enjoys gardening and grows butternut squash, acorn squash, celery, potatoes, carrots, radishes, beets, and tomatoes. Rose uses her bounty to make soup and salad dressings. Some favorite soups include non-dairy butternut squash, gingered carrot, and tomato. Her salad dressings contain extra nutrients and fiber, since her ingredients include vinegars made from fruit stems, as well as actual fruit, as much as one cup of blueberries!

Rose developed a line of RoseMade products to help people eat well one plate at a time. She is passionate about cooking recipes that are healthful. RoseMade includes salad dressing, vinegars, soups, and Off the Plate meals. For information about RoseMade products, visit on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/rose__off_the_plate/) or Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/offtheplate.rose.3/about_details), or reach out to Rose via e-mail at Offtheplate.com@gmail.com. 

Rose has been composting with Back to Earth Compost Crew for over two years, but she is not new to the idea of composting or living sustainably. When Rose was in sixth or seventh grade, she learned about recycling and the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle”. She took it to heart and looked for ways to implement it in her everyday life. As a middle-schooler, she presented the idea of recycling newspapers to her local township officials. Soon after, the municipality started a recycling program. Rose realized what an impact one person and one single idea can have. She also worked on recycling during hours of training in environmental health as she pursued her education in public health.

Rose lives in Dresher with her husband and two teenagers. Her family has many sustainable practices in addition to composting, producing as little waste as possible, and using natural cleaning products. They strive to eliminate use of plastics in their home. They also save jars to repurpose for storage and other uses. 

Rose’s favorite thing about Back to Earth Compost Crew is the convenience of simply filling a bucket, putting it outside, and starting over again—both literally and figuratively. Rose thinks compost is a great way to give back to the Earth. She hopes for her kids’ planet to be better than ours.

Back to Earth Compost Crew is happy to have Rose and her family in our composting community!