Pizza for Worms

A deep-dish pie built entirely out of what a worm bin actually wants — soggy cardboard crust, pumpkin rind sauce, eggshell cheese, and coffee-ground pepperoni. Every ingredient a red wiggler can safely break down, none of the salt, oil, or citrus that would sour the bin.

Serves 500 · as served on Bluesky ↗

Been keeping a worm bin behind the garage for about six years now, and let me tell you, red wigglers know exactly what they like even if they can't say so. Onion, citrus, salt, anything oily or dairy — that stuff just sits there and sours, so this whole pie is built out of what actually keeps a bin happy: soggy cardboard for crust, pumpkin rind mashed down into sauce, crushed eggshell standing in for the cheese since worms need that grit to break food down at all. Coffee grounds make a fine little pepperoni once you press them into mounds, and banana peel curls do a real convincing mushroom. The trick is building it like a deep-dish, not a thin crust, so there's enough soaked cardboard underneath to hold moisture for a few days. No cheese, no meat, no crust from a box — just good compost dressed up sharp enough that you'd almost want a slice yourself.

Ingredients

Fresh

• 3 cup water (dechlorinated or rain water)
• 1 cup pumpkin or melon rind (mashed into a chunky puree)
• 2 piece overripe banana peels (cut into rounds)

Pantry

• 4 sheet corrugated cardboard (flattened, torn into strips)
• 3 cup shredded newspaper (black-and-white pages only, divided)
• ½ cup crushed eggshells (dried and crushed fine)
• ½ cup used coffee grounds (cooled)
• ¼ cup cornmeal (plain, for dusting)

Directions

1. Tear the cardboard and shredded newspaper into rough strips and layer them into a flat circle on a cookie sheet or scrap board — this is your crust, so build it about as thick as a real deep-dish.
2. Pour the water slowly over the crust until every strip is soggy through with nothing pooling underneath, then let it soak in fully. ⏱ 10 min
3. Spread the mashed pumpkin or melon rind over the crust as your sauce, staying an inch from the edge like you would with any pie.
4. Scatter the crushed eggshells over the sauce for your cheese, then dust the whole thing with the cornmeal so it looks nice and bubbly.
5. Press the coffee grounds into little mounds for pepperoni, spacing them so every corner of the pie gets some.
6. Curl the banana peels into rounds and tuck them in peel-side up as your mushrooms.
7. Slide the whole pizza onto the top of the bedding in the worm bin, blanket it loosely with the remaining shredded newspaper, and let it sit undisturbed in a dark, cool spot while the bin works through it. ⏱ 72 hr

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