Gourmet dumpster diving

I ate out of the dumpster for the first time today. It was delicious.

You'd expect it to be covered in slime and filth, but it wasn't. The way dumpster-diving expert David Giles describes 'recovered' or 'saved' food, you'd think it came straight from the shelf at Whole Foods rather than the dumpster out back. And funny enough, I'm sure he was right when he said it is safer to eat out of Safeway's dumpster than Jack-in-the-Box's drive-thru.

The juice he brought for the class to sample was the most expensive brand, Naked, and probably double what any normal juice would cost. But instead of spending $10 on a half-gallon, I ate for free and at the same time felt good about saving the environment, feeding the hungry, yadda yadda yadda. Well, not so much feeding the hungry as Ben and I nearly singlehandedly downed an orange juice and a blackberry-blueberry mix. Still, it felt good knowing that my food came from the trash. Never thought I'd say that!

Not only is dumpster diving economical for poor college students like Yours Truly, it prevents a hell of a lot of waste. David noted during class that 96 billion pounds of food are wasted by Americans each year, from the feedlot all the way to the last bite of uneaten food on the plate. Couple that with the carelessness Pollan noticed given to food (in his case, corn), and that food surplus morphs into a shortage because of plain apathy. Pollan deduced that since it didn't make economic sense to input effort and money to making sure extra food is distributed, it is cheaper to throw it away.

I found the following recipe that makes good of the vegetable scraps, if you can call it a recipe: It calls for taking the week's vegetable scraps and boiling them in water until the nutrients are leaked out to make a nutritious broth. Add one onion, 6 cloves of garlic, and a pinch of olive oil. Then strain out the scraps and use the broth in a variety of ways. You could dip bread in it, add crackers and chicken, add fresh veggies, or just drink it up.

Kevin and Donna Philippe-Johnson.
<http://www.geocities.com/~newliberty/earthstar/recipes.htm>