Day 23: First Freegan Dinner

Money spent: $0

Amount in food eaten: $.20

Breakfast: Bagel ($0)

Lunch: Cheese burrito ($0)

Dinner: Quinoa w/ white beans, roasted parsnips, and roasted kale ($.20)

That's right, folks.  The only thing I ate today that came out of my pocket was the quinoa, which was fluffy, delicious, and only $.20.  

My morning bagel, scavenged from last night's freegan dive was only a tiny bit less than perfect - just a day-old bagel.  I put a little jam from Mike's fridge on it and was good to go.

For lunch, I used the work groceries to make a yummy cheese wrap - I put a burrito wrap on the skillet and covered it in some shredded cheese, and added half an organic tomato, chopped.  I topped it with a little hot sauce and cooked it up for a few minutes.  Sorry I didn't take a picture - it was great, though!

After work, I headed to Queens to work for a few hours for my friends David and Michael.  I hadn't seen either in a while, so it was great to catch up.  Michael joined me when I left and hung for the rest of the night.

We were hungry, so we munched on freegan grapes (I had SO many).  Mike had the brilliant idea to cover them in water and put a few drops of citrus essential oils on them.  The oils made their flavor pop like no grapes I've ever eaten.  Whoa.

For dinner, I made Mike, Michael, and myself a whole meal from my freegan dive!  I'd NEVER made parsnips before (I had to look them up by searching "white carrot" to even know they WERE parsnips).  I chopped them into fry shapes and arranged them with the kale on a baking pan (yep, I confirmed it to be kale... this is the problem with shopping out of a dumpster.  If you're not educated on your greens, you could wind up with a mouthful of dandelion leaves...). 

I drizzled them with olive oil and garlic Season-All, and then put a little ume plum vinegar on the kale.  I baked them for about 15 minutes while I cooked quinoa and beans on the stove (the beans were something I scavenged from my apartment's "not gonna eat this" section).

Parsnip fries, kale, and beans on quinoa

The kale was tasty, but I don't think I cooked it quite right - the tips were delicious and crunchy, but the middle was kind of tough.  I'll have to look it up.  Anyone have any good recipes?

The parsnips were SO good - definitely something to pursue.

We had a great night hanging, and Mike's friends Bradley and Matt stopped by later.  We all took a nice stroll around Times Square and laughed our asses off pretty much the entire time.  It was so great to reconnect with Michael (it's been a long time since we've hung out).  

Great, great, great day.

Day 22, (con't) - Freegan Dive!

Update!  

Derrick and I just returned from our first successful freegan dive! (What is Freeganism?)

Brother Derrick von Derrick, with a tray of carrot sushi

We walked around Hells Kitchen for about 15 minutes scoping out places we figured we might find some dumpsters.  Food Emporium and The Little Pie Company didn't have anything on the curb, so we spun around and headed uptown to another Food Emporium on 48th.  We'd seen dumpsters there when we were scoping out sites last week, and a lot of the freegan blogs say it's a great site.

We got there to find another person foraging, who, upon realizing we were fellow foragers, pointed to the last dumpster and told us "there are some good grapes over there."  There was a huge bag filled with all kinds of fruit.  I grabbed two bags of grapes, a slightly bruised organic apple, a perfectly good non-organic apple, and a bruised orange.  Down the line, there was a closed bag full of nothing but pastries and breads - sealed.  We got a bunch of bagels, a jelly danish, and some bread.  It was all perfectly good - only one or two of them were a little stale; the rest were perfect.  

Along the line, another sealed bag was full of veggies.  I got 2 parsnips (which are looking pretty droopy, but I'm looking forward to finding some parsnip recipes) and a really fresh, nice piece of kale or something.  There were a TON of leafy green veggies in the bag, but some of it looked a little slimey so I didn't really want to dig too far.  There are lines to draw... The piece I got is beautiful, though, and I'm hoping to cook it in some olive oil and garlic, etc tomorrow.

There was also a whole box of sushi trays with a "Made on" date of today.  Derrick found an all-veggie one and ate it as we walked home.  It was sealed in it's box and it's very cool tonight, so it was still totally fresh.  Amazing.  And way less gross than I expected.  In fact, not gross at all... (see picture above)

The bounty

It's so cool to know that these stores throw their garbage out this way - all the yucky garbage was at the bottom of the three dumpsters. Then the store places the food they can't sell in sorted, clear bags on top of the real garbage.  This way, people can easily access them and "shop" for what they want, as it were.  I read about this on the blogs, but didn't think it'd actually be like that very often. It's obviously a little haphazard, but there is definitely a method to that garbage's madness.

The other cool thing was that the dumpsters are on a pretty non-busy, dark corner away from passers-by.  It doesn't feel awkward - and this could definitely be a little awkward.  

We headed back to Mike's.  Derrick hung for a little while.  I washed and sorted the bounty - froze some grapes and put the rest in appropriate containers.  Then I cut up an apple (chopped the bruise out to find an otherwise delicious organic apple).  We ate it while we hung out, and DvD made himself a bagel with some jelly.

Derrick suggested we do this every night.  Alright.  Let's see what happens.

 

What's better than CheaplyGreen? FreelyGreen.  Which kinda sounds like Freegan. 

Awww yeah.

The apple surgery was a complete success

P.S. Be on the lookout for Brother Derrick von Derrick's live shows all around NYC.  He's an amazing solo performance artist with some serious stuff to say.