Everybody's comments are appreciated and well-taken.
But there's something more about dumpster diving that you all should know.
What is "food"? I'm not talking sketchy "is that moldy?" questions, I'm talking legitimate food. Last night we went out again. Quite an unexpected evening. We arrived at the dumpster at 10:30pm. Just as I ducked around the side of the dumpster, a car drove by. Stina walked on, seeming to just be enjoying the night air. The car stopped. It parked. From it emerged 2 fellow scruffy-looking youngsters. "I see we had the same idea." says one. Stina introduces herself and me (still hiding behind the dumpster, 'cause I can't see or hear what's going on).
The dark-haired fellow introduces himself:
"I'm Brendhan, from Seattle."
No, seriously.
My hair isn't dark enough that I'd self-describe as dark-haired. That's not me talking and misspelling my name. That's him. With him is Scott, the guitarist.
We spent the evening with them. From grocery story 1, we rode in the van with them
to grocery store 2, and learned their stories - road trip, Vashon Island, in a band playing at the Saturn, odd jobs, nice though racist landlady, etc, etc.
We're going to try to work together to create a big enough busk that we can perform in "The best pitch in North America" somewhen near Mardi Gras.
Anyways, at Grocery Store 2 we found treasure:
Green, red, and yellow bell pepper tops and bottoms. Nearly a dozen bottles of Prego.
And this is what I mean by "What is food?"
It seems absurd to me that the grocery store would throw these things out. Presumably they slice the bell peppers prettily and throw out the parts that aren't the middle. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't donate those either, because the perception is that they aren't worth keeping. But we found gallons and gallons of these discarded parts. And tonight I am making so much spaghetti sauce, God would cry.
And the Prego - something had been spilled on them, so they threw the whole carton out. It wasn't worth it to wash them. The marketing is, after all, where so much of the money goes, so washing them off and maybe smearing the label destroys the merchandises value... plus you'd have to pay someone to wash them off... Oh, I don't know the reasoning, but this is the kind of thing that I know is still good to eat... hell, they're still vacuum sealed.
Bah and Hooray to waste!
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I am participating in one of the NorthWest Earth Institute discussion courses now - "Menu for the Future" and it's about food. It's true that jars with stuff spilled on them and remnant parts of cut vegetables are considered to have no value although they are perfectly good to eat. But the responsibility goes deeper than the store. Because they're right - nobody will buy that stuff and a food bank might be unwilling to take the risk that something else is wrong with the food. And cut vegetables pretty much have to be processed within a day. We have all been educated to believe that anything we buy at the store should look perfect and most people believe they will get sick if it isn't. You can blame that on advertising, but also on the fact that most people are so overloaded they don't want to think about their food.
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