I’ve been doing more “dumpster diving” since I moved into my new place. One of my room-mates is a master of the art and some of that has rubbed off onto me. He even dumpster dives meat, something I’m currently too squeamish to do. I’ve taken a leap of faith by eating garbage meat that he cooked up, though. I didn’t get food poisoning and the food was quite delicious!
I figured I’d switch things up a bit and show you the food I found today. All this came from a string of three groceries on a stretch of Parc in the Mile End.
I found a lot of bananas, many of which are fine for eating plain while others would be better for use in a banana bread. I find a lot of peppers in the trash too. Most of the time there’s a little soft spot on them, all you have to do is cut it out and the rest is good to go. Today though I actually found a few peppers that looked pretty much perfect.
I also saved a couple of melons, one of which I’ve already cracked (it tastes great!) and a bunch of strawberries. What probably happened with the strawberries is that a few went bad on the top so they just threw out the whole package. The same thing happens a lot with grapes and other types of berries.
On top of this I scavenged some potatoes, leafy greens (kale and rapini), fresh peppermint, a sweet potato and some cranberries. This will all go into the “community fridge” where various people will use it to create amazing food.
It’s obviously a shame that all of this was thrown out. Still, this is only a small bit of the food that is wasted every day. I won’t get too much into the numbers and details, however. If anyone is interested in learning more about “dumpster diving” and just how much food our society wastes I’d recommend watching “Dive!”. It’s a great film and you can check out the trailer here.
Tomorrow I’m likely going to head out to Ahuntsic, the part just North of Highway 40. I’ll let you know if I find anything good.