Our working class neighborhood has banded together in a new kind of sharing. As we all struggle to make ends meet feeding our growing children, resourcefulness and gleaning has risen to a new level: the dumpster.
Behind our favorite bakeries, loaves are regularly dropped into the trash wrapped in paper and plastic. They are the same breads that cost $3-$5 only an hour before. As we stretch to pay mortgages and car/bike repair bills, such tidily discarded food is a blessing. There are now four families on our street alone that regularly dive and share the spoils to stock freezers and pantries.
I have to admit that it took me awhile to wrap my head around the notion of this. Eat food from the dumpster? Is that safe? As I write this, I am reminded of my childhood beliefs about mushrooms. Don't touch them! They're poisonous! Wash your hands! Fortunately, I've taken classes on wild mushroom identification since then and learned what I was missing. (In fact, no mushroom is so poisonous that you can become sick from touching it, or even touching it and putting your hand in your mouth -- unless you've seriously molested the poor mushroom.)
In our world of mass consumption, anything that's turned the corner of premium marketability is suddenly considered worthless and is discarded while people on our streets and in our neighborhoods struggle and starve. Where is our common sense?
What can I make with sour milk? Pancakes, quickbreads, and more. Stale bread is good for stuffing mix, croutons, and bread pudding, or it goes to the chickens if it becomes rock hard. Let us save our planet and our people at once by keeping edibles out of the landfill!
I am also looking to my own habits to discern whether I am truly as frugal as I'd like to be. Yesterday, when I pulled a box off of my beehive to keep the colony warmer this winter, I tossed a chunk of propolis aside. Bees make this golden sticky comb out of tree and bush resins to glue and hermetically seal their hives into antibacterial commercial kitchens.
I tossed it aside. "What am I doing?" I thought. Propolis is medicine, and when carefully processed, it's worth a pretty American penny. Can I afford not to learn how? I came inside with the bees work and sat down at the computer to Google "propolis preparation." I discovered that I can turn it into a powder with ease (freeze and grind), and from this form I can blend it with a variety of carriers to make oral or topical medicines for my family.
God grant me the eyes to see where I waste and easily harvest the bounty we discard.
Hopefully the kids will have it easier. They are already delighted by our gleaning in its many forms. Picking up hazelnuts on the orchard floor after the harvesting machines had been through, they proudly announced their "jackpots." Tromping through the woods with friends, they wavered between sharing and hoarding as they stumbled upon golden patches of Chanterelles. These are big ticket finds, in more ways than one.
And they know quality. Bread is edible three days old or straight out of the oven. The latter is a rarer find, to be sure. When we pulled a bag of seeded baguettes out of the dumpster last Friday, Trinidad squeezed the soft end of one and said, "Wow!"
"Mmmm!" Sam smiled broadly. "Fresh from the dumpster!"
Calendar and Current Events
13 years ago
1 comment:
Hey girl,
Too funny again, but truer than you know. I work at a restaurant, and it's disgusting what they throw away. They could feed all of the homeless in Eugene on the food people don't want. (not even spoiled)
As I walk around I see piles of perfectly good acorns, trees full of yummy dogwood and strawberry fruits, ginko nuts and rose hips. I see yards and yards filled with all kinds of lovely greens and herb plants going to seed. I know where all the fennel plants are and the nigella. But what is amazing to me were the miles and miles of edible leaves that were about to turn golden and get thrown into the trash. Ginko leaves worth $20 a pound dried; birch leaves that make such lovely pesto, maple and tulip trees, hawthorn and blackberry and raspberry.
It is said that what we don't know will kill us, but what we don't know seems to be going into the trash. The first thing we can do to save money and consume less is to consume what we have. Max needed a new pair of shoelaces and,
voila! Sky had them in an old pair of shoes he was throwing out. I had an old, faded dress. I took it apart, turn it inside out and, voila! new dress.
It's amazing how much we use that we don't need and how much we throw away.
Good for you!
hugs
me
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