Garbage Envy…

I committed a sin… JEALOUSY.

My lover, who is currently residing in Bellingham, WA called me a little past midnight the other night to tell me of his dumpstering bounty. They found, among other goodies, 51 BEERS. And not just some Budweiser or Coors, my friends; hefeweizens, ales and pilsners.

Luckily I have had some of my own recent success. I GOT A BIKE TRAILER!! I took a welding class last winter and came up with a pattern for a trailer, but only got as far as cutting and bending the conduit. My welder friend finished it for me and now I am a lady about town, carting dumpster goodies and furniture with reckless abandon.

My sexy new bike trailer!

Two weeks ago, there was a bell pepper bonanza at Save Mart, which resulted in some yummy nummy stuffed peppers to share. I also got a humongous eggplant and a bag of stir-fry veggies out of that dive, so an Indian-style feast was in order for my friends. The menu: Coconut, cumin, and basil eggplant, a spicy mango curry tofu stir-fry, lots of rice, naan, and sweet mango chutney too.

Last night, before the ‘Rock Me Sexy Jesus’ party at the Co-Op downtown, I went on a quick dive. The most remarkable find was probably the two boxes of petite brownie bites from Safeway. They were so delectably cocoa-y, and I brought them to the party where they were drunk-munched up! The fixings for pesto were also abundant: Basil and parmesan! I had walnuts from a previous dive and we had lemons and garlic on hand. I also got a bunch of pre-packaged deli sandwiches, which hopefully my lover will consume when he visits because otherwise he will not have any meat all week.

My dumpster fridge full of dumpster finds (Top shelf: Parmesan, pesto, sandwiches; Below: Lettuce and veggies in the drawer!)

Last Dive in Davis

Such a lovely bike cart filled with lovely garbage

I have been in Lake Tahoe since the end of June, and haven’t updated for a while — I think this picture is from June 16th when I went diving with a couchsurfer from Stanford. We actually spent almost the entire day getting stuff for free. We gathered a crew and picked so many pounds of fruit at Village Homes, got her bike tuned up at my roommate’s bike shop for free, dumpster-dived (and came up with 3 bags of stir-fry vegetables!!! plus tons of cookies, eggs, fresh veggies, balloons with some kind of ‘eat beef’ logo on them and a baseball bat!), and then we turned all that Village Homes  fruit into ‘Davis in June’ jam and all those stir-fry veggies and eggs into fried rice with rice I pilfered from my roommate’s cabinet — also free.

I have been asked if I have tried out the Tahoe dumpsters, and the truth is that I have not. The cabin where I am staying with my Forest Service coworkers is not accessible by bike to pretty much anything. Plus a lot of the dumpsters are locked or have weird mechanisms on the handles to keep bears out — and yes I have seen 5 bears, and 4 wolves, since I have been here!

Now that the number crunching is done for the day, I am going to make a bike journey to the lake. It will probably be dark by the time I get there, but that will make skinny-dipping by the side of Highway 50 that much easier.

Early Harvest

This was my first dive in a while, but it was quite fruitful. This only shows all of the produce that we got, we went to Posh Bagel and got about 3 dozen muffins, scones and buns. I gave those away to friends, though, because I really don’t need a bunch of sugary muffins hanging around, beckoning my ass to get bigger. Save Mart really provided, there is enough basil here to make a badass batch of pesto. And I’ll probably make some kind of cream of asparagus/squash soup to slurp on.

I think this was the gooiest experience I’ve had dumpstering.

Note to self: When the weather gets hot you may want to be a siss and get some gloves.

I know, sacrilege… but it was gooey. The second photo is not anything I found in the trash, but just a trashy person that I happen to live with. Later that night, we encouraged each other to make bad decisions after racing to finish a ‘Full Moon Party Bowl’ at that new Thai place downtown.

A Thing of Dumpstering Legend

Last night I was hanging out at the co-ops on campus when someone had the great idea to go on a dive instead of doing his math homework. We took off with my basket, his bike cart and a visitor who had never been dumpstering  before. Our first stop at Cost Plus was unfruitful. There was a cool looking mirror with figurines along the sides, but I figured I’d save room for more interesting finds later. At Save Mart we found some fruits and veggies (including an entire case of mangoes) and some meat and 3 tubs of cake icing (I only brought back the strawberry one) — and I think a loaf of bread… not super good for Save Mart, but good enough. Our newbie found bananas and was overjoyed.

Then we went to Safeway where we found the piece de resistance — BEER!!! Yes, 10 unopened bottles of Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve. It was fantastic. I screamed with joy and then someone reminded me that we’re supposed to be covert. Oops. Next was Posh Bagel for a shitload of bagels. We overfilled the bike cart and had to put a whole ‘nother bag in my basket.

Our last stop was Steve’s Pizza because it was a Wednesday and I knew that they often had leftover pizza from the Farmer’s Market booth they set up. We took a look and came out with 5 WHOLE family size pizzas. Only 2 of which were vegetarian, but there were some meat eaters back at the co-ops. I took home 2 of the meat pizzas for my roomies.

So just imagine going on a dumpster dive and finding the two greatest things you could possibly ever have together, PIZZA AND BEER. I think this will go down in dumpstering legend.

Home Goodies from Cost Plus

I had a really amazing and impromptu dive at Cost Plus the other night after a failed study group. I found lanterns, cookies, tea, a lot of slipcovers (that I didn’t take), a beer glass, a teapot, curtains… anyways, a bunch of stuff.

Cost Plus goodies

 

 

And my roommate wanted to model the apron I found… sex-ay!

Aprons are cute

And then I found a shit-ton of awesome produce, including 3 eggplants, chard and grapes and stir-fry… it goes on.

Winter bounty

And just so you know, this only about half of what I found because I gave a bunch of salad and bananas to my buddy who I forgot to call to go with me. Glorious.

Scrubby Dub Dub

 

A Soap Box

I haven’t posted in a while. I think I’m unmotivated some times because it’s getting so cold now and the prospect of going outside is not inviting.

Last night was really lame, the grocery stores had nothing — I didn’t go until about 11 so everything was picked over. I got two sandwiches, a loaf of bread and an oriental salad. Then I went to Cost Plus and scored a humongous load of soap. I’m going to take them to the homeless shelter because they always need stuff like that. There were also a bunch of containers of Halloween candy, some chocolates and a cool lighted branch. I’m not sure how the branch works yet, though.

The past two dives were more successful yielding acorn squash, plantains, pop tarts, cornbread stuffing, fennel, two bags of cereal, caramel sauce and beautiful wooden bowls. I just need to get out there earlier!

November 19th

 

November 11th

!!!

Friday night was special — 2 whole apple pies in the Safeway dumpster! I gave one to a friend to bring to a party and the other was drunk munchies later. We got told to leave before we made it through all of those bulging, plentiful garbage bags, though. That was definitely a first… At the next dumpster 2 employees that were throwing away deli meat actually stopped to have a chat with us.

Dumpster Divinity on Election Day

The [dumpster] gods were smiling on me this last Tuesday. Not only did Obama win and make me giddy enough to enjoy a beer or two on a Tuesday, but the dumpster was loaded… I wish I had brought my camera with me! I had a lot of other things on my mind, though.

 

My loaded freezer

This picture really doesn’t describe the bounty very well. I filled my humongous bike basket, then tied a banana box to the top of all of that with some rubber rope that I found. In all it was about 50 pounds of food.

Most dumpster divers caution that when a large quantity of one thing is being thrown out, to be very careful, but all of what I took was prepackaged. There was so much, there’s no way I could have let it go. Pastas, sauces, pesto, guacamole, salsa, pickles, cheese, mushrooms and a head of cauliflower. Couldn’t have asked for a better day!!!

Rain SUX

Rain keeps you indoors, makes it miserable outdoors and makes the dumpster soggier than normal. However, I got a pair of rain boots today to make dives more bearable — flip flops do not cut it for rainy weather diving.

My buddy and I went earlier than usual today in the hopes that maybe something would appear. We found a lot of baked goods; cookies, cake, cinnamon buns and stuff. I’m trying not to bring those home as much because they’re fattening! We did find some more hummus and a whole buncha limes — don’t know what I’ll do with them though, ideas welcome.

Refilling the Fridge…

Tonight I made pasta with garbage pasta, garbage pasta sauce, garbage broccoli and my roommate’s cheese — completely free! I gave him some of the pasta, so it was a fair trade.

It was pretty apparent that the dumpster had been rooted through by someone else before I got there because there were baked goods smashed on the ground, and things were piled up on one side. Lucky for me, they didn’t know on what side of the dumpster the produce hides.

2 bags of lettuce, a cucumber, a rotisserie chicken, 2 bags of bagels, a package of lite jalapeno tortillas, a roll of sugar cookie dough and hella bananas.

 

Tuesday Night

I tried to get my Vegetarian Society to dumpster dive with me, but they told me “next week”… we’ll see.