've always been a big fan of dumpster diving/trash picking. This city in particular provides wonderful finds in furniture, clothes and collectibles. Half the furniture in my room has been dumpstered and I've found things like an 1891 copy of Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare and a first printing of To Catch a Thief. I constantly salvage flowers from my street (28th) in the Flower District. But I had never done urban food foraging before.
So about a month ago I went on the Freegan tour in Murray Hill. It was great, made even more social by the fact that I think it had been featured in the Voice that week.On my first trip out I got eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, pasta sauce, organic apples, crackers, bagels, Cheddar and Cream Cheese Cheeze Whiz and lady fingers. I ended up making ratatouille, an apple pie and tiramisu! And of course crackers and cheese to snack on and bagels for breakfast. All in all, a great first experience.
So last night I went for my evening run and then embarked on my first solo mission in my neighborhood of Chelsea. The website here listed a bunch of possibilities around here, though I had planned mainly on getting bagels from Murray's Bagels. What with bagels and breads are one of the food items you can pretty much count on being able to get daily, I figured it'd be good for my first time out alone. I ended up getting not only fresh and warm bagels, but from the Eckhard drugstore across the street I found 24 bottles of fruit punch Gatorade (expired), 3 boxes of Granola bars, Colgate toothpaste, a bag of Butterfinger miniature Crisps, a flashlight, a curling iron and a bar of Cadbury chocolate. I left an additional six pack of Gatorade and one of those huge cans of Maxwell House coffee, still vacuum-sealed.
Plus, lugging home all that stuff over that last 3/4 of a mile put a nice button on my workout!
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First Solo Freegan Outing
Posted - 09/27/2007 : 14:21:48
