still making headway into the dumpstermeat: ~15 packs of 2x chicken breasts remain. (in addition to the freezers of lamb, sausages, meatballs, steak, and fish.) barbecued last night two steaks in fresh lemon, rosemary, sea salt, crushed b. & r. pepper, little bit of tamari on recommendations from the pater, who grilled steaks for me before i understood fractions. i'm trying to break the habit of coating things in smaller other things. (i chopped rosemary etc., rubbed the steaks in oil, and encrusted them. it's delicious but a bad habit, i'd like to branch out. the 4 bags of jumbo shrimp we dumpstered also went the way of the Coating, getting battered in egg, flour, pepper, and fried. those were phenomenal, though: butter and lemon juice made them the best week-span of lunches i've had since january.)

also: the 2-cubic-feet glob of milk chocolate (with hints of raspberry and coffee) we got a month or so ago is chunking away into intense and thick hot chocolate. very sweet.

made a simple syrup, and steeped rosemary as it cooled. with the lemons i picked in california made rosemary lemonade. delicious. breakfast was such as runny-yolked eggs with cheese and grain-based meat (" ") on potato bread.

my friend kris came by with dumpster booty in the form of fusili and penne-- we've now got a 5-gallon bucket overflowing with pasta. come get some, whoever you are.

too hot to eat much. all i ate up 'til dinner was bread from essential baking. for dinner liese made a big pot of gazpacho (joy of cooking recipe) with dumpstered ingredients except for the canned tomatoes. also bread and salad were eaten. it was quite delicious, the gazpacho was just how i like it: really garlicy and acidic with plenty of aromatic notes (cilantro & parsley mainly). mmm.

canned tomatoes infuriate me because they are so convenient but if we had our shit together we'd be canning free tomatoes ourselves. oh well. still haven;t used the delicious looking toms tim canned for me last summer. should hit those before we're swimming in fresh stuff.

gonna go out to get food in a few minutes. the hot weather is harsh on the perishables; we'll see how it goes.

got: pasta and strawbs from tj's, lot's of bread from ebc, juice and lots of vegan meat/cheese from weird "healthy" food distributor. most went to the pantry, but we kept a fair amount, and traded some for much fresh produce dumpstered by neighbors.

ate: chicken sandwich x5 (dinner). dumpstered content = fresh sandwich rolls from essential, organic tomatoes and butter lettuce form greenwood, chicken breast from tj's (and basil from garden). very very delicious. bought mayo though :(

also ate: chickpeas and rice with tomatoes, avocados, onions, and fried eggs (breakfast). dumpstered produce + the last of the insane cache of dumpstered eggs the pantry got last month + salvaged leftovers from a house dinner. yum.

need to think of other good things to do with the many chicken breasts we have in the freezer...

oh, i forgot to mention, we also eat food from our garden: mostly chard, kale, and other leafy greens now but hoping for tomatoes, peppers, peas, and other stuff later in the season.

my housemate and fellow coöper alex and i go dumpster food for our house and the community pantry fairly often. left to our own devices, we'd probably only eat dumstered food, but our house operates on a shared food system, and the pantry bulk orders food as well as dumpstering for it, so we end up eating stuff like dry beans and grains, milk, cheese, tea, spices, and the like.

this is ok with me, since for the most part we buy ethically sourced stuff from a decent food coöp in the city, but over the past half-year, the food we've both really been into has been the dumpstered stuff: endless amounts of produce (not farm fresh, but not bad), artisan bread, coffee, juice, and chocolate. but the best part is constantly stumbling upon massive amounts of a completely random foodstuffs — ie the "this week we're eating 150 lbs of plums and ten dozen tortillas!" phenom (nb this week we're eating four dozen ears of corn and two dozen avocados).

sooo... we decided that we'd like to keep track of some of the fun things we make with dumpstered food, a daily diet of mostly dumpstered food, and our ability to, most of the time, feed our house of fourteen people out of the city's trash.

fyi both alex and i are omnivores. i have no problem eating animals and animal products in small quantities when it's either ethically sourced or dumpstered.