January Bounty

After work one night (1/12), I went to Trader Joe's again with Mark (my co-worker and friend). It was freeeeeezing! It's hard to untie bags with gloves on, so I'm pretty sure we got frostbite in the process of looting. Afterward, we went to my house to divide the plunder.

This particular evening, we lucked out and got shopping carts outside the dumpster again (this happens a lot in the winter when the grocery staff are too cold/tired to throw bags in the dumpster at night).

It turned out to be a bread night - every kind of bakery goods imaginable were ripe for the picking - ciabatta, sourdough, french baguette, cakes, tarts, dinner rolls - you name it. There was also a pretty healthy selection of other types of food as well, but the amount of baked goods was unfathomable. Bread is great, because it keeps for a VERY long time if you freeze it. You just need to pop it in the toaster oven or microwave, et voila - perfectly good bread. (a note about larger loafs/bagels/etc. - you need to cut them prior to freezing, or else the defrosting process takes forever and you'll have a cold center to your bread, which is gross).

Usually grocery stores will throw out certain items on certain days. If you watch/pillage their dumpster regularly and start making a list of what you get on certain days of the week, you'll start to notice trends. Then, when you're low on a certain type of item (bread, veggies, dry goods), you'll know what days you're more likely to come out a winner. I'm in the process of making a really pretty monthly calendar to track my trends.

The plunder was a little more modest in scope compared to my last dive, since I was a little more discerning this go-round:

- 2 avocados
- 1 bag of sweet "kid-friendly" apples
- 1 red pepper
- 1 orange pepper
- 1 bag of mixed greens
- 3 red onions (yes, more onions. I thought red onions would make it better. But I still have a million onions).
- 1 loaf ciabatta (I froze this)
- 6 individual, small ciabattas (I also froze these - they're perfect for sandwiches)
- 3 limes

Mark came out with a little more than I did this time (his plunder included lemons, oranges, ONIONS, potatoes, hot peppers, etc). He ended up making a potato stew with it that sounded delicious. I asked him to take a picture so I could put it up on the blog as part of soup month, but apparently he ate it too quickly!