I haven’t been dumpstering since the start of covid, but my friend saved this nice lamb leg for a year in his freezer. I rubbed it with mustard and herbs and roasted it and made some peppers stuffed with cheese and rice to go with it.

This week I found a couple of unexpected items: some “chicken style” seitan chunks packaged in a tofu-style container, a bottle of cooking sake, baby broccoli, and a couple of nice bell peppers. With some other ingredients (carrots, onion, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, lime juice, a little leftover pineapple juice) I was able to put together a stir fry.

That night we also found a bunch of dried aloe snacks, Clif bars, cereal, pea shoots, little prepackaged meat and cheese trays (“adult lunchables.”) and so much burrata and mozzarella balls that we had to put most of them back.

On the way home from work Tuesday I found an enormous 15 inch cast iron skillet out on the curb. I carried it about a mile home, stripped and reseasoned it with olive oil.

Today I used it to cook a pork loin (seared on the stove, then 400°F for 35 min) with little potatoes, Brussels sprouts, onion and garlic, a little fennel, salt and pepper, and a homemade BBQ sauce a friend gave me earlier this year.

Also, last week we found approximately one hundred bars of chocolate.

I have not been cooking that much, because we have been finding forty or fifty boxes of day old sushi every time we go dumsptering lately, as well.

First you have to soak the nuts, overnight up to 48 hours. Then discard the soaking water and add fresh water. You should end up with twice as much water as nuts; I added less here to prevent the container from overflowing then added water to the final product.

If you’re using a kind of nut that has skins, you’ll want to rub those off at this point because they’ll make the milk bitter.

I used an immersion blender (you don’t need a super powerful blender for this) to grind up the nuts then strained them through a clean kitchen towel, wrung out all the milk, and discarded the solid stuff.

The result is a bit bitter, so I added a pinch of salt and a few teaspoons of sugar.

Homemade nut milk is good for about three days in the fridge. It will separate and need to be shaken before using, or you can scoop up the stuff on top and use it as cream.

I thawed them in ice water with salt and lemon juice after reading some stuff about dry and wet scallops and being pretty sure these are wet scallops because they’re pretty white. While preparing the scallops I roasted some broccoli and potatoes with shallots with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Once thawed I dried the scallops on some paper towels for about ten minutes and salted and peppered them. I just found a large jar of peppercorns the day before that somebody left on the sidewalk.

I seared the scallops in butter and oil with minced garlic (not hot enough, should have waited to flip to put the butter in, could have gotten a better sear, still good) for two minutes per side.

Served with lemon wedges and the roast vegetables.

It’s been a couple weeks and I’ve been gradually making my way through the stuff in my freezer, getting more confident that we’re pretty much always going to be able to find what we need when we need it, so I was ok with not taking everything I wanted. But I still wound up with a lot of stuff. Tonight was a really good night for milk. We found two half gallons of whole milk (one whole gallon that was half empty, and one half-gallon that was leaky and had to be poured into empty Gatorade and tonic bottles) a quart of goat milk, a half-gallon of rice milk, and a quart of chocolate oat milk. There were also several boxes of cereal. I only took one because I already have a bunch of cereal and was running out of places to put it. There was a large bag of serrano peppers but I only took a handful. We found 3 babkas and some meat as well. There was a whole dumpster full of tulips and impatiens, but none of them were in great shape. This is what I got:

• a little bit of smoked salmon
• smoked salmon poke bowl
• california roll
• frozen breaded calamari
• frozen chicken marsala
• frozen chicken parmigiana
• frozen teriyaki chicken
• 3 chicken verde tamales
• 6 eggs
• 1/2 gallon whole milk
• 1/2 gallon rice milk
• 32oz Greek yogurt
• small honey Greek yogurt
• Bellavitano cheese
• blueberry goat cheese
• sliced mozzarella
• tres leches cheese
• fontina
• sliced cheddar
• About 10 opal, pink lady and honeycrisp apples
• 1 banana
• grapefruit juice
• A handful of serrano peppers
• horseradish hummus
• small whole wheat tortillas
• ginger carrot artichoke soup
• marble rye bread
• garlic naan
• a large bag of pita
• minced garlic
• 4 bottles of pineapple juice and bitters drink mixer
• turmeric ginger chai
• mixed broccoli and cauliflower florets
• 1 carrot
• frozen broccoli
• 2 little avocados
• 2 spiced walnut goat cheese salads
• a Gorgonzola and walnut salad
• a quinoa salad
• a bag of walnuts
• a box of falafel mix
• dukkah spice
• gluten free bean-based Neapolitan ice cream flavored cereal
• a jelly donut
• cinnamon alphabet cookies
• cinnamon babka
• about 6 vine tomatoes
• a large can of diced tomatoes
• A bouquet of irises
• A potted azalea

The first step is to preheat the oven to 350°F and line a greased pan with puff pastry. I rolled the pastry out a bit to get it to the dimensions of the pan. Then line the inside of the pan with parchment paper and fill it with beans or pie weights. I used some old split peas, which is kind of a pain to use because so many little bean pieces can get stuck to the crust when you try to remove them. The pastry has to be refrigerated for 20 minutes, then baked for 20 minutes with the beans, then baked another 5-10 minutes with the beans and paper removed. After the crust was done I set it aside and lowered the temperature of the oven to 325°F.

While waiting for the crust, I boiled 3 heads worth of garlic for 3 minutes to blanch it then removed the skins and fried the garlic* in a tablespoon of olive oil for 2-3 minutes on high heat, then mixed in 1 cup of water and 2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar.* After letting this boil for ten minutes I added 2 tsp of chopped fresh rosemary,* about 1 tsp of freshly ground nutmeg,* a pinch of salt, and 3/4 tablespoon demerara sugar, and continued to boil until the syrup thickened, about 10 minutes.

In another bowl, I whisked together two eggs, salt and pepper, half a cup of heavy cream and half a cup of mascarpone.

Then I layered chunks of about 6 oz of smoked ricotta, 4 oz of mascarpone and the garlic cloves in the crust, poured the egg mixture over it, sprinkled a little more nutmeg on top, and baked it for about 40 minutes.

The tart, once cooled, will shrink back down in the pan a bit.

*store-bought items

I used regular food coloring to dye my eggs, but there are a number of ways food scraps can be used for dye. Turmeric, beets, onion skins, and red cabbage are fairly well-known. Avocado skins and pits can also make a nice pink.

I also wanted to clean out my freezer, since I have a tendency to forget about food once it’s in there, and to hoard the higher-quality items for later when possible. Because of that a lot of meat and fish piles up in there. I’ve been trying to only take home food I really want, because there’s always enough.

The first step is to saute 2 chopped strips of bacon, a small diced onion and 3 small (about 1 medium) peeled, diced potatoes in a little oil for about 10 minutes. Then I add a cup of water and a vegetable bouillon cube*, salt* and pepper to taste, about a teaspoon of Old Bay**, and a pound of cod, and let it boil, covered, until the fish and potatoes are fully cooked, about another 10 minutes. Then I add 3/4 cup each of milk and heavy cream and heat on low until it almost boils.

Garnished with parsley***, pepper and Old Bay. I forgot that I had some oyster crackers, too, which would have been good with this.

*store-bought

**no idea where this came from

***grown in my window

On medium low heat, I combined some vegetable oil,* a chopped strip of black forest bacon, a clove of garlic, half an onion, and about a teaspoon each of cumin and cayenne pepper.* Once the onions started to brown, I turned the heat up and added the beans, and mashed them once heated through while continuing to cook them, and added salt* to taste.

Meanwhile, I warmed some tortillas on the griddle, topped them with the finished beans, salsa, Colby Jack cheese, and avocado and rolled them into burritos.

*store-bought items