Since David and I were married, everytime a vehicle had an accident or was damaged, it was because of dear hubby.  I won't go into the long list (but it is looooong!) so as not to completely bash my poor husband.  But it has almost been a point of bragging rights for me that I had never damaged our cars.

Until yesterday.

We were coming home from church and decided to cut through Norwalk so we could dumpster dive at the Fareway.  Dumpster diving was a good decision as we got TONS of great produce -  tons of cucumber, oranges, grapes and apples, potatoes, brocolli, green onions, and several shrink wrapped packages of peppers and onions already cut up and just begging to be made into fajitas.

Anyway, we decided to cut through the back roads to come home.  The paved roads weren't bad at all.  Then we turned on the dirt road to head to our little piece of countryside.  It was so beautiful - snow packed roads, snow falling, driving through the woods - it always makes me think of that song:

"Over the river and thru the wood,
To grandfather's house we go;
The horse knows the way
To carry the sleigh,
Thru the white and drifted snow, oh!"

The road ends at a T where you can go right to the Banner shooting range, or left, over a little bridge, and the road continues.  I put on the brakes extra early since everyone knows that driving in snow isn't a problem - it's stopping in snow that is a problem.  Well, the brakes immediately went into their anti-lock vibrations, which I HATE!  David insists that it would be worse without them, but you might as well just be sliding because you still can't stop the car with anti-lock brakes.  I tried pumping them, but there was just no traction.

We lucked out that there has been so much snow that has not melted and more snow on top of that because instead of running off the road and into the creek, we plowed into, and half on top of, a big snowbank.  I did take out the sign that told how much weight the bridge supported.

We also were lucky that the Banner shooting range was right there.  A car came down and picked up David and brought him down to find someone with a 4 wheel drive.  Then the 4 wheel drive came down and brought me and the girls to the main building so we could be warm while they located a tow strap and got the van pulled off the embankment.  The guys at the shooting range were so nice.  They gave all sorts of goodies to the girls while we waited - a camouflage drink holder, a Dept. of Natural Resources water bottle, and a duck call.  What more could you ask for?!

Anyway, apparently we were the third vehicle that morning to plow into the embankment at the end of the road.  When we drove out we could see where the other cars had ended up.  That made me feel a little better about crashing the van.  Also the fact that the car is okay.  There is a only a little place on the bottom side of the bumper that got bent as the van was yanked off the embankment.

I had David drive the rest of the way home after that little adventure onto the snowbank.  To further make me feel better, when we came to the first turn we could make to go home, David wasn't able to get the car slowed down in time to make the turn.  So we went straight, veeeerrrry sloooooowly to the next turn and made that one.  But if David had been faced with the end of a road like I had been, we would have been in the ditch again!

Posted in: dumpster diving, snow on Monday, February 8, 2010 at at 8:42 AM 2 comments    

David is really getting into this diving for food now.  He hit up one store on the way home from work yesterday and had an excellent score for right before the holidays:

Posted in: dumpster diving, God Lane on Sunday, December 20, 2009 at at 10:13 PM 1 comments    

After our first experience with dumpster diving yesterday, we feel like our lives are changed forever.  First of all, it was keeping David from sleeping last night.  He was blown away by how much good food was in the trash and wondering why can't the food get distributed to the needy.  It is a hard reality to face.  To realize that the dark, underbelly of this creature that we call abundance is an incredible amount of waste - it's a painful pill to swallow.

Obviously, we aren't going to be able to correct the system.  But, we can do our small little part - like forming our Dumpster Diving group.  A small band of us working together can help take some of the waste and let it do what it was created to do - feed and nourish a human being.  I am looking forward to our first meeting this Friday night.  And after some more diving on our way across town to go to church, we have some awesome stuff to share with them!  See this little beauty?  This is an organic Simply Coffee iced coffee which retails for $1.99.


See this... this is a box which had 44 of these in 3 flavors (latte, mocha, and vanilla) which we found in a dumpster this morning.  They had a sell by date of 12/11, so they went in the trash on 12/12 and we rescued them on 12/13.  I'm not a coffee gal, but hubby had two of these today and attests that they are delicious!

Posted in: dumpster diving, Slow Lane on Sunday, December 13, 2009 at at 8:21 PM 0 comments    

If you read up on the web, there are staggering statistics of the amount of edible food that gets trashed and hauled off to our landfills.  It is estimated that 40-50% of our food ends up in the landfill.  You might wonder, how come perfectly good food is being tossed?

Many and varied reasons.
Packaged food gets dented, banged up, hole in it, etc.  Into the trash it goes.  Perhaps it has reached it's sell by date.  Sometimes a new shipment comes in and what is still on the shelf goes in the trash.

With produce, if you have a bag and there is one bad one in the bag, into the trash for the whole bag.  If something is blemished, oddly shaped, discolored - it's gone.  We are a picky and finicky crowd here in our abundance and we want perfect produce. (or as close to it as possible)

So after lots of reading and watching tons of You Tube videos I talked to hubby about diving for food.  His initial reaction was, "Alright!  I'm in!  I'll do it!"

David actually got off work at a decent hour tonight so I asked if he would hit up a store on the way home.  He wasn't as thrilled about it when it came right down to the actual act.  But he agreed to give it a shot.  He was talking to me on the phone when he arrived at an Aldi's and said he would call me back when he was done.

Well, he called back really quickly so I thought it must have been a bust.  Maybe an employee had come out of the store or maybe there wasn't anything in the dumpster. (I had tried going to a store this past Monday, and the bin had been emptied that day)  But to my surprise he started telling me excitedly about all the great stuff he got and how he didn't even really begin to make a dent in the amount of food in the dumpster.  He just took the stuff "on top" rather than digging through the mounds of food.

"I'm going to another store!  I'll call you later." he said and hung up.

He admitted to me after getting home and helping me sort through the haul that if there hadn't been anything in that first dumpster, he would have never gone again.  Good thing it was full! :)

Anyway, it is unbelievable the amount of food we got, and even more sad, how much more that is destined for the landfill.

Anyway, here are some pics of our first haul.   Mmmmmm, bread!

1. Smaller stores are more likely to have easily accessed dumpsters.  The larger stores often lock them up with gates or have huge trash compactors to destroy the food.
2. Check your local laws.  Some states have made it illegal to dumpster dive.  Most states it is still legal as long as it isn't locked up.
3. Don't make a mess!  Keep it clean so the store doesn't have a reason to lock it up.
4. Do some drive by's when you are out and see what stores have easily accessed dumpsters.
5. It doesn't hurt to ask.  Some people have reported that asking managers for food destined for the trash nets them all they could want without having to dive at all.  Often they will ask for the food to give to their farm animals. (so there is no concern on the stores part of liability issues, but truly, what isn't fit for human consumption, can be fed to the chickens, goats, or pigs)
6. Last but not least, if you are lucky enough to live near a Trader Joe's, these are a highly coveted dive spot yielding a wide variety of great food.

Posted in: dumpster diving, Raw_Vegan Lane on Saturday, December 12, 2009 at at 7:57 PM 8 comments    

I may have to go dumpster diving soon.

Actually, I was just reading about an organization that picks up the food being thrown away from various groceries.  It is then cooked and served to the homeless.  Now there is an idea to be explored!

Having recently joined the ranks of those whose food future is in peril, I would dearly love to get my hands on  some free food.  I could totally get into that.  I have gone dumpster diving in the past, back in Arizona.  I remember talking to a police officer about it too - whether or not it was legal.  I remember him answering that it was technically illegal, but it would just depend on the officer and the situation whether or not they would actually enforce it.

Amazing, isn't it?  That taking trash out of a dumpster is illegal.  Who would've thunk?!

Posted in: dumpster diving, Slow Lane on Thursday, November 26, 2009 at at 2:43 PM 0 comments