I dumpstered some lovely little greenbeans so I immediately made what I like to call Greekbeans. You’ll need:
dumpster greenbeans
2 dumpster tomatoes, diced
1 small dumpster onion, diced
juice of 1/2 dumpster lemon
garlic
salt and pepper
2 Tbsp olive oil
You could blanch the greenbeans by dropping them in boiling water for a minute – or steam them – but I’m pretty lazy so I generally don’t. The greenbeans aren’t as tender the lazy way but whatever, if it gets food in my mouth sooner then I’m ok with it. Heat the oil in a pan and add the chopped onion.
Oh yeah, you should pinch or cut off the ends of the greenbeans to make them all pretty and stuff. You could also break them in half if you want; I like to keep mine long.
Saute onions until tender then add the garlic and cook until it starts to turn golden. Add the greenbeans, tomatoes, and lemon juice. Cover and simmer for as long as you can wait. I can usually go for about 10 minutes, 5 when I’m extra hungry. Then longer you simmer the more tender your Greekbeans will be. Season with salt and pepper. Eat with someone you love. Or someone Greek.
ROYGBIVegetables. And those are just the scrubbed veggies.
Still more to clean up:
This week’s finds:
We only went to 3 dumpsters, but we got a TON of stuff. This is just a portion of it.
Also got a bunch of bagged salad mix, veggies (broccoli, carrots, cauliflower), and slaw mix. All in perfectly edible condition. And we found two bags of pistachios (score!), several boxes of chocolate covered peanuts, and a couple boxes of a nuts/dried fruit mix. Crazy.
So much delicious food. Can you believe this is all supposed to be rotting away in a landfill right now? Not even compost to grow more food with. A landfill. Pure waste.
We also got a can of spaghetti sauce and a can of dog food which is probably being eaten by my friend’s cats right now. Eat up, kittens! Even cats can be little anarchist freegans!
Until I get around to posting more delectable rescued vegan meals, please enjoy this bizarro.com video that asks, “Are humans natural carnivores?” Answer: duh, no.
I dumpstered a bunch of plums, but I knew we wouldn’t eat them all so I made an upside-down plum cake to use them up. The cake turned out pretty well but next time I’ll definitely use a bigger pan. If I’d used a wider pan I would have been able to fit in more plums and the cake would have cooked more evenly. As it was, it took forever for the middle to bake completely. Baking never has been my strong point…
Ingredients:
1 1/2 c flour
1 c sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 c any kind of juice (or water)
1/3 c oil
1 Tbsp white vinegar
as many dumpster plums as you can fit in the pan, pitted and sliced
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.
In a separate bowl, combine oil, vinegar, and juice. For mine I used some blueberry/pomegranate juice that my friend bought and didn’t like. It made the batter an awesome pink color.
Quickly mix wet ingredients into dry, stirring quickly to combine ingredients well and get out the big lumps.
Arrange fruit slices on bottom of pan.
Pour into pan on top of the fruit.
Bake for 25-35 minutes or until golden on top and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Baking time will depend on pan size. Let it rest for at least half an hour before you attempt to invert it onto a plate.
A lot of vegan french toast recipes use bananas, but I just don’t get it. When you use bananas it makes everything taste like… bananas. I want to taste french toast, so here’s what I do.
Ingredients:
dumpster bread, sliced
2 Tbsp flour
1/2 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
soymilk
margarine/oil
dumpster fruit, optional
In a bowl mix the flour and sugar together while whisking in the soymilk. Slowly add soymilk until you have a smooth, thin batter then stir in the vanilla. Heat the margarine in a pan. Dip a slice of bread in the batter, coating both sides, and fry on each side until golden brown. Serve with slices of dumpster fruit, a little powdered sugar, and maple syrup. This makes about 4 pieces of french toast so you can multiply the ingredients to your liking.
Delicious vegan french toast with no unwanted banana taste!
Only the veggies for this sushi were dumpstered. I didn’t have sushi rice, or want to spend money on it, so I used brown rice. It was the first time I ever used brown rice for sushi and it worked out really well. And it’s better for you. I just added about a 1/4 cup more water than usual to cook it and that helped make it sticky enough.
sushi mat (or get creative w/tinfoil, parchment paper, etc.)
Thinly slice the veggies and prepare the rice. Let it cool down to room temperature. Mix the vinegar and sugar together. You’re supposed to warm it up so the sugar dissolves more quickly, but I’m usually too impatient to do that. You can just let it dissolve in the vinegar while you wait for the rice to cool. Stir the vinegar mixture into the rice when cooled.
Batter and fry the veggies (except cucumber and avocado, of course). Somehow I didn’t get pictures of this step, but you can check out the link above for my post on making veggie tempura. Places the nori on the mat and spread rice onto a little less than one half of the sheet. Keep a bowl full of water next to you so you can keep your hands wet while you spread. It will keep the rice from sticking to you.
Layer the veggies, tuck them in, and start rolling.
Put a little water on the last bit of the nori to help it stick and form the roll.
Slice the roll. Use a damp towel to clean the knife after every cut, makes it a lot easier and cleaner.
I wanted to make some leek and potato soup but the dumpster did not bless me with potatoes so I had to do a little research. I found this recipe on vegweb.com, one of my favorite vegan recipe sites ever. Back in the day it was pretty simple, but now they have thousands of recipes and lots of tasty looking user-submitted photos. Sometimes I go there just to look at all the food photos.
2 cups lentils
1/2 head of cabbage (or lettuce in this case), roughly chopped
3-4 leeks
1/2 onion, chopped
carrots
2 tomatoes
2 tsp basil
2 tsp oregano
salt & pepper
olive or vegetable oil
water or broth
Boil the water or broth and add the lentils, cabbage/lettuce, a little salt, and some leek tops (you’ll take those out later). Reduce heat, cover, and simmer while you chop more veggies.
Slice the leeks in half lengthwise then chop them up.
Chop up the carrots and onions. I used about 1/3 of a bag of baby carrots and a few pearl onions that I dumpstered.
Saute the veggies in a couple Tbsp oil and add a pinch of salt and pepper.
Add the sauteed veggies and tomatoes to the lentils. You can also remove the leek tops now. Add the basil, oregano, and more salt & pepper to taste. Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes.
I dumpstered a bunch of plums, but I knew we wouldn’t eat them all so I made an upside-down plum cake to use them up. The cake turned out pretty well but next time I’ll definitely use a bigger pan. If I’d used a wider pan I would have been able to fit in more plums and the cake would have cooked more evenly. As it was, it took forever for the middle to bake completely. Baking never has been my strong point…
