Dumpster Bruschetta

Petra and I were having an IM conversation about places to be out and about en femme. I mentioned I hadn't as yet, but thought it would be amusing to go dumpster diving.

By way of background, I have long had this hobby, its fun, eco-friendly, a little edgy and gives one a reason to skulk around in the night. Forest Gump's mom had it wrong like is like the contents of a dumpster. Some finds are better than chocolate, Some, considerably less so.

I find I am more inclined to dive when its recreational than a necessity. I have always had a talent for finding needful things, but the ego takes a little hit if one thinks one is reduced to such as opposed to choosing to.

Apartments are always best on weekends especially at the end of the month so normally I wouldn't have gone on a Thursday night. Wanting to have something more interesting to report than some nice ripe tomatoes and a half peck of slightly bird pecked apples, I headed for a favorite gated apartment complex. Its newer, the residents are young and still running up their credit card, so I never leave completely empty handed. I recently refinished a beautiful dining room table from there. It was late enough that there weren't any cars to follow through the gate, so I burned some calories walking the circuit around the parking lot. A couple of open gates denied me the fun of hopping the fence. I almost did anyway for kicks now that I am no longer carrying a field-packs weight of extra caloric reserves around my midsection. I hadn't exactly crossdressed for the excursion but didn't want to risk ruining my one dollar thrift store Calvin Klein womens jeans, so I kept it light and resisted the urge to actually dive in so to speak.

Even with such a cursory search I came away with a GI Joe (he was neither in mufti nor Barbie clothes, just plain BDU's), a pair of apparently outgrown, good condition leather upper old-style roller skates in size 5, some misc snap together build a creature type toys, and a 52" five blade ceiling fan.

Grocery store yielded Roma and slicing tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, a small pumpkin, a very ripe avocado, a couple of Maya sweet onions, vacuum packed individually sliced reduced-fat baby swiss cheese, and six crusty, baguettes. I left a dozen baguettes, a ripe mango because they seem to go un-eaten around here and lots more.

Before I left I had weighed myself after eating 1/2 a bag of chips. despite eating 900 calories of a full bag of chips then night before I was at the lowest weight in 10 years, at 132 and figured I should have a cookie.I had several Oreos but sliced out the lard sugar filling. No one needs those kind of empty calories...who thought of sweetened lard anyway?

After washing up the produce, I sliced the end off a baguette, split it open and drizzled with olive oil. A little oregano, garlic salt, basil, then sliced tomato, and topped with the cheese. broiled till bubbly then drizzled garlic infused red wine vinegar over that...Yummy!