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which_chickOn Thursday after work and lesson, I stopped over at Lala's to feed Bird and get the playpen settled for the night -- check hay and water, fix Friday Breakfast Pans, etc. At Lala's, she was Please Take Some Vegetables!!.
This happens sometimes. Occasionally the food bank that Trys's FiL is associated with gets several 50-lb bags of fresh onions that they cannot give away (even like three onions at a time, they're totally not asking someone to take fifty effing lbs of onions at one go). That happened two years ago and we had French Onion Soup with Crusty Bread all winter long. Sometimes Lala's mom goes to the sale barn and buys shit she doesn't even know what it is for because it was only a buck, ask me about tubes of chorizo this summer. Sometimes they butchered a steer and thought he would dress out at around 400 lbs and they got 540 lbs of meat which, ok, YAY but they only have 400 lbs of freezer space... and it's August. Take some beef, please! And sometimes unexpected food is from a truck wreck on one of the assorted interstates that goes through Breezewood PA (where I live).
If there's a truck wreck, they are not allowed to deliver wreck food even if it's entirely edible, hermetically sealed in individual plastic bags, with those bags in pristine cardboard boxes, 100% nothing wrong with the food except that it was in a wreck. It is economically not worth the time of the produce company, the trucking company, the people who clean up the wreck, etc. to sort through the load, generate a list of what can still be sold, manage needed refrigeration before spoilage happens, find somewhere to sell the remaining good stock, yadda yadda yadda.
It's simply too much trouble. They write the whole thing off, all the damn time.
But... if you live in Greater Rednecklandia and you happen to know a guy who winds up towing and/or cleaning up after wrecks... and you readily accept free food items IN QUANTITY on virtually no notice, regardless of what sort of food it is... you sometimes get freebie "fell off a truck" food that is not stolen but has literally fallen off a truck. You can't count on it or predict it. You have no control over what you get or when. Just know that for every truck full of food that wrecks on the highway, there is a shadow distribution system of people who will 100% gather up all the not-destroyed food and find homes for it.
Thursday I got four 12 oz bags of fresh green beans, four bags of butternut squash cubes, four bags of halved brusells sprouts, two 32 oz bags of baby carrots, and a big bag of "spinach with mixed greens". None of it is expired or wilted or weird. Just... truck wreck produce. This was not even half of what Lala got, but it was all I could handle. Some I will eat fresh. Some I will blanch and freeze. But none of it will be wasted.
Dinner this evening was Haricots Verts (d'une épave de camion) Avec Bacon. It was delicious.
(The Redneck Bingo Card most assuredly has a space for "I have willingly eaten truck wreck food". It's next to "My truck is old enough to drive itself" and "I have ridden an ATV while drunk".)
This happens sometimes. Occasionally the food bank that Trys's FiL is associated with gets several 50-lb bags of fresh onions that they cannot give away (even like three onions at a time, they're totally not asking someone to take fifty effing lbs of onions at one go). That happened two years ago and we had French Onion Soup with Crusty Bread all winter long. Sometimes Lala's mom goes to the sale barn and buys shit she doesn't even know what it is for because it was only a buck, ask me about tubes of chorizo this summer. Sometimes they butchered a steer and thought he would dress out at around 400 lbs and they got 540 lbs of meat which, ok, YAY but they only have 400 lbs of freezer space... and it's August. Take some beef, please! And sometimes unexpected food is from a truck wreck on one of the assorted interstates that goes through Breezewood PA (where I live).
If there's a truck wreck, they are not allowed to deliver wreck food even if it's entirely edible, hermetically sealed in individual plastic bags, with those bags in pristine cardboard boxes, 100% nothing wrong with the food except that it was in a wreck. It is economically not worth the time of the produce company, the trucking company, the people who clean up the wreck, etc. to sort through the load, generate a list of what can still be sold, manage needed refrigeration before spoilage happens, find somewhere to sell the remaining good stock, yadda yadda yadda.
It's simply too much trouble. They write the whole thing off, all the damn time.
But... if you live in Greater Rednecklandia and you happen to know a guy who winds up towing and/or cleaning up after wrecks... and you readily accept free food items IN QUANTITY on virtually no notice, regardless of what sort of food it is... you sometimes get freebie "fell off a truck" food that is not stolen but has literally fallen off a truck. You can't count on it or predict it. You have no control over what you get or when. Just know that for every truck full of food that wrecks on the highway, there is a shadow distribution system of people who will 100% gather up all the not-destroyed food and find homes for it.
Thursday I got four 12 oz bags of fresh green beans, four bags of butternut squash cubes, four bags of halved brusells sprouts, two 32 oz bags of baby carrots, and a big bag of "spinach with mixed greens". None of it is expired or wilted or weird. Just... truck wreck produce. This was not even half of what Lala got, but it was all I could handle. Some I will eat fresh. Some I will blanch and freeze. But none of it will be wasted.
Dinner this evening was Haricots Verts (d'une épave de camion) Avec Bacon. It was delicious.
(The Redneck Bingo Card most assuredly has a space for "I have willingly eaten truck wreck food". It's next to "My truck is old enough to drive itself" and "I have ridden an ATV while drunk".)
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