January 2010 Digs in Germany - A picturesque Sampler

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Happy New Year 2010,

In the beginning there was a dumpster.....
new finds at
ALNATURA Super Natur Markt, Frankfurt Bornheim

good organic carrots make good organic carrot juice - Tasty!!!!!!
and they make an excellent beginning for another great food-salvaging year

The wintery weather creates excellent conditions for thrown out food to last.
Normally perishables are recommended to be kept between +4 and +8 deg C.
Right now temperatures are hovering around freezing, apples and many other sweet fruits don't freeze until temperatures are well below freezing. Others like tropical bananas don't like frost!
Except when severe frost freezes delicate lettuce and the-like quicker than a rescue mission can be arranged. Bread obviously does really well and when I find lots, I try to find empty freezer space and/or can give it away!

from ALNATURA, Königststein im Taunus, Jan.10,2010


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ALNATURA Super Natur Markt, Frankfurt Sachsenhausen
Jan 11, 2010

nice shit!
The people who work there, ordered as part of their job description to throw out this food, they may not take home themselves and which they have a hard time affording themselves must surely go crazy with
post traumatic waste syndrome!

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We went to Mespelbrunn-Heimbuchenthal near Aschaffenburg in the Spessart Forest Park,
to celebrate my mom's 70th birthday.
Jan 12, 2019
Many family and friends came and we all ate and stayed over at the hotel "Lamm"
where i was watching closely what food might get thrown out from our dinner and afternoon coffee and cake session......
.......but more importantly, on our way there I had noticed from the car, that 1.5 km from our hotel in nearby Mespelbrunn, there was a fairly new REWE Supermarket.

So I used the break between Coffee and Champagne, Cake and Dinner, to go for a walk through the snow and forest up the valley, of course I brought a little stuff-sack, for the event that I would hit gold.

Well there was lots and lots of food, and I took what i could fit into my bag, though not organic, I figured I could always give away what I won't eat to some friends of my parents, who were familiar with my tasty hobby!




While most people hunt for their food in huge trap cages on dinky wheels,
the freebies are out there lone and dark, freezing, which should only prolong their off-shelf life!


Among the finds were sliced cheese packages, yellow sausage, a kind of specialty cheese made from moldy milk (Handkäse) actually a favorite of mine,
surprising:
The expiry date, Jan14, 2010, had not even been reached on none of the things I picked,
if you zoom in you can see it in the bins on the packages

squeaky-clean-corporate-contrasts


The famous villains and robbers from the Spessart hills, no longer waiting in ambush alongside muddy forest tracks, they now hide their evil faces behind squeaky-clean corpoRATe logos, surrounded with "black-crack-oil-and-tar" covered parking lots for the "black-crack-oil"dependent "power-wheel-chairs" of our age (the most luxurious kinds of wheelchairs around, enabling the mentally handicapped/challenged-to-walk-more-than-100m citizens to reach their feedlots)
My feedlot too! Thanks!

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ALNATURA Super Natur Markt, Frankfurt Sachsenhausen
Jan 15, 2010



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ALNATURA Super Natur Markt, Frankfurt Sachsenhausen
Jan 16, 2010



"Ohne Worte - Without Words"




A lot of todays food I took to Aschaffenburg and the Odenwald while visiting friends over the weekend, way to much good stuff to leave behind or to eat oneself in many weeks


A freezer load of organic breads to Aschaffenburg

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An Exploration of TEGUT Supermarkets between Frankfurt and Aschaffenburg
Jan 19, 2010

a supermarket chain founded on Steiner- or Anthroposophic principles,
20% of sales are organic,
they aswell as Alnatura give much of "unsaleable" food to organisations such as:
"Die Tafeln"
but as always they have no need for it all!


"Fairytale-like Moments"


Certainly a rich dumpster on certain days, though locked and only occasionally accessible, one can expect a good amount of organic food there since nearly 20% of their sales are organic.
I only saw some frozen meat and left it at that!


"Artwork from Nature" ....................and .............................."setting Standards"

Industriestraße 24
63811 Stockstadt


Then I went to Pflaumheim 10 km from there for the next one!
Good one!
Unlocked dumpsters!

Rudelzauer Straße
63762 Großostheim-Pflaumheim

Pflaumheim is a rural town with some old charming buildings and churches


found a few organic bananas which i took and some crappy junk cakes which i left, and some poison mouse-bait in the regular trash. Apparently expired!

Next thing I know, two female employees came out and tried to chase me out of there. I refuse to return the food, which I rescued from destruction, back into the bin!
When the vocal one of the two threatens to call the police, I ask her if she also wants me to make a fuss over the illegally dumped mouse-poison in the regular garbage (right picture above). Immediately there is a change in tone, and a defensiveness appearing:

"Ooooh, that wasn't me, i didn't work there this morning!!! Let me have a look...."

All of a sudden she's more friendly and I am able to explain that I am documenting the wastefulness of our society!
She actually says that she will look into this mouse poison thing, but strangely enough for the time being leaves the boxes in there!
Well who knows what happened, I hope she came to her senses and did something about it!


Slogan of nearby regional water-treatment plant:
"Water is Life"

Industrialized nations spend billions each year to clean water for drinking from a variety of sources that are under continuous threat from industrial, modern agricultural and household as well as traffic related pollutants.
A cost which is paid by all living things with their long term sometimes even short term health.
As well as future generations, that will have to pay dearly for the often still unrecognized/invisible long term cumulative effects of our mistreatment of our home planet!
Poisons that end up in the dumpsters and percolate into groundwater, fertilizers that end up in our drinking water directly.
Pesticides in peoples conventionally grown foods

At the next and last TEGUT shop, no photograph, i forgot my duty, I was able to find some nice organic peppers, cherry tomatoes and a good load of mushrooms in pretty good shape, Unlocked dumpster, so that's good for those who might want to rescue some good food in:
tegut... nah & gut
Hasselstraße 26
63762 Großostheim-Ringheim

Heading home!

Jan 20, 2010

Mom cleaning nice mushrooms from TEGUT for lunch

My parents as children were both forced to flee from their homes at the end of World War II,
although they have worked up material wealth all around themselves, they have still retained a common sense regarding food, the looks and smells of it, so that the mere fact that it came from a dumpster is not the most important thing to observe.
They had to eat out of dumpsters and survived with their families, although the stuff they ate was never such nice stuff as i bring home.
First they were in shock and disbelief, still shaking their heads when i come with the next load!
"Unbelievable!"
What does it look like, what does it smell like, does it taste bad?
The expiry date means nothing more than a recommended date by which to use things.
From Experience we know for dairy, often weeks or months later it's still good.

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ALNATURA Super Natur Markt, Frankfurt Sachsenhausen

Jan 21, 2010

AND
Jan 23, 2010

food for a week


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ALNATURA Super Natur Markt, Frankfurt Bockenheim,
Jan 26, 2010

a totally insane amount of oranges and mandarins in nets, TOMATOS ASIDE
standard procedure, rip open the nets quickly and take out the bad ones 10-25% only, leaves me quickly with 10-15 kg of great organic fruit to take home and juice

my cruiser getting loaded down with the goods

later at home, YUM!

Orange Juice, Orange Juice, gotta have my orange juice, reminds me of the famous late physicist and Nobel Prize winner Dr Richard Feynman, who could occasionally be heard singing and drumming bongos using a modulated way of singing english so it would become almost intelligible, singing this orange juice thing such that it sounded like a very tribal and foreign chant, that was later used by the Ondar Project mixed in with Tuvan Throatsinging,
well here comes Richard Feynman on YouTube drumming up for Orange Juice!!! My kind of Man!

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ALNATURA Super Natur Markt, Frankfurt Bornheim,
Jan 28, 2010

with friends A. & J.


Nice glow, nice marketing, feel good strategy using colors according to Anthropological teachings, Rudolf Steiner, would have been happy but not about the colorful waste that is produced on a daily basis

first, a quick scan of what is available, without digging deeper into hidden treasures
This could be rich!!!!

Then we hit a jackpot of dairy and meats

screening and packing, we left a lot behind.....thinking hard who to give stuff to

Afterwards a little peek at ALNATURA in Frankfurt Sachsenhausen
ON MY WAY HOME, oooooooooopppssss!!!!

...that's where i hit a jackpot of oranges and mandarins, generally these red nets with usually one or two squished or moldy ones that I just sort out...


and here back home, taking stock of the afternoons finds in detail

....Mango, 4 boxes of cherry tomatoes, grapes, sausages for the neighbors and parents' freezer(i don't eat meat anymore)
3x irish salmon, spanish air dried pork, 8x Chiemgauer Naturfleisch, tomatoes, loads of oranges and mandarins (approx 10-15 kg), spelt-buns, toast, a head of red cabbage, brocolli....


....Camembert, tofu, goat and sheep cheeses, kefir, 3 giant red beets, butter...


sTiLlLife
there still IS life in this!!
The Loot of the day in total, minus what A. & J. had hauled away
Perhaps I should change my name to Loot-wig (from Ludwig and "wigged out" meaning "crazy high")

Well, that's that for January I think!!!
Many Thanks for all the abundance!

FareShare & Feeding The 5000: Free Food Event In Trafalgar Square

This happened on December 16th on Trafalgar Square in London.

Tristam Stewart, british historian and freegan, offered free lunch for 5000 people!
6 tons of food that would have otherwise been wasted, thrown away by farmers, supermarkets and wholesalers alike, because of cosmetic reasons, overproduction and/or expired sell-by dates, was perfectly edible.
The event was not pulled off to feed hungry people, but designed to expose the wate of our western consumer society and inspire people to more mindful eating habits.



Stewart has also written a book on this waste on a global scale:

Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal

New Years Surprise at REWE shop in Kempten, Bavaria, foothills of the alps

Some of my best friends hijacked me from Frankfurt and took me to the scenic south of Germany, to Kempten im Allgäu to spend New Year in good company

We brought along a lot of the good organic breads, apples and other goodies from Alnatura's rich dumpsters in the Bankster City. Boy did we eat well!

And then shops again due to close for a few days, over new year, and another opportunity to check regional differences, aswell as differences between the different chains.
How do they dispose of their garbage, unsaleable food items?

In the Region around Kempten, they have a chain of food stores, FENEBERG, that sells quite a few locally branded products under the name "Von Hier" (From here). Of course like any supermarket, shelves are filled to the brim, stuff almost falling into your shopping cart, clerks constantly sorting out slightly blemished fruit and veggies, abundance suggested at every turn, to entice the shoppers to buy more than they really need, eat beyond real hunger and appetite. We've become a culture of gluttons, obesity rising even in Europe
And the dumpsters are usually totally hidden. I never found a Feneberg shop that had an accessible dumpster, where a food recycler had any meaningful access, except perhaps on the day when the trash truck comes and picks up the stuff, and the bins a re rolled out onto the sidewalk, i saw that once and there was bread and stuff, but we didn't need any, neither was it organic.

Once inside such a shop i saw a bin where they had been collecting slightly damaged organic oranges, mandarins and other fruit, ready to be carted to the back of the store and dumped. I asked a cheerful friendly attendant what they do with that stuff, she replied nonchalantly "oh, this is just written off".
I must have looked a bit perplexed, because she offered a clearer statement right away "...We just throw it away".
Well that's basically what i had expected, and so i offered to buy the net with oranges where one was obviously moldy, but all others were fine, just so they wouldn't be chucked, Most people would never even think to buy them, but they offered me a 50 % discount on the bag, and so i rescued these lovely happy juice balls.

On the 31st of December we went to check out a REWE store near the train station in Kempten, my friend went in the front door, not heeding my cautionary advice, we ought to first check out the containers in the back and buy if need be what we cannot find for free.
So I was left to my own devices and was magnetically pulled to the containers behind the parking lot, basically in the open accessible to anyone who would like to have a look.
First it was this I saw when I opened the lid:



From this bin I was able to sort out 5 or 6 kg of perfectly firm and unblemished oranges, Now i had all those in addition to the 3 kg of organic oranges i had bought earlier at a downtown natural food store! Oh well, fresh pressed OJ is one of my favorites, so I am not complaining, and happily proceeded in my mission to rescue as many as I could, and even scored a kg of bananas too.

Then I went for the large blue plastic dumpster on wheels, and lo and behold, was awarded with a real jackpot of high quality "Niederegger Marzipan" all expired within the fall, the latest expiration date on the 24th of December 2009, so just about a week prior.



fortuneately I was prepared with a bunch of empty plastic bags which i always carry an ample supply of for these occasions, and just lunged in there stuffing the bags as fast as I could with as many boxes, metal cases and heart shaped tins of this delicious and decadent and really expensive stuff. I was really elated, perhaps with a pre ingestion sugar buzz.
When my friend came out of the store i awaited him gleefully by our bikes. He was shocked and delighted at once. An elderly lady locking her bikes next to ours, was also initiated into our jolly secret, and with surprise and disbelief accepted a box of specialty marzipan Bars as a new years present.
I also tried to share some with a few kids who arrived, but they kindly declined the offer, not sure if they did so because most kids are drilled to not accept gifts, foods and rides from strangers, of if the forwarded answer, that they didn't like MARZIPAN, was indeed the truth.

One thing was certain though, at home at my friends appartment we would be heroes, for his wife loves that Niederegger Marzipan from Lübeck in the north of Germany.


Later at home I added the prices of the Marzipan, as on the price tags of all the boxes and came to an astonishing 230 EUROs Total!

We really suffered greatly starting the great decimation program of this candy as soon as we got home.

Perhaps most surprising again, the telltale clues that employees are not allowed to take home such stuff. ONe of the packages thrown out, and I did only take 60 % of what was there, was missing a few pieces, a s if someone had eaten some in the store, but thrown out the rest, for fear of reprisals or of even loosing their jobs.
Most of the Candy was actually in excellent condition, there were a few rather dried out ones, but most were still tasty, chewy and moist and as good as any good marzipan I have ever eaten!