Freegan Haul

Yummi! EPIC bc of where it came from and how super clean and quick the dive was.

Sheckys Girls Night Out NYC

It was my first time going to this Girls Night Out Shecky's event, a friend sent me an awesome deal for tickets just $9 !  Honestly, not a horrible event but we left as soon as we got our drinks worth in and more.  I'd say the gift bag pictured above is cool but not super exciting.  Was it worth it? Well it depends ..if your just going with your girls and don't mind standing ..it was crowded and a line to get in as well.  You do get cheap drinks from I guess ok looking male bartenders.  I'd go if you want a cheap night of drinks with the gals.  Their was promo dessert wines which I loved, a beer section of Guinness girly beers and a regular drinks section. The reason I wouldn't recommend it to some people is that it was a little ghetto, NO ONE really seemed into shopping.  I'd say when I went 90% of the people were ghetto and loud and trying to cut.  Some people I saw brought in a bag of fry chicken from outside and just at it at one of the few standing tables.  But considering the bag had two full price products granted everyone gets something  a little different  And you can use this a quick pregame drinks place and goodie bag is worth at least $6 alone.  But thank goodness that I had plans afterwards.

Rite Aid Black Friday 2013

Starting with the out right freebies!

The food deals, honestly lowest pricest I've seen for these products.  And who doesn't need baking soda?

The Awesome quick cheap stocking stuffers or gift basket products.

I will say that these Home Repair gift cards are golden!! I'm going to get the max, its buy a $50 card and get $10 up reward back.  Thats 20% easy discount!

And the hidden sneaky deal is the Kushyfoot products limit 6, at $1.99 each they are so freakin worth it, it even includes the to go flats!

Rite Aid Look Ahead sales starting Nov 24

Finally, a reason to get excited and back into Rite Aid.!! Lots of freebies for the weekly sale starting Nov 24!  All these freebies are fine to get because you can easily roll your up Rewards to their Black Friday Freebies!  I personally plan to get my freebies on first day and then use them to roll onto the AWESOME Tide aka P&G deal they have.  You do need lots of your P&G coupons though but hopefully you took heed to what I've been saying and stockpiled a bunch of these booklets.

Tide Deal
Scenario 1
Buy 6 Tides  at $5.94 = $35.64
 use 6 $2 off coupons = -$12
Pay OPP or with other ups= $23.64  and get back $15 up rewards making real cost just $8.64!!!
Thats $1.44 a bottle + tax!
note with this scenario you will need to make 2 transactions as its 4 like coupons per transactions.


Other deal to mention not the best but the GROUPON and Living Social movie ticket deals are really scarce these days is the MOVIE gift cards, buy $25 worth and get $5 up reward, basically a 20% discount.  Its a good deal because there should be no exclusions and its an easy gift .

thanks to I heart Rite Aid for the aid scans!

NYC Freegan Finds and Update

Healthy Work Snacks- BYO so you don't waste money on vending machines!

I know I've been pretty MIA lately .. I've just been enjoying life, working and of course DIVING!! Anyways, I've finally got a day to myself and so I started thinking of the work week ahead.  My fridge is packed full so come Monday I'm moving a weeks worth of food to my office fridge.  I can't believe I didn't get more lunchables on my of my dives last week they threw a ton of them out in boxes (which I've since removed for extra space and so I don't have to clean).  Grr I had no idea they had Capri Sun's in them as well, man who'd of thought I would have found OSCAR MYER lunchables on a dive.  So thats why I havn't even been posting pictures of my Hauls any more because I've kinda got my grove on diving.  Remember all the things I said I had trouble finding .. well not anymore I have tons of Cheese, Yogurts, Lunch Meats, and just enought that I've probably spent less than $30 these past months on food.  And those trips were more couponing stock pile trips.  The above is a weeks worth of work week snacks.  Sometimes, I'll add whole grain cereal to the yogurt for healthy breakfast.

Anyways, I've also found lots of actual EGGs in my dives now too.  Crazy huh.. and I did take some pics of some recent things like tons of Organic Butter.

And the below, again.. I'd wish I'd had grabbed more of this stuff.  Its so yummi!  And these box things are the easiest because to clean all I do is remove the boxes!

I just wanted to say how amazingly grateful to have the chance to do these Food Rescues aka dumpster diving.  It is one of the best things about living in NYC!  I've literally just used all the extra money I've saved and TIME (I rarely cook)  to have fun and just relax!  And while I've been writing this post, I've been doing a yogurt face mask :)

Epic Weekend food rescue

Above was from large group dive.
And below was from a much smaller group.  It was pretty epic because I got tons of SUSHI not pictured, sandwiches and salads and... a huge bag of my favorite cookies!  And also not pictured was huge super cold cooked meat ! I had to give away stuff to make room for it.  But I literally got a huge bag full of premium sausages!

Awesome Freegan Haul

Stir fried veggies Kale stems, Green Beans, Asparagus, Celery and Eggplant

So here's a freegan tip, when taking home veggies that are loose, try to use it as soon as possible. For the most part my produce rescued comes in sealed packages.  But what I've noticed about one of my spots is they have become more spiteful of freegans.  And they will literally cut open packages and take salads out of their containers to discourage people from rescuing the food.  At least in most cases they toss it all in one huge bag so sometimes because I just can't stand the thought of not rescuing these veggies all in great condition I take home loose veggies. Like in this case the celery and Kale stems.  I'll clean and then blanche them to be extra careful.  And then stir fry them in oil and garlic.  

It's just a quick way to cook everything and preserve the nutrients as much as possible.  Plus, I'm a rice fanatic so it goes great with that.

Freegan Italian Pasta Salad Cooked

So so Yummi and this meal was entirely free. I had some basil from the garden, and the ready made pasta (with sun dried tomatos, feta cheese and spinach) along with cherry tomatoes and chicken from recent freegan food rescues.

This box of pasta alone would have cost $6.49 from the high end grocery store we rescued it from.

And here's the chicken I froze separated from the deluxe salads I rescued.

And I'm so bummed I didn't rescue more but literally there were two huge bags full of cherry tomato's I had to leave behind.

Basically all I did was cut these up and stir fry everything, took about 10 minutes max. And that's one free lunch right there.

Kale, Baby Potatoes and Kimchi over Rice

This has to be one of the most yummiest and healthiest meals ever and its vegetarian.  Best part is with the exception of the rice, the whole meal was free!

I'd gotten a bunch of Kale Salads from one of my favorite spots but I couldn't eat it all so I decided to stir fry them and Kale tastes super yummi stir fried I discovered.  I also added some of the baby potatoes I got from an earlier freegan haul and kimchi and everything just blended perfectly.

Freegan Haul amazing finds

So lately I've been super swamped to document all my freegan hauls.  But I feel like now I've gotten a good rhythm to my diving and finds.  So I haven't felt compelled to post about them as much.  But recently I had an amazing haul at one of my favorite sandwich spots, they actually trashed the stuff that they usually donate  for some reason on this epic haul.  So I got tons of the standard sandwiches and premium salads instead the standard wraps!

Freegan tip, I actually took out all the speciality like ingredients to store in separate containers to freeze.  As I feel that it makes the leaves stay crispier longer.  And they put a lot more extra stuff than I need in one salad serving.  So its actually a frugal tip to stretch your salads.  Plus I wasn't sure if I could eat all the salads fast enough.

Also on this run I got about bunch of Kale salads from and juices from that super expensive juicing spot.

Olive Bread

I feel like this post is like an episode of the most delicious thing I've ever eaten.  So recently on a Sunday dive, I took a bunch of strange looking bakery breads I've never eaten before but a bunch of people in the group had and they said it was delicious.  So I took some one was these amazing cheesy breads and one was these Olive breads.  Literally with olives baked into it. I've never had it before but it was so amazing that I had to take a picture to remember how amazing it was.

god I love freegans.

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Ramen with Quinoa

So this is why I love Ramen, I literally just toss all my leftovers in and the spicy MSG seasoning makes everything taste good.  I  had some left over mexi quinoa with cauliflower and brocolli left over and carrots and that Roitisere Chicken that I just put in and it a great way to use your leftovers.

Freegan Cooking from skinny falaffel to huge burrito

So I love finding these wrapped Falaffels, they are so the perfect ready to go meals and super versatile and freezer friendly .

Basically its just a wrap with pure flavored protein like in this case spicy chicken breast.

I can totally just eat it as is or make it even more frugal by stretching out the meal.  One idea, is to make it a burrito.  So I made some cilantro rice.  Mashed so avocado, added some lime juice and those purple onions I got in my prior haul.  And the result is a meal twice the size!

And everything is super healthy so easy and its still frugal even though ironically the falafel was free to start with lol.

Organic Ave Haul

Organic Ave juices at $9 a pop are so addictively good in a healthy way. I picked up their still cold Chai Latte, Green Love and Almond Milks.  I was super psyched to get 5 boxed salads from them as well.  As we were waiting we dived at the supermarket across the street and ekk got more smoothie juices! These are tastier as their fruit smoothies and POM as well.  My diving partner preferred the POM's to the Organic Earthbound salads as well.   On top of that I got chopped butternut squash and from OA a mexi quinoa bowl.  Haul worth about $75!  

Sandwich Haul

I just love NYC just for the fact that I can be a freegan.  Just look at this amazing haul, the wraps were still hot when I took them out of the bag about $65 worth of expensive fancy wraps and sandwiches.

And then I got 4 more chilled garden soups, 2 sets of Hard Boiled eggs with Quinoa and Spinach, and 6 Fruit Yogurts. I guess its worth another $60.

What I love about this is that everything is super healthy and what most non Freegans don't realize is that Garbage bags are super clean its not like smelly garbage, although these stores sometimes tend to throw coffee grinds to discourage freegans.  And I don't have to cook!

And lets not forget dessert!

3 regular croissants, a chocolate croissant, and cranberry oatmeal cookie!

Freegan Cheese!

I was super excited to find this I mean they literally must have thrown their entire fridge out everything was still super cold to touch.  Its funny because when ever I say I rarely find cheese in my hauls, I find that very thing! So weird, but yea I love this cheese and there were more expensive Brie's that others took.

This haul was really unexpected because we were only waiting for another stores closing and then saw this store starting throwing stuff out and just decided to dig in.  And we found so much.. they threw out like at least 5 super cold still Rotiserre chickens.  I took one and just cut it up so I could store in my Freezer. Haul value at least $80! 

The main reason for the Freegan Rescue was my new expensive addiction these awesome Juices! Value of this haul $140 crazy rite??

Tabouleh Leftover Patties

So I got 3 containers of these Tabouleh Salads in my last haul..a girl can only eat so much salad.  So an awesome leftovers idea is to make Tabouleh Patties.  So yummi! Its like a non spicy kimchi pancake.

And its so so easy to make.

Ingredients

Left over Tabouleh Salad

4 TBS flour

1 egg

Oil for the pan

Directions

Mix egg and flour.  Then mix in Tabouleh.  And scoop onto frying pan. And cook like a pancake.

Seriously delicious, and best of all in my case a great way to use my Freegan Find.

Freegan Cooking

So literally this entire dish is Freegan the noodles, the chicken, carrots, mushrooms and even the soup base was from that Simply Asia Haul.  

Freegan Food Rescue

Last week was a crazy cool haul, I have so many things I was to lazy to put in picture or had already eaten.  I'd say the best thing about it was the crazy amount of speciality chips, expensive Annies Organic cookies and simply asia noodle bowls I got.  It was super sad because we had to leave so much behind.  Even though we got a lot of random passer by people to take stuff.

For this haul, I actually focused less on fresh produce and more things that didn't require a freezer.  And what was super cool about this haul was how many random people commented on the waste that was going on.  It was just a crazy amount of stuff that day, you can barely see the fancy cooked eggplants and tilipia I took out of the boxes to store in my freezer or the crazy amount of fancy desserts still in super pretty wrappings we left.  Or the Huge amount of rolls still in large bakery bags we had to leave.