In my newsletter I wrote about heirloom tomatoes that taste delicious that I eat after other volunteers, homeless people, and poor people reject them. Here’s what I wrote, followed by a picture of the tomatoes and a picture of the gazpacho, as if it tasted different if the tomatoes weren’t bruised.

What’s wrong with us that we act as if other people waste food? Or all the other garbage we produce?

I haven’t written about people wasting perfectly good food and heirloom tomatoes in maybe a month, but yesterday, again, there were at 80 pounds of bruised heirloom tomatoes. The volunteers, who volunteer to help hungry and poor people, wanted to throw the bruised one away without even offering them. The hungry and poor people didn’t even take the unbruised ones.

The point: everyone talks about food waste but most are blind to their own. There are two distinct issues. One is the food waste. The other is the lack of personal responsibility and lack of resourcefulness or ability to cook. Besides the tomatoes, plenty of other perfectly good food gets wasted. People just don’t take it. Some don’t have kitchens, but plenty of that fresh produce doesn’t need any cooking. Many do have kitchens. They’re leaving it. Meanwhile, they take the sweets and candy that are doof, not food, which is taking drugs for pleasure.

But most of all are the overwhelming majority of people who claim to help the poor and hungry but waste food too. I lead cooking workshops. Why don’t more people help make people independent? Why not start with delicious, healthy, nutritious fresh produce? Why not start with yourself and learn that the stuff at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods that looks perfect is unnatural, taxing on the environment, and from a different system? More farmers markets will make fresh, local food cheaper, that’s how supply and demand works.

I take the bruised stuff and I don’t use a fridge. For tomatoes, when I blend them into gazpacho, bruised and unbruised tomatoes taste identical.

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The picture of the blended tomatoes may not be a great picture, but I’m more interested in eating it than taking pictures of it. If you want great pictures, go to Instagram, where people are trying to get attention. If you tasted this soup, you’d agree a restaurant could charge $20 a bowl.

I’ve eaten about ten bowls of it since Sunday, almost all free ingredients. Preparation time is a few minutes.

• ← I apologized after over twenty years and it turns out he didn’t notice what I did.
• Year five, day 2 no refrigerator. Did you know power companies promoted them to use more energy (not for health, safety, or flavor)? →