The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [43]
I looked at the bagels practically spilling over onto the sidewalk: There were cinnamon-raisin, poppy, plain, egg, everything, whole wheat, oat, onion, and garlic (which accounted for that strong and still-fresh aroma)—every kind, in fact, was represented. Janet went on to stress that so often, food was purposely produced by restaurants in extreme excess simply for appearance’s sake. A bakery knew it wouldn’t sell out of every loaf each day, but the look of a nicely stocked shelf was a lot more attractive to potential customers than a near-empty one. Who wants to grab dessert and coffee at a place that has one cookie left? That was the American sensibility. Maybe we ought to do what the Japanese do, and place rubber models of food in the windows of our restaurants and bakeries instead of the real thing, I thought.
I thought about my bread-baking experiments of earlier that year, and how much pride the city’s best bakeries and critics like Jeffrey Steingarten took in making the perfect loaf. I also recalled a passage about bread in Arthur Schwartz’s book New York City Food: “If, as food philosophers say, the gastronomy of a place can be measured by its interest in bread, then by that criteria alone New York City must be judged the world’s greatest gastronomic capital,” he wrote. He goes on to explain how heavily bread—of every stripe—weighs into our culinary landscape. I wasn’t sure if it was hypocrisy or pure clumsiness that so much of our favorite food was being left untouched, on these curbs, on a daily basis.
Arms dove into the trash bag as the group fished out their favorite bagels. I dug in and scooped out an oniony, poppy-flecked everything bagel (or was it only now “everything” because it had been rubbed against so many other bagels?). I resisted the urge to grab more only because I had just baked a loaf of no-knead bread that night. I always manage to end up with way too many carbs in my kitchen all at once.
“Did everyone bring plastic bags?” Janet asked the group. Most of the people around me indeed had. Only the reporter and her photographer shook their heads.
“No problem; I’ve got bags here for anyone who needs them. I just found this roll outside of a store, perfectly good,” she said, holding up a tube of perforated plastic bags, the kind you’d find in a grocery store produce aisle. “And thrown out, for no reason, I guess.
When everyone had finished taking their bagel picks, Janet carefully reknotted the bag. It was important to leave everything as tidy as you had found it, she said. From the looks of it, we’d hardly made a dent in that hulking bagel bag. Beside it, those other two trash bags hadn’t even been opened.
“We’ll leave the rest for the homeless. Sometimes they like to pick through these, too,” Janet said, giving the bags a last glance.
For our next stop on the tour, we walked a few blocks south to a small upscale grocery store. The store was closed, its dim lights exposing the aisles of gourmet food inside. At the curb in front lay our target—a disheveled heap of black garbage bags.
The group began tearing into the bags with a careful, yet determined dexterity that must have come from much experience. They would feel around the outsides first, then untie the top and take a peek in. I helped open one bag, which was filled with a variety of produce. Hands reached in from all directions around me, and one by one, fruits and vegetables were removed. Finally, I stepped back and surveyed what had come out of the group of bags so far. Along the sidewalk, the group had lined up a cluster of several decent-looking apples, some with bruises here and there. Many more spotted bananas were recovered, some good-looking pears, and several tomatoes, which looked wet on their surfaces, probably from condensation and being squashed beside something else, but otherwise fine. I was amazed to see bag after bag of prewashed mixed salad greens emerge from the garbage as well.