I Ate Your Uber Eats

My dog and I live in a condominium building. We’ve come and gone through its lobby for years, three times a day. Two of those years, pandemic years, saw a spike in intrigue and temptation: food deliveries. What’s in that bag, Luc wanted to know. They proliferated. Most dogs coming and going probably smelt and felt similarly; biological imperative that it is. In Luc’s case, I let him have at it, smelling being as far as it went. 

As the pandemic dragged on, as the novelty of food delivery wore off, as deliveries became more routine, an odd thing started to happen. The odd bag of food went unclaimed. Mealtime would approach, a bag would appear, and, two dog walks later, it would still be there. Had it come to the wrong address? Was it a replacement? A mistake? There was no way to know. No one’s ever going to claim that bag, I’d say to Luc eventually, And now somebody’s going to see it and feel the need to take matters into their own hands, and get rid of it. They’ll take it to the garbage room and pitch it into the garbage cart, packaging and all, without even separating it. 

Bothered by the prospect of further waste, and being relentlessly cheap and preternaturally resourceful, I decide Luc should have the proceeds. Whatever’s in that bag will be better than the bones, pizza crusts, and containers and wrappers of the leftovers he finds on the street. This food is at least untouched and fresh. Ish.

From that day on, I rescue neglected bags, empty their contents onto my kitchen counter, decide what’s fit for Luc, and recycle and compost the rest. Properly. There’s routinely twenty or thirty dollars worth of food. I’ve composted an entire bag of expensive European cake slices. A sin. But Luc can’t have those. I’ve chopped up chicken shawarma, toasted bagel with cream cheese and bacon, pakoras, samosas, breakfast sandwiches, falafel, wraps, burgers, and onion rings, adding portions of each to his meals. Needless to say, he’s chuffed. 

Things have taken a turn, however. Two days ago a bag arrived from a restaurant called Moxie’s. The name was familiar, the menu, not. A receipt on the outside of the bag said “For Nick, 1 BEEF VINDALOO, 1 WHT CHOC BROWNIE, add ice cream. $46.86.” The brownie and ice cream alone were $14.75 plus tax. Ice cream. The buyer clearly intended to eat this order right away. It’s now supper time. The bag sits for the evening. It’s still there when Luc and I take his bedtime walk four hours later. Next morning? Still there. When we come back from the park? Same. 

I take the bag to my condo. $46. That’s a lot of money. Maybe something happened to the buyer, I say to Luc, and they’re going to pick it up today. I take it back to the lobby, set it down. Go to work. When I return at the end of the day, it’s is still there. It’s now been almost 24 hours. I take it to my place, remove the hermetically-sealed containers from the hermetically-sealed bag, place them on my counter, and contemplate my next move. Beef vindaloo. Too spicy for the dog. To hell with it, I say to Luc, I’m going to eat it myself. 

I don’t typically cite dumpster diving as the bar above which I must aim for my own eating but right now it comes in handy. It brings to mind the time I found an economy-sized box of individually-wrapped granola bars on the Commons and took them to the office to share. Chocolate chip. I disclosed their source, adding that they probably came from the food bank in my neighbourhood, deposited on the Commons by a recipient with too high standards. And, yes, strictly speaking they’d expired but weren’t expiry dates really just a capitalist ploy? My mother told me they’d been invented to get us to part with perfectly good food so that we’d then have to buy more. Unlike the brownie in the Moxie’s bag, however, the chocolate in the granola bars was not so much white by design as white with age. HR’s trying to kill us, my co-workers said, dragging my professional role into it. Into the compost the granola bars went. 

But the beef vindaloo? And the brownie? And $46? The bag was sealed, the food a bit chilled by the cool winter air that got as far as the lobby. I had to try it, keenly aware that food poisoning might result. Had it been sushi I’d not have given it a second thought. No way. But curry? Wasn’t curry invented as a preservative? That’s what I told myself, at least, and I’m here to write about it so maybe there’s a grain of truth. Or maybe I’m just lucky. 

We’re a sadly wasteful lot, we humans, food too easy to get if you have the means and too easy to discard if you subscribe indiscriminately to notions of food safety. “Best before” is a suggestion, not a command. About leftovers I apply a one-week rule. Otherwise, I try as best I can to buy and make only as much as I’ll eat. Sometimes I think I’m incapable of throwing away food that’s never been touched. Would I do it again? Hard to say, I didn’t know I’d do it once. But having survived? Call me reckless, call me emboldened, but if an opportunity arises I may have to take it.