Cathy2 wrote:My friend Helen worked in a Chinese restaurant. They always fit the food into the smallest boxes and threw away whatever didn't fit in. She almost always packs her own leftovers in restaurants.

It drives me crazy to get home, dig into my leftovers the next day and discover that a significant portion of the meal has gone missing! If I know a dish is large, I'll only order it if I'm able to eat it for lunch or dinner the next day. To find out that the restaurant cheated me out of part of my meal really puts them on my sh*t list...if I ever go back to the restaurant, I'll always insist on wrapping my own leftovers.

re - missing food from doggie bags

We were at Avec once and DH had a migraine come on, so we asked for everything to be boxed up and went home. He had a lie-down, and I opened one of the boxes expecting our bacon-wrapped dates and found a piece of bread! No dates anywhere

The bread is good there, but I don't think it rated its own box.

It's wasteful of me, which I regret, but I practically never take food home in a doggy bag. The reason is mainly that half-eaten food is gross to me. Not eating it, but carrying it around in a bag.

riddlemay wrote:It's wasteful of me, which I regret, but I practically never take food home in a doggy bag. The reason is mainly that half-eaten food is gross to me. Not eating it, but carrying it around in a bag.

But what if it was a half-eaten dry-age steak from David Burke?

G Wiv wrote:

riddlemay wrote:It's wasteful of me, which I regret, but I practically never take food home in a doggy bag. The reason is mainly that half-eaten food is gross to me. Not eating it, but carrying it around in a bag.

But what if it was a half-eaten dry-age steak from David Burke?

I would have done my darnedest to arrive at Burke's hungry enough that there'd be no leftovers!

lately - with how much money i seem to not have - i'll order at a restaurant keeping in mind how well it'll convert into leftovers. I'll purposely order something that'll keep well and re-heat well and i'll only eat half of it at the restaurant and take the other half home for later.

so, yes, i do eat leftovers - a lot.

Another problem I have with the idea: I wish it weren't called a "doggy bag."

Doggy Bags for the Hungry

We go out to eat several times a week. Because I’m always looking for foods (ingredients, preparations, etc.) that I can write about, we tend to over-order so that we get a broad sampling of a lot of dishes. That means we hardly ever can’t finish everything on the table. We always take a doggy bag and because we almost always take public transportation, we can be assured that on the way home, we’ll always run into folks who might not be able to remember when they last had some decent chow.

Last week, returning from dinner, we had maybe two pounds of uneaten food, good stuff, meat, vegetables, not all gnawed apart but in pretty good shape, basically untouched and all packed neatly into carryout containers by the wait staff, who portioned it into three bags. Changing from the Red Line to the Green Line at State and Lake, we ran into a street guy, one of the usual fellas who sit at busy intersections, sometimes with cardboard signs, hand-lettered to explain their plight. Carolyn handed the man a bag of food. His eyes got big. A friend of his came over, and we gave him a bag. “Hey, Jimmy’s coming, too,” the guy said as another man appeared from the crowd, backpack on his shoulder. We gave him the third bag.



The men looked at us and said, “Thank you. Thank you, god bless you.” Overall, this seems like a much more personal exchange than just peeling off a few bucks and walking on. No one’s saying this is a magnificent gesture of humanitarianism: giving away food we in all honesty don’t need is not a major sacrifice in any sense. Still, as we moved up the El train stairs over State Street, we saw the guys pouring over the food. They looked happy and we felt good.

Last year, the forward-looking French made it a law that grocery stores would no longer be allowed to throw away edible food; it now has to be donated to those in need [http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/05/22/france-food-waste-grocery-stores_n_7422090.html]. Worldwide, about one-third of food goes uneaten. Giving away doggy bags seems like an easy way to redress, in whatever small way possible, that wastefulness.

So when you’re out to eat, and you haven’t finished all your food, consider having it wrapped up to go; then eat it yourself or, perhaps better, give it away to someone who hasn’t eaten well in a while.

POSTSCRIPT: I’m walking along Michigan Avenue by the Water Tower around 9pm last night. A family of four clean-cut tourist-types walk by a street guy (sitting on the sidewalk, with a sign explaining his sadness); the dad stops and hands him a box, which the street guy opens and looks into. He says, “I hate pizza.” Walking away, the dad notices me noticing the interaction and says, “I was just trying to show the kids something.” No doubt, he did. "Maybe the guy just gets a lot of pizza," I offered, which I suspect he probably does.

Mensch

Handling Panhandlers: Tale of Two Playa Azuls

Whenever giving food to homeless people or panhandlers. I always remember this response from a former homeless person:

thehomelessguy wrote:This has been the most congenial message forum discussing homelessness/panhandling that I've ever read. I saw the back link to my blog and thought I'd check it out.

I say that it's better not the give to panhandlers as it does encourage more panhandling. They are like stray cats - you feed them once, and they never go away.

But that doesn't mean that you should completely ignore the panhandler. He is obviously in need of some help - I just don't think that supplying his drug/alcohol habit is the answer, (also, if you give food to a panhandler he/she is then able to keep more of their cash for the booze and drugs.)

I always encourage people to get to know the homeless and panhandlers in their area personally. In talking to and getting to know them, you are able to find out what their real needs are. If then you want to help, then help with those things. Unless you really know you can trust the person, and most homeless people know that they can't even trust themselves, then take the effort to go to the store and buy a pack of socks (or whatever) and deliver them personally. That personal envolvement makes a big difference - it's a statement that says "I care about you." Hearing and/or seeing that other people really do care about them makes the biggest difference in the world. Sure, it may be easier to just donate to a local charity - but that message that you care often gets lost in the translation of that middleman.

Peace,
Kevin

Love that, thank you.