Upon Discovering That She Had Been Eating Shit From The Trash, Janet Resolved Never Again To Eat At Madeline’s Apartment

The situation for the middle class in Manhattan is much worse than previously thought:

Janet, a high school Spanish teacher, napped after Madeline’s gourmet meal, her body satiated with the comfort of a full stomach.

The lucky ones invited to Madeline’s two-bedroom West Village apartment were served carrot ginger soup, followed by ratatouille (onions, peppers, eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes sautéed in olive oil), organic salad with spinach, roasted baby potatoes and whole wheat bread. Homemade lemonade was the drink and the dessert, frozen banana whipped into sherbet.

The ingredients came from New York’s bountiful streets, actually from trash bags on the sidewalks in front of grocery stores where an hour earlier the food would have sold at full price. The fruits and vegetables, and whatever packaged foods that had reached their expiration date, had been discarded at the end of the stores’ working day. The food is free for the picking during the two-hour magical period, usually from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. — between closing time and trash pickup time.