The most important meal of the day - or is it

 The most important meal of the day isn’t breakfast

The most important meal of the day is the one you need, depending on when you're hungry and what you're doing. I often don’t eat breakfast at all; I only start feeling hungry around late morning.

Anyway, enough about that. On weekends and during holidays, I do eat breakfast, because that’s when the family can gather around it. It’s a good start to the day, and it’s cozy.

For many years, I haven’t needed to bake bread, because I’ve literally dumpster-dived fresh bread every single day. Every day, the store receives fresh bakery bread. Every evening, they throw it out in a clear sack, only with other bakery items.

Here’s a typical dumpster-dived breakfast – none of this cost a single thing. Sure, it varies how much you’ve found for free. But this one was 100% free all around.

Skyr with blueberries

Some of the berries in the package were mushy, a few had mold near the stem. So the whole package was thrown out. The skyr was past its date (that stuff is crazy expensive!), but all yogurt keeps for at least a month past the date. You’ll know for sure when dairy goes bad.

Bread with butter and cheese

Coarse French bread. Plant-based butter – it really varies what you find. And often, there are many packs at once. This time it was some kind of vegan spreadable stuff – tastes fine. You can cook with it too. The cheese was mature, had some flavor. A lot of cheese gets tossed either because it’s past its date or has a small mold spot. Just cut off the mold – there are people who pay big money for cheese full of mold (I don’t get it).

Multifruit juice

Nothing fancy. The plastic cap had popped off, so it was tossed.

Coffee

Sometimes there’s tons of coffee, often the expensive brands (which is basically all of them nowadays). I have a grinder for when I find whole beans. The record was finding 52 kg (hundreds of bags) at once.

Orange

So much fruit and veg gets thrown out. Citrus fruits in nets, especially organic ones, often go. If one fruit in the net is bruised or bad, the whole thing is tossed.