I picked up this produce from the trash bags outside Gristedes. During a friend's dinner party, I popped down to the store around 9:30pm and picked up the veggies shown above, in addition to a bag of potatoes, another zucchini, more sweet potatoes, a spaghetti squash, apples, carrots, and of course the requisite bagels and bread. It took about 5 minutes and I only looked through 2 bags, and even left much of what was in those bags behind because I couldn't carry it all. Multiply that by every other bag there, and then by every supermarket in the city, and then by every day of the year, and you're talking about a ton of food going to waste.
For the top dish, my friend and I mixed in some coconut milk, shellfish sauce that I had frozen from Momofuku leftovers, spices, and made some rice. We mixed the beets with crumbled feta and leftover salad. Note: I dove for these vegetables and then threw them in the crisper. These pictures were taken 10 days later when I got around to cooking them. So not only is the produce from the trash good enough to eat that day, it's still in fine form long after.