Food Banking

Now, you know how Miss MoneyPenny has been beating you over the head about her favorite community program.  It has really been brought home to me by all the people coming into the library for help making their appointment with the energy assistance program.  I've never seen so many people needing help.  Would you rather eat or be cold?  That is what it is coming down to for so many people in our community.

There are a number of different ways that we can help our neighbors.  I prefer to give to the food bank.  You can give food or money, or both.  Mr. Know-it-all takes a big bag of quality dog food up to the animal shelter every month.  For birthdays and Christmas we donate to the food bank or animal shelter in each other's  name.  Miss MoneyPenny prefers to buy her own gifts anyway.  That way she always gets a good present.

I donate food all year, thinking that people aren't just hungry during the holidays.  Who thought that up anyway?  It really is pretty simple to work it into your routine.  This week I bought six cans of Starkist at 69 cents a can.  It did not break my budget.  You don't have to buy a whole bag of food at one time, just what you can afford.  This week was very unexciting sale wise, so I just bought a few basics and the tuna and it still only came to $17.

I realize that the food bank and the animal shelter aren't very exciting topics, but times are tough.  Since we are now such savvy shoppers and are always looking for the deal, we have a little extra for those in need.  If we don't have an emergency fund, an occasional expense fund and we have credit card debt and we lose our job, we could be depending on the kindness of others.  I know that was a run-on sentence but you get the idea.  We are a community and we care.