Looking back, I'd have to say I ate pretty well this past weekend. My sister and brother in law used to live down in Indiana, but about a year or so ago he was appointed as pastor to a church in a small farm town a little under an hour away from where we live. Due to the community and thus the church being so small, my brother in law also has to have a second job to contribute his share to the finances.
After trying his hand at Dollar General for a few weeks, he was lucky enough to find a position as the director of a small charity shop in the next town over. They basically take all donations and sell them, then they use the money to buy food from the state food bank and some other sources to give away for free to the needy people in the county.
It's actually a pretty interesting process as he was telling us about how he buys boxes of things like "assorted meat" for something like $.09 per pound. He was telling us that one time they sent him lobster tails and filet mignon steaks. All for $.09 per pound! Pretty crazy huh? I guess it's just basically whatever they have that might be going bad before they can use it legally. I don't know. It's pretty interesting though. He is basically paying cents on the dollar for decent stuff that he can then give away to the needy.
@mrsbozz and I have been donating all of our unwanted stuff to the store since he took over. It's a bit of a hike to get things to them, but we at least know it is going to a good cause and the funds aren't being mismanaged.
In fact, we took a load over last Friday and then we decided to go out to dinner with them. We ended up at a place called Francesco's Bistro. We don't eat it as much anymore due to the number of carbs and calories, but my wife and I are huge fans of Italian food.
@mrsbozz got the Florentine Ravioli that you see in the opening photo. The sauce is a basil pesto alfredo. My sister got the butternut squash ravioli that was on special and she said it was very good. She was actually hoping they had it that night, so she was quite excited when she found out they did.
My brother in law got the chicken Griglia above. He decided to pair it with some spaghetti on the side. It looked like a very fresh dish and the chicken was quite tender. I almost got that as well, but instead I decided on something else.
I went with the Basil Pesto Chicken. I ended up getting a side of fettuccine alfredo with it. It had a balsamic glaze on it that was really good! I never would have guessed that a place with refined food would be out in the middle of nowhere like Francesco's. It was absolutely delicious and while I don't think I would go there every weekend, I would definitely go again if I was invited.
With the price of BTC hitting all time highs lately, it kind of feels like many of us are in an overall "rich" mindset. How appropriate then that we got to partake in some rich food, and we also enriched our souls by giving to charity.
Speaking of rich, this is the last piece of silver I picked up to give my nephew who is also my godson for Christmas. Now that he is older, I don't know if he cares as much about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles like he used to, but I still thought it was a pretty cool piece. Given the licensing, I had to pay a bit of a premium for it and it came in a little more expensive than the other rounds I picked up that day.
If you look really closely in the photo above, you can see the Viacom trademark at the bottom. I remember when a young friend of mine came to me 40 years ago and showed me a page from a catalog of these things called TMNT. I honestly thought it was the dumbest thing I had ever seen. Who knew they would blow up so big and have such lasting power?
As usual, on the other side of this coin we have King Charles III. It's actually kind of impressive how quickly they were able to switch over from the Queen to King Charlie on some of these pieces! Even if he isn't into the theme as much as he used to be, I think he is still really going to like the piece.
I mean 1oz of silver is 1oz of silver right?