Free Food from Family is Not Charity

I stopped at my parents’ house yesterday to pick up my daughter while they were busy packing up the RV to go camping this weekend. I asked my mom if she had any extra lunchmeat so the babysitter could make sandwiches for lunch the next day.

Mom always has spare food. That’s where I want to be, that no matter what, there’s enough food in the house to skip the grocery store for a couple months if necessary. While she was getting the lunchmeat I asked if she had a frozen pizza for dinner and just my luck, she had one that her and my dad couldn’t eat.

Then, since they were going camping for the week, she gave me a cucumber that would go bad, bacon that needed to be eaten, 5 packs of the new coconut M&Ms (which rock, by the way) and a bowl of homemade strawberry ice cream.

Not bad, huh. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t especially like asking anyone for anything and know that on this great and wonderful earth, not one soul owes me anything. But, if Mom has food that absolutely must be eaten, why let it go to waste? I’m pretty sure that once in awhile the things she throws in aren’t necessarily going to go bad (do M&Ms ever go bad?). I appreciate that and I’m grateful. It’s okay and even wise sometimes to accept when something is being offered. It took me a while to figure that out.