Odds and Ends

I was planning on a post about my salmon patties (yum!) but my batteries in the camera are dead and the tomatoes on the counter were looking almost too ripe so we opted to have tacos instead. This is my food challenge month, after all, but I've been slacking on the recipe posts lately. Don't despair, my budget challenge next month will also include several more recipes. My salmon patty recipe will be sometime this week.

Add to my weekly food budget challenge $3 for a gallon of milk yesterday. Then add another $3 for a gallon of milk today. Because sometimes multi-tasking just doesn't pay off! We took a wonderful family bike ride yesterday and decided to go for some slushies/ice cold sodas (some had slushies, some had soda) afterwards. We picked up a gallon of milk at the same time but then got to driving around town and checking out the sites (read below to learn why) and once we got home we all left the van...leaving our poor milk behind. No one noticed until this morning when we went to make cereal. I'm guessing the milk would be more of a cottage cheese constancy now, though I'm not asking hubby if there were lumps in the sink as he poured it down the drain!

Add another $3 for more sweet corn. We found a little sweet corn stand off the beaten path and though the ears are tiny they were delicious! Best sweet corn of the season...you can be guaranteed that I will be back for more!

Why were we driving around checking out the sites yesterday? Unfortunately, with all the rain we have been having (some spots around us saw more than 11 inches in 24 hours) our town had major flooding issues. In fact, it reached the highest crest that has ever been on record.

While the picture above may not look too impressive, you must realize that that small "dip" is typically a 15 (or more?!) foot drop. The river swelled so much that there was no longer a waterfall at all.
This is just part of the downtown area. Many businesses were filled with water, and many had windows burst out or the whole sides of the buildings torn off. Not only was the water high, but the current was swift. Homes have been flooded and even in neighborhoods that saw no standing water, there were basements that couldn't keep out the water from the soaked ground. We were lucky that our 120 year old rock foundation was solid enough to keep the water out. Which is a great metaphor...

What's worse is that some areas in surrounding towns were completely flooded out and people we know had their houses hit so bad that they may not be repairable. Luckily, the most important thing is that as far as I have heard no lives have been lost due to the flood.

Seeing such devastation makes one feel helpless. Donations to the Red Cross or food pantry can help some families get back on their feet. Which reminds me of a challenge that is going on at The Path to Frugality. Martha writes " My challenge for the month of August for myself and for anyone else is to donate 10% of what money you spend on groceries to a food pantry or a charity that directly helps the poor. For many of us that amount would range from $25 to $40." I think that this is a wonderful challenge and I intend to do this. A charity that I fully support is Food For the Poor and I will be sending extra in September when I add up the 10% costs of our food for August. I urge you all to join in this worthy challenge!

(Photo credits: Daniel Kenyon)