New Year's Pantry Challenge, Sharing Abundance, Day 4

Today's Menu:
Breakfast:
Fruit Smoothie
Waffles with honey

Lunch:
Pizzadillas
Apple slices

Snack:
Tangerines
Cherries

Dinner:
Taco Soup (Made by Forest)
Honey Cornbread Muffins with Butter
Oranges
Chocolate-dipped Peanut Butter Cookies (Made by Cori)

Today's highlight was the opportunity to share our abundance with others and live in community. For those of you who have been following along, you know that Monday we had a Pantry Party. Four friends showed up with extras from their own pantries and we all traded items and brainstormed new recipes. We also put together a bag of "abundance" to share with someone in need. The original plan was to donate this to our church pantry. I actually found out about a more tangible need through my dad. My dad volunteers with a program at our church called Celebrate Recovery. He told me about one of the veterans he works with who has been homeless for a while and is just getting his first apartment. My dad happily delivered the extra food to his friend. Other people from our church have been collecting furniture and kitchen items for this man.

Tonight we had dinner with our Life Group. Four of us couples from church have been meeting for dinner every other week for almost seven years now. Not only is it a great chance to encourage each other in our faith journeys,  as parents and in our marriages, but it's also an opportunity to share in community. For this meal, our friends the Benedicts hosted and made a crockpot full of Taco Soup. I brought corn bread muffins. My friend Cori brought oranges fresh from her tree and made peanut butter cookies dipped in chocolate. I didn't have all the ingredients for those different parts of the meal but when we pooled our resources we had quite a feast!