In all my years of cooking and preparing meals for my customers and clients, I had never seen people who, for lack of description, were so financially stressed until I opened my own first restaurant. This was after serving in hotels and other peoples' establishments.

One evening, one of my servers entered the kitchen and, standing in the doorway, signaled me to look in the dining area. When I did so, I saw a family of 5 - parents, 2 boys and a girl - huddled over menus and, according to the server, trying to decide what to order so that they all could enjoy the eldest son's birthday.

I watched for a couple of minutes, then told her to let them know that the evening was on us. I really enjoyed paying it forward, just as my paternal grandmother, Vie Moore, always did from her restaurant in Vancouver, BC.

Vie's was a place where the people of the city, both rich and not-so-rich sat shoulder to shoulder, at the old kitchen tables (there were 10), dining on her wonderful fried chicken and steaks. Many times, when I was there (or in company with siblings or friends), I observed her passing food out the back door to some less fortunate person looking for a meal. She never turned any person away at any time when I was there. She, like Mom, always said that, "There are no strangers at the dinner table." It was the same at home where Mom would add a few extra potatoes to the pot to make sure everyone ate.

The restaurant was a gathering place for the black entertainers then working in the myriad dinner clubs around the city. This was in an era of barely-acknowledged segregation. They could perform, but not eat or stay in most of the venues around the town.

Over the many years of going to her establishment, we met people like Sammy Davis Jr., Earl Grant, Miz Ella, Pearl Bailey and so many others. Life was always full of surprises and excitement.

This brings up the reasoning for this, my blog. Over the years, I've seen so many people on fixed income, seniors and others, who always have too much month at the end of their money. They end up either going hungry or going without medication or a utility or something else.

In this blog, I will attempt to bring together the opposite ends of the situation so that there is less chance of having to do the same thing next month. So enjoy and let me know if anything on this site is of help to you.