Frugal Cooking & Meal Prep Tips With Jess Dang of Cook Smarts

Published Oct 19, 2018, 6:00 AM

We are so excited to have Jess Dang, the Founder of Cook Smarts on the podcast today! After experiencing health complications of her own, Jess desired to provide a useful service to others that may be experiencing difficulty in meal planning, and finding recipes to suite their dietary needs. Jess gives us a behind the scenes look at CookSmarts, and shares some expert frugal tips for meal planning, eating at home, and improving your kitchen skills!

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Episode Frugal Cooking. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, rights, and liver with your life. Here your host Jen and Jill. Hello everyone, I'm Jen, this is Jill and we are your hosts for the Frugal Friends podcast, hanging out with you for another week of frugal goodness. We're we're not going anywhere. We're consistent. That's a sign of a healthy relationship. You have a healthy, consistent relationship with the Frugal Friends. We are dependable for sure, and today we are dependable in bringing you more frugal tips from our latest interview with just Dang of cook Smarts. You know, we've been talking about cook Smarts for the past few episodes, and it's not because that they offered to sponsor the show. It's because it's because I emailed and asked, am I allowed to talk about you on this show. That's literally how it worked. Uh. And and then Jess was kind enough to offer to actually come onto the show and share a little bit of her story and give us some tips for frugal cooking. So we can roll right into our sponsors because we're gonna go with our unofficial not sponsor cook Smarts, and if you listen all the way to the end of this episode, you will hear a special cupon discount code. But even if you have to leave us midway through, you can get three free weeks of meal planning from cook Smarts. And it's a great, all inclusive like service that offers recipes, instruction videos, one click grocery lists. So definitely head over to Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash cs to check out more of what Justice is doing and you will hear a little special something at the end, a little treat, little tree. Yeah, this episode is also brought to you by borrowing. It's not just something you do at the library. This is a deeply rooted value in the frugal community and you can try it out for free today. Nada down. Need a nice pair of shoes and you know you'll only wear once. Borrow it. Thinking about buying a deep friar, but you're not sure if it's going to be worth the investment, borrow it. You can try this tactic with anything except for food and underwear. Borrowing the better option to spending. I love that you added that fine print. I don't not food or underwear. I don't want people to take me literal that you can borrow anything, because there's certain things that you should not borrow. But borrowing definitely a another lucrative sponsor for the Frugal Friends podcast. I don't know how we get them, Jill. We We've put out our feelers and they're like, sure, yeah, it's all of our listeners. Really, they're just so good that anybody, anybody we think to get to sponsor will will come on, including borrowing. Alright, y'all, let's get into this interview that we did with Jesting of cook Smarts. She starts off with a really great story and like I said, stay tuned to the end for a special discount, code offer, special treat. We are so excited to have jes Dang from cook Smarts on the show today. How are you, Jess, I'm doing well. Thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, welcome. Awesome. So before we get into the questions, I would really love to know personally, how did you come to start cook Smarts. Sure, so this is actually a bit of a long story, but I think a good one. When I was seventeen, I was actually diagnosed with hepatitis c UH, this virus. You know, this is twenty years ago where you know, little was known about the virus, and I was diagnosed because of a high school blood drive. I was donating blood to my high school um and I received a letter a couple of weeks later saying that they couldn't take my blood because it tested positive for this virus. And you know, then I just was let on this journey that like, you know, just not really knowing what my future was going to look like, you know, my future health, Like was I going to live? Like what what did I have to go through treatment? And so long story short, I did go through one year a chemo and the doctors deemed me, you know, labeled me cured. But I was still like, really, you know this all of this had just like really shaken me to my core. I did and really feel confident that like I was cured and I was going to be you know, okay. But the doctors told me just to like live my life as normally as possible. I would go in for annual annual checkups and blood blood work, and you know, it always looked good, and I kind of voutout to myself in the back of my head. I was like, okay, like, if I lived to see thirty, then I'm going to, like, you know, do something to help other people live their healthiest lives. And you know, luckily, I did make it to thirty, and I quit my corporate job, which was a really scary thing. Like I enjoyed my job. I had a lot of financial security from it, but it was just time. And so I spent that first year, you know, not knowing, and I was like, I wanted to help people get healthier. I love cooking, and I really believe in the power of a home cooked meal to like nurture people's health as well as you know, strengthen connections around the table, you know, with your family and your friends. But I didn't know what people needed to to do that. Like I knew that, you know, a lot of people didn't cook, but I didn't understand, you know why, what were the big challenges people were facing that was preventing them from from making dinner every single night. So I spent that first year just you know, being in people's kitchens. I was an in home cooking instructure. I taught teenage moms. I taught a class that you know, a local high school, and that just gave me like a really good insight into why people you know, didn't cook. They lacked time and they lacked knowledge, and the kitchen was like a pretty stressful place, right. So I wanted to launch a meal plan service because I thought, if we gave people a meal plan every week, that like takes a huge burden off of their their to do list, you know, it saves them so much time. But I wanted to do something different than just like you know, give them give people a menu or recipes for the week. I really wanted to focus on the education piece so that they were building their skills while they were cooking every single night. So it was like they were getting a mini cooking lesson. So we focused on knife skills, like how to chop specific ingredients, so that like they would build their confidence in the kitchen so each time they got in there, it wasn't this like daunting experience, you know, chopping their vegetables didn't take forever, and it became something that they actually enjoyed doing. Um, hopefully over time. Yeah, that's so true because that's I think the biggest barrier to entry, at least for me, because I um self proclaimed horrible cook. But it's mostly because I never like learned how I don't know how it is for you, Jill. Oh, definitely, and and to know, yeah, what to do with different ingredients and how to cook them and what's the best way to prepare them. Definitely, And just I love the personal story that you have connected to this, which we see so often in stories of frugality, and then the intersection of that with one's health and wanting to spend smart, to eat smart, to take care of ourselves well. And so yeah, what you're saying about giving back to others what was maybe lacking when you were going through your own journey, it's it's quite amazing, And I think that bowl can really latch onto two personal stories like that, and to have reasons behind what we do. We don't just be frugal just to be frugal. We don't just cook for ourselves just because we think it will be fun. Like there's a reason behind it, like you said, the connection with family members around or friends around a home cooked meal, but also the health benefits of it. So yeah, really really lovely backstory to cook Smarts. Thanks so much for sharing that. Oh, You're welcome, And I think what you said is so true. It's just that you know, we're not taught these things. It's the same thing in finances. You know, there are in high school, we're taught, you know, lots of important facts and things, but we're just not taught so many life skills. And I think something like you know, caring for yourself from a health health standpoint is you know something that most people are not taught, and then they're kind of thrown out in the real world and forced to figure out how to do it. And it's kind of just no wonder that people really easily resort to take out in prison foods because you know, those things are very straightforward and their directions on the box. And so I think that these at least life skills are really important, and I'm so excited you guys are focusing on them. Yeah, we're excited too. Well, let's dive into the questions because I think these will be really helpful, whether you're using cook Smarts or not. The you have some really great tips to share with us and for the person who's too busy, because I think that's who most of us will identify with, right, So, what are some easy, quick solutions to making dinner happen. So unfortunately, you know, there's no magic bullet. It's just the same thing as like you know, anything about your you know, your personal finances, there's you know, it takes time to save, right, you know, And to me, I think we just need a mindset shift, and I think that's kind of the easiest way to go about It's like, just what your personal finances, it's important to always be saving a little bit here and there, right, and that that adds up and you'll always be glad you put away those small amounts, you know, for your rainy day fund. And I think kind of the same thing goes for executing dinner. I meal planning and meal prepping. You know, we're all really busy people, but we all have small increments of time, you know, we all have time to check Instagram and Facebook and all these different things. So I think it's about you know, thinking of those small increments of time you have um and just taking advantage of them to make dinner happen fast on a stressful weeknight. S instead of checking Instagram for five minutes, can you plan a meal or two for you know, tomorrow and the next day for me, like I love kind of ending the day watching a show, you know, I'd just like to relax, um, But I also try to do that, you know, on my iPad while I do a little bit of meal prep for the next day. And it's not about you know, I know, we see all those pictures on on Instagram hashtag prep Sunday, people who cook for three hours and have like tend you know, ten to twenty meals and beautiful chopper were always and the fridge that doesn't have spills all over it and crumbs everywhere. No one's life is like that. Those are just for the photo shoots. And so to me, it's not about like these huge aspirations of like trying to find three hours of time in your week. It's me it's really about And I think that's just also too daunting for people. And I think like if that's the barrier or entry, like you know, for most people are like no way, Like I don't really want to spend three hours on my weekend chopping vegetables and cooking chicken or whatever. But I bet if people look for small opportunities, you know, those that that stuff really adds up. So for me, It's like, you know, thirty minutes, I can watch a sitcom and chop some vegetables for the next day. And that makes a huge difference, you know, when you're getting home from work and I've got two kids that like things just need to happen fast, and so if the vegetables are chopped the night before, then dinner is just it just you know, is able to unable to execute it so much faster. Yeah. I like that breaking it down into manageable pieces. I think that that makes it easier for us to swallow. And does cook sparts assist then with how to meal prep? Is that part of what you guys do? Yeah, So each of our meal plants comes with a weekend prep section and it's one of those things that's totally optional because we know, like some people will not want to do it, um, but you can, you know, on a Sunday if you decide you want to get ahead out of the entire week. We kind of break down all of the different things you can do, whether it's making us you know, making getting your sauces ready, you're making your saladdress and getting some vegetables prep and we kind of anticipate, like knowing that like, you know, some things are not going to stay fresh for more than three or four days, so we only put in the things that we know are going to stay fresh, whether you do the weekend prep or not. We write our recipes differently than most recipe sites. We really believe in this whole concept of means and plus like having everything in its place before you start cooking. And so if you're you know, a busy mom, but you might have map time, you can look at the prep for the day and kind of get that stuff kind of out of the way, so when it's time for dinner, you just have to do the cooking part of it. And I think that again, it's like a mindset shift of like reorganizing how you're cooking process works so that by the time cooking happens, everything you like, all the big things you need are done. You won't be you know, in the middle of a stir f I and realize, oh, like I actually didn't chop the guards, like and that's the first day, and you know, are written that way, like it assumes that people have read through and kind of figured out, you know, everything, and we assume that people don't do any of that work nice, I never know, and then I and then something's in the pan and it's like oh, and then add this sauce to it, which you had to have already made ahead of time. So now the things that are in the pan are burning because I've got a quick make the sauce that I was supposed to make before I put the things in the disaster. And I like that idea of doing like little things when you get the time, like, because I have been that person before to spend three hours meal prepping on a Sunday, and I just can't do it very often. But even if it's like thirty minutes while you're watching your evening sitcom or you know, during a lunch break or something, just to get you know, that night or the next day prepped is such a good idea, so much more attainable. Yeah, really taking advantage of those moments. It's such a good tip. Yeah, and ends up being insurance because it's like, oh, you have that they're already makes it just a little harder to be like, well I'll do something else, because you're like, well, I've already chopped ex or made the sauce, so like I'm already you know, like a few steps in, I might as well just finish up. Yeah, and I've noticed that too for snacks or just grabbing things from the fridge. I'm more likely to finish up all the grapes if I have already washed them and I've cut them into you know, portions that I can hold in my hand. It's yeah, it's so simple and so stupid, but it makes all the difference in me eating my groceries or not. Jess, I want to pick your brain on this one. So, my husband does not really care for leftovers, and he really likes variety, and I've heard this from a lot of people, like leftovers are not a thing for them. Some people are great, they can have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every single day of their lives. That's that's not my husband. So for those people out there who don't like leftovers, how can you get around that and eliminate food waste? Do you have any tips for us there? Yeah? I do. Um, So they're basically two wayte to meal prep. Right. There are folks that will spend that Sunday and cook like four meals and they'll eat those leftovers the entire week, and then there are people who get their ingredients chopped, so that all I have to do is, you know, kind of a similar cook when dinner time comes. Um. So for those people that don't love leftovers, I clearly don't recommend that first for suption, so I recommend the latter. And it's just kind of learning a few versatile meal templates. And what I mean by that is, you know, the meal templates are like where the cooking process is the same, but you can customize with whatever ingredients you have on hand. So a meal template could be like a stir fry or a soup. So like you know, a stu fry pretty much whenever you make a sture fry, the process is the same, but you can you can add whatever ingredients you want into it. Um. So let's say at the beginning of the week, you know, you chop some mushrooms, sweet potatoes, carrots, and broccoli. You pick four vegetables for the week, So one night you could easily make a bollyonnaise with mushrooms, carrots, and ground meat. Right, So, like two of those ingredients can go into a really good pasta sauce. And if you know, you couldn't make extra for leftovers for later. You can freeze that that stuff works really well, or you can just make a portion for the two of you and another night you could bake a protein and then row some sweet potatoes and broccoli, so again like two of the other vegetables that you've chosen for the week. And then the third night you can end the week with the sture fry. Like I said, you know, the surfris a great meal to plant template because it's so customizable, Like it's to be kind of like the thing you should do at the end of the week with whatever you have left over, because anything can go into it. Um, So you can do your sture fry with any protein. You can do chicken, mushroom, shrimp, whatever you have on hand that you know it was on sale for the week, and then adding your mushrooms, carrots and broccoli. You know some people do like the soup on Monday's Taco Tuesdays. You kind of for meal templates and just say like, these are the ingredients I've chosen for the week. You know, these are vegetables and protein, and you know, just changing up the style in which you make them like makes them feel like different meals, right, same ingredients, but maybe cooking it differently or putting it with a different side. Yeah, that's yeah. Other versatile templates that we use a lot of cook Smarts are fried rice, you know, get anything going there, soups, chilies, a burrito. You know you can have like rice, beans and throw anything else in their salads caesada. So we just like to think about leftovers, like this whole concept of repurposing leftovers, how do you like make left over something new again? And we actually have customers has actually has this really great infographic called how to Repurpose Leftovers that gives you ideas, you know, on how to repurpose these leftovers based on what liftovers you have. So if you have sausage or shrimp, or lentils or veggies or tofu, we'd be like, oh, here are the things you know that you can make based on those leftovers. So it feels like, you know, you're making something new and you're also saving time because you're kind of cooking cooking ones, but you know, making two different things out of it. Yeah. I have seen your infographics and they are phenomenal, so good, so helpful. Yeah, and that's another like the whole thing about like education, right, Like education has like you know, people want to learn in a fun way, and so we feel like if you throw something in a fun graphic and break it down into into small steps, it just helps people enjoy and you know kind of we all eat with their eyes first, So infographics takes that approach as well. That's probably why so many people are into meal prepping is because the pictures do look so good. Yeah, I want my fridge to look like that and never will, but I'm gonna try. Yes, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I feel like those people must have like a spare fridge that's like not I hope so used for anything. Definitely, it's a fridge in a studio. I doubt it's even cold, right, yeah it was cold, Like Yeah, the containers would kind of like fog up there bekond sensation, but they're always a clear and perfectly Yeah, I don't know. It's behind the scene of guys, this is what goes on behind the scenes of Instagram. Don't be fool. Yeah, alright, So for the person who just hates cooking in general, which is was me and kind of still is me most days. Um, where should they start? So I'm gonna I'm gonna throw that question back at you. It was you, like, how did you make that change? You know, shift your mindset to start cooking and maybe not love it, but not hate it as much as you used to. It was oh gosh, turning the tables. Um so we had to do it too, because we paid off seventy eight thousand dollars of debt in two years and so gradually, thank you. So it was kind of something that I knew had to happen. Um So, I just changed my grocery shopping habits to two meal plan because I'm a very like numbers and planning, like, I'm not super creative. So I had to start planning different meals and looking up recipes on Pinterest, but it would take me forever and then I would get the recipe so wrong. But just like practicing has has made it almost soothing. But it's definitely I'm not creative in the kitchen. It's not something that I would do over like going out to dinner, but it's become like a we're on speaking terms, me and cooking, you know, where we can be in the same room together. We don't hate each other. That's all you need. And so I think that's you know, I've kind of to to answers to your question, and the first one is like your your kind of situation, like you didn't have an alternative, right, And I think a lot of people don't come to cooking until they feel like they don't have another alternative. Like when I was given cooking lessons, the main people that came to me for lessons were moms and people who had just been also had gone through some sort of health diagnosis where it was like, wow, like I really can't continue on this path of take out. You know. I had what had one student who ate at McDonald's like once or twice a day and did you know a steakhouse lunch? How to start his He had a gas stove and like he kept he was like I think it's broken because it won't light, and you just get like let the like, let you know, the lighter go on. For most people, it's like they don't decide that they want to cook until it becomes a necessity. And I think for folks who have the option, you kind of have to like maybe trick yourself into thinking like there is no other option. If you hit you know, if you especially if you hate cooking, and so it's like, you know, if you always have like the option of like you know, you don't have to stay on up your budget is like pretty flexible, then you're kind of continue on your current habits. Right. So I think a lot of it you just have to trick yourself to be like, well, there is no other option, and then also just like take baby steps, right, Like, no one starts off running a marathon by running a marathon everything. You know. You know a lot of people like run marathons that hated running from the beginning, right, but they want to achieve that goal. So if your goal is like I want to be cooking more, you know, I want to be cooking most of my meals, Like don't start by cooking all of your meals. Start by cooking one of your meals. And I think that again, it's just really about these like small incremental shifts in your mindset and that really can help you know, your behavior change. And I think for a lot of people, once they start seeing the results of like, yeah, they're not bad cooks, the only reason they were bad cooks is because no one taught them how to cook. You know. I think that you just gain confidence. And I think like if you start with just looking at your local area and finding a knife skills class, I think getting some good knife skills under your belt makes a huge difference in your appreciation for being in the kitchen because it doesn't feel like you have no idea what you're doing. So if you get you know, you go to a one to two hour class, and then all of a sudden, I think you'll see like, oh, like I actually can use a knife and it doesn't take me forever to cook. And I think that that really helps decrease the hate the hate of the cooking. I like that it's kind of setting yourself up for success to and what you're saying of the baby steps, but also being able to see, oh I did that and I had fun or I enjoyed it, or it tasted good, and not to throw everything at yourself at once, but being able to say, will this be an attainable thing, and be able to see the success that you've achieved to then inspire you to do more and learn more and cook more. Yeah, exactly. Do take those little things for granted, like knife skills, yeah, yeah, And again, like it's like throwing someone into the water, who's like never swam before without like a floaty. You know, it looks like amazing that we don't give people more instruction on how to use them. Even if you hate cooking, you probably know somebody in your life that doesn't hate cooking, or actually maybe even loves cooking. So I think like spending some time with them and like getting you know, convincing them to let you spend some time with them in the kitchen. I think a lot of that enthusiasm can be infectious. And so I think if you kind of see why someone enjoys cooking through their eyes, maybe like you know, you can kind of adopt adopt the move. That's a good tip that community. I like it. Jazz speaking of knives and knife skills, referring to kitchen gadgets. So, I'm a little bit of a minimalist in the kitchen. I really don't like things all over my counters or cluttering my drawers. I do recognize the importance of a good knife, because that really frustrates me. But what what would you say are the top kitchen gadgets to have and what are the ones that we can just pass on? They're not that important? Yeah, I'm actually quite a minimalist too, for someone that cooks a lot and sort of for a living. I don't have a very like I don't have every every gadget or piece of equipment. And if you open my pots and pants, I think people be surprised, like how few I have. So I think a lot of you definitely having a good knife. And a good knife to me is like the best knife that you can afford. It doesn't have to be, you know, something really expensive, but it's a knife that, like you know, most knives you buy will start off sharp. Doesn't matter like if it's a twenty dollar knife or a hundred dollar knife. But I think the main thing is like maintaining it. It's just like it doesn't matter like how what kind of car you buy. You want to take it in for its tune ups, right, you want to take it and get its oil change. Same thing with a knife. You know, you want to take care of it and make sure you don't like throw it in a drawer and just like you know, let it bang around with other things. Um So, to me, it's more about, like you know, having a few things and really understanding the kind of cooking you do. But I think really like most people like if you have a good knife, you have a cutting board. That's all you know, like And to me, some most cutting boards strangely don't like they're not very safe and that they like shift around when you're when you're chopping on them. I don't know if you guys have noticed, but you just fold up a kitchen towel and put it underneath there, and that will make your your you know, that will stabilize your cutting board and make such a huge difference. So maybe not so much gadgets, but I think a lot of it it's just the organization of your kitchen. So like if you have I have a little prep station set up, so in my prep station, you know, the kind of the equipment that I have in there are my prep bowls. And for people who are short on space, there's these great collapsible prep bowls and also come with lids so you could you know, pop them open when you're prepping and then collapse the for storage and also to put in the dishwasher. Use the lids if you are doing prep ahead of time, and they make a huge difference just kind of organize, you know. I think so much of it like if your your cooking process is organized, it just makes you feel so much more like zen in the kitchen versus like, oh my god, there's stuff everywhere. Yeah. So the other things in my prep you know station is my salad spinner. I think it's one of those things where people think of salad spinners only for salad, but I actually use it as my like calendar for everything. So I washed all my veggies in it, um, and it's just yeah, we we just use it for herbs, for vegetables, for fruit. Um. We don't always use the spinning function. But if you have a salad spinner, you don't also need to get a colander thing. Yeah, and I think people also just forget that, like you know, to have a little packing away area, and you don't. There's not like specific gadgets associated with that. But I've really invested in a couple of things to reduce my use of plastic or like saran wrap. So I have these things called food huggers. They're these really their silicone and they hug onto an open can or an open jar, or half an onion or half a lemon. And I have these plastic bags that are reusable, so I don't have to like use you know, zip block bag, you know lots of zip block bags. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, and I'm not sure. I just keep my like sharpie and some masking tapes so when I know, pack things up in the freezer. All that stuff is just like nice and handy to have. Yeah, are there any gadgets that you think are not super necessary to have in the kitchen? So not so much gadgets, but like I think a lot of people they see like sets of things like knife sets or pots and pants set, and like, you know, they make them sound like a really good deal because instead of one pan for you know, thirty bucks, for like a hundred bucks, you can get like six pans or something like that. But like a lot of those things are not like the right size for your family or like the cooking you do, right, So I think you really have to understand, like if you're cooking just for two people, if you're cooking for a family, like what are the sizes of pots and pants you really need? And forgot about the the sets, like just buy the things all of cart and same thing with knives, like most people, I'd rather have like two good chefs knives and like a whole set of like knives where like more than half of them. I'm like, how do I use this knife? What is for? Yes, I said goodbye to the kitchen knife block because I don't like it taking up space on my counter, and I always go for one of them. That's it. I use one, maybe two exactly. I think if you bought one of those pots and pants that there'll be like two or three that you'd end up using all the time, and the rest are like then you know, kind of what's the point? So to me, I think like just understanding what you're cooking needs are so like, there are lots of gadgets that are really helpful if you will use them, right, Every gadget is helpful so long as you use it. So if you're someone that like makes a lot of smoothies, get like, you know, a blender is useful, but it's like, if that's something you never do, then what's the point of having a blender. And in the last couple of years, the two trendy gadgets have been the spiralizer and the instant pot. And if you're someone that really loves making vegetable noodles, then get us like you know, like clearly get a spiralizer. But if it's something like you think you want to, just like do once and try, like you know, I'm sure a friend of yours borrowing. Yeah. Yeah. And the class people I've got on the like you know that love their instant pot, like I use my instant pot many times a week, so it's been definitely worth it for me. But it's like, you know, don't get it just because it's like trendy and everyone else everyone seems to be getting one because unless it really fits into like the food you're gonna eat and the kind of the you know, the cooking that you do. Thank you for that freedom. I do not have an instant pot. And I actually hated my crock pot and I sold it for five dollars at my yard sale. Yeah that's great. I was late to the instant pot train, especially like considering them in the whole like food, you know, being in this area of cooking. But once I got it, I was like, Wow, this thing is amazing. And I actually got rid of two of my slow cookers because the instant pot has replaced them both. So that's how she helped me free up a little bit of space. Yeah, I got it because I hate using the oven in the summer because we're in Florida and it's so hot. So I wanted to like commit to doing instant pot summer, and so I did so many things this summer with the instant pot. It was great and it didn't heat up my house during the day and I didn't have to leave the slow cooker running all day. Yeah. For the people that use it, and I think it's life changing. Maybe you do not use it, then it's just like a wis space, Yeah, as is everything? Right. Yeah, that's such a great perspective. It's great. Well, I think we can introduce Jess to our favorite time of the week. What do you think, Jill, Oh, my word, I think it's about time and it's it is my favorite time of the week. It's time for the bill of the week. That's right, It's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That's bill Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week. Okay, So I had to think long a har about this. I received lots of bills as a business owner. You can imagine I have lots We worked with lots of vendors and contractors, so I re leave lots of bills. But so I'm going to cheat a little bit, and I think more like I guess when you're building a business, like you're kind of always saving four things. So like instead of like I guess, I guess you can think of its like I got a bill for something, a good project I wanted to do, and then I had to like say for it, and then you know, pay it off. So one of the things I'm most proud of this year is our meal plan developer, Jess, who lives in Kansas City. She's wonderful. She's been in the company for three years. She was able to take a three month maternity leave, so that was kind of like I guess you considered like we and it was a paid maternity leave, and for a company that's only four people, that's a big deal an employee for three months. But like we were able to kind of like pay that bill off in the sense that like we've just nil was happening, right, So we like we're able to, like I was able to kind of like save for it um and you know, so I could hire someone to kind of like help do someone her tests and just make that happen. And so we're just like, I just feel so proud because something like that's really important to us because like you know, everyone that works for me is like family, and we of course wanted to give her that green of benefit in time to spend with her little one. That's amazing the small business I thought that was like, really really is planning ahead and valuing your employees. My goodness, that is one of my favorite bills, uh that we've ever had. I love that. Thanks for letting me twist the you know, the meaning of bill a little bit definitely really vague on purpose, so you make it whatever you want to make it. Yeah, So if you want to leave a bill of the week with us, if you think you can top paying for your employees maternity leave for three months, then Frugal Friends Podcast dot com slash will and leave us your faith. So we love it. Definitely the best time of the week. So, Jess, we want to get into some questions from the community, so we have a Facebook community frugal community that we talk about all things frugal, and we've been talking about cook smarts on there, and we've gotten a couple of questions from our listeners. So if we can kind of do like a lightning round with it's not it's two questions, but spoiler weather. So the first question is wanting to know what your best tips are for cooking for one person. Sure, So I'm actually going to go back to the leftover's question from earlier. I think it's very similar. Like, you know, if you are not if you're cooking for one you're likely again not to want leftovers for days and days of the same thing. So you kind of just to take that same approach of like gathering a few ingredients, learning those cuss you know, those like super versatile meal templates, and that will kind of help you be able to cook something new every day, um, in small portions, but they can still prep those vegetables in large portions, right, so you can like not feel like you have to buy like twenty things every single week. Just buy a few things, but again just like switch up the template and so that you have a different meal. And this is something about like my mom used to do with her best friend, like they used to cook together and split meals and so like sometimes it's hard to like scale a recipe down for one or two servings. And if you have something you really love, like I don't know, I made eggplant partners on the other day, but it's like you don't only want to make it for one. Uh So if you like had her friend over and like you know, made it together and split it up, you know, it feels a little bit less like you're ending up with a humongous cast role at me. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, my tip would be to just invite me over for dinner. If you're cooking for one, all come eat the rest. I also that invite chill over. Yeah, thank you, thanks for that plug. Yeah. And I think, like, you know, it's if you're still like single and like you're like your your post, you know, work life is pretty flexible. Like you guys, you can find like a couple of friends and do sort of like some like dinner co op thing where like I don't know, you took turns um, you know, one person is always as mondays or you know, like and then you kind of just like switch around. I think that like makes a huge difference to well, I heard this tip recently, um like last week, and apparently they're like freezer meal parties where people will get together and make like one freezer meal or or something and make it like two or three times and then get with two or three people and then you give them the rest of your freezer meals and they give you the excess of theirs, and so you leave with you know, two or three different freezer meals, but you only have to make you know, one recipe three times. Yeah, exactly. I think like just like community makes such a big difference, kind of like scaling that way when speaking of freezing meals, this is this is an answer to a question you did not ask me. Somebody please give us all the answers. I think when I think a freezer meals, I often think about like people that just had a baby, because we get this question all the time from cook Cook's parts memory and be like, oh, my friend had a baby, Like I want to give cook them a freezer meal. So like my tip is, yeah, what should I make? But my tip is not so much about like what to make, but like don't give them an entire cast role like divided up for them so that they don't actually then have to eat like a lasagna for like four days straight. Um. And so this is what I do when I was pregnant, was like, you know, even though I would make these big cast roles, I divided them up so like I will be eating it for like two meals max. Right, So like I don't want to be eating something super heavy for that long. Um. So if you could do that for you know, if you're bringing super stew over, like I would do that in the same way, like divide it up into like two to four servings so that you know, they and their partner can have it versus like just giving them a big vat of something to put in the freezer, because then they freeze the whole thing and then happen to cross the whole thing and then eat you know. So true. Yeah, wow makes me want to get pregnant and I can get meals from you, jess. Yeah, I won't, don't worry. Oh man, that's must want someone to portion it out for me. It sounds so nice. That's always the worst part when I bring home a whole thing of chicken and I know I'm not going to cook it all at once. So I don't want to throw it in my fridge and you got to portion it out and put some in the freezer. Have somebody else do that for me? Yes? Its euch difference. I don't think that's like I don't yeah, I don't think it's worth getting a task rabbit for that, like portion out money. I don't know it. Friends on how busy you are, I guess that's true. Yeah, sometimes like yes, I'm tearing up a rogisterry chicken and we we will do Costco chicken a lot and then like the holy there's definitely to me like oh I have to like divide this humongous thing up into you know. So yeah, yeah that's a great tip um. Okay, So our next quite from our community, uh is So if you don't have access to fresh veggies, is it even worth getting frozen um or at that point? Is it just like you could just get a frozen whole frozen meal at that point and it's the same. Oh No, I think it's totally worth getting a frozen veggies. Are my freezer is always packed with frozen veggies? You know, we have roughly a cauliflower, okrah, mushrooms, just anything you can think of uh to me, Like, you know, frozen veggies they are just usually just as fresh as fresh um, because you know they you know, whenever they package them their their packaged at their fresh as they usually are, they blanch them and so like the cooking't process is actually even faster than you know, starting from starting from fresh um. It's something you can get like really good deals on right so you know, you can find them on sale. You can buy them in bulk, and you know you can buy them in bulk um large bags and then to buyde them up yourself, you know easily. At home, our big thing is just to like take a bag of frozen veggie and put him in the air fryer, put him in her oven and like just let them roast, and they pretty much roast the same way they stirre fry the same way. So we're a he I'm a huge fan. So she now with kids, even though like I have good knife skills, like some days like it is just so hectic that I'm like I did not have anything chopped. And then you know, you just pull a bag of veggies out and throw it in whatever we're making and it makes a huge difference in like, you know, time time it takes me to get dinner on the table. That's great. I'm so intrigued by your knife skills. I just like, where should I go to learn knife skills? So this was this was like one of the best birthday gifts I've ever received. When I was like right out of college, my best friend got me a knife skills class. Yeah. It was a like a local kitchen um, like a local like the small little cooking school. Uh. And it just made such a huge difference. So we did all these We did a bunch of things, like we made salts, like which involves chopping a lot of tomatoes and onions, you you know, but like and they taught us how to use different knives, and I just made a huge difference, like knowing how to hold a knife for like protecting your fingers from getting you know, sliced open. Oh yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. And it's like two hour class and just like, you know, I use all those skills today. Still, that's amazing. I can't help but think of have you guys seen that video of Ryan Gosling and Will Ferrell like interrupting the Jimmy Kimmel show with with knife guys. No, no, Nari, Well I'll post it in the show notes. It's so funny. We're like knife guys and they like talk about their knife skills and they're trying to sell their like brand new knife. It's it's really funny. But anyhow, it's making me laugh, but it's also making me excited to learn some knife skills. Yeah, it's it will make you will probably, like I don't depending where your current knie skils are at, Like it'll just decrease your time in the kitchen by so much. Is to know how to use a knife correctly and knowing how to chop certain things like you know, like there are certain things that like are such a mystery to people, like butternut squash. It's like, how do you chop this thing? I get scared cutting watermelon? That really well. Also you have to have a sharp knife, Like it doesn't help when you're when your knives are dull, which sometimes that happens, but watermelon scares me. I'm like what my fingers right there? Yeah? Yeah, it's also like a big heavy thing to wheel. But yeah, so if you got if you take a knife skills class and get whatever knife you have sharpened professionally and just take it to like go and yelp and look for you know, knife sharpening and find take it to your local guy. Like for where we live, they usually have like a knife sharpening truck at the farmer's market every week. Uh, there's likely someone just like station there and so maybe that's the case of your farmer's market too. But yeah, it's like makes such a difference to like know how to use a knife correctly holding you hold it correctly and also have a sharp one because it's not sharp. Knife is not that helpful. Yeah, she is going to turn into knife girl. Yeah, knife girl, knife a knife ninja. Yes, hey, knifers. That's what we're gonna start calling our listeners soon. They're all going to take knife skill classes and they're all going to be knifers instead offers. This has been such a great chat, Jess, Thank you so much for coming on with us. So what is going on at cook Smarts now? And do you have anything coming up in the future that people should know about? So much is going on at cook Smarts. We went through a big redesign this year, so the site is so pretty. It's just like makes you you know, want a meal plan with us every single week, or it does or we make it like so easy that you don't you don't have to think about meal planning, right, Like we've done all the work for you and just like we've tried to make it as simple as possible. Um and so you know, we're really just like excited about all the new meals we haven't had. I'm headed to Kansas City later this week. Because our you know, like Jen, you we're saying you love planning, we also love planning. Clearly, we run a meal planning service and sour our team gets together once a year and we planned the entire next year's worth of meals together. Yeah, it takes a lot of planning beforehand. Clear like we've already like brainstormed all the meals and have a good idea of like what meals you want to put in next year's calendar. Then we kind of do the whole like tetrissing and calendaring of everything and making sure like we're not doing too much salmon in any month or like all the days makes sense in terms of like we really like to reduce food waste, so we try to, you know, make the Monday and Tuesday, and meals have like the most perishable ingredients so that like they don't spoil before you to use them. So we think through all of that stuff, and it's just really really fun time really thought, so I don't have to think, yeah, you know, I think like good meal like you know, good meal planning. It really takes time. And I think, like you know, you, I think lots of people should do with themselves because, like you know, it is really nice to have control over your meals. And if you're someone that's totally okay with wanting to you know, like if you have like a ten to twenty meals that you really love and don't mind rotating through them, like totally meal plan by yourself. But if you're someone that really loves variety but just doesn't have time to like sit through pinterests and look through cookbooks like outsource it too. You know, it's like all these all of our meals, all these meal plan services or several meal plan services, are all really quite affordable, and I think if they help you stick to a budget and stick to cooking, you know, they pay themselves off many many many times over um over the year, not to mention that that there's something to be learned then in it, and that people might even be able to taper off from from different things that cook Smarts offer because you've helped them enter into that new lifestyle. Absolutely, yeah, and you know, we so we we have a couple of things, you know, where we a lot of people, you know, and the people, depending on like their life stage, Like some people like when they're really busy, are the ones that that's the time when they need us or sometimes actually that time that they don't need us because their life is like just too unpredictable and they don't know when they're going to be home and everything. Um, So it just depends on what your needs are different different stages of your life. And then we also have nourished our online cooking program, So that's like the program that really focuses on these skills kind of these like very practical, doable kitchen skills that everybody should have. But again, like we're never taught in school, and you know, that's the thing where we focus on knife skills. We focus on teaching you these like versatile meal templates so that you can cook without a recipe, so that you don't need a meal plan service, right, so you can just look into your fridge or your pantry and say like, oh, I have X, Y and Z. That means I can make this because I know how to. You know, you use this particular cooking formula. Wow, I love it. Thank you so much, Jess. Thank you for having me. It's a so fun to share all this information. Rumor has it that you are providing the Frugal Friends listener with a little discount code. Yes we are. Yeah what what? Yeah? So if you are interested in trying out cook smarts, um, Jess is giving Frugal Friends podcast listeners off um meal planning when you use the code frugal Uh so, definitely, like we've been talking about, head over to Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash cs and then you can enter code frugal for off. Thank you so much for that, Jess. That's so nice of you. Ye, that's amazing. We'll have a great day and we will talk to you later. Thanks by guys. Thanks Jill. I loved that. I loved all those tips about taking small bites of meal prepping to get it done. You don't have to do three hours of it on Sunday. Yes, there's freedom in that. I also want to expand my knife skills. You pick up on that before I got it. She's inspired me. Yes, guys, Well that's all we have for you today. That's all. I mean. That was a lot. And uh, I hope it's inspired you to expand your skills in the kitchen, do some more meal planning. Um and find some of those templates will have links to some of the infographics just mentioned so that you can try out some of these meal templates for yourself. Uh and uh and I hope it lowers your grocery budget as a result. And uh So for the rest of the month, we're still reading Your Money or Your Life by Vicky Robin and Joe Dominguez, and we are still giving away November's book. You can win the More of Less by Joshua Becker. And if you want to win the free copy of November's book, we're giving away one for every five reviews we get this month, no limit. So to enter, leave us a review on your podcast listening device not just iTunes, Screenshot that review and then email it to us at Frugal Friends Podcasts at gmail dot com. And we're going to select the winners for this book at the end of the day, at the end of the month, like always, Yeah, which is gonna be Halloween, so maybe maybe we'll announce it in some creative way. Who knows. Stay tuned if we put on Halloween costumes. If you want to know what a really good review is to leave, it's from Frugal Young Mama, who says, I love this podcast. I love this podcast. It's fun, funny and frugal. It's nice to have a lighthearted podcast about stuff that is so important, like finances. I feel like finances or something a lot of people don't like to talk about because it's serious. These girls find a way to make it fun and enjoyable to listen to. Thank you so much, Frugal Young Mama are glad to have listeners like you, and I hope you screenshot at that and sent it in for a to win our next book. You can still do that, so guys, thanks so much for hanging out with us today. Hit the subscribe button if you haven't already where ever you're listening to this episode, and that will ensure that we come at you every Friday with all of our frugal tips and tricks and special gifts and until next week chow We'll see you chow down. Frugal Friends is produced, edited and mixed by Eric Syria. Uh So John, I legit had a frugal failed today at the library. And it started with me going to the library. I got I uh rented. What would do do you do at the library? You rent the books, you borrow the books. Yeah, you sign out the books. I don't know, take them out. Took out our next book for our Frugal Friends book club. And I go up to the front. I haven't been there and forever. I'm just gonna be real honest with you. And she was like, oh, this is great, but before I lend you this book, you owe us money for the last book that you got that was returned late. And it was so long ago that I have no way of proving whether or not it was actually late. It was only a dollar thirty five, But I was like, are you serious? I shouldn't have come here. I always just view it as a donation to our public library system. I don't need. I would love to donate to them to keep them going. They do so many great programs in the community, so your donation will not be in vain. Don't they get money from the government. Don't dollars already donate to them. I'm just saying, not that much. I'd rather donate to hungry children. Does the library give to hungry children? It is a space that provides lunches to kids during the summer. There you go, so in defensive libraries. Okay, episode episode eight two. That'll be your episode eighty two. We'll talk about libraries. Yeah. I probably won't be around then. Yeah. Oh gosh, sorry, that's the right. It was just really loud. It's okay. I just don't do it ever again. Okay,

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