Tiffany King Interview. Ep 50

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to Best of Both Worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to Best of Both Worlds. This is Laura. This is episode fifty. Wow, we're getting up there. We have talking all things dinner again. Longtime listeners may recall that we had another episode on meal planning and getting dinner on the Table back in the fall of twenty seventeen. You can go back and check out that episode number fourteen. And by the way, if you want to see all of our stuff, just go to Best of Both Worlds podcasts dot com. That will take you you to our lib sun site. That's where we're hosted and so you can listen to old episodes. We really would appreciate you checking out and you can tell us if we've gotten better. Hopefully we have. We're a bit more polished now than we were back then. Anyway, So we did this dinner episode in the fall and got a little bit of, you know, a lot of positive feedback, a lot of maybe more mixed feedback too, because a few people putting it out that neither Sarah nor I are actually the person getting dinner on our on the table for our families during the week. It's not like we never have, by the way, I did for a great many years and then decided about two years ago that I just had had enough. I was tired of it, and so figured out a way to outsource it. I'm the same for you, right, Sarah. Yeah, And so I think our episode was good taking the guilt off from people who then met have been empowered to outsource it, but maybe not as good for people who didn't feel like they were able to outsource it and having practical tips for doing it ourselves. And yes, I during North Carolina phase, I made dinner, you know, every night. But I only had one child, so I cannot say I have the experience of dealing with the witching hour with three children and getting dinner on the table, and that is a choice that I have made. But I'm I actually am always enthralled to hear secrets of those who have figured that out. So I think our guests will be really really interesting. Yeah, no, it's it's definitely obviously an option to people talk about, like what are the parts of your life that are most stressful and then figure out can you do something about this pain point? So that was exactly what happened for me. I was feeling very much like by the time I had four children, and that I was trying to entertain the baby and everyone else and get dinner on the table, and then people were complaining about not liking the dinner or whatever. And I was often doing this, you know, without my husband around and feeling very put upon and such. So you know, different options. One is to continue to feel like a martyr, one is to you know, explode at one's spouse and be unhappy, and the third is to outsource it, which is what I elected to do. So that was that was a happy choice, and it's been going great. I've been been thrilled with with not doing that, and often what I'll wind up doing is is playing with some of the kids while while dinner is being prepared, which is which is nice. Have you made any family dinners that you can remember in the last weeks, months, year, well, because you know, often during on the weekend, I kind of let my husband take the lead on it that Saturday and Sunday, I sort of feel like he can kind of think about it, and he often does, like he will. He's more likely to be the one who's gone to Costco and gotten whatever ridiculous quantity of meat and seafood whatever, and so he'll figure that out and I will assist. I think of myself in sort of a soux chef option for that, I'm the one who tends to be like cutting up the fruit and vegetables for the kids to make sure that there is an adequate quantity of fruit and vegetables on everyone's plate. That just like like a giant cut of steak in the middle of the table that might then be ignored. So I mean, in his defense, like, what's the point they just moved from the table over to the kitchen sink, And you know, maybe it was not worth dressing myself out about. Like you know, they sales seem to be thriving, even if not all the fruit and vegetables always get eaten. That's interesting because fruit in my house gets inhaled no matter what fruit it is. Vegetables are a little bit of a tougher cell, particularly with can. We've been doing it. I feel like we've been getting better on this front. And partly it's everyone's getting older and so they're becoming slightly more reasonable about the idea that you can eat something even if you don't like it. They've been certainly the fruit tends to be pretty good, Like the older kids are good about fruit. The three year old is still a little bit reticent about everything, and it's just, you know, a toddler pickiness phase, I'm pretty sure. And he's a kid who likes to control what he can. Between our nanny and I, we've really been pushing more on this, like that he has to try stuff he can like lick foods like. He doesn't necessarily even have to get ahold break down, but he can lick it to try it. And and and that's been getting better, so you know, I mean, we're talking stuff like getting him to try pasta, like for whatever ridiculous reason, he wouldn't eat pasta like I like bland post because he knew you wanted him to. Well, yeah, so he's the little rebel, right. So then finally he took a little bite and he's just like, oh yeah, now I'll eat it. So now he'll eat a whole like plate apostle, which is good because that's at least something everyone can eat. You know, we're slowly developing things with fruit and all that that he's trying these things and is willing to lick them or take a tiny bite, so evolving a process. You know, the kids still complain, but there we're trying to more have everyone eat some of the same thing and then they can fill up on an extra kid friendly thing that will be on the plate too, And you know that's that's one way to sort of approach these these battles. But yeah, I just got kind of tired of it. So I still understand. I still like to like read through cooking Light. I read through it and then you know, I'm not actually making anything, but it's reading it as like recreational reading, which which why I totally do that. Yeah, And then well, and honestly, and I like Milk Street. It's really I think I've mentioned it as a love of the week before but it's it's really pretty and if I make one thing out of the issue, I consider that a success. Yeah, so it's really we're excited to have Tiffany King on the podcast this week to talk about somebody who really, I mean runs a business helping families get dinner on the table. That she's got a lot of great recipes and stuff and meal plans on her website, eat at Home. She's got a new book out called Eat at Home Tonight, which she gave me an advanced copy of, which is awesome. It's one hundred and one recipes that are actually you know, structured along the lines of this is my problem, and here's something that will solve it. Like I only have fifteen minutes, or I only have X, Y and Z in the cupboards and in the fridge, or you know, people are eating in shifts tonight or whatever it is. So that's that's right there, like the problems that we hear from people writing and like, oh I have this, what can I do? So encourage people to check it out? And all we've got the interview with Tiffany. Well, we're very excited to welcome Tiffany Kane to the podcast today Tiffany, why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners. Yeah, I blog at eat It Homecooks dot com. So I started that I don't know, two thousand and eight, so I've been at it for a while and it's grown from just a hobby food blog into a full fledged business now where we offer meal plans and have a membership site. And I have a cookbook coming out in August called Eat It Home Tonight, and that is to solve all of your dinner time woes, which sounds like kind of a big promise, but hopefully it'll be really helpful for people. Yeah. I have a husband and four kids and two kids in law. So yeah, that's my life. So your kids are older now, they're Yeah, they are. My oldest is twenty and she's been married for a couple of years, and then my youngest is fifteen, and so she's really the only one kind of at home that we're still working on. The others are fairly launched, launched into the world. That's good. Yeah, and at the end of the tunnel. Yeah, but when you started your blog, then, if I'm doing the math right, your your oldest was sixteen and your youngest was more like five or six, right, that's right, Yes, yeah, that was That was a different time, a much different time. Yes, things change a lot in the years, as you know, as the kids grow, it just changes things. And so you started this business though while you're you were homeschooling your kids too, right, yes, yeah, we've homeschooled all along. So for better or worse, that's the way it's been. And you know, back when I started the blog, I had four of them at home, all of them in school. There were a lot of responsibilities. Even though the older ones had classes outside of the home. You know, it's still it required a lot of me. Now I've just got the one she takes all of her classes outside the home, so it just doesn't require as much as me of me, which is fantastic. It's a nice time of life, your work out of a job so yet so, but tell us about like the challenge that you were facing with getting dinner on the table. I mean back when you are you know, four kids at home that you're homeschooling, well, and at one point you would have had four under ten or four under eleven, so you definitely went through the thick of it was dinner always something that you were passionate about, even in those early years. Dinner, Well, I like to eat, doesn't it right? And for me it was just something that I was good at and was interested in. So even though it's kind of, you know, doing day in and day out, is it can be a mundane kind of thing, it's also a place that you can put a little bit of creativity to if you want to. So for me, that's it was something that I'm I feel like I'm pretty good at. And also I really feel strongly about connecting with a family around the table that does not have to be at dinner time. For most families, I think that is probably the most common meal that they can connect with. But if breakfast or lunch works, by all means, do that instead. But it's just such a nice time to teach your kids the art of conversation, to really kind of connect with them about their day, to just be together and regroup together. So yeah, it's dinner kind of became a sacred hour for us. Even when we have to chase that down a little bit. That's not to say that we're not pecking food and eating it in the car or on the soccer sidelines or you know whatever, because as the kids grow, they do get busy. Yeah. Well, take us back to when you did have, let's say, for young kids, and you are, you know, a homeschool mom, so you're mostly home with the kids, and like, when did you grocery shop? And when did you cook? And how did that work? Yeah, grocery shopping usually when when we were deep in the homeschooling, happened on the weekends, which was never my favorite. I still don't like to grocery shop. Online ordering is just a godsend. I wish I'd had that when my kids were young. It would have saved my little ones knocking over a whole display of ice cream cones in the groceries. For sure, I'll have those. Oh yes, So if you if you have online grocery available, that is the way to go. Such a time saver. But yeah, and then a lot of times I would do the cooking as much as I could in the morning and prep that either putting something in a slow cooker or just getting a casserole ready to go in the oven, or you know whatever, whatever I could get done in the morning because everybody's a little bit happier and working on their things then, you know, but by the time you get down to five o'clock, your toddlers and preschoolers have basically had it with the day. It's not always a happy time the witching hours. Yes, exactly exactly, And so you know, a lot of our listeners have sort of out of the home jobs. I mean, is that morning prep something that could work for somebody who was planning to leave the house? I mean, do you think that would work in I think that there are things that you could do maybe the night before if you have time, you know, depending on what time you're leaving for work, you can maybe get some morning prep done. A lot of slow cooker recipes only require maybe five minutes of hands on time or you're literally just tossing the things in. One of the things that I like to do is cook six meals in an hour. You're really just assembling those and then they go in the freezer and then those are ready to go in a pressure cooker or a slow cooker. So that I've got a chapter in the book with plans to do that, and then we also offer our members a new plan every month for that. But I use those as emergency meals because you never know when that day is going to come where you just don't have time. If you can pull something from the freezer and it's pretty well done, then that's a lifesaver. Yeah, well, let's talk about you know, you've shared a couple of tips an email with me before that. The first thing you said is work from a plan. Like what do you mean by a plan? Do you mean a weekly plan, like a daily plan, a monthly plan? Like how far ahead is this plan being made for me? I use a weekly plan, and I find that works for a lot of people. Some people have every single day is the same, but for most of us with kids activities, it's going to be a little bit different. So I like to have a slow cooker meal, maybe a pressure cooker meal, a sheet pan dinner, a fifteen minute meal every single week on the plan, and then I juggle those as I need to, so you can almost always carve out fifteen minutes to get dinner done, so I know if I've planned for that, and that can be in our busy our busiest day. And that's kind of the way we structure our meal plans for members as well, so that it fits your life. You know, it doesn't help to have a book of thirty minute meals if you don't have thirty minutes to cook well, And I love you know you've said the word plan like fifty times, but I think that's actually really really important because the reason that you that these fifteen minute meals work is because someone did do the planning to order the groceries that they need, to make sure they have the other ingredients that they need in house, maybe to do some pre prep, and that that enables them to throughout the week be able to throw things together in fifteen minutes. And that's awesome, exactly right, And I'd like it's not doable on a willy nilly basis. I think it makes it really much more challenging, right. And I do like how you said someone did a plan. It doesn't have to be you, because if you've ever done meal plan and then you know that can be such a rabbit hole of internet recipes. I mean it can take hours to do it because it's so side you know, sidetracking, that's true. Next thing, you know, you're shopping for pans, Looks and Art has a website. Yeah, and I literally just use our meal plans that we provide for members I don't overthink it. I go in, I grab one, and then I make it because by the time, you know, if you sometimes we think, oh, I'm not in the mood for that, but by the time it's sitting in front of you on your plate, you're in the mood for it. It's okay, you eat it, Yes, exactly. So we sort of envisioned how this might work. You know, somebody might think about it as I'm thinking logistically for how our listeners lives. A lot of people are thinking through their weeks ahead of time. On Friday afternoon, we always do something, you know, put plan your priorities on Friday afternoon. But you could take a few minutes to think, like what a what are we eating next week? Put in your online grocery order so it's shows up you know, Saturday morning or Sunday morning when you're home, you know, so the groceries are in the fridge, and then you have your stuff for the week ahead of time. Exactly. Yes, that's exactly how I do it. And then if you post what you're making and keep the recipes handy, you can have your husband or an older child make the food. If that works out for your schedule. Yeah, exactly, that's supposedly true that you know, it doesn't always exactly. That's similar to our approach is like, you know, I do the planning and then I'm actually in charge of what happens, but then have somebody else put it together, which is awesome. Yeah, So let's some a couple of your favorite you know, the fifteen minute meal is sort of like this holy grail of cooking because we all know that you couldn't even like drive to a restaurant most of the time in fifteen minutes, let alone like get seated or like get through the you know, counter or the drive through whatever. So what are what are some of your favorite fifteen minute meals? My very favorite, the one that I go to most often is Mexican beans and rice and it's I love it because it's all pantry ingredients. So it's just a couple of cans of kidney beans and some salsa, an onion, some seasonings. It just comes together really fast and easy. And then I usually these days use the pressure cooker or instant pot to make brown rice, which okay, that is I set the pot for seventeen minutes to cook the rice. So that's not fifteen minutes, plus you have to add a couple of minutes, but in twenty minutes you can have your brown rice. So that's a little bit like not quite fifteen minutes. Yeah, somebody could do you know, instant rice too, that you can't do instant, but they have the foods and bags of brown rice that whole foods if you're really lazy, or those pouches. I forget what the brand is, but it's like, oh, get actually have a whole grain ones they do like seven something seven something Yeah really good. Yeah, yeah, they are good. No, and so I yeah, that was one of my That was the section I was definitely going through in Tiffany's cookbook. I was like, oh, fifteen minute meals. Let's say you know what she's what she's come up with. Another one, just to give our readers ideas, is she calls it eggs run through the Garden, which is tell us about that one, Tiffany. Yeah, that is just basically scrambled eggs, but we're adding a lot of different vegetables to it and some herb seasonings. It's really fast and easy, it's healthy, it's pretty cheap, which is you know, also great sometimes Yeah, eggs are a great base for a meal because they are so fast. The same with rice, pasta, anything you can wrap in a tortilla. And my other big timesaver is to have chicken in the freezer that's cooked, because you know, if you're facing down frozen chicken at the end of a day, now not going to have it for a lot of us, But if it's already cooked and you just have to give it a spin in the microwave to thaw it out, and that can be rotisserie chicken. You don't have to cook it from scratch. If you don't want to. You can take a rotisserie chicken off the bone or go to Costco where they've already done that for you. So that's that's a great idea. I like that idea because there's a lot of this sort of idea of stuff. So, like you said, beans and rice, which you throw any random veggies in as well that you'd like eggs, you throw any random veggies in as well. Pasta like lots of you know, pasta's cook in like twelve minutes. You know, might take five to ten minutes for the water to boil and then ten minutes for the pasta. But during that time you could also you know, mix together tomato sauce with with veggies and maybe frozen sausage that you've put in the microwave or something to Yeah, I mean there if you think of sort of those things, like a meal doesn't have to be like a chunk of protein plus you know, two sides, right, Yeah, So the fifteen minute concept works with that. Although I found that salmon cooks pretty fast, it does have a fifteen minute salmon recipe in here as well, I believe, Yeah, it does cook fast. And if you do a sheet pan dinner, that's something that I have prepped in the morning. Put the like salmon or another kind of fish or a meat if you're gonna cook it for a little bit longer, with vegetables that you've chopped and tossed in olive oil and whatever seasonings you want, then just slide that into the oven. If you go for twenty five, you can probably get that done in fifteen or twenty minutes, depending on your kind of vegetables. If you're using potatoes, maybe not. Yeah, but that's something that for instance, would be very easy for an older kid who was old enough to maybe be home by him or herself in the afternoon for a little bit before you got home from work. Definitely something that kid could turn the oven on and stick in too. Yes, right, that's for sure and doable before I see a lot of people have kids if they have earned the little kid phase. The kids get up pretty early, so sometimes you actually do have a good shunk of time before work that that could be prepped, even with a you know, nine to five. If you're doing that at like seven am, it's in your fridge all day and then it's there for you. And I think you include the sheet pan dinners. That was a whole section called I don't feel like doing dishes, right, Yeah, that's because how does I mean that solves that problem? Right? It does, especially if you line the pan with either foil or parchment paper, then you really don't have to hardly wash it at all. Yeah, which is genius. Yeah, totally, because because why is it? I mean, when you think about it, like when people tell you I don't I mean, I have real trouble getting dinner on the table. What are sort of the reasons they tend to list most frequently? I think a lot of times we think it's going to take a long time to cook something. I don't know if it's because as Americans we're watching a lot of cooking where they go all in for it, or it's just something in our mind and we you know, if you're dreading a task, you think it's going to take a long time, but if you actually time yourself going out to the kitchen and doing it, it really doesn't have to take that long. If you make sure you have a sharp knife so that you're not, you know, fighting your knife at every cut, and you just work quickly. You're not aiming for perfection, You're just aiming to get your dinner done. It doesn't take as long as we think. Yeah, So, Tiffany, what are your favorite tools? You just mentioned the knife, like that you have a good knife. What are some other key things to have in the kitchen for the quick and quick and dirty home home cook. Yeah, the good knife, in a good cutting board that's not going to dole your knife, So probably a wooden one and maybe a plastic if you're gonna use it for chicken so you can sanitize. Then I love a garlic press because it's really fast and you can get that fresh garlic flavor. But another tip is to use the jar garlic. A lot of people like that an instant pot. The more I use it, the more I love it. I will say that you won't get your dinner done in two or three minutes the way some recipes will tell you. That is just not the case. It's not actually having a nice Yeah, you have to wait for the pot to come to pressure, and you have to add that to whatever cook time you put in. So a twelve minute cook time, you still may be looking at it twenty five to thirty minutes total time, but still that's pretty fast. A slow cooker definitely is a tool that I find so handy because if you're working a twelve hour shift, if you choose the right slow cooker recipe. Not every slow cooker recipe can take twelve hours of cook time, but a lot of soups, stews, larger pieces of meat can handle that. That's a great tool to have. And then a sheet pan, so either one really large one or two small ones. I find that if you really don't want to do dishes too small lined are better than one large one because with the large you have to use two pieces of foil. And then the juices run underneath, and then suddenly you have to do dishes. So yeah, save yourself the trouble with that, that's true, and just in terms of like what you put on it. I mean, people can just make their own sheet pan recipes too. Is there a good formula for a good sheet pan dinner for me? I like to have some kind of a meat obviously, if you're vegetarian, you can skip that part, and then I like to do some sort of a starchy vegetable, potatoes or sweet potatoes, something like that, and then some other kind of vegetable. I love Brussels sprouts and I always do those fresh over frozen. They're really good. One tip if you want to do a super simple vegetable is to use green beans. You can use those frozen, especially the thin cut green beans. Toss them with the olive oil, still frozen, put them on the pan, still frozen in the oven. It works fantastic. Same with chicken tender, you can use them frozen, put them straight onto the pan, frozen, sprinkle whatever seasonings in the oven they go. I love that tip because they turn out really well and you didn't have to thaw anything, and it really doesn't take. I'd say probably twenty minutes at four to twenty five would do it for those Yeah. Yeah, do you recommend using like a thermometer or something like a meat thermometer, I'm sure or you can, I think through it, through it and make sure it's cooked through. But yeah, I met a meat thermometer would be a more exact way to do it, for sure. So I think one of the things that people need to get their heads around it. I mean, as you talk about a lot of this cooking, it really is just as fast or faster than running to a restaurant. I mean, so why do you think, like, I mean, given that you have to eat any way, like, why why do you think people do wind up doing the restaurant thing as much as you know people tend to. I think part of it probably is because we don't have a plan. And when you don't have a plan, then if you get to five thirty six o'clock and you've got a hungry van full of kids, it's just so tempting you think, oh, I'm out, I don't have a plan, let's just do this, which is fine every once in a while for me personally, I like to eat out and I do eat out, but I like to do it when I plan for it. I really don't like to do it when I've gotten to the point where I didn't make a plan and now we have to that. I get irritated with myself when I do that, because I always think, whatever, we just ran through and got really fast, it would have been so much better to make something at home. It would have tasted better, it would have been better for us, We would have felt better after we ate it. Yeah, yeah, well i'd throw in that, you know. Also, supermarket shortcuts can work too, if you think about it, like a rotisserie chicken and a bagged salad is also a dinner, absolutely yes, and yeah so and that probably is going to be cheaper and healthier than you know, the drive through in many cases. So that's always an option. It is. And if you're starting to kind of break that eating out habit and work to eating at home, that is a really great way to go to run through the grocery and get something if you need to, just anything to keep you from doing the restaurant thing to break that habit. Yeah, And one of the fun things about Tiffany's book Eat at Home Tonight is that she she throws into these little bonus things too, So it's recipes of course, but then she's got these sidebars on fun things like, you know, conversation starters, because I mean, part of the reason one of the things you're trying to encourage people with is not just like solving the problem of getting dinner on the table, it's actually making family dinner and experience. I mean one of the things you mentioned is that it hits all five love languages. What does that mean? It does? So the love languages are from Gary Smallly's book Five Love Languages, and they are let me see if I can remember on top of my head, the love language of physical touch is one. So you're sitting close together, So yeah, gifts, gift, just quality time, acts of service, that's the last one. Yeah, yes, it's ben It just kind of builds all of that in. Obviously, quality time is just naturally built in when you're having dinner together, physical touch here right next to each other. You can hold hands when you pray, or put a hand on a shoulder. Words of affirmation. Again, if it's so easy to do that at dinner time, to just speak positively to each other, acts of service is cooking meals, clearing your table, cleaning up. That's all an active service, and gift giving is a little bit harder. But if you may a special dish or a special meal, that's like a gift for the person. I think cooking for someone is definitely a gift. I mean, that's obviously it's an active service too. Yes, unlike sweeping the floor. There's something you like at the end of the cooking, so that could be the gift exactly. And now that my kids are older, you know, I've seen this through from the time that they were really little twenty six years ago when we had our very first all the way through to I've got two kids who are married now and they are beginning to build that dinner time habit with their spouses. No grandkids yet, so I haven't seen that part of it. But it's just it's really neat for me to see how prioritizing that dinner hour over the years is spilling off into the next generation. And how how my kids are handling their relationships with each other. That's wonderful. And so what's one of your favorite conversation starters, Like if you're all sitting around the table, and I think most of us have a tendency just be like, oh, so how is your day? You know, so which what did you do today? Nothing? Yeah, so what's something to get kids to talk? Getting kids to talk can be a little bit hard depending on your kid. I have one who will talk NonStop and others who won't get started at all. The best and worst of your day is a good one. How did you help someone today or how did someone help you is another good one. Sometimes we talk about how technology gets you know, it's so invasive in our lives, so I like to bring up like how how would you try to stay off your phone? Or do you think it matters? And let's just talk about that a little bit, those kinds of things. Yeah, I have a whole list in the book of conversation starters. And Sarah, what's your favorite conversation starter? Well, I'm similar and that like I tend to so we don't do family dinner, That's that's my admission, but we do tend to. Like I get home around six almost every night and my kids have already eaten, but they're they're starting to sort of want to usually get like a little snack, like a lot of times they'll have some fruit just while I'm eating dinner. So they sit there, which I really like, and I usually ask them the best and worst part of their day, so and they enjoy giving me some I mean, my six year old's like very literal and we'll tell me specifics, and my four year old says something off the wall and is funny. But it's very enjoyable and I can imagine. I mean again, I don't know that we're going to have it in the traditional sense. We definitely do more breakfasts with all of us together, but I do look forward to, you know, once they're a little more civilized, maybe actually eating a meal with them. We'll see. We've been doing a fair number on family breakfast. I mean I tend to, you know, eat with the kids in the evening as well, but family breakfast has been something that's that's worked for us. And I don't know that it will next year because night oldest is starting middle school, so that will be a different start time, so there's probably gonna be breakfast and shifts more than it is. But it's just nice to sort of sit around and talk and you know, ask people what they're looking forward to in the day. That's something we can always talk about. And then you know, I feel like the conversations kind of happen anyway at the end. I have a lot of talkative children. But you know, usually if I try to ask something specific that I know somebody has had happened during the day, so that then I can it's harder to not answer a question about like, hey, how was you know pajama day today at school? That you know, that gets an answer more than what did you do right? Which doesn't. Yes. And then when kids get older, I think it's important to steer clear of maybe the discipline issues that you need to bring up because those things they are there, and you sometimes you think, okay, we're going to get into this now because we're all gathered here. But I've learned sometimes the hard way that dinner is not a great time to do that. That doesn't help any Yeah, you want it to be a positive, we say, don't yuck my right, Yes, So Tiffany, we always do a love of the week, which is something that we are happy about this week, grateful for enjoying all those those type of things. So Sarah and I can go first, and then you can be thinking of one as we're doing this, So Sarah, Sarah, what's yours this week? Yeah, so I'm going with the food theme since it's a foody episode, and my love of the week is leftovers, and I think we talked about We did talk about that specifically on our prior Dinner episode, but I just want to give leftovers in general another shout out, because I think that's one of the easiest ways to eat home cooked food in an efficient manner. I often have Monday's dinner for Tuesday's lunch. We almost always eat the same thing Tuesday and Wednesday and then Thursday and Friday, or you could alternate it, and it just means more home cook food, less healthy, easy, and honestly, usually I can handle. I can tolerate something twice past that, I will admit, you can get a little old. My husband could probably eat the same thing for like a week. I can't do it, but two times is never really a problem. So now I'm a big fan of there. So I've never really gotten into the idea of cooking on the weekends and then eating it during the week. But the exception to that is stuff like you know, grilling a lot on the weekend, Like you know, you get the Costco sized pack of steaks and then you grill all of them on the weekend, Like then you have a protein you can cut up during the week. You know, I work at home, so I I'm often making my lunch, so I could just put those on a salad or you know, cook it with veggies or something, and then that solves my problem for the entire week, which is which is really nice? So I would say I would say a love of the week is Weagmans, which again not sponsored anything on here. We go to Costco and we go to Wagman's. And the one thing I would say though with Costco is because they're getting people to sort of sell specifically through that channel in bulk sizes, you often wind up with more than you need or else it's not you know, one thing speci difically, Like you know, we get these giant bags of what do we call it guy sauce, which is a squeezy apple sauce. My three year old still calls them guy sauce, which I just love. Everybody stops saying that that's gonna be sad. But they come in all these they only have the variety pack right, like they don't have like in one specific flavor, whereas I feel like Wegmans has bulk stuff in like one flavor or you know, bulk meat of like one kind, and but it also has normal size stuff too. So we've enjoyed shopping there when when we can because because of that. So Tiffany, how about you? Okay, my love of the week is Hamilton. Again. I hope that is not useful to anyone. Hamilton's awesome. I like it and we set in Chicago from maybe a mile away. We were almost in the very back balcony row about a year ago. I think it was so good. But every once in a while on Spotify I just cycle back to it and dive in deep again. Yeah, I'm a big Spotify lover. I'd love to listen to all kinds of things, but that just keeps coming up for me. So that's awesome. And it goes down well with cooking because you can blast it makes and I think, honestly, that's a good tip there. If you know people are coming home from work and are tired and like the kids are cranky, and like, just put on some upbeat music while cooking. It doesn't solve all the problems, but it can at least make people feel slightly happier if they're, like, you know, dancing and singing to Katie Perry or something while they're or halt. Absolutely, yeah, all right, well, thank you so much, Tiffany. We really appreciate it. Thank you, thanks for having me so Our Q and A this week actually comes from an Instagram question. Someone direct messaged me on our best of both words world's account, and by the way, that is a way you can get us as well for those who are more into Insta than they are into their email or blog reading at this point anyway, So they just wrote, I can see you're a pool veteran living in Miami because I personally had recently posted like a picture of Genevieve next to the pool. It was cute, and she said she's a little bit overwhelmed going in with three kids under five this summer. Do I have any go to items to pack for the pool? So I actually thought, Hey, that's that's a good question. But then as I wrote it out, I was like, is this all Captain obvious? Because I don't feel like I have exactly I mean, maybe I'm minimal, So Laura, you can add to this. I'm going to tell her what I wrote back to her. So I wrote enough towels, so and sometimes like sometimes usually i'll like stick one like a bag that's like just our towel bag that's going to be filled with like wet stuff. So that's that's kind of our swim bag that I bring sunscreen and bugspray, which are always in my diaper backpack that I carry around anyway, I'll throw goggles and swim caps into the towel bag. Swim caps only if it's like somewhere you need it, change of clothes for each kid, and pretty much I usually have a swim diaper and a hat stuffed into my regular baby backpack, so I don't have to think about packing them. And that's about it. Sometimes depending on where we're going, like a couple of non sun damage how do I say the sun safe snacks like that the sun won't melt and make a mess of so like crackers or lar bars and then water that's like it. I don't pack any of those like floaty type things for babies and toddlers. I know some people love them. I actually like kind of feel like they and maybe you love them, Laura, I don't know, but I don't like the idea that they might train your two year old to think that they can swim when they can't. I want them to beware that they sink. So yeah, I don't pack like hair stuff for anybody. I deal with the consequences later. I don't care. I don't feel like dealing with it. I don't pack any reading material because that would be just like a tease, like you were going to read on the side of the pool. Haha. Yeah. I don't really don't usually have a first aid kit, to be honest, because usually you know, if you're somewhere public, they're going to have one and you can always just go to the bathroom and wash off. I just can't think of things that you would need. Of course, you know, I'm lucky. I don't have a kid who needs like an EpiPen or obviously if there was something like that, then that would be specific. But yeah, what about you, do you have a pool routine? Well, so, I mean we're one of the reasons we bought our house here in Pennsylvania. We liked I mean, well, we were going back and forth on whether the pool was a good thing or bad thing. I'm kind of feeling like it's a bad thing at the moment this morning because we just had this huge rainstorm that had like flash flooding. So now there's mud in our pool and the cover broke, I think, like shorted out, like they got water in the motor just all. So it's going to be like a nine hundred dollars repair because i know this happened to us before, and I'm like, oh my gosh, not you. You can pay for a lot of public pool memberships for that. Yeah. No, and we do have a pool too, I will add, but but I also feel like one of the big activities down here is like meeting at someone else's pool or like going to a cool, big public pool or whatever. Anyway, Okay, keep Yeah, So when we just walked down to our backyard pool, we just have our goggles and our towels because everything else is in the house. So that's really not an issue. And that is an upside of it. You know that you can just go in for like twenty minutes after dinner some night and it's really just not a big deal. Like you don't feel like you're packing for this like invasion of a country sort of level of stuff to head to the public pool. But that said, we have a membership at our Why that we like to go in the winter to go to the pool. So we have a red bag that is always the swim bag, and in the swim bag will go six swim suits, like one for each of us, four pairs of goggles for the four people who actually use goggles, the three year old and I do not. Then we put in usually just like three towels. I generally feel like people can share a towel or else can like, you know whatever, you can share a towel. So I'm not packing six towels because that just wouldn't fit in one bag. And then so we wear our clothes to the Why. Obviously we have to like go from the car to the Why in our winter clothes. And so then we you know, leave the clothes in the locker or stuff fat back in a bag or something, and then go change there in the locker room, come back out, you know, with our stuff, and that's all we need, really, like all we have then is the swimsuits, the goggles, the towels. So you know, because they have a life jacket there that the why requires that anyone who is not swim tested wear a life jacket? And so the older three kids have all passed their deep water swimming test, but the three year old obviously has not, so he he wears a life jacket, and he wears a life jacket in our home pool as well. We have we have rules about this, just that you know, he must have the life jacket on before the cover is opened. In any way, there's also a fence around the pool. You know, it's interesting to me and I don't know, Sarah, like, this is a totally off tangent thing. Do people ask you about like your pool being locked and such when they before they do playdates. No, they don't, and they probably. I mean that would be good our pool. This is on air. I'm gonna get like laand basted for this. It is locked. I mean, we have locks on our doors that you have to open, and we actually have you know, our alarm would go off if someone were to open them, and we have ropes tied around the doors. It would have to be cut for our kids to open it by themselves. We do not have a pool cover specifically, a lot of people down here don't. Again, yes, people are going to. Aren't you worried about like alligators getting into your pool or something that if you don't have a copy about alliears. I'm much more worried about the idea that someone could like, you know, walk outside and get to the to the pool. And I'm not and you know, really the only one at this point that it would be really dangerous for would be Genevieve. So we focus more on preventing the ability from getting from our house to the pool, and then there's a fence around obviously from the outside, like you can't just get and then teaching children swimming skills as soon as possible as well. Yeah, that is huge, and we did hire you know, we had a coach come. Cameron learned by the time he was three he could swim across the pool. I know some kids will go even earlier than that. I cannot wait to get Genevie you've trained sooner than later, because I actually feel the more kids you have, like, the higher risk this does become because it increases sort of the traffic back and forth. So I have pretty strict rules, like I mean, I still don't feel like i'd be I guess at this point I could watch all three at once because Annibal and Cameron can swim, but I'm not sure how often I'm gonna want to do that without another adult present, because I just feel like there's such I don't know, I feel like I need one eye on both of the big kids and then full yeah, man to man. Yeah. So well, once she can actually move, I mean right now, it's fine. She doesn't go anywhere. Yeah, that's true. I mean, once once I felt clear on the I mean, when the older three have all passed the I mean, the older two are on swim teams, so they're pretty good. And then the you know, my daughter had actually just passed the open water like the deep water swim test as well, so you know she's good too. Obviously, we'd always have an adult out there when the children are in the pool, but the three year old is the only one who needs to really have somebody on him. And when he's got the life jacket on, he's pretty good about it too. Now this summer, he's not you know, putting his head in thinking that he can do something with his head in the water, right Like in the past years, we've had to be much sort of more on him Now you just have to watch him, but you don't have to actually hold him in the pool, and you're probably about a year away or less from him being able to actually see Yeah, so definitely it's on the list for him to have swim lessons this summer that he's going to learn, because yeah, I mean, that's that's just the reality of having having your own pool, but swim swim skills. You know, this is we weren't We were talking about what you bring to the pool and now it's going into the sort of a different thing. But definitely swimming skills is one of those things that you should get your kids to do soon. Just if if your kids are going to go to pool parties and such, because yeah, you might, it could go badly, So definitely something to do. Totally agree. Yeah, all right, well this has been best of both worlds. We've mostly been talking getting dinner on the table. We'll be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.