Episode one, Frugal Meal Planning with Ashton Cope. 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 Oh. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and we are talking all things around meal planning today. Yes, we need this, we all need this. We know that you
are here for it and it'll be everything you expected more. Yeah, because we've already done the interview so we know what it entails, and it is chocked full of stuff you're gonna want to take, like audio notes on your phone, so just don't be scared to pause, take a note. And then Ashton has a really great resource on her Instagram bio that you're all going to want to download, so because I'm going to go there after this and
download it. Very excited. It's been a long time since we've done a like actual meal planning episode, so we've done. Episode sixteen was like our first foundational meal planning in prep episode. And then we have one of my personal favorites, episode seventy nine. Do you remember this one? I forgot We did that the Frugal Friends Food Blog Awards. It was a very unique episode where we didn't go through articles, but we just went We gave awards to several different
food blogs different unbeknownst to them. Never done war since then. Just I feel like we should do that again for some other category. So if you have a category that you want us to make up awards first brother, let us know in the Frugal Friends community on Facebook and maybe, just maybe you will get that episode because that was really fun. One. Yeah, I'm seventy. Yeah, So I'm excited
to hear from Ashton. She's got a great blog where she talks about meal planning, she does meal planning services, she's got all kinds of resources, and she's sharing some very tangible top tips with us today. So let's get into it. Hey, Ashton, welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. How are you. I'm good? Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. We are so thrilled to have you on this show, and we imagine we're going to get a ton of listeners because this is a huge
pain point for so many people. Part of that is because we have to eat every day, which is a whole other issue and of itself. Right, I won't elaborate on that one, but about how to eat every day, let's not reveal that it just is. It's a never ending thing that we get constant listeners curious about, even in my social circles. Not that they're that large hashtag covid, but this is a thing. What do I do? How
do I meal a plan? Because because it's not just eating every day, it's it is the meal planning, the shopping, the cooking, the what do I do with leftovers? Anyhow, thanks for coming on and solving all of our problems for us. So, Ashton, can you kick us off? Just tell us about yourself? What got you into meal planning? What's the overarching Ashton story? Yeah? So I am from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I was born and raised here,
kind of moved around a lot. But the one theme that I have always maintained, regardless of what I'm doing and where I'm living, is that I just literally love budget lifestyle. Whether I'm in a season of not really needing it but just prioritizing it, or I'm in a season of like, okay, it's you know, survival of the fittest at this point, I have to live on a budget. I just love it when and so when I got started,
my oldest daughter was like two months old. I thought I'd be super busy with like the whole mom life thing. And then I realized that newborn's literally sleep all day, and so I was super bored and just watching something exists. Yeah, and so that's only fun for like the first few hours. And then you're like, okay, I really have and you feel like I need to do something. My creative juice is needed to be exercised. So I decided to start
a blog. And originally my blog was budget Um Fashion for Moms and Babies, and then I got like a month into it and realized how much I hate fashion. I love the budget and like it's kind of that whole like your passion isn't always your mission and so while I love dressing up my baby, that's not what I'm about. So it was great. I still dressed my baby every day. It was just like, I gotta pivot,
and I ended up moving into budget home renovation. A couple of years later, I was actually about seven months pregnant with my second daughter, and renovated our whole house by myself while my husband worked, and that kind of started picking up momentum until our house was finished and
I had no more projects to do. So one night, I was sitting at the table on a Sunday evening like I always did, to plan our meals, and I decided to like do hashtag you know, real life on Instagram stories and I just was like, hey, guys, I'm post you know, I'm planning out my meals for the week. I wonder if you guys would be interested in like seeing what I have planned. And the risk aunt was astounding.
I had never seen a response the way, like with any of the other things I tried my hand, I never saw like that, yes, please tell us what you're eating, tell us, why tell us what you're planning? To tell us how? And so I'm like, oh, dang, Like I didn't realize this was a thing, but this is actually a thing. So I kind of, I don't want to say I fell into it, but it was something I
was always doing that I never realized. You know, it's not something that you walk into a party and you're like, hey, guys, want to know what I planned for me my meals this week? You know, It's like something that until people see you and and it randomly comes up maybe in like a circle of like friends, close friends. It's not something I realized people needed until they did, so I
just kind of started sharing it. My passion really lies with low income eating, so that's kind of where I started, is like, here's how to eat on a budget, which you know, I'm on the perfect podcast to talk about this today. I'm so excited, And here's how to stick
to your plan. Because we have now finished January, we are heading into the rest of our year, and most of the time all of those resolutions end up falling off, and so this is a great way to kind of like get back on track and keep it moving for the rest of the year. I love I love this story. Who knew we can have you back on the podcast to talk about home renovations and budget fashion. But you're right,
it's not I mean, food prep isn't glamorous. It's not something that is immediately going to draw people in, but it does solve a pain point. This is a massive pain point for most people. So yeah, it's not what we want, but it's what we need. Yeah, and I love that you shared a bit of your business journey, because I've always said, like, just having the knowledge of
how to do certain online business things is enough. A lot of people get into it and they fail in I think, oh, I'm just not cut out for this. But it could be that you're learning the skills so that you are aware when a good opportunity falls into your lap. If you don't know what to do and how to capitalize on unique opportunities that come your way, you will totally miss gold mines. And so I don't think that any like business endeavor side hustle endeavor is fruitless.
I always think it helps us to be more aware when successful opportunities are presented to us, because that's so many stories are like it kind of just fell into my lap, like I can name. I for so long have attributed my success to getting lucky, and I've had to kind of start to reframe that and be like, no, you put in the work, so when the luck was, like, when a lucky opportunity presented your itself, you could capitalize
on it. Yeah. Yeah, And so I hope people take away that from your story as well, because I know we have a lot of people trying to start online businesses or side hustles and stuff. So that is really encouraging, just on a side tangent. Yeah, So now you do custom meal planning, what are some of the tips you give a client whose main goal is to reduce their spending on food? Well, obviously, as a meal planner, my
first piece of advice is to have a plan. Don't walk into a grocery store thinking, you know, oh this sounds good or oh I think I saw like a Facebook recipe that had this in it. You know, that's where a lot of the overspending and the impulse buying because we do that with food. We do it with food more than we do it with anything else, and
we don't realize we're doing it. We impulse spend on food constantly just because it sounds good, or it looks good, or we heard about it, you know, in a podcast or whatever. So that would be my first tip. My second tip is do all the prep work way before you actually step foot in the store. So besides having a plan, that also means using keyword rich search terms,
whether through Google or Pinterest, use search terms. Two of my favorites are They're gonna sound really self explanatory, but I'm gonna say them anyways, budget meal ideas and affordable weeknight meals and the plethora of ideas that come up. You can get super hyper specific and say budget chicken dinner ideas or you know whatever. You can get even more specific with multiple ingredients recipes with chicken and broccoli.
And so that takes me into my third tip, which is narrowed down the ingredients that you plan to use for the week and then plan accordingly. So choose like two proteins I'm gonna eat this week chicken and fish or so whatever you want um, and then you know a few protein and produce carrots, spinach, broccoli, whatever you want. The point of this is to make sure you're cooking
up what you purchase before you purchase more. Because when we purchase on top of things we haven't used, they get buried, they get forgotten, and then they get spoiled and wasted, and wasted food equals wasted money. So this way you know we're buying less, which means we are spending less and we're using less, which creates a better impact on the environment as well, because the greenhouse gases produced from wasted food and landfills is much worse than
that of anything else that gets thrown away. Yes. Absolutely. I've did a nutrition challenge once and they said for meal planning, to use like three plus three was three proteins and three carps, and then just plan like all your meals around those, so you make sure you use all of them up. And it's just like really simple, Like I can get behind like math stuff. If you give me an equation, I can get behind that numbers
the numbers three plus three. Okay, that's perfect. Two For those people who are like I hate meal planning, because there are people who hate it, I know that I am kind of alone in my love of picking out meals and searching recipes on Pinterest, and so that is so much easier for someone who doesn't love that part of dinner time. They have just like you said, three and three. So it's like all you have to do is mix and match and come up with a few different ways to cook just the one thing, so that
you're not swimming in this huge sea of ideas. You've narrowed it down so that it's much easier to choose from the few things that are listed. These are such good tangible tips, and you're right, none of it is mind blowing, but we need these reminders. As you're talking, I'm remembering the times when I did these things, and I remember being shocked at how low my grocery spending was for that week, and then something happens. I don't know, I just get off track and I don't keep doing
these things. But this is a tried and true method of prepping and planning beforehand, staying simple. And I even love your simple suggestion of using s e O like search engine optimization ways of getting the meals that we want with the food that we have on hand. I will often do that, and I'm sure this is what you're speaking to as well. But if I have just a couple of things in my pantry or in my fridge just to look up, can these things be used together? Yeah?
I do have a little bit of chicken and some beans. What do I do? Chicken and beans? What do I know? Beans? And then sometimes I get to try new things as a result of that. It doesn't necessarily mean that just because we're getting a few things that we can't have variety in our meals exactly. You mentioned to Ashton just about the food waste and being cognizant of that, because not only is food waste not great for our environment, it's also not great for our budgets. What are some
of your go to ways to reduce that food waste? Yeah, so again this isn't like this profound thing I'm about to drop, But the best way is to just know what your most time sensitive ingredients are and then use them first. So pay attention, be really mindful that you know these few items need to be kept in plain view in my fridge, in my pantry because I know
that those are going to go bad first. So you're going to plan those meals for the beginning of the week obviously, because they're not going to keep quite as long as the other items. And that kind of means being a little more organized in your pantry and in your fridge, and at the end of each week, kind of taking inventory of everything that's in there, making sure that those condiments that you know you knew were on their last leg kind of need to be shifted forward
so that you can use them first. Like I said, the produce that needs to be used first, and then honestly, when in doubt, just freeze it if it's especially proteins if you forgot to make that meal, that's a okay, don't beat yourself up about it. We all do that. We all decide that cereals easier than you know, that
full meal you were going to cook. But just do yourself the favor of freezing it, because not only is that helping your budget because now you have something to pull out of the freezer later in the week or next week, it's also saving your mental health and your self confidence because we all feel that, like ding it, I had to throw that away and that makes me feel really bad. So it really just helps in so many different aspects. If you just toss it in the freezer,
then you feel like at least you've accomplished something. You know. Yeah, I stopped trusting myself to use my produce in a timely manner and just started buying frozen vegetables, Like I no longer buy fresh cauliflower or broccoli or corn, or rarely anything unless it's like on super sale fruit. I'll buy fresh fruit, but I just buy it frozen already because I can't be trusted. I feel you, I know myself, and that's a tip to that I often forget about.
I just this week frugal fail. I had bought a jar of pesto a while ago, used half of it, loved it amazing, and then just looked back at it and the jar did say use within two weeks of opening, and it's been over two months. So I don't Speaking of not trusting yourself, I don't trust myself to know whether or not something's good or bad. And I don't need that stomach ache in my life. But I thought if I would have just frozen it, opened it, use what I wanted, freeze the rest of the pesto, like
it works on most things. Yeah, it does, And I will tell you frozen broccoli thrown into the oven and roasted taste the same as fresh broccoli roasted preach. Don't get it twisted. Oh thank you for saying that too, because I tell so many of my clients. I'm like, hey, I put like four bags of steamable veggies on your grocery list. I hope that's okay, justin you know, I've done a lot of research and there's really no nutritional difference, So don't feel bad for tossing it in the microwave.
It saves dishes, it saves time, and it saves you from from wasting it. So plus they're for a bag. I know, they're so cheap and you don't have to chop them. They're already there, already flourishes. I don't want to eat. Oh yes, I just want to eat the tree parts, leave the stocks out. I actually just bought broccoli. I think they call it bits or something, which it
has the stocks in it. It was even cheaper. I won't do it again, but I did get a big bag because I just wanted to see what it was like because I don't mind the stocks, and it was like too many stocks with all stocks, so trying to pull one over. Yeah, so just have that tip if you're a broccoli lover, don't be fooled by the bits. Real talky. Okay, So for those of us who don't like cooking, like I have revealed so many times of myself, what are some tips that we can use to actually
follow through with the meal plan we've created. Yeah. So I have a lot of clients who either don't love cooking or they are busy career women and their husbands do a lot of the cooking, and so it needs to be life and so these these recipes need to be like as no effort as possible, and so use that actually to your advantage when you're searching search it's okay to have like three crock pot meals in one week.
They make something called a crock pot saver. It's a bag that goes in your crock pot so that you're not having to scrub out your crock pot every day, and it's a life saver. It's so helpful. So plan crock pot meals, sheet pan meals, you can even there is a search term that is no effort dinner ideas, and they are like literally dump and go move on with your day. Let's make this as painless as possible.
Also ten minute meals, one pot dinners. I mean, honestly, I feel like there's almost a better selection for people who hate cooking than there is for people who love cooking, because these are so simple and so few ingredients, so little time that it's like, it's honestly sometimes quicker to make these than to order take out and have it delivered, so and it's way cheaper. Yeah, that's been an unfortunate
reality for me. Sometimes I'm just like I don't feel like cooking, let's just order in and then I'm like, that's gonna be at least forty five minutes away, versus I could cook this and we'd be eating in twenty minutes. Darn, but my money is happy, is certainly happy? Oh yeah, these are I think you're just even providing such great search terms. It's almost like the from the influencers perspective,
what are the hashtags you typically put on things? There you go, that's what you search, and that's how you find it. And I would encourage people don't just look at the first page of Google. There are hundreds of pages of Google for each search term. So maybe one week you're looking on page one, and next week you look on page two, and then three. There's an endless like Google is endless, Google is. I love that, Ashton,
And I'm curious. This isn't a question that we previously talked about, but how much time does it take you two meal plan? Because that is a whole other thing we talk about how long it takes to cook food. What I mean, now that you're a pro, what are you finding? So I love this question because it's something that I pride myself in very much. I've actually gotten it down to like thirty minute a week to plan the meals. And then the way that I organized my grocery list, I can be in and out of a
huge chain grocery store in like thirty minutes check out time. Wow, jealous, right, I'm jealous, So I am beautiful. Yeah, that is amazing. It takes I have been doing this for a while and I love meal planning, but it always takes me about an hour and I feel pretty proficient at it. But man, that sounds lovely, Like what do you do
to get it that quick? So the first thing I do, I have an actual monthly calendar template and I go through an empty calendar for the month before I plan anything, and I'll put a protein in every single day, so and I enge them up. And then typically I like consistency, so we typically do something around tacos or something on Tuesday because hashtag taco Tuesday is my favorite day of the week. Mondays, I usually do like a meatless Monday.
So that's already solution right there. I already know I'm going to cook something with no meat that day, and then Friday's it's going to be something kind of like celebratory, whether that is like homemade pizza, or like loaded fries or something super easy that you can throw together. That's like I want to call it like bar food, since there's no you know, happy hours anymore. So something really tasty that like everybody can be really excited about that
doesn't take a whole lot of effort. So really, the two days that I'm trying to get a little more creative are Wednesday Thursday. Thursday is our busy day, so that's gonna be a crop pop meal or a sheep pan recipe something like that, because I know I need
as little time invested into it as possible. And then Wednesday, I get a little creative, and I usually will go off of something that I use called family favorites, and I keep a notes list in my phone in the notes section of every time someone in my family or just me has liked a meal that I've made, and I'll write it down, and then I usually will pull from that because it's hump day and if people have, you know, something to look forward to, they're more likely
to eat those other two meals before they get to that favorite. And then you're getting people to like complain less and be a little more adventurous. And so it's kind of just like a little algorithm I've created for my own meals. But it's so easy to follow that it's like I'm not spending all this time searching and searching. It's a little bit easier because I've narrowed it way down. Oh I'm so glad we dug into this question because I think having a framework like that, I mean, just
as humans, we do well with structure and routine. Some of us like to be more rigid than others, and so for those who want more variety, you're still giving a structure to implement variety, but at least it takes a lot of the decision making out of it just to have, Like you're saying, a meatless Monday, that's not saying what exactly you're going to eat. It's just gonna
be based around vegetables, creative Wednesday, easy Thursday. Who I can get on board with that one, right, Yeah, I love that phrase, a structure to implement variety, because yeah, we do all love consistency, just some people love variety more than others, and some people are a little more rigid, and that when you give a structure to for either or that's really great. Speaking of structure and something that's really great and easy and quick. Yes, the 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've paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That build buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week, all right, Ashton, how that we've yelled at you. We love to invite you to share your favorite bill of the current week, and I know you have one for us. I do so I mentioned earlier.
I am from Grand Rapids, Michigan. So it is frigid where I am at right now, and the apartment that I am in is electric heat, an electric everything. So that is like number one selling point on most Midwesterners is natural gas heat when you're trying to look for a home. I did not have that luxury, but I have the luxury of lowering my bill of the week,
and that is my electric bill. I had. My landlord kindly stopped over and gave me the fancy tape that goes around all the windows to help insulate, and my lovely mom helped me so some blackout curtains for all of my windows, and already I have been able to turn the heat down in my house because it's finally staying and it's not leaving. So I'm pretty excited about it. Hashtag adult ing. I'm very proud of my curtains and my windows. Amazing bout current Basically hibernation mode is in
full swing. I can't see the sun, but exactly do you know how much you've saved or is that yet to be determined? I will have to see, but the energy company does tell me, so I will see hear tod on you guys, and share when I find out. That's amazing. It does help that stuff you put on the windows. It minimizes drafts insanely. Well. If you want to submit your bill of the week, if it has to do with making a cave out of your apartment or anything else related to you are Batman, visit Frugal
Friends podcast dot com slash bill. Leave us your bill. We're excited to hear it. What you got for us? And now it's time for the lightning all right, So for today's lightning round, we are going to share our current favorite freezer meals. Because I've already given myself away. I love the freezer and it is my go too.
But I love making freezer meals because they are like truly dump and go, and I prepare some of them in advance, and like on a day where I'm just like I can't, I can pull one out defrosted all day, or just defrosted in the microwave for a few minutes, and then it's ready for my pressure cooker. So, Ashton, I would love for you to go first. What is your favor right now? So my fav falls somewhere between meatless Monday and taco Tuesday. It is a sweet potato
black bean soup that is so good. It's so easy to And one thing that a lot of experts will say is regular white potatoes do not freeze well. They absorb moisture. It's not pretty, it's not tasty. But sweet potatoes are a lot creamier. And so if you you make a soup base out of a sweet potato, then you don't have like the dairy issue, and it's already creamy and it freezes beautifully. And I will heat that up in my crockpot all day and then serve it
with cheese. Casita is on the side. It's amazing. Black bean soup is on my meal plan this week. Oh good, good choice. Yes, I love you. Got me at cheesecase Cdia. Yeah, I do love a good Cadia. Also, thanks for the tip about white potatoes. Also, freezer meals don't always work for me because a lot or at least these like one pot meals. Because my husband doesn't like soup. Love him to death, He's got a lot of great qualities, he just really doesn't like soup, so that takes away
a lot of the really easy meals. However, if I can serve a soup with bread or any other type of accompaniment, it does, you know, make it more palatable. So for the soup idea with a cheesecase City, Yah, yeah, I'm on board. Good. Hopefully Eric's on board. Travis doesn't really like soup either. He'll eat it, but he doesn't get Yeah. Maybe it's just like I want to choose something that my husband walks and he says, Okay, this is the soup course, and I'm like, this is not
a soup course, this is your meal. This is this is a super meal. There's meat in here. You can choose meat. I don't want it to be wet. He doesn't really talk that way, but for these purposes, he can't control what's said on the podcast. Yeah he can. That's just that's why. Yeah. So for me, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, this is going to be the same go to I typically talk about as it relates to my freezer. Got this one
from my mama. Shout out to Brenda. I really enjoy finding well, I don't enjoy this, but it helps me finding an afternoon where I can cook up a bunch of breaded chicken cutlets and I'll just make a whole ton of them and freeze them and then I can pull them out and use them in a variety of ways. That's usually what takes me the most time is cooking my protein, so being able to pull it out and use it in chicken parmesan, or throw it on a salad or you dame it however you want to use
breaded cooked chicken cutlets, that's my go to. I usually have a handful of them in the freezer. And also I recently got a really nice blender, like pretty obsessed with my blender, So having frozen fruit in the fridge has been awesome because I know the Typically when we talk about meal planning, we're talking about dinners, but I
also have to eat breakfast and lunch. I don't know about the rest of you, but I usually have more than one meal a day, and so having frozen fruit that I can throw into a smoothie for a quick breakfast in the morning is my go to non dinner idea. Yes, I love it. And Eric doesn't eat leftover, so you kind of have to plan for breakfast and lunch. And the blender has helped incredibly with due using food waste.
For me, if I've got a bunch of lettuce or really any other vegetable that's about to go bad, I'm just like, well, here you go and fruit. Oh yeah, it's fun over here at the Syrian. Think twice before I accept your next smoothie. It's vegetables, trust me. Okay, okay, So mine I have to first is this jumbalaya that I love. I had it at some kind of New Orleans restaurant at Universal Studios and I loved it, And so it was a vegetarian jumbalaya and I added some
chicken to it. So I just used frozen chicken like chicken breast, and so freeze that all up together and then throw it in the pressure cooker with some stock and rice, and then it cooks all together, and the rice is perfect at the end. It does do better when it's like too frosted for twenty four hours versus going and like totally frozen, just because the rice doesn't take that long to cook. But if you're using brown rice, like go to town. My other one that I've been
super into is Indian food right now. I'm loving Indian food, So chicken teak and the sala that's a big one, or any curry. So doing that with the frozen chicken, and I buy if I'm doing a freezer meal, I don't buy fresh meat. I buy frozen meat because why why would I spend the extra money to get fresh meat.
But I did just switch up. I have been buying chicken breasts, but I just bought a five pound bag of chicken tender loins because they're smaller, so they will cook faster in the instant pot and they'll be easier to like up when eating them. So I just switched from breast to tenderloins and put those in my freezer meals and then just throw them in and for the Indian food, I make the rice separately. But yeah, those are kind of a favorite chen. Check you out with
some tips. I'm making notes from my own self. I see those cooked chicken breast and I'm always like, I don't know what am I going to do with it? It's just chicken. It's just frozen. Yeah, and it's why not if you're just going to be putting it in like a casserole type dish. Yeah, it's great. I do. Sometimes I'll buy like a big ten pound bag of frozen chicken and just make like five freezer meals with it,
like it's great, so good. Yeah. Well, thank you so much Ashton for coming and sharing your great wisdom with us. It's been a while since we've done a meal planning episode, so I hope that everyone got a refresh memory or if you weren't with us when we did our last episodes on meal planning, welcome to the meal plan Army. Where can we and our listeners find more about you and what you do? Yeah? So, my website is Ashton Cope dot com. That's a s H T I N C O P dot com. I am at Ashton Cope
on Instagram. If you find me on Instagram and head to the link in my bio, I actually have an ultimate guide to meal search terms free. That is what everyone needs. Everyone needs that. It's clickable so you don't even have to copy and paste. It will literally take you straight into your Pinterest app and search it for you when you click each one. It's awesome. I technically made it for myself and thought I would share the wealth. So here it is. Thank you. Yeah, so that's where
you can find me, sweet Ashton, thanks so much. Yeah, thank you for having me. I love talking with you girls. Thank you. It makes me excited to cook. That'll last for a day. But I appreciate the motivation. That's all right, that's all right. Oh how fun and amazing and helpful and motivating that yeah of you was. I feel as though, yes, it's providing benefit to our listeners, but I also just feel like I did that for myself. I needed that
interviewing and conversation with Ashton. I was hoping she would tell me some of her like a list of her search terms for Google, and when she's like, I have a whole list. You can go to my Instagram and get it, and I was like, yes, thank you, that's what I wanted. I'm about to go do that right now. Yeah, and super fun. So my goodness enjoyed that. I hope you all enjoyed that. Thank you for listening. We also want to thank you for your kind reviews on iTunes
and Stitcher, like this one. It's short and sweet. It's the Oki Doki emoji with five stars from Kirby v just literally says love the podcast. That's all you have to say. The greatest gift you can give us is just doing something like that random emoji love the podcast, send five stars, amazing star that yeah, don't forget those stars. Many thank you for your gift, thank you for your short and sweet message, absolutely, and thank you for our
friends who share these episodes on social media. We see you and so when you share the latest episode and tag us on Facebook or Instagram, then we add you to our monthly drawing. For every five tags and reviews we get each month, we give away a copy of the Frugal Friends workbook, So keep leaving us those reviews and iTunes are Stitcher send us the screen shot to Frugal Friends Podcast at gmail dot com also tag us
on social. All of these methods enter you into our monthly drawing yes, and we will see you back here, same time, same place, same phone, next week. Bye. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Cirianni. So Jen, what are you cooking tonight? Um? I don't remember. It's on my fridge. What are you cooking tonight? It's still up in the air. As soon as I get off this, I think I'm gonna pull chicken out of the freezer. And then I have some leftovers from a restaurant the other day that
had like some extra sauce. It's like noki and sauce, and I think I'm just gonna throw in some chicken into that sauce from my leftovers. You are great at repurposing leftover. It has been a fun challenge, and I've found that I enjoy that you are really good at as long as I have something to work with, I'm getting better at figuring out what I can do with it. I know that I have tomorrow is black bean soup, but I can't, for the life of me, remember what
tonight is. Last night was cheeseburger, like a cheeseburger mac and cheese. Yeah, it was so comforting, like it was just very much comfort food and definitely not healthy at all. We're trying to eat healthier without like cutting out all sugar because the doctor actually told Travis not to do any more sugar detoxes because he works nights. I don't know, I don't know what that means, but he said his body needs the sugar. So now traffic is like, got
eat sugar. Wow. Sure, we're going to get lots of responses from people saying that's not true. Right, Yeah, I'm sure she did not mean adage sugar. She just meant don't do any crazy deat doxes. So yeah, that's about it. And after he said that, I brought home a connoli. I feel like I got you boom, I got you boo. I got him one and me one because you know they're nice together. You need to be on the same journey as him ultimately, yeah, yeah, ultimately, and we'll get
there together. So yeah, well done,