Episode four twenty two, How to Eat the Food you Have at Home.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and liver your life.
Here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Welcome to Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are reminding you that you have food at home.
Eat the food you have at home.
But we're not just telling you to do it.
We're singing it to you.
And we're not just singing it to you. We're going to help you to do it, to have the internal motivation and the external hacks quote unquote to be able to choose the food you have at home over buying takeout, going to restaurants, what have you.
We've got all the excuses in the book lined up and ready for us, and not quite all of the answers, but some of the solutions. Yes, But first, this episode is brought to you by foraging, picking berries, mushrooms, herbs, leafy greens, just out on a stroll in the woods in the backcountry, eating it and calling it dinner. Who needs grocery stores when you can just forage in the woods. But if this does sound like a lot of work and potentially lethal. You should be getting the Friend letter.
We've done the foraging of information for you and are delivering free to your inbox updates on freebies that week, ways to save on the stuff you're already buying, and ideas to help you refine your thoughts about money. Frugal friendspodcast dot com. Don't forage in the woods, Forage in your inbox.
But if you are interested in foraging, follow Black Forager on TikTok and Instagram. Alexis Nicole. I am kind of obsessed with her, have been for years. Love her. She is she knows everything about forging. I feel like everything is so interesting.
I love the concept in theory. I want to be a forager. I just absolutely know I would die and my confidence would lead to death.
Well she yeah, she says like how to tell the difference between so many things? And then she makes so many, so many things with her forged items. I think she lives somewhere up north, like Ohio or something Columbus, Ohio. I just googled it. There is or Cincinnati, Ohio. So especially if you're in that area, her forging would be very relevant for you, so because a lot of forging is like specific to location.
But you know what else is relevant for you is the friend letter.
I took away.
You really are sorry. This is why we don't make any money.
Jent all right, So if you are interested in eating the food you have at home, or maybe the food that you have foraged, then we have a ton of episodes for you on meal planning, meal prepping, reducing food waste. I loved our episode three ninety five Creative Ways to Reduce Food Waste with Carl Bodrug of Planting you. I'm obsessed with her cookbook Scrappy Cooking, and then episode three fifty four meal planning for people who hate to cook. And then we also just did a recent episode on
very simple meal plans. So if you are I think that's episode four sixteen. So if you are trying to be better about your food spending, definitely check out those episodes. But we find and this I find in my life is the hardest thing when you have made the meal plan, You've prepped either the ingredients or the meal, and then it comes down to it Wednesday. Gen is just a different person than Sunday Gen was when she made the
meal plan. And prepped the food. It's always that's how it goes, Like, I don't know Wednesday Gen does not know who Sunday Gen was, and Sunday Gen never sees Wednesday Gen.
They never meet, they never meet.
And so this episode is for me and Wednesday Gen as much as it is for you listening.
But like, don't don't forget Sunday Gen.
She still matters, right, Sunday Gen matters, And we have a ton of episodes for Sunday Gen. This this episode specifically is for Wednesday Gen. And so we have an article that is from help guide dot org called.
Cooking at Home. God, yeah, this is just that's the whole thing. But they've I've got a lot of different subheadings. We're not going to go through all of them, but we do want to briefly talk about the benefits of cooking at home, and then we're going to jump to the overcoming obstacles to cooking at home. So you all know this, but I think it's worth a little bit of a raw raw pep talk of why are we
even doing this, Why is this valuable? And it has to do with the ability to choose your own ingredients whatever reason you're coming at this from, whether it's for health reasons, or finance reasons or time reasons. Really eating at home can solve for all of those things. Not that you can't ever go out again, but if it's for health reasons, eating at home is your best option.
You get to pick the ingredients, you can decide how much salt, sugar, processed foods that you are eating, and so there's a ton of health benefits that you can realize as a result of that. They've got also a whole chart that outlines some various health benefits, like it can give you more energy and improve sleep at night
depending on the types of nutrients that you're getting. Preparing healthy meals at home can support your immune system and reduce the risk of illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes. Now, we love preventative things. We're not saying that this is the cure all, but there have been links to nutrition and getting all of our healthy vegetables, fats, and protein as being helpful and preventative measures.
Yeah, I think one of Sunday Gen's problems and I'm going to keep doing this so sorry it annoys you. One of Sunday Gen's problems is that I make a really good meal plan, a really healthy meal plan, and Wednesday Gen is not as concerned about health. And I
think there's a radical middle to be had. So if Sunday Gen just cared a little less about being perfect, then I could create a meal plan that's more realistic, maybe has a little more salt, sugar processed foods, but we'll still be appealing to Wednesday Gen and will be leaps and bounds healthier than something that I would get in like the quick service or fast food or even restaurants where you cannot control how much is in there.
At least I have control. So I think that's one of the issues, is that maybe we make a meal plan that's a little less healthy than perfectly healthy, and so we also another benefit is portion control. You get to decide how much you eat. There's like we all have the problem of going out to eat and eating more than we want right and then you just feel sick afterwards. And so this article is written by a dietitian and a PhD, so like this is a lot
of like health focus. But something I've been thinking about recently is that if I need two twenty two hundred and eighteen hundred calories a day. What have you? Then if I eat more calories in that, that cost me more money essentially, So if I can control my portions, I save money. And I still I'm not restricting my calories. I'm just not like overspending and over eating. So that's kind of one of the ways, like I have recently
been thinking about portion control. Take that, take without what you will.
Yeah, eating at home, as we've said, is also a great way to be able to save money. It absolutely costs more money to go to a sit down restaurant than eating at home. I know some people might argue fast food can be cheaper. We'll get into that, but it's all so another win for cooking and eating at home is it's a great way to spend time with other people. You're not as rushed, there's more opportunity to chat with one another. You can even involve family members
in the cooking process. They're citing kids being excited to cook in the kitchen with parents and might be more apt to eat or at least try the thing that they've made. That works for some doesn't work for others, But give it a try. If you've never tried it before.
Yeah, And one benefit that I will add that's also in this article is that cooking at home actually takes less time than eating out, especially if you have children. There are nights where I am I don't want to cook, and I also don't want to go out because I don't want to take my children, and so nothing is planned. And so then take out it takes a lot of time to figure out where to get the take out what you want from where you're ordering to either go pick it up or wait for the delivery person to
deliver it to you. It does take more time than making something at home. And so when you have a simple meal plan, which is what we talked about in episode four sixteen is how to keep those meal plans simple, then you do save a lot of time by cooking at home. I think we deceive ourselves because cooking at home takes a little more effort. We think it takes more time. But when you're really catering your meal plan to simplicity and minimal effort, then it is not a time suck.
I have started to time things because I will think that I don't feel like as much as I love my vitamins, there are times that I don't feel like making a smoothie, but truly it takes me seven minutes, which does lead us into obstacle number one. Let's get to it all of our excuse.
Five obstacles, five of many obstacles.
Yeah, first one is I don't have time to cook, which we just started talking about that. And sure, all of the shopping and the chopping and the cooking and the cleaning up afterwards, that is time consuming. And I think when we say this, that's what we mean. It's not necessarily just the hands on cooking time. It's all that is surrounding it. But they're offering a variety of different solutions depending on what the barrier is for you
when it comes to time. So a couple of things can include shopping online and having the ingredients delivered to your door. Of course there could be that at it. There is that at a cost of delivery, tipping the driver. I will say I have found even still, it saves me money over going to the store, and it absolutely
saves me time. There are ways that I can find, Oh, this version of potato is actually less expensive than the one I am accustomed to putting in my cart When I'm there in person, I'm less likely to do some of those impulse purchases when I'm just searching for specific items online through the grocery store. So if that's you,
consider shopping online getting it delivered. If you don't want to pay for that delivery fee, then make a grocery order online and pick it up for free on your way home from work or wherever it is that you're going online grocery shopping just at I even will add things to a car. I know you will too, jen as they run out. So it's not even like you need a long sit down opportunity to be adding things to your car. You're just doing it along the way.
You can get your family involved, trade off either shopping clean up duties with a spouse or a roommate if you are open to sharing this responsibility with whoever you're living with. Doing preparation ahead of time, so like chopping your vegetables on the weekend when you're less pressed for time, can cut down on your final cooking time. You've got some great hacks for that gen of pre chopping onions, putting them in the freezer.
The freezer is my best friend.
Yeah, pre shredding things, even buying the convenience items, getting over whatever hurdle that is of I don't want to pay the higher price for convenience, I could chop it. That's great in theory. But if you're not then chopping the things, you're not eating what's at home, and it's going bad and you're wasting food, then we all would have been better off to buy the pre pressed garlic, the pre cut fruit and vegetables, the box rice, the
pre cooked frozen chicken, the pre portioned turkey patties. It's all fine if it actually means it'll help you cook at home. Yeah, let the hacks work for you.
People love buying their like two pound blocks of cheese and cutting them up and then hand grading them and then putting them in the freezer. And that's great if you love to do that. If you don't love to do that, you can still be frugal. You can still save money and buy it, buy it pre prepared. There are a lot of things that I do, you know, like onions, I don't. I don't buy pre chopped onions.
I will shred those, so like it can also, it doesn't have to be one or the other it can be a variety, so it can be a balance between you know, what I can do and what I can't do, and every week it can be different. But they have use fresh ingredients here, but specifically for like salads. So every week almost I'll buy a big like like the Caesar salad in a bag and I and it saves me.
Like I just pull some shredded chicken out of the freezer, let it defrost and or maybe heat it up myself, and then put it on that Caesar salad and I'm just like, it's done. It's a no brainer. So getting making sure you have no brainer meals on hand every week.
Frozen veggie mixes. I love the frozen veggie frozen quinoa type of options that they have at Trader Joe's. Yes, it's more expensive than if you were to just make your own rice and chop your own veggies, but it is far less expensive than going out to eat and a great addition to some simple protein.
All right. And two, the second obstacle is it's cheaper to eat fast food. And I think we've seen, especially in the last year, that that is incorrect. So they have referenced a few studies, one from the University of Washington revealed that people who cook at home ten to have healthier overall diets without higher food expenses, and long
term that can be translated to fewer medical bills. Another study found that frequent home cooks spend about sixty per month less on food than those who ate out more often. I'll cite you know some newer research from finance buzz that shows the in like from twenty fourteen to twenty twenty four average menu prices have risen between thirty nine percent and one hundred percent, all increases that outpace inflation
over that ten years, which is thirty one percent. So all fast food in the last year is no longer the you know, the cheap option when you're out of money that we grew up with. In the last ten years, fast food is no longer a cheap option. It's fast, it's still fast, but it hasn't promised to be affordable. Uh and it really no longer is so the worst you know, villain, I don't know how to say. The worst one at one hundred percent is McDonald's. McDonald's prices
have literally doubled since twenty fourteen across popular items. The next verse is Popeye's, followed by Taco Bell, followed by Chipotle. And so I was like, so we've this year, we've seen some like viral stuff about McDonald's, like an eighteen dollars big mac meal in Connecticut because it varies state to state, right, but the average price of a quarter pounder with cheese meal is eleven ninety nine now, and I looked what it is in our area, and it's
like about nine. That's why, right, I can get I can go to Chipotle and get a burrito bowl for.
Five, so like two meals, right, And.
That's two meals. So for literally twenty cents more, I can get something that's leaps and bounds healthier and will be two meals for me. So when we think about fast food, something with a drive through, we have definitely been conditioned to think that it's more affordable, right, because at one point it was for a lot of us. But over the last ten years that has changed and
some of these companies are like falling back. Like when we were writing the book, I like, I was writing about how we as a collective can tell companies by not spending money with them, that their practices are unacceptable.
And so I proved that with a couple examples, like from PEPSI, like they they tracked their price hikes back, and so since we sent it off, we've just seen more of this, Like so these examples aren't even in the book, like like Target is rolling back, rolling back, like Walmart, They're they're rolling back prices on five I have thousand commonly purchased items, and the CEO of McDonald's said in its latest shareholder meeting that affordability is becoming
a bigger priority. So I think we're going to see some of their prices roll back. So at collectively, when we are conscious about how we spend money, and we choose to not spend money in places we feel are where their practices are unethical, that's how we make a difference in how these these places operate because they're not inflating, because inflation requires them to. Inflation's at thirty one percent
over the last ten years. That's a lot, But McDonalds one hundred percent, Popeye's eighty six percent, Taco Bell eighty one percent, like these these are not going towards food. These are going to c suite executives. These these increases, and we only we can tell them that we don't like that, only with a collective. We're eating at home.
Now we're home, we're going to make our own double stack or whatever it's called.
So I thank you for coming to my ted talk.
Okay, number three reason I'm too tired Wednesday, Jen too tired. Has been a busy day.
I am too tired.
And creating meals at home, and even some healthy meals don't have to involve a huge investment of effort. A couple of ideas for if this is your main obstacle. You might be a slow cooker person. Maybe this is going to be the best solution for you. Is to throw a bunch of meat and vegetables in the morning into a slow cooker, and you come home to something that smells good and is ready for you to eat, so you don't have to have a lot of energy.
I would really recommend leaning into the slow cookers the instant pots if tiredness and energy levels are low. For you,
also finding days that you are not as tired. Typically that's for people when they're they have days off of work the weekends, when you can make a bunch of meals in bulk, freeze leftovers into single portions to eat when you don't have the time or energy to cook, Defrosting or reheating things from the freezer does not take as long as I previously thought, especially already cooked foods.
Of course, thawing out your frozen meats and then cooking them can be a little bit time consuming, but if we've already prepared these things, it's not going to take more than twenty minutes to be ready to eat from the freezer.
Yeah, if you want to do like supercubes s O uper cubes, those are great for making a big batch of soup, freezing the supercubes, and then you already have like a controlled portion meal ready to pop into the mycrauth.
I also like this one of cooking a main protein just once a week, even if that means Sunday night, when your Sunday gen roast the chicken, cook the turkey breast, make just a pile of meat, and then use that throughout the week in some easy stuff like soup, salad, sandwich, burrito, pasta dishes, cold salads.
Like.
There are so many ways to use one type of ingredient in a variety of ways that all of those other things don't require a lot of prep. It takes ten to fifteen minutes to cook up pasta, It takes ten to fifteen minutes to arrange a burrito, It takes ten five to ten minutes to arrange a salad or sandwich. So as long as you've got the thing already cooked, the one thing already cooked, the rest of it will absolutely take less time than going out to eat, driving somewhere,
sitting down ordering, waiting for your food. Recognize that that's going to take forty five minutes.
Yeah, And so I recently posted a reel where I did this. I got my griddle out where I usually just use it for pancakes, but I got it out and I did a big batch of a couple of chicken breasts and made like prepared all those And this was the height of our renovation when I was just like, I can't do anything. I feel completely out of control, and the only thing I can control is is meal
prepping some chicken and broccoli right now. That is the only thing I can control, And so that's I'm gonna I'm going to process that in a healthy coping mechanism by making a big batch of chicken and broccoli, and I did, and I capped it off with the real I capped it off with my saying like when I was really feeling that, and I was like, if you're going to be stressed, at least be well fed.
Yes, so you do love a good chicken and broccoli combo.
I love broccoli. I'm broccoli girl. So the fourth obstacle is I don't know how to cook. And this one is so much more common in than we realized because who actually took a class on how to cook? And not everybody was you know, had the parent that loved to cook and pass down their cooking skills to their
child like I was. I remember when I was young, I was the one putting like chicken voila into the you know, frying pan at our house because my parents hated to cook and I didn't like to cook either, but I liked to eat. So that was my my childhood. And so as an adult, when I have more opportunity to you know, control my eating, I chose to eat out a lot because I just I didn't like to cook. And it's because I really didn't know how to cook.
And so the more I have gained skills and learned about salts and fats and acid, heat, acid and heat. I have become more confident in the kitchen, and so maybe cooking still isn't my favorite thing, but at least I feel like I know how to do it. And so there's this great app called Zest and they don't sponsor us. I wish they would, but it's like duo lingo for cooking and it has so like I went through it just to try it out, and it is
so funny. It's so good. So if you want to increase your cooking skills, and it'll give you a quiz at the very beginning. You don't start at the very beginning. You take this quiz to find out where you are skill wise, and then it'll put you there and then you go on in the lessons. But I really, I really liked that app for learning cooking skills.
Yeah, I think following people on Instagram social media or watching shows that can kind of start to get you excited or learn new things about it. There's plenty of people on Instagram who are showing the QUI kind of sped up process. So I think becoming even more familiar by watching others but in an entertaining way can be really helpful. I know for me too, the delivery boxes has been really helpful for me, not just when time and convenience is a high value, but also in learning
new ways of putting ingredients together. So yes, more expensive than just buying the ingredients at face value, but less expensive than going out. So if getting a meal delivery kit for a season is going to be your entry point to cooking at home, do that too. The final barrier that we're going to talk about on here is even if I cook a healthy meal at home, I can't get my family to eat it.
So true, Yeah, true, And you know what, just make another peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That's all. That's all I have to say. Make a ham sandwich. Just serve them a sandwich.
We do like what they have to say on this that over time you can wean your family and yourself off the taste of takeout and prepackaged food. But it doesn't have to be cold turkey. You can start small. You can try cooking just once or twice a week if you are going out fairly regularly, and give everybody a taste, everybody's taste. But it's a chance to adjust. I like how they're describing this because I think that there's something to that. It's not always just about convenience,
it's about flavor. Like I can't cook the things at home to taste as good as these other things. And part of that can be what if we try, What if we look up recipes that are dupes of the things that we love? That could be a nice entry, right.
Able middle on the on the meal planning.
Yeah, but also recognize that we have been conditioned to crave certain things, and you can just as easily wean yourself out of those things and enjoy what you're cooking at home, finding the recipe that you like, and giving your body an opportunity to kind of branch out from what you're accustomed to. This is also where they're referencing include your children in on the process. It might make them more apt to at least try what it is that they've made. And that the childhood impulse to imitate
is so strong. So if you are forming new habits, doing new things, modeling, eating the food that you have at home, the more likely your kids are to follow suit.
Yeah. So there's a lot of salt and sugar in foods cooked at restaurants, quick service fast food places, and the more of it we have, the more our bodies crave. So it is a time thing. You do have to give your body time to readjust from that, eventually you can train yourself to crave less salt and sugar and
enjoy foods that have less of it in it. But it does take time, and like so often, we don't know how to cook like chefs at restaurants, and we don't enjoy it, so we don't give ourselves the time to readjust. But like anything, it takes time to learn to hone your skills and to retrain your body. And so I do I do agree. Young children love to help in the kitchen, and that is one way that you can get them to eat more of the food at home. Teenagers need to be taught how to cook.
They need to be in the kitchen, uh, because a lot of a lot of us just don't think about it. It's we don't, we don't. We're so tired and making food at home is like struggle enough that we don't also have the energy to also train our teenagers to cook too. But it is something that needs to be done fairly regularly so that they can go off into the world and feel like they have the skills to cook. They know that a meal needs to contain you know,
like protein, carbs, fats, and micronutrients like it. You know what a basic makeup of a meal should have. So so all those things. And definitely check out our episode on how to Reduce food waste with Kids because we talk a lot, especially you have young children, and that's a really good episode for you that can help with this.
You know what is an every episode that can help in all of the ways.
Yeah, and maybe if you did this, you would want to cook a homework Like it's just like maybe a cathartic thing you could do to start your cooking session. Maybe by yelling.
The bill of the week.
That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage. Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Tough bills, blow bills, Bill Claron, this is the bill.
Of the week.
Hey girls, my name is Natalie and I wanted to share with you my bill of the week. So I have been in physical therapy for a snowboarding injury, and I was budgeting for it to be a very high price for each of the visits. I think I had about seven visits, and so I was budgeting, you know, this range that they had given me. So I budgeted the most just so it wouldn't be a surprise when the bill came.
And I've been waiting and waiting for the bill just finished up, pet and I got the bill today and it was over five hundred dollars less than what I expected it to be. And I'm actually excited to pay for it and get out of the way because now my budget has just opened up greatly this month. And yeah, thank you guys so much for all you do, and I'm really excited to share this with you.
Congrats Natalie h. Five hundred dollars less. What a treat, What a nice little life surprise.
I love it when bills are less than what we expect, especially medical bills. You never anticipate that. I would still say me, probably paid it already, but make sure that there's not more you could negotiate there if you're really ready to pay it off in full. Just offering to pay cash in full could knock it down a little bit, but also making sure that what they build you is accurate.
We keep talking about our episode with doctor Vergie Ellington, Yeah, about how to negotiate medical bills, So check that out to anybody else listening. If you've got a medical bill sitting on your desk, check out that episode really walks you through how to negotiate, how to lower those medical costs.
And if you let your medical bill go into collections, definitely negotiate it because you can get at least twenty percent off of that probably more. Don't pay full price for anything in collections.
So if any of this has helped you save on a medical bill, or you've just got anything else bill related, you want to talk to us about Frugal friendspodcast dot com, slash bill, leave us your bill, we want to hear it. And now it's time for might be Wronghoo.
All right, So a time where you miserably failed at cooking and what happened. I mean a lot of times I try a lot of things and sometimes not all of them go well. I think, I don't know, I'm just like not a very good cook. I don't enjoy it very much.
But food is good. You keep saying this, so then it makes me think like, oh, yeah, I don't I don't know if I want to eat your food, And then anytime that I do, it's amazing. You're a very good cook. Actually, I maybe you've gotten better.
I have gotten better. I have gotten better, and it's because I understand more about flavor profiles and the chemistry of cooking.
Yeah, so that's what have you done when you failed miserably? What did it look like?
Throwing it away? Nobody eats it, and we we do have to waste it.
And then and then happens you dig for something in the freezer or like you have a go.
To we eat one. It's just we eat. We don't save the leftovers. But Travis and I will power through. If it's made like, we'll eat it. And sometimes I'll save the leftovers because he's a garbage disposal and he'll eat it even if he doesn't like it. And you know, thank God for him.
That truly doing the Lord's.
Work, is doing the Lord's work, especially with my cooking. But I don't know. I I don't have any rec like nothing, I've ever never caught anything on fire. That's my vision of miserably failing.
Yeah, you're reminding me, I did just have a failure. You were here. You were here for it when I found out about the failure. Oh so, I had had an evening of just prepping a ton of root vegetables and other raw veggies and did a bunch of like batch cooking of it. Some of it just went directly to the freezer, some of it I was sharing with friends.
Others was prepped for food. It really only took me a couple of hours that evening, in and out of me doing other things, which was great, except for that final batch of root veggies remained in the oven until the next day because right it wasn't on I put it in. I've got like an air fryer that's also an oven and can fit like a nine by thirteen pan in it. So and you set it to a
certain time and then it turns off. And I didn't hear it turn off, and I did not remember it, and it sat out for over twelve hours.
Did turn the turn the timer but sound off that too?
No, Eric turned the timer buzzer off of the microwave because we are often on calls or recording that really he did it because he wants to be able to heat things up when we're recording and not hear the timer go off. So he's turned it off infinitely, and now it's just confused.
Now we never know when our food is done because the microwave doesn't turn.
Off, keeps going.
Yeah. Yeah, so the fan keeps going and it sounds just like it sounds when the microwave is cooking. Yeah. So we're sitting there for five minutes and not thinking about it, and the microwave is just going. It's not heating up past the timer. It's just you just don't know. You don't remember unless you sit there and watch it.
Yeah, yep, uh, it is what it is. That's one of the risks you take. And coming over to my house. Now, what were easing up your food? What was your original answer for? My original answer is that most of my life, most of my adult life up until now, I was failing miserably at cooking.
What is now like last six months, last year, last four years, I would.
Say since COVID. I think COVID really did a shift because I was forced to be at home and I hate food delivery.
I do not. I don't like it. It's so gross by the time it gets. Yes, I never do delivery and more unless I have like a gift card for it, I always pick up whatever it is. Yeah, because not only does it save money, it's also saving time so the food is not gross by the time it gets.
And you actually get to check it. I literally can't think of a time when everything was correct in the order. It's not the driver's fall, but if I would have picked it up, I would have been able to know you missed my rice. This isn't my entree. This like I don't really like it. Yeah, so I was forced to cook. I will say a lot of me failing miserably did have to do with the time, And that's legit.
There just there are some seasons of life where I mean I was working from I was out, gone from the house seven am till eight pm for a lot of my social work career in my twenties, and that's just that's not great.
And part of you lived in the RV with I actually did.
I will say I did well in the RV. I love cooking in a small kitchen. That was really helpful for me, pairing down my not having a complicated pots and pans, knives, or even pantry set up. It's one of the reasons I'm so for a minimalist pantry, which we've also done episodes on that, because that complication and chaos is reduced, so it's much easier to know, I'm just going to cook some rice and I'm going to make a protein. Yeah, maybe I'll roast some vegetables and
another barrier. Like when you have fewer kitchen gadgets, then it's easier to process how.
You're going to cook food. It's one less decision you have to make because by the time dinner comes around, so many decisions have been made, decision fatigued. So if you don't have ten different ways to make your food, it's much easier to make a meal plan. It's much easier to make your food. It's truly Simplicity is truly a gift in the kitchen.
I think it's a good way to try to enter in is just what's as simple as possible, Like don't go super elaborate, don't go like the fanciest type of food that the thing that you think your taste buds will love the most. Just do it simple and start to get a habit forming and then start stacking more on top of it.
We'll do something that your taste buds will love.
Sure, but I'm thinking these like thirty five ingredient two hours in the kitchen, which is a lot of what some of these people on Instagram are doing and it looks amazing, but then you look at their recipes, it's like, yeah, but I'm not a food influencer, so no, I'm not going to get all of these ingredients.
Oh my gosh. Their job is to make food look really beautiful and really great, so sometimes these are really complex, Yeah, waitings and recipes like because that's their job. If the food doesn't look good, and then you don't go to their website and see all their ads, that generates all their revenues.
So why you need to follow the people who are doing it like you would do it. The people who are showing you how to make ten meals out of fifty dollars worth of food they got at Trader Joe's. And the ones who are doing good yeah with three Oh, Jen it's good does a lot. She does that. She also does a lot of meal prep. She does low ingredient recipes. She's a good one to follow.
Yeah, she's really great. And then the family Freezer. I love her for freezer meals. The one thing with freezer meals is I love to cook them in the instant pot. If you're going to do them in the slow cooker, then you have to make sure they are one hundred percent completely thought you might need to thaw over two days because you do not want to put any frozen meat that is raw in the slow cooker. You can do that in the instant pot, but not in the slow cooker. So well some bonus tips. Thank you so
much for listening. I hope that after this episode this week, you will choose this upcoming weekend. This upcoming week, you will choose to eat at home, even if it's just an extra day, even if you just avoid takeout one extra day. Please let us know that it helped you in a rating and review kind of like this one from Kate Sowers that says impressed and says wow, I've been looking for something like this for so long. Millennial women discussing money and getting at the root causes of
a lot of issues. Thank you, ladies so much for doing this podcast. Makes me feel less alone in the world of finances and impulse spending, et cetera. Love it and yours can you can add? And I didn't eat at McDonald's this week because forget them, and they're one hundred percent inflation.
Forget those golden arches. I'm staying out.
I am almost I am. I am almost sad that we once referred to ourselves as the Taco Bell of podcasts almost because of what Taco is doing has inflated so much. And you know how much we've inflated zero zero percent. We're still free, so we are still. We've we started free, we still free, and we're still and we're giving you more free stuff. So actually would that be negative We could say negative one hundred percent inflation because we've doubled the amount of free things we give you,
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Bye. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni all right, chill. So I was this morning. I was listening to music and I had a just a random generated playlist on and the Avit Brothers Abbot Brothers. They have a new album out, and one of their songs came up. It's called untitled Number four, and I was like, did they name their songs this album? I don't know. I only listened to one, but it was saying I'm happier with nothing. And I got through like two thirds of the song
because I really wanted to hear. I'm like, okay, tell me more, tell me more. And two thirds of the way through the song, I'm just like no, like I can't. I'm happier with money.
Right right, Well, it's needed, right.
So, And I don't know what his nothing is like. His nothing is probably more than most people something, right.
He only got there by way of having a lot.
Yeah, And so I just couldn't. I couldn't get through the song. And I know the purpose of this, like I know it is pure purpose behind it, but like I'm just sitting in my car and I was like, you couldn't even name the friggin song. You couldn't even name it, Yeah, name it and claim it man, I.
So did it make you angry? Are you angry?
It didn't make me angry. I was just like, no, brother, no, no, this is not it. This is not it. I am happier with money. I am happier with things to an extent, right, there's a lot of diminishing returns. But like I think, but part of it, one of the reasons is I think it made me upset maybe and I'm I'm processing this in real time, is that when we hear narratives like that, people like us think, Okay, yeah, I should be happy with nothing. He's happier with nothing. Yes, I'm
happier with nothing. But like his nothing is not our nothing. We are different. The nothings are different. It's the different day John and Sunday Jen. They're never gonna meet, right, But these are two different people.
This is.
You know, Ralph Ralph, right, and they don't. They're never gonna meet. So don't don't compare your nothing to his nothing, because he still probably has like a very nice house and a very nice neighborhood and a lot of money in investments.
Right.
So that so sometimes that causes people like us to say, like I don't need to you know, I should just be content with what I have, and there's something wrong with me for not being content with what I have. We think it's an internal problem. It's not an internal problem. It is good for you to want more and pursue more incongruence with what you value most, Like we're rejecting hustle culture, but we're not embracing poverty.
Right. Wanting more it can also be said as just like wanting growth, wanting life, wanting purpose, wanting the next day to be and hold value, Like that's a good thing to want. Otherwise, what's the alternative?
Yeah, So so that was my That was my morning with the Abbot Wow Avid Brothers album.
You really, I.
It wasn't even the album, it was one song I listened to.
Was it a lot of pondering about that that you did?
I pondered a bit