Real Happy Mom

Practical tips and encouragement for moms

Grocery Shopping Doesn’t Have to be the Worst Part of Your Week!

LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | STITCHER

Grocery shopping can be a drag. It’s one of those adult chores we must do but actually doing it can feel so time and energy depleting…

Not only that but with many school districts across the U.S. going back in person this month and it’s no secret that parents everywhere need help to save both time and energy where they can!

Don’t you worry. I’ve got my guest Christine Pittman from COOKtheSTORY.com to help with this.

Christine has mastered the art of her grocery shopping for her own family and is sharing her time and energy-saving hacks in this episode.

In this episode Christine shares:

  • The #1 time-saving hack for grocery shopping. And no, it’s not using a grocery delivery service, she could share her best-kept secret for saving time on groceries each week.
  • The app she uses to save herself time and energy each week on grocery shopping.
  • Her tips for getting back on track with prepping school lunches and family dinners.
  • How to save time with batch cooking meals.

If you are ready to get on top of grocery shopping and meal prepping, you’ve got to check out this full episode.

About

Christine is a cookbook author and the founder of COOKtheSTORY.com where her passion is to create recipes that take less time in the kitchen, giving you more time to relax and have fun in life. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of TheCookful.com. Her websites reach over 2 million people a month, many of whom also enjoy her podcast Time Management Insider. Christine’s love for cooking started early, watching and listening to her mother and grandmother in the kitchen, and working in her parents’ restaurants starting at age 12. She is the mom of two amazing kids, aged 9 and 13, and she’s also a nature buff, podcast addict, and paint-by-numbers expert!

Connect

Links Mentioned

Subscribe & Review in Apple Podcast

Have you subscribed to the Real Happy Mom podcast? If not, I’m encouraging you to do it today.

I don’t want you to miss any upcoming episodes. I plan to add some bonus episodes that you won’t find on this website, and if you’re not subscribed, you might miss out on those. Click here to subscribe to Apple Podcast!

I would be so happy and grateful if you left me a review on Apple Podcast too. Reviews help Apple Podcast to know that this is a podcast for other moms so that other moms can find this podcast. Plus, it makes my day to read the reviews.

Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know your favorite part of the podcast. I really appreciate any help you can provide.

Don’t have Apple Podcast? You can subscribe to the podcast Google Podcast, Anchor, Spotify, Breaker, Castbox, Overcast, RadioPublic, and Stitcher.

Related blog posts

Join the Real Happy Mom Facebook Community

If you want to get more of what you hear on the podcast (with some fun, of course), hang out with other like-minded moms in the Real Happy Mom Community on Facebook.

Could you leave me a message about this episode?


Transcript of this episode

Real Happy Mom 0:06
You are listening to the Real Happy Mom podcast, the weekly podcast for busy working moms to get inspiration, encouragement and practical tips for this journey called motherhood. My name is Tony and and you are listening to Episode 148. Well, Hey there and welcome back to another episode of the Real Happy Mom podcast. I missed you so much. I hope he you missed it as well. I had to take a little break in the month of July. But we are back in at it here, here in August getting ready for school. And I was thinking of you, especially with us getting ready to go back to school. I know last year was totally different from anything we ever experienced. And a lot of us were home, working from home, having the kids home doing virtual school, and a lot of us are going back into the building. A lot of the kids are going back into the building for school. So I wanted to make sure that we were ready to go with this practical school season. So I brought my friend and guest Christine Pittman on, she is a hobby or food blogger. And she is going to be sharing with us some tips in this episode on how we can do better with our grocery shopping as well as meal planning. And then lastly, she shares some tips on meal times, that will definitely make your lives easier. Because one thing I’ve learned from Christine is that it doesn’t have to be complicated. She definitely keeps things very simple. And the other thing is really just tuning into our kids, and what they actually like, because I think a lot of times we know what we think is best for them. And we don’t always take into account that they don’t always like the things that we’re giving them. And that’s okay. Now, we definitely want to make sure that they’re getting the proper nutrients, I get it. But if your kids don’t want to eat broccoli, like that’s fine. Like, let’s try something else. So in this episode, Christine is going to share with us some of the ways to make grocery shopping a lot easier. She shares with us an app that you definitely want to check out that will help you and your family, make grocery shopping a breeze, as well as how you can prepare meals and keep track of things so that you can continue to make the meals that your family loves and enjoys. Then lastly, she talks to us about lunchtime, how we can get some lunches prepared for our kids as well as dinnertime so that it doesn’t have to be a struggle. So if this is something that you are needing some help with, you definitely want to stay tuned to the end of this episode. But before we jump in, make sure that you join me in the Facebook group, the Real Happy Mom Facebook community, and there is a lot more information as well as some monthly training on Trello that is going to help you make this even more easier to implement. All right, so you can head on over to Real Happy Mom comm slash community and join me there. Now that we have that out of the way. Let’s go ahead and jump on into this week’s episode.

Real Happy Mom 3:08
Well, Christine, welcome to the podcast. I am excited to have you. Thank you, Tony. And I’m excited to be here. Yes, yes, Christine. I am super pumped to jump into our conversation today about grocery shopping and meal planning. Because this is one area that I tend to struggle with. So I definitely could use your help. But before we jump in, I wanted you to share a little bit about you and what you do.

Christine 3:31
Yes, so I am a food blogger, I create recipes that are fresh from scratch mostly, but easy and quick so that people can cook for their household and still have time to relax and spend time together and not just be in the kitchen all the time. And I have two websites cook the story. COMM is my personal blog that I started in 2010. And then the cook fall, which actually just got redesigned and launched today. So I’m super excited about the redesign the cook fall, which is like a contributor base site that I managed that has a whole bunch of different people posting all kinds of amazing recipes. We get cookbook authors and experts. It’s really wonderful. And then I have a podcast time management insider where I am talking about meal planning and time management for inside the home. So that is all of my weird food media stuff that I do.

Real Happy Mom 4:25
Yes, yes. And I love the food blog, in part because I probably am on your site probably often trying to find recipes and whatnot. Because I definitely could definitely do better with you know, making it easier for myself because I love the Pioneer Woman and I love all her recipes. But the ingredient list is very intimidating. A lot of things that she used it sometimes to create those beautiful and tasty dishes. So I love that you’re trying to make it easy. Now, before we even get into making the actual meals we have to start with actual grocery shopping Actually prepping things. So let’s start with the grocery shopping part. And that’s the part that tends to be a headache for a lot of us moms. So I wanted you to share some tips or hacks you have for grocery store visits.

Christine 5:13
Okay, yeah, so and I really think this is a great time, because a lot of us were getting grocery delivery over the last year more, and we’re finding ourselves back at the grocery store. And maybe we don’t have the routines that we had before. Which means it’s kind of a good time to try out something new or build a new habit in. So if you are finding yourself stopping at the grocery store on the way home from getting kids from something or whatever more often, and not using the delivery of much, this is a great time to try things. So the first thing that helps me so much is I keep a separate list for the like bulky big items, because I find they slow me down in the grocery store. Like if I have a big thing of toilet paper and a couple cases of seltzer water and all that stuff. And I’m taking them when you really think about it, you’re taking them from the shelf into the cart from the cart onto the conveyor belt for the conveyor belt, into the bags into the car, then home. That is a lot of big things that are taking a lot of time, you can only carry sort of one at a time. So I keep those on a separate list. And then I do those either by grocery delivery Amazon or like a once a month big shop so that my daily or like weekly shops aren’t bogged down with all that big stuff. You know what I mean?

Real Happy Mom 6:28
Yes, definitely, because I definitely have that struggle, where I end up putting a whole bunch of things in the buggy, and then I don’t have any space warm, or I get home. And I’m like, I don’t even feel like taking all this stuff out. So I like that one.

Christine 6:40
Yeah, so that’s great. I think I have a master grocery list. That is like a list of things that I buy most times that I go to the grocery store. And I’ll say that I’ve heard people say you should have this for like years. And I never did it because it seemed like a pain. But I found like a hack to make it more easy. So what I did was I kept all of my grocery lists for like a month, like didn’t throw them out after I went grocery shopping, and then just opened an Excel spreadsheet and typed in all the stuff that was like on every single one of those old lists. You know what I mean? So it was like, super easy to be like, Oh, I am always buying tomatoes. I’m always buying cucumbers, I’m always buying bread, milk, cheese, like whatever that is. And then when it comes time to write the grocery list, I’m not being like, Oh, do I need what are we? What things should I get? There’s already this like starting point. So that’s really helpful. I also love there’s a grocery shopping app that I love. It’s a free app. It’s called our groceries oh you our groceries and you can share the app with multiple people so they can see the list. And if they cross something off the list, it gets crossed off of yours. But the thing that I love the most about it is that it remembers how you categorized each item. So if you type in milk and put it in like a dairy category, From then on, whenever you add milk, it’s going to put it in that dairy category automatically for you. So you end up with your grocery list getting like automatically sorted according to the sections of your grocery store, which then makes your grocery shopping trip so much faster. Because you’re not going back and forth through the store trying to remember where things are find things the app has remembered for you.

Real Happy Mom 8:17
Again, it says I love that and remind me the name of that app. It’s our groceries. Oh, you our groceries. Got it. Yeah, I love that. Because I will be honest, I don’t like going to the grocery store with my kids. That’s the one thing I don’t like to do. And they always want to come with me. So I have been doing a lot of Walmart grocery delivery. But the problem is, is sometimes items are not in stock, or they substitute it for something I didn’t ask them for. And I end up back in the same boat where I need to go back to the grocery store. So this definitely makes it easier for me to get back in there without it being overwhelming.

Christine 8:54
Yeah, and I think now too, is a great time to maybe reflect on how our grocery trips go. Like you just said, your kids always want to go. So like if there’s a time when they’re not around and you can schedule it for then. Or like I find I always think that I’m a big grocery shop person, like I’m going to do one grocery shop on Sunday. And that’s going to get me through the week. And then I’m literally stopping at the grocery store on my way home from everywhere all the time. And I just have to at some point, I was like, okay, Christine, you are not a big grocery shop person. You’re at every three day grocery shopping person, just accept it and stop making these massive meal plans stop making these massive lists and go over a few days. Whereas I think there’s other people who just want to go for a few days, but then find themselves not finding the time to go or not going and maybe they need to be like, okay, I am not a grocery shop every second day person I need to get on top of doing a big grocery shop. So I think there’s something about like, when something’s not working, like when you’re like, Oh my god, this is not this is never working. That’s when it’s time to be like okay, how can I try something different, even if it’s just like one Time or like for a month or something, you try it different, and see if there’s a better strategy to the one that you’re using, because we’re not all the same. And nobody taught us how to do this, right? Like, you’re not shown how to time manage and meal plan and all of these things. And so watching what goes badly can help us figure out what’s going to work for us.

Real Happy Mom 10:19
Absolutely. Now, you brought up something good, you know, when you’re talking about, you know, when it’s not working, try something different. And I know I have tried some different things for meal planning in particular. So now you got me feeling a little bit better about going to the grocery store with my kids. But I’m just thinking about like preparing meals, you brought up a couple of different ways, as far as you know, planning for every three days versus a whole week or whole month, like I’ve seen some moms do. But what are some things that we can do to just make it easier, because I think a lot of times we make it too complicated. But it’s some ways that I know that you can simplify things, especially being a food blogger, I’m sure you come up with a lot of great things that you can reuse things, many different ways so that you’re getting the most bang for your buck kind of thing.

Christine 11:04
Yeah, for sure. So I want to I want to start by telling you a little story, because I think that we think of meal planning as a certain thing, like you write Monday to Friday on the side a piece of paper, and then you sketch and that’s how you’re supposed to do it. Or people have the systems and this is the way that you meal plan. And I had early on on my podcast, I had a friend of mine on and she was sort of like feeling bad for self or being hard on herself saying I don’t meal plan. On the way she’s a teacher on the way home from school every day. I have a 30 minute drive, I spend the first 15 minutes frantically mad at myself trying to figure out what we’re gonna have for dinner. And I really feel like I like what we came to for the conversation was like, actually, maybe that is how you meal plan for you. And maybe it’s not, uh, oh, my God, I suck. But okay, I’m in the car. Now is meal planning time for today? What am I going to make when I get home, and like forgiving yourself and just realizing if that’s how you always end up doing it. And that’s where you’re always doing it. Like maybe you can strategize to feel better about that. And it doesn’t have to be one of these, like elaborate systems that some food blogger like me has, like pushed onto you. So just sort of like realizing that it doesn’t have to be a certain way and that there’s a bunch of different ways. And one of the things is my favorite favorite tip is to try keeping a calendar just I just print off a paper PDF calendar from online and Google for printable PDF calendar. And I get like this piece of paper, and I just jot down on it, what we’ve already had to eat, like, Okay, what do we have on Monday? What do we have on Tuesday, and I kind of keep like a diary of what we’ve had. And then when I’m trying to find meal ideas, I can go back and look at that and be like, Oh, yeah, that worked. That worked and the ideas already there. But the biggest perk for that is if you’re somebody who’s trying out different meal planning strategies, maybe you tried meal kits, maybe you’re trying to pick up something at the grocery store regularly. Or maybe you’re trying somebody’s system, whether it works or not, you still are getting that data on your calendar of the things that work for your family or not. So even if you abandon ship and stop doing whatever meal planning strategy you’re trying, you still have like meal ideas and stuff that you can still turn back to when you’re trying to figure out what to make for your family.

Real Happy Mom 13:19
Yes, yes. And I love the scientific approach, like collecting the data here, because that’s something that I haven’t really taken the time to do. Because for a period of time, I was trying a different different recipes with my family. And some of them they were like, looked at it and they like started gagging. I’m like really like you haven’t even tried it. And then other times they’re like, yeah, we love it. But I haven’t really made it again. So I love keeping a diary, or at least a list a running list of what we’ve had that work. So I can always kind of revert back to those things. Because I was making my life way too difficult. When I was trying to make a new meal each night for them in they ended up hating them all.

Christine 13:58
For sure. And I really think that I think for me, too, sometimes when I’m like, Oh, I should try that system. I should try that. And then I think oh, but it’s not gonna last I’m not going to stick to it. Like what’s the point? But if I’m at least like getting some experience or getting some new ideas, or, you know, I have one Saturday free and I Google for a whole bunch of recipes and find a bunch of stuff and we make those for a week and then I don’t have time again, that information is like still always there. You know? The other thing, you know, I’m thinking you were just saying that you made some interesting things for your family and then never made them again, I think we feel this weird pressure. I mean, I talk all the time about especially moms, we feel this pressure to not only be good at cooking, but also love cooking and like we don’t feel that pressure about laundry. We’re like, okay, we have to be adequate at laundry. But if we don’t like it, nobody’s like, oh, you’re not a good mom. But we feel this like oh, but and I think that puts this pressure that we need to be like coming up with new ideas all the time. Whereas like, I don’t know about your kids. My kids get super excited when dinner is spaghetti tacos like burgers, like the stuff that like, they know and are familiar with, they’re happy they’re not, you know, upset that we’re not having something new and exciting for the most part.

Real Happy Mom 15:14
Definitely, definitely, yeah, I do see that too, like they are fine with the things that they’re used to. But I’m just thinking about leftovers in particular. So I want to get your perspective on this one because my family, oh, my goodness, we always have leftovers. But as far as like, you know, actually using them. We don’t always do that. So I’m just wondering what is your some of your favorite recipes that you can either batch during the week or use them to make different leftovers for other meals?

Christine 15:43
Yeah, so I don’t do like a big meal prep day on the weekend, or, like, I’m not super great at that. I joke that, you know, especially during the pandemic, we’re not going anywhere, anytime, like we’re home all the time. And then the one week that I do a whole bunch of meal prep, suddenly, we have to be a whole bunch of places. And I’m like, how does it happen? When I have the food is, but we’re not home to eat the food, you know, it just it’s just always that way. So I’m not somebody who for whatever reason does that. But what I do try to do is have some, like one or two super simple meals in the week that are really just like protein, vege carb. So it’s like, you know, chicken, thighs, rice and broccoli, super boring, whatever. But then I make extra like, I’ll make twice as much as a chicken and twice as much of the rice, maybe even twice as much of the broccoli. And then later in the week, those just become wonderful things like you can do the most delicious like bowl dinners, of course, like you’ve got your rice, you’ve got your chicken, you crush them tortilla chips on top with some shredded cheese, salsa, sour cream, some chopped up cucumbers, tomatoes, like you’ve got delicious dinner from those leftovers, because you had those basic items. I also I love there’s I have this, it’s on the cook full on that website of mine, it’s called the one pot pasta formula. And that one, it’s a it’s a one pot pasta. So only one Bob’s dirty at the end. But it you it shows you how to use ingredients you already have in your house. And so you can use the cooked chicken and the cooked vegetables that you had and, and make that meal and ends up being kind of different every time because you are throwing in the different things. But you as a cook, get to know the recipe like Well, I’ve got it off my heart at this point. So I could just start it going when I walk in the door. And I know how it goes even though it’s going to be kind of different every time. But then having that protein cooked or those vegetables cook that can speed that up there too. So that’s how I approach leftovers more is the basic things like having a basic meal or two that I can make extra of and then turn into more interesting things later enchiladas tacos bowls, into soups into pastas. That kind of thing

Real Happy Mom 18:05
I love in the bowls is one thing that I recently started, like getting into because it was funny because one day I was at work and one of the girls her mom is a phenomenal cook. And I tease her all the time and I call her princess because I’m like you don’t even know what like bad foods tastes like because your mom is so good at cooking. And so one day she was just like, Hey, Doc, I got this extra bowl leftover that I didn’t want to eat. Do you want it? And I’m like, yeah, your mom cooked it cuz I love everything she makes. And when I got it was like so simple, but so good. It had like, like you said the rice. I think I had chicken. I didn’t eat the chicken but it had like some corn salsa, and a couple of other different things. And I was like, This is so easy and so good. Like who would have thought?

Christine 18:48
Yeah, and you can turn I mean, I think the bowl craze started with like Chipotle and like Tex Mex kind of stuff. But I turn on kinds of things. I do like a Greek bowl, I do a smoked salmon bowl, like so like what you would think of like smoked salmon on bagel, like Sunday brunch sort of thing. So they’re like I warm up cream cheese, smoked salmon, capers, lemon, cucumbers, dill. And the thing about all that stuff is it’s like cold, like you don’t have to cook it. You know, like, anytime that you can have a dinner that you just have to chop a few things and dinners come together and you’re not even turning on the oven. Like that is gonna save so much time. And the other thing especially for people with kids is they can pick and choose what stuff they want. And so if you’re like me and you like having adventurous flavors, I want to have you know, haritha on my chicken bowl this week, and I know that’s a spicy chili paste. I might not make a meal where that’s incorporated right into the chicken but I can totally drizzle that on top of mine and not on there’s you know,

Real Happy Mom 19:50
yeah, definitely because that’s what I was thinking cuz my oldest is I tease him and say that he’s a picky eater, but he’s just, he likes what he likes and he likes things. Very Are you playing so like fried chicken doesn’t like it, he takes all the fried parts off like he likes just regular chicken, no ketchup, no nothing. Just regular fries. He doesn’t even like crispy because he gets mad at me if I’m making too crispy. His hamburgers are literally abundant the body like that’s it like he’s super, super plain. And so I love the fact that you know, they can either experiment with it and make it how they want it or Cuba is playing Dane is my son likes to have it. So I love that.

Christine 20:27
Yeah. And my daughter, actually, she’s nine, she is still maybe she will always be in this phase, I should necessarily call the faith, this could just be her. She doesn’t really like her foods touching each other still. So like if we make spaghetti, I literally have to put her noodles on her plate. And then I take the meat sauce and I rinse it off. So that it’s just kind of like ground beef on her plate for her like she’s like that. And so with the bowl concept, she doesn’t have to have it in a bowl, she does it in a plate as she calls it piles of stuff. That’s what she’s having for dinner piles of stuff while we’re having our bowls. And she’ll have like her little pile of rice or a little pile of tortilla chips or a little pile of chicken or a little pile of vegetables. And she does it that way. And it totally works for her. And she’s still having sort of the same thing we’re having. And it’s just easier. And I’m not making her this separate meal. It’s the same, you know,

Real Happy Mom 21:15
yeah, yeah, I love that. And she’s fun. She sounds like my kids too. So definitely can relate on that one. Now, you share with us some really good hugs for dinner. I’m just wondering about lunch, especially at the time of this recording. We’re getting into that back to school season. So I’m just wondering, what are some things that we can do as parents on rediscovering what lunch PrEP is gonna be, like, just adjusting to this new back to school period.

Christine 21:42
I know, it’s really weird. And for a lot of people, not everybody, but a lot of people have their kids home for part of the year, a lot of the year last year, depending on where you live. And I think we you know, we’re out of the habit of packing lunches I we were doing, quite honestly a lot of warming up of leftovers with lunch in my house this year. And so, you know, my kids are going to day camp this week. And I’m like, Oh, I need to pack a lunch. I don’t even know where my lunch containers are, like, it’s that kind of thing. But, um, so what I love doing is thermoses of leftovers that is especially like pastas. And and well, I guess even sort of the rice bowl stuff, that kind of thing. Having some thermoses and being able to put some soup or something like that in there actually is quick, like, it feels like you’re doing something more, but you’re just warming up something for the fridge. So I really like that. I I struggle with lunches for my kids. I think part of it is my fault, because I do this thing, where I asked them what they want in the morning, like we’re running around like crazy people. And I’m like, hey, do you want to ham roll up sandwiches for lunch? And if the answer’s no, I’m kind of screwed. Because I didn’t have another idea. And that’s what I was trying to do. So I’ve been trying to keep my mouth shut and not ask them. I know what they like for the most part. And so if I just do it, and don’t ask them, they eat it right, like it’s fine. The other thing that I think especially with kids my age, my kids age 13 and nine, I have no way of knowing if they’re eating their lunch at school, when they were younger, the teachers, I guess would sort of send home what they didn’t eat. Well, now my kids will just throw it out if they don’t eat it. And so I’ve actually become much more fixated on making sure that there is stuff in their lunchbox that’s going to fuel them that they are going to for sure eat over making sure that it’s varied and has all the food groups. Like if I if I chop up a bunch of broccoli with ranch dressing, I have no idea if they’re gonna eat that, where’s my daughter loves cucumbers, I give her cucumber or they both love fruit, I can give them an extra orange in there instead of the broccoli that I’m not sure if they’re going to eat. And then I know that they’re going to have it and I worry less about like, okay, is this whole brain is this, like, I worry about that at home? And I worry about that a lot. But for when it comes to what’s going in their lunchbox, really? I’m like, are they going to eat this? Are they going to have enough energy to get through their day? And that is more of my priority than the other stuff. And I feel like that has taken a lot of the pressure off of me when it comes to making the lunches. Does that make sense to you?

Real Happy Mom 24:24
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. Cuz I know that I was doing kind of the same thing where I was like, Oh, no, I got to make sure he has like, a little bit of everything. And he wasn’t eating it. He told me he was throwing it away and he had come home hungry. And I’m like, that is like defeats the purpose. If you’re not gonna eat it, so yeah, definitely love just sticking with what they like. And then the thermoses too, because I bought a thermos for my son and I didn’t really use it as much. But I’m trying to figure out like what he actually likes, I can heat up in there and keep for him but like I said, I know he he’s the playing guy. So keeping it playing. I just need Stop trying to overthink it. Do it how he likes it.

Christine 25:04
Yeah, I did my daughter today, literally. So we had some smoked salmon left in the fridge from something. And she was like, can I have smoked salmon for lunch and I was like smoked salmon for lunch with what? And literally, she went to her daycamp today, with like four little pieces spoke salmon, tortilla chips and a little container guacamole. And that lady, she gets some fruit and there’s a snack in there too. But like that was her entree and She’s so excited. She’s like, I’m so excited about salmon for lunch. I’m

Unknown Speaker 25:30
like, okay,

Unknown Speaker 25:31
I didn’t do anything.

Christine 25:33
Of course she’s also the piles of stuff person so that fits like the you know, she’ll she’s happy with like, a couple slices of lunch meat, a couple pieces of cheese slice of bread, some cucumber slices, that’s her favorite. And, and a fruit and all sort of separate and not combined. So that also makes it easy.

Real Happy Mom 25:50
Yes, yes. I love that. And, and I love how you’re just kind of keeping it simple. Because I know in that situation, I probably like smoked salmon. Like, what do I need to make some rice? Or? I don’t have bagels. But yeah, no, I think I think Yeah,

Christine 26:10
keeping things simple and and trying not to. It’s just like, sometimes we have the time and the energy and the ideas. And when that happens, great. Go with it. And sometimes we don’t have the time or the energy or the ideas. And you know, it’s not gonna be the end of the world. There are way more important things, the conversation that you have with your kids in the car on the way to school is probably more important to their well being then, you know whether all the food groups are in their lunchbox.

Real Happy Mom 26:38
Yes, definitely. I totally, totally agree. Now, you have given us some really great tips and hacks. And I am super excited to give some of these a try here. But I was just wondering if you had any last words of encouragement or inspiration for us Real Happy Mom before we signed off?

Christine 26:56
Yeah, I think just know that if you’re even listening to this, you are already doing so much and trying and you’re doing you’re doing great. And and all of the comparisons and what other people are doing or about what our parents did. All of that is just the negative thoughts that keeping that are keeping us down. And just think about all the great things that you’re doing for your family and focus on that. That’s it.

Real Happy Mom 27:21
Definitely I am totally agree. Now, Christine, if we want to connect with you, or more about you, I know you told us about your websites and your podcast, but where can we find you online if we want to connect with you?

Christine 27:33
Yeah, probably. Facebook and Instagram are the best places and I am cook the story co Okay, th e s t o r y on both of those. I also love getting emails. It’s Christine at cook the story calm. And yeah, people emailed me questions. And I always had that personal connection that I really enjoy. And I find that I think I learned so much when people reach out and ask a question of me like I am getting better and better at figuring out what parents and people in their kitchens really need from that. And I want to answer the questions and incorporate what we learn into my recipes and my podcast and everything like that. So definitely reach out.

Real Happy Mom 28:18
Yes, for sure. And I will make sure to include all of those links in the show notes. Christine, again, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all this with us. This has been awesome and I really appreciate you.

Christine 28:29
Thanks for having me, Tony. I’ve loved it.

Real Happy Mom 28:33
Now that does it for this episode of the Real Happy Mom podcast to find the links in show notes make sure you head over to Real Happy Mom comm slash 148. There you’ll find a cliff notes version of this episode as well as all of the links that were mentioned. And do me a favor if you found this podcast episode helpful. Leave me a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts. This helps me out more than you know and gets the message out to other moms that this is a great podcast to listen to. And it just lights up my day. So do me that big, huge favor and I’ll be super super grateful. So that’s it for this week’s episode. Take care and with lots of love

error: This content is protected.