3 Simple Ways to Take the Dread Out of Dinner || with Brittney Hanks

Have you ever been filled with dread as five o'clock approaches, the house is chaotic, everyone is hungry, including you, and you're unsure of what to make for dinner or if you even have all of the ingredients? Brittney Hanks, creator of One Stop Meals, sat down with me to explore how busy moms can simplify dinner planning. Brittney shares her personal journey with cooking, from childhood experiences to finding joy in the kitchen as an adult. Plus, we dive deep into the mental load of meal planning, offering valuable insights and practical tips for overcoming common obstacles.

Come away with simple fixes for your most common weeknight dinner concerns, including flexible planning, recipe sourcing, and how to shop for success. Brittney also gives us some insight into how her recent cookbook came to be, plus we both share our favorite Costco finds.

About a few other things...

Do you struggle to create habits that stick? It's not your fault. The truth is simple: you've been trying to form habits using methods designed for perfect robots--not real women living real lives. It's time to change that. If I could help you gain confidence in creating habits AND guide you to uncover the ONE supportive habit to deeply care for yourself, could you commit 21 days to learning this method? The Sticky Habit Method is a 21-day course that revolutionizes the habit-formation process. It's real habits for real women.

Sign up for the Go Getter Newsletter to get Progress Pointers in your inbox every Tuesday.

This episode is brought to you by Vionic Shoes (use code PROGRESS) and Factor Meals (use code PROGRESS50).

SHOW NOTES
Brittney's Cookbook, Website, Instagram
Try me FREE Class and check out my NEW Habit Course
Leave a rating and review for the podcast!
Lend your voice and experience + be featured on the show HERE
Join Monica on Facebook and Instagram
Songs Credit: Pleasant Pictures Music Club

TRANSCRIPT

Monica: Brittany Hanks, welcome to About Progress.

Brittney: Oh, Thanks so much for having me. I am so excited. to be here. Monica?

Monica: We had you on the podcast a long time ago, really long time ago, and it's about time we had you back. You are. Everything home to me. Everything from organization to cleaning to hacks.

I have made your lunches for my kids, those freezer lunches for years, and it's saved us so much time. And we're gonna be talking about dinner, which is another thing that can be way more complicated than it needs to be. But for understandable reasons, it's a lot to feed a family. I wanted to start though by learning from you.

Have you always loved cooking dinner? What's been your history like with this main meal?

Brittney: So It's interesting because I personally actually do love . Cooking. It's a creative outlet for me. I've always enjoyed cooking. Growing up, my mom cooked more out of necessity. She's never loved cooking. My dad's always actually been the one who is a big foodie, and he would always cook for special occasions, but just out of. Pure necessity of getting food on the table. My mom was usually the one to do it when I was growing up, but it's been interesting as I've become an adult and I'm one of seven kids, we all are total foodies now. We love to cook. We're sharing recipes all the time. We have a text string where we're sharing things that we're making. So we've all kind of grown to, to love it and to use it as a fun, creative outlet. But it's been interesting and I'm sure. A lot of moms feel this way, that even if you personally love cooking as a creative outlet,

once you get to the stage of motherhood where you know you have to get dinner on the table in a certain amount of time, maybe you're holding one kid on your hip and you have one at your legs that's asking when dinner's be ready, it can tend to suck the joy out of cooking

So I Definitely have found myself in that rut. Many times over the years because cooking is something that has to happen multiple times per day, like kids have eat and that need never goes away. So I feel like that can often take the joy out of it if you're someone who does love cooking just because you can't really do it on your own terms in the setting of being a mom sometimes.

So I have found that during seasons when it feels more like a chore, I don't enjoy it very much, but I've tried to get to a place where

Monica: where

Brittney: I have a lot of really simple recipes that I can choose from so that it's not as much of a chore when I have to get dinner on the table, but then it doesn't totally suck me clean of all of the energy I have.

So maybe one day a week, or maybe a couple times a month, I can use cooking as that creative outlet and really find joy in it when there's more time and less stressors. And there's not the time limit of, okay, I have 30 minutes to get something on the table. I.

Monica: You shared a little bit there, and I wanna expand on that. What are the biggest obstacles that you find ? You face and also the women in your community who are primarily in charge of meals. 'Cause it's not always the moms, but the majority of the time it tends to be that way. So what kind of obstacles and circumstances are influencing the dinner dreads?

I just made that up.

Brittney: I feel like if you were the one who is the primary caretaker for your kids and the primary kind of keeper of the house, manager of the home, that is a lot to juggle. Just mentally, it's a lot of things constantly going on in your mind of, who has to be where, at what time, what chores need to be done today.

Do I need to be getting laundry in? So this child has his sports uniform for after school. There's just a lot of invisible labor that is happening that you can't even see. And anyone who is the primary caretaker I think fills this very Strongly

in their life. so honestly, I find this time and time again that when I talk to other moms about this, it is the mental burden of thinking about what to make for dinner. That is the hardest part. It's not even the cooking, it's not, anyone can cook a meal and the actual cooking is often not very difficult, but it's the, what am I gonna make for dinner? It's the coming up with an idea. It's making sure that you have the food to make that meal. It's actually the. Mental energy, that is the hardest part of making dinner every night.

Monica: I am so glad you started there because I think that is the one that is the most overlooked and yet carries the most weight. Oftentimes we think it comes down to time, which it can be, and it's time intensive, but it's the mental weight that drags me down for sure.

Brittney: Yeah, I think a lot of people feel that way. And in fact, I have one friend who got so overwhelmed with it that she finally said, okay, I'm the one who's shopping and preparing the meals, which I'm fine about, but I'm gonna turn over the meal planning part of it or the choosing of the recipes part of it to my husband and just say, come up with five meals every week.

'Cause I just don't wanna have to think of them. I don't wanna have to think about what to make. And I think that was really representative. Of just what that mental energy takes, even more so sometimes than just the time it takes.

Monica: So alongside that mental load, we also have the many moving parts. Not only does it help to plan ahead, which I actually . Don't do . So we can talk about that. That's one way to simplify. But again, planning ahead, but it's also shopping. It's also the time. It's also cooking while you're trying to manage other things going on.

And top of the moving part piece, anything else that I might be missing here that can be complicating dinner for people? I'm gonna say that again 'cause I said that weird. Complicating, complicating dinner for people.

Brittney: I think as your kids start to age, just scheduling is a huge part of planning dinner. If you've got kids that are in sports or afterschool activities, you have, I have my days that are free now because all my kids are in school, but as soon as school gets out, I feel like I am Carpooling kids from place to place.

My husband's taking kids places, I'm taking kids places. There's a lot of coordinating of schedules. And so that can be really tricky too, to figure out, okay, when am I gonna cook? Are gonna have to eat at four different times? So I feel like. Just scheduling can be a tricky part of when do we eat, and also taking into account kids typically come home from school starving, so do I give them snack and then delay dinner for a couple hours?

Do we just have an early dinner? So there's just a lot to think about as far as logistics go.

Monica: Yeah. This is when I'm like beginning to feel the dinner dreads right now, just even in this conversation 'cause I feel the mental load of all of those moving parts as well as the time issue too. I was talking to my friend yesterday and she's what would help you with what's going on in your life right now?

I'm like, it just always comes down to time. If I just had more . Time, and we often can't. We can't just wave a magic wand and make that extra time appear, or the scheduling conflicts to go away, or maybe some life circumstances. Maybe you have a new baby or special needs kids, or maybe your health isn't doing well, your mental health isn't doing well.

For whatever factors the women are facing here, our goal now is to help them take what's complicated and simplify it. What are your go-to ways to simplify dinner?

Brittney: So my first tip, and I'll go more into this 'cause I don't want it to rub some people the wrong way, but my first tip is to meal plan. But let me say that with a grain of salt because I know some people hear meal planning and they think. No, I could never meal plan. I hate the idea of meal planning.

I want more flexibility. What if I don't feel like that on a certain day? So I personally have a very flexible meal plan, and by flexible meal plan, I mean I am often switching days of meals. I am usually incorporating a couple meals that don't even require a recipe. Like we'll do a breakfast for dinner one night and that doesn't require me looking up a recipe or anything like that.

Meal planning comes in all shapes and forms. Some people like to be very particular about it. They like to use a recipe each time, and you have to figure out what works best for your energy and for your lifestyle. But unless you have a very well stocked fridge and pantry, which that's one method that you can utilize too, is maybe you just keep your kitchen really stocked so you can throw together meals using what you have on hand, but you just don't wanna find yourself in a situation where it's five o'clock and. You can't really find anything to throw together for a meal. So you end up having to go out, or maybe you have enough for one meal, but then the next day you find yourself in the same position and you're going to the grocery store multiple times per week. So I usually do this on Sunday nights. And I'll just put together a rough plan for dinners for the week. And there's a couple things that make that easier is if you are consistent every week doing certain things. So for instance, on Friday we always do pizza. Sometimes I make the pizza, sometimes we buy the pizza. It just depends on what I'm feeling like that Friday and whether I have the energy to make it or not.

But my kids can pretty much expect that We're always having pizza on Friday, so that's one day that I can write down and I don't have to think anymore about it. Saturdays we usually eat out. Then Sundays we have some family in the area, so we switch off dinners. So two out of every three Sundays I'm not having to cook on those days, and then one out of every three I am. So then that only leaves me like Three or four days where I have to plug in meals. And I'm just either thinking of things off the top of my head.

Okay, I have a loaf of sourdough bread. Let's do grilled cheese and tomato soup. One day I need to buy some tomato soup and then I'm putting together my shopping list at the same time.

So at the end of maybe 10 or 15 minutes, I have a list of recipes. And then when I'm grocery shopping that week, or doing a grocery delivery or pickup or whatever, I'm getting all the stuff for those recipes that I wrote out on the meal plan. And then, Each day I know that even if I don't feel like making the recipe that I wrote on that day, I know I have all the ingredients for the recipe that I was gonna make tomorrow. So it just ensures that I have the food that I need to make these recipes each week so that even if I'm switching things around, or maybe I'm bumping one to next week, 'cause I never got to it, I know that I have the stuff to make that on hand. So it relieves some of that mental burden.

Monica: And I know everybody has their preferred way of meal planning if they're in their regular way of doing it. I like how you shared . Yours is a given. Every Sunday you do it. Some people do it the first Monday of the month and they plan for an entire month. Other people just have the same meals on certain days of the week, like you mentioned.

But like to the extreme, like every Monday we have a chicken rice bowl period.

I think that's why I don't really meal plan because we just eat the same meals over and over.

And we have the same type, but pivoted. So I always have the food on hand, but that mental load piece is something that I always overlook because even if I have the same meals in general that we make, it's on my mind still.

What are we gonna make tonight of those meals? So I'm going to follow your advice and see how it just helps.

Brittney: And I think your method is a form of meal planning because you have a small handful of meals that you are cooking on repeat. And so you're making sure that you have the ingredients for those things probably stocked all the time so that you from any of those meals so that you know you have the stuff.

'Cause I think that's half of the panic is, oh, I wanna make spaghetti and meatballs, but shoot, I don't have any spaghetti, But if you keep certain meal items in stock in your house, then those are easy things you can turn to. So in, in my mind, that's a form of meal planning. So Good job. You're doing it.

Monica: Alright. I'll give myself a pat on the back. But I also think I have to credit my dad there because he's always kept like our food storage and pantries well stocked. And I've just

Brittney: is amazing.

Monica: that's, how we do things. So maybe we just have so much food it helps. So let's go on to another tip.

Brittney: So another tip that I have started to utilize just in the last few years, but it's been really helpful and I'm someone, and again, this is where people are different. Some people like to stick with what they know and they want to make the same things week after week. I'm someone who loves to try new things. I hardly ever repeat recipes. And so that's partly probably one of the reasons why I have written cookbooks, because I'm always trying New recipes out. I just love to try new things, but one thing that I have found that simplified my meal planning process, because I like to try new things, is just choosing one source for recipes every week. So for instance, if I'm putting together my meal plan and I need Three recipes I've filled in the rest of the days. Then I'll choose one cookbook in my stack of cookbooks, and I'll choose all three recipes from one book.

Or if I have a blog, a food blog that I love that week, I'm gonna choose three meals from that food blog. And then it just makes it easy because If you're referencing all different sources, sometimes I'm like, oh, I wrote down that I'm making chicken gelatos on Tuesday, but shoot, where's that recipe? Is it on Pinterest? I save it on Instagram. Is it in a cookbook? Sometimes it's hard to keep track of it.

So if I'm, for instance, cooking from one cookbook, I just keep that cookbook out on my counter, and then it's really easy to know, okay, all the recipes this week are coming from that one source. So that's one thing that's helped simplify, especially if you're someone who likes to try new recipes. Just try one source any given time. And then move on to something else.

Monica: And that goes back to the people who resist meal planning too, is because we're overcomplicating it what meal planning can look like. So just limiting your choices. Oh my gosh, that helps so much. Let's do another tip.

Brittney: So my third tip is to try to shop at just one store each week. So we've talked a lot about time and how time is a very limited resource. We're all busy and I really try to only shop once a week and it's so nice now 'cause we have a lot of options. A lot of people have grocery delivery options.

You have Pickup options, there are some stores that don't provide that, or maybe you don't have that in your area, so you may have to go in person, but you are gonna save so much time if you're not grocery shopping every other day. And that's part of where meal planning comes in, or just keeping a well stocked kitchen, is that you wanna prevent yourself from having to go to the grocery store just for one or two things to make a recipe, because then you're also gonna be window shopping throughout the store, you're gonna be grabbing things you don't need. You're gonna spend a lot more money, so you're gonna save both time and money by trying to just shop once a week at one location.

Monica: it is so easy to forget this one , especially because, I have different stores that I like for different reasons. I love a lot of stuff from Costco and I love buying a bulk because I have a large family. But my favorite place to shop is Trader Joe's because it's more affordable. But Sprouts has the best produce for the best price.

It can get complicated. So if you just say, you know what, just trade off and let's do one week, one store at a time. Nope. Can try the next one the next week,

Brittney: Yeah, and it, for the things that are non-perishable, you can go to Costco and stock up on all the non-perishables that hopefully can last you a month, so you're not having to go there every single week.

Monica: Yes. Yes. And I'm saying that to myself 'cause I've just gotten to Costco twice in a week. 'cause my kids are sailing through food, like it's their job. So let's actually talk about Costco because this my favorite store overall.

And it's my favorite way to simplify dinner because that rotisserie chicken, like I probably have 25 ways we use that because I don't love, I'm squeamish with meat stuff that's like my own little weird fact.

But that rotisserie chicken like feeds my family for many days a week. So I was wondering related to Costco in particular, if you have any tips.

Brittney: Definitely, I think everyone who shops at Costco loves Costco. Costco has almost a cult following, and I totally understand why. We all know it's a great place to get paper towels and toilet paper and stock up on bulk items, and I've always loved shopping there.

I've shopped there my whole married life. One kind of problematic feature of Costco sometimes is that you go, you get a whole shopping cart full of hundreds of dollars worth of groceries and household items. You get home, you take everything outta your car. I. You're looking at everything like, now what do I actually cook for dinner?

I found myself getting into this rut every time I would go to Costco, and you're spending so much money there because

you're usually buying things in bulk. So you can save on a lot of things because you are buying large quantities. But I would find myself spending three, $400. I get home and I feel like, gosh, I shouldn't have to Grocery shop for a couple months, but you get home and I would think what? Now? What do I do with this? I got so sick of having to go and spend all this money at Costco and it's a hassle to load it and unload.

It's a whole process. And then I found that I would. Get that, all that stuff from Costco, and then I would still have to make a trip to the grocery store either the same day or the next day to get all of the supplemental food items I needed to actually get enough food so that I could put meals together with the things that I had just got at Costco.

Monica: also. 'cause you don't wanna get like baking soda from Costco

Brittney: totally.

Monica: if you're doing it for actual baking. And I learned that from Courtney Rich from cake by Courtney. She's this goes bad. You don't want this for, so something so can't get a supersized item.

Brittney: Exactly, or like a big, even big tubs of like sour cream or other things where it's this we're not gonna go through this before it goes bad. So certainly there, are certain products that are better to get there than others. But I eventually set this goal for myself that I, when I go to Costco, I. I'm gonna try to get the right ingredients so that when I get home I actually have full dinners that I can put together without having to go to any other stores. And I started sharing these on Instagram and I was calling it One Stop Meals because I was like, I'm making one stop and I'm gonna be able to make a meal out of just the ingredients I get from that one place.

I also started sharing the recipes because I felt like a lot of people were having the same problem of having to stop at multiple grocery stores just to get the ingredients they needed for a meal.

So I started sharing just very simple practical meal ideas with ingredients just found at Costco and so you could go to Costco and you could come home with your shopping cart full of stuff, but then you could have 10 meals. That are ready to make, and you have everything you need for it.

You don't have to go anywhere else.

Monica: Bravo for that because I am guilty of getting to the end of all the things are put on my cart and then being like, I'm also going to pick up a pizza on my way

Brittney: Yes, totally.

Monica: because I'm now too exhausted to figure out how to make dinner from this.

 Is there any go-to thing, Costco?

Brittney: Costco, as I'm sure many people have seen, has a lot of ready-made meals. They have chicken tacos, they have mac and cheese that you're just reheating. They have lasagna. Those are really great meals and they actually are quite delicious, but in my opinion, they're quite expensive. If I was. Grabbing those already pre-made, ready to go meals from like the Costco refrigerated section every time. That would be like eating out every night for dinner as far as cost-wise. So I love finding things in the meat and cheese refrigerated section of Costco where you'll get the carnitas that's already cooked just has to be reheated and we love apple and chicken sausages. Like those are really great with vegetables for a sheet pan dinner. So I feel like that section has a lot of, especially if you're one who doesn't love cooking with raw meats, which

it sounds like you're not, I don't really love it either. Look for the prepped meats. The rotisserie chicken is a huge bang for your buck. It's the biggest and best rotisserie chicken that you're gonna get anywhere at that price. And then look for some of the other pre-cooked meats in that section. Like the carnitas, they have precooked pork, they have meatballs, they have sausages. And those are really great, already prepared protein items that you can pair with. The non, for example, to make easy flatbreads, or you can pair with just a few other things with those already cooked meats to save a ton of time. But you're also not spending as much as the fully pre-cooked pre-portioned meals at Costco.

Monica: I so agree with that. And I also think the bakery section for years with my little ones was I would go to the bakery section first and we would pick up a loaf of bread and then I would tear off pieces.

And had it to them because Costco was always insane, like way too many people and all wanting the samples. So it might, I'm like, we're not getting samples, but we can go through Costco and they each get like a hunk of bread. But then I would use that bread in multiple ways.

So we would have. as a side and then we would have it as sandwiches or then I would turn it into croutons to go up on soup, just even those loaves of bread can be a great way to simplify. For sure.

Brittney: Any other things. They also have some great salad kits as well that make a great side or that also throw that rotisserie chicken on it and make it a meal, put some fruit on the side.

So that's another great place to look is in that produce and pre made salad section.

Monica: . I know if they're looking for more how to tips, we need to talk about your cookbook. So tell us for starters, the name and give us a little behind the scenes peek on this.

Like what went into developing this cookbook? Cause I'm sure it's way harder and there's a lot more of a story there than people would ever think.

Brittney: Yeah, so I mentioned that I started sharing these recipes on Instagram. It was a series that I call One Stop Meals and every Monday I would share a new One Stop Meal and I realized that people were loving the meals.

It was so fun to see people making the meals and tagging me and sharing their favorites, suggesting new One Stop Meals and It's very interesting being in the content creation business because you're just creating content that you throw out there for the world to see and it's awesome and it's so great that you can reach so many people and just give them the content for free.

But it's also just an interesting business model because you don't have. physical products all the time. It's a service based business almost. And so I'm a very tactile person. I love to hold something in my hands. And so I started to think, how could I turn some of this content into a physical product?

Something that people can hold. I, briefly thought about, do I, maybe I do a magazine or maybe I do something cause I just love like paper and physical things. And also I realized one of the hard things about, social media. It has its pros and its cons. We all know. But when I was sharing these meals, I'm not only sharing one stop meals, I share a lot of other content for around the home as well.

And social media is just not very searchable. It's not easy to find what you're looking for. Maybe you're looking for a one stop meal that I posted six months ago and you have to scroll down and down in order to find that if you didn't save it. So I, I was in the mindset of wanting to figure out how to get some of my content off social media and on to a place where it could be more helpful for people and just in a different format. So at the time that I was thinking about that, I actually was Approached by a publisher who said hey We have seen your costco one stop meals. We want to publish a costco one stop meals cookbook and I was very surprised I had not even thought of going through a publisher.

I was very flattered. Obviously. It sounds like. And so I started going down that path and after meeting with them several times, they were really great. There's a lot of really great pros of going with a publisher.

So I was really strongly considering it But as we got further into kind of talking through the details of it I realized that at the end of the day once the cookbook was done They were going to own the content, so the cookbook would house all of the recipes, but I wouldn't be able to use those on any other platform, I wouldn't be able to have them on my blog, I wouldn't be able to do anything else with them moving forward, , and then also they just had a very specific idea of what they wanted the book to look like, they wanted it to be a soft cover book, they wanted it to be smaller almost like a, pocket size book because they are very simple recipes.

And at the end of the day, it just didn't really match what my vision for the book was. And by this point, I had been sharing one stop meals for Over six months, and I was personally loving it. I was benefiting from, putting these recipes together. And I really wanted to turn it into a resource. For busy moms to, like we were saying, just remove some of that mental burden of trying to figure out what to make for dinner. And I had seen it already working for me so well, and so I really wanted to do it in a way that would make it a timeless book.

I wanted it to be very high quality, I wanted it to be a hardcover book, I wanted it to lay flat when it was opened, I wanted it to be linen bound and embossed, and I just, I wanted it to be, What I saw is like the beginning of a whole collection of books that are just very easy practical resources. To help moms simplify their lives, especially around food.

So at the end of the day, I said no to the publisher and I thought I can do this. And there was even a point in time when I thought, maybe I should just take all the pictures on my phone. I can easily get a template to plug all of these into. I can even do an ebook. I could get it out really quick. And then I thought, no, I have a vision for this book.

I think it will be really great. And I think it could help a lot of people. And if I'm going to do it, I'm going to go all in. So I hired a really talented food photographer and a food stylist and a graphic designer to design the whole book. I got connected with a really great printer and I just went all in with it.

And it was wild. It was a wild journey. It took about a year start to finish. Once I got all the recipes done and we started the process of. Taking the pictures. We had about seven full days where we took all the pictures. We set up like a photo studio in my house. I was cooking all the food while the photographer and the food stylist were setting it all up and taking pictures.

And it was really fun. I just had such an amazing team and it was so fun to bring in women who are so skilled in their area of expertise and just come together. To make something really special and really beautiful. And it was also really special to have my kids, , see that and be a part of it.

And to just have them be able to come into the shoots and see it it's almost making me emotional. It's just a really beautiful thing to, come together and work with people as a team at a high level like that. So that was something that was really special about putting together the book that I wouldn't have been able to do if I had done it through a publisher if I hadn't self published.

And then, we worked through the whole process of editing the book which was also , very difficult and more time consuming than I thought it would be, just to make sure that, every recipe we're using the same abbreviations and everything's grammatically right.

And, that was very labor intensive, but when we got to the point of me getting the first book sample delivered to me, it was so emotional because it was, All of this time and effort and all of the people that worked on this and that came together to create something that not only is so beautiful, but also is such a great resource , has just been a really special thing.

Monica: Hold it up for us nice and clear because I want people who are watching this to see it. It's beautiful.

Brittney: Oh, thanks. I'm so glad you did it. And yeah, it's

Monica: Wow. It's gorgeous. Oh, thanks.

And

Brittney: one thing I wanted to do, I wanted it to be very image heavy because I'm a very visual person, so I was like, there's going to be a beauty shot of every recipe, but I also wanted to include a photo of the ingredients from every recipe so that if you're at Costco. Brilliant. And you're thinking, what does the packaging look like?

You can reference this picture and see, oh, this is what it looks like. This is what I'm looking for in store. Because sometimes it's hard to navigate Costco and find exactly what you're looking for. So anything with packaging that made it helpful to know what to look for, the meatballs. Oh, okay.

I'm looking for a green bag in the frozen section. So we have both an ingredient shot and then a finished, kind of beauty shot of every single recipe.

Monica: That's something I didn't even think of. That would be so helpful to just be able to see it and know what you're looking for. And I am with you.

Every recipe needs that beauty shot. I hate it when there's recipes I'm like, but what does it look like? And that makes me not want to cook something. Yeah.

Brittney: Yeah. Yeah. Because that helps me know. So you want to know before you even go into making something, is this enticing? Does this draw me in?

Monica: This is just an amazing accomplishment, Brittany. It's so easy to look at what someone's done like that and just think, oh, they just did it all of a sudden. And you didn't. Like you said, there were so many moving parts, so much time, and so much persistence, too. We're a podcast about progress, obviously.

But this to me is one of those things like we have to be able to lean into our dreams too, and know when something is worth pursuing in ways that match the vision that you have in mind. So you did it. Congrats on that. And I can't wait to get my hands on it. Where should people go if they want to get their own copy?

So the cookbook is available to purchase at shop.homeandkind.com. You can grab it now. It's 29.99, and we offer free shipping. And we also wanted to give your listeners a free gift. So if they are buying the cookbook, they can use code aboutprogressgift, and that's going to get them a free set of our magnetic bookmarks.

So if you're not watching and you can't see this, we created essentially they're like magnetic bookmark tabs and they have the days of the week on the top, written on the top of the tabs. So instead of using a sticky note, which I always used to do for my cookbooks, you can just clip the magnetic bookmarks to the top of the pages for the recipes that you're using that week.

And then it even says what day you plan to cook that recipe on. So you'll get that for free. And also as a note, you want to make sure to add both the bookmarks and the cookbook to your shopping cart.

So it's not just going to automatically give you the bookmarks, just add both to your cart and then use that coupon code, aboutprogressgift, and it will take off the 9.99 for the magnetic bookmarks.

That is so generous of you. And I have to say that's a really good price too, because I've had a couple of cookbooks I've had my eye on and they're understandably more expensive than they've been in the past.

So I would say that's a phenomenal deal too. I'm very particular about my cookbooks. That's why I like keep my eye on them before I buy them because I love cookbooks, but I don't like having a lot of them because it overwhelms me. Yeah. It makes me feel guilty because I'm not getting to them and it takes up space.

This is one I'm getting no questions and I can't wait. Brittany, well done. And before we go, I have a couple just quick questions for you. And the first one is what is your favorite go to Costco meal?

Brittney: Ooh, that's a good question. I would probably say that I love making flatbread or pizza with naan.

 I always have. The non from Costco in my freezer or in my fridge, and I actually have four or five recipes in the cookbook that use that as the base of a flatbread. There's a barbecue chicken version. There's a pesto chicken version. So there's so many different ways that you can use that to make.

Flatbread or pizza, and it just is so quick. It's family friendly. We even have a breakfast pizza, which uses that non as the base. So that's probably my go to and the one that I use most. And partly because it's so easily customizable, you can throw whatever else you have in the fridge on top of that and just make a really quick

Monica: and easy meal.

Okay, that sounds amazing. And I've never thought of a breakfast pizza. Next one is what's your favorite thing to get from

Brittney: Costco? I'm with you on the rotisserie chicken. That's definitely up there because I just think it is delicious and you can make so many different things with it.

But I also would have to say I really love their snacks as well. I love their chocolate covered almonds and they also have really great seasonal treats. So probably my favorite thing is... In more like the snacky food section, because variety of chocolates are some of my favorite things.

Monica: Agreed. I love their chocolate toffee truffle things, like in a freezer. That's a great pick me up. When I go to carpool, I put one of those in my mouth and it's frozen and it just melts the whole way. I love that. I think I can put it in the

Brittney: freezer too. I'm going to have to try that.

Monica: Yeah. Try it out.

Okay. Brittany, this has been so amazing. I want to direct people to home and kind on Instagram and again, shop. homeandkind. com for the cookbook and use the code about progress gift.

Amazing, amazing job. Proud of you. And thank

Brittney: you for being here. Thanks so much for having me. You're always such a big cheerleader of other women and their accomplishments. So I appreciate that a lot.

Monica: That means a lot to me. Thank you. It's just one of those things like seeing someone go through something like this when they've done so much.

Okay, so I wanna, I'm gonna take this part out. How many, I wanna make sure, how many tips do you have?

So I'm not like, what? More tips. More tips. More tips, Brittany. And you're like, I'm done. Okay. So we'll do one more. Okay. And my neighbor's dog is just having a hard time, but luckily I can edit that out if you're hearing it. All right, so let's do another tip.

​

​