94 | Making mealtime easy and fun with Linda of Balaboosta's Secret

Today I am speaking with Linda of Balaboosta’s Secret where she is sharing tips to help you get dinner on the table quick without all the Martha Stewart fuss. Her goal is to help your family enjoy this time with food they will love and family time that will keep everyone laughing and looking forward to dinner. Enjoy our conversation.

Grab the one dish guide: https://balaboostassecret.com/easy-one-dish-dinners/
The joy of cooking and how she got started.
2:37

How to make dinner more fun.
5:22

How to repurpose recipes.
9:40

Pantry staples for moms.
12:12

Meal planning and meal prepping.
17:24

Equipment to make cooking easier
20:14

How to make dinner time a more fun experience?
23:04

Game nights at the dinner table.
28:17

Where to find Linda on social media?
31:13

Linda’s cooking skills were so bad, her own family banned her from cooking when she was a teen. Happily, her skills have dramatically improved. She now has over 1000 cookbooks, is a graduate of Rouxbe Cooking School and the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and has countless cooking courses from the International Culinary Center and Natural Gourmet Institute under her belt. She is a kitchen confidence coach and owner of Balaboosta’s Secret where she helps busy women with meal planning, prep and cooking lessons as well as coaches them on how to serve dinner with side dishes of clever conversations with their family.  Stress free cooking tips for maximum flavor, fun and yum. Whether you’re a beginner cook or a well-seasoned pro, Linda’s got your back. Hook up with her for some 1:1 virtual coaching. Your inner dinner demons will thank you.
You can find Linda at the links below:
HOME - Balaboosta's Secret (balaboostassecret.com)
Balaboosta's Secret | Facebook
Balaboosta's Secret (@balaboostas.secret) • Instagram photos and videos

Transcript

Unknown: 0:03

Welcome to raising healthy humans, a podcast created for busy moms where you can easily find info on health and wellness for your family. Join Courtney a health coach movement and posture specialist and founder of form fit and active and supportive community where she helps busy moms move more here on raising healthy humans podcast. She shares personal life experiences, training, knowledge and conversations with other health and wellness experts so you can raise healthy humans. Today I'm speaking with Linda of Bala booster secret where she is sharing tips to help you get dinner on the table quickly. Without all the Martha Stewart fuss. Her goal is to help your family enjoy this time with food. They will love and family time that will keep everyone laughing and looking forward to dinner. Enjoy our conversation Hi, Linda, how are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. Thank you so much for joining me today. I want you to speak with me about what you offer and the name of your business because I want to say it's valid booster. Am I right or wrong? You're 100% Correct ballot booster secret. Okay, and what what exactly is Malibu stuff? Sure. Ballot booster is an old fashioned Yiddish Yiddish term. And people say well, what the heck are you doing with an old fashioned Yiddish term to dead language? No one speaks it. But the concept of a ballot booster is exactly what we all want to be. So what about a booster is a woman who makes a fine home. Now my fine home definition is the anti Martha Stewart. You don't need coasters to put your drinks down. You want the house that everybody wants to go to? It's warm. It's welcoming, great conversation, lots of laughter, lots of meaning terrific food, you want to be the hub of everybody's life. And when you're a mom and you have kids, it's so important to let your kids feel that their friends are welcome. Because you want to know who they're hanging out with, what their influences are. And as a person, you want your friends to be able to want to congregate around you. So my ideal is to have that fine home for everybody. Okay, perfect. This makes me think of my mother. When I was in high school, my mom, all my friends would call her mama Williams, and everybody would come over to our house and it'd be midnight. And she would start making the nacho cheese throughout the night at midnight, and just you know, have all the kids there because she knew that she knew where I was. She knew that she was keeping these other kids safe and off the street. And that's kind of how it was for us when I was growing up. So I love this. And can you tell me like what got you started on working with families and moms to help them in the kitchen? Absolutely. So I will preface it by saying I started out as a terrible cook. When I was in my teens, my mother was the most boring cook on the planet. And I told her so. And she said, Alright, smart aleck, I'm going to get you a cookbook. And once a week, you're going to be in charge of cooking. Tell me what you need for the ingredients. You cook it? Well, the pressure was on. I mean, I couldn't make anything that would be, you know, ordinary because I already told her she was so boring. So she bought me the joy of cooking and back then the joy of cooking and I haven't seen it in years. But back then I had no pictures. I didn't know how to cook. I didn't even know what the dish was supposed to look like. So here I'm picking out these outrageously complex dishes, not knowing what I'm doing. So the first time I made I think Chicken Cordon Bleu, I can't even say to this day, let alone cook it right. And I cooked it and it was an absolute utter disaster. The next time I made Swedish meatballs. Well, again, I'd never had a Swedish meatballs. And these were like cannonballs awful. But the third time I cooked my meal, I was banned from the kitchen. Now most people at that point give up. I didn't I took it as a challenge. And I said game on. And from that point on. I took cooking courses taught myself how to cook. The rest is history because now I'm the go to place where everybody wants to have their food. In between I became a lawyer and I did many, many other things. So when I had kids and I had them later in life, I decided to take off some time because I had accomplished a lot of my professional goals and I really want to spend time with my family. So I ate really late because that was my I way of growing up. And that's what I liked. And I didn't really care, but you have to care and kids get hangry and everything else. So I started to figure out there's got to be a better way. And I created a system for myself where I could get dinner on the table before midnight, and everybody was happy. And when my kids would have their friends come over for sleepovers, I wasn't always doing the takeout pizza here. Kids go have fun. I'd be making something and we play games at our dinner table. And so my kids friends would say, Holy cow, we don't eat like this. My mom doesn't cook like this. And we're miserable at the dinner table. Can you teach her how to do it? And so that's how Ballard is the secret was born. Oh, I love this. I have to ask you a question. When you mentioned how you were bored with your mom's meals. Was it? Can you elaborate on that was it like specific meals every single day? When my dad was working, working late or had meetings scheduled during the week, we always knew that it would be roast chicken but she was not really big on seasoning. It would be she would make spaghetti and meatballs because my dad didn't eat spaghetti meatballs. So we would make that but it was from meatball she made with no seasoning and canned tomato sauce with no added seasonings. And it was just there was nothing to it. And so I really did protest. Okay, okay. I was just curious, because my husband speaks about how when he was a child, they had like Monday was, you know, whatever it was thinks in a blanket Tuesday was this Wednesday was this. And he's like, every week, it was the same exact thing. So I was just a lot of a lot of moms are very comfortable cooking with we call it cooking with themes. Because even if you don't want a meal plan, it gives you a way to structure something of what you're cooking. And when I work with a mom who is comfortable working with themes, you know, I try to work with women where they are I don't want to impose my system on anybody because everybody's lifestyle is different. Their taste buds are different. Their food preferences are different or their food needs. So I work with people where they are but if they want to do food themes, and they don't want to be in that boring rut of taco Tuesday, and sometimes Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I teach them think out of the box like a taco doesn't have to be a beef taco. You could have shrimp tacos, you could have fish tacos, roll it up and make it an enchilada you can still keep that concept and still very menu. Yes, yep, that's exactly what we do. It's like it'll be taco or Mexican type night where we'll do enchiladas or taco bowls or changing it up because my husband when he comes home, you know, for dinner, he'll always look at and be like, Oh, not another Taco Tuesday. Okay, so tell me, like, what is your strategy for changing things up at the dinner table and making it more fun and all of that, in terms of food wise, or in terms of first food? Yeah, let's start with the food. Like how how do you help moms? get dinner on the table? Dinner? Okay, this is going to be a loaded question here. Dinner on the tape. First, let's look at the planning of it. How do you help moms plan for dinner every night, or one of the things I like to have my clients do first is get organized. Because if you're not organized, I don't care how many recipes you have, you're still going to be chaos when it comes time to getting dinner on the table. So I have my clients organize their pantry, their fridge in their freezer. Because once my big theory is, once you know what you have, you have to know what you need. And then you have to know how to use it. And those are really the steps for you to becoming better at cooking, learning more about cooking. Or if you already are a good cook had a very it's a you're not bored all the time. So know what you have know what you need, and know how to use it. That's where we start as a general rule. Then we try to get a bunch of recipes under their belt. I asked them to find out what their family likes to eat what they don't like to eat because you have to have an awareness of what your family's food tastes are. So you can amplify it grow it in a different way. But if nobody's going to eat a certain ingredients under every single circumstance, don't make it you know, it's pretty simple that way. So once you get a couple of things in your belt, I teach women how to not only make those recipes But how to repurpose them. Because you don't want to be cooking from scratch every night of the week. It's exhausting. There's no need for it. And it wastes a lot of food and it's expensive. And then you start resenting everyone and everything. So that's not a way to live. So you want to learn how to repurpose some of your recipes, you can batch Cook, which means making a bigger quantity of a certain part of your recipe, and then repurposing that later on the week for something else. And I can give you an example of that. So my family loves spicy Asian meatballs, and I make them on a sheet pan in the oven. I don't like this bladder, I don't want to clean up my stove. They take 15 minutes to bake, maybe less than 10 minutes to prepare. Simple, simple really, really bursts of flavors. So let's say on night one, I'll make some rice to go with it. And maybe some bok choy with garlic sauce and maybe oyster sauce. Again, you can buy the oyster sauce, you're not making it from scratch. The whole middle comes together in under 30 minutes. Okay. Later down in the week, I will take my leftover rice because I made a lot. And I will make it into fried rice because the secret of fried rice is you need DALED rice. Getting ready. That's why people tried races don't work. Okay, yeah. So you make a fried rice. And you could add a leftover protein from another meal. Maybe you made a roast chicken one day, now you have extra chicken, making a chicken fried rice dinner, half that meal was already done before you even started. So these are ways that I tried to teach women you don't have to look at just every individual recipe. We're going to learn how to look at what you're making and how you can modify it throughout the week. So you're eating different things, totally different flavors. But you're not spending so much time in the kitchen because everybody to a one tells me I have no time to cook. Right? Yes. And going along with that even just doing simple things like when you plot half an onion, like my recipe last night called for half an onion, not that other half up and just stored away. So that's ready, so you don't have to then again, dice another onion tomorrow night. 100%. And if you know if you know what you're cooking, and you see that you're gonna be using garlic, we're big garlic fans, my family. You're gonna be using garlic all week. You know, you can mince a lot of garlic at one time, put it in a baggie or a little container, keep it in your refrigerator. And again, it's the little steps that save you so much time in the long run. Mm hmm. Yep, yep. Okay, so are there anything so you usually go through the pantry and determine, like, what they need and everything are there certain things like certain ingredients you want moms to always have on hand in their pantry. You know, it depends on people's backgrounds, their ethnicities, you know, different cultures have different staples in their in their pantries and in the refrigerator. And I respect that and I need to learn from them, if I'm not familiar with it, although I know a real lot of variety of cuisines at this point. For me, one of the things I recommend is get a an Italian seasoning blend because you're not going to be adding your rosemary separate from your time from separate from your oregano. You know, if you really want to save time, there's a million great Thai seasoning blends out there. Have that in there. Have your garlic have your salt and pepper obviously, I think it's really important to have hot sauces, whether you like a Siracha watch Egon Frank's hot sauce, it doesn't really matter. Have something they can really spice things up with and we go through I have a list that I work with, with my mom's on what are your pantry staples that you should have? What are the things that you should have in your freezer at all times? And what things could you have in your refrigerator you know, if you have a lot of sauces that you either make or buy and I question with the bind because there's a lot of ingredients and a lot of sauces out there that you really don't want to use. But you know there's some really good ones too. So if you really judicious in what you buy and what you make, sometimes adding a sauce to your chicken changes the dish entirely and all you just had to do is nothing you know, like we make when we really have a need to fast dinner my kids like chicken tenders but that's boring and I'm not going to make boring chicken tenders. So also I take some onions and some ginger and some garlic and I'll add the chicken tenders and then I'll go to a Trader Joe's you can go anywhere you want. They've got a great Indian Tiki masala sauce, you pour that on top of it and in 10 minutes you've got an Indian dinner and it's awesome. And if you really want throw some of your chopped broccoli in there you got a one pan dinner now with your vegetables you can make a rice on the side that again you can reuse later for your fried rice down in the week. And it's simple. So if you have a decent set of spices a decent set of marinade or sauces As you can create countless dishes, even with little, little little cookie knowledge you may have, okay, perfect. When you are working with giving them variety throughout the week and with the different meats that you're using the proteins, is there a way that you recommend storing those throughout? Because you mentioned the roasted chicken and then a few nights later, are you just storing it in the fridge and making sure to have it within two or three? A couple of days? Yeah, if you and I work with all kinds of diets, so I do vegetarian, I do plant based and vegan, you name it, I can accommodate all those kind of dietary preferences or needs. But if you've got a roast chicken, it's gonna stay good in your refrigerator refrigerator for three days, you know, I will say that when you put something, whether it's in your refrigerator or your freezer, I prefer to have something in a clear container, because then I can see what it is, you know, we all like little colors. And that's really nice. But if you can't see what's inside it, it's gonna go bad, because you're not gonna remember what's inside, and you're not going to use it and there goes your money down the drain. So clear containers and whatever you want to do airtight containers, obviously. Okay, this brings me to a thought that I'm having here is, I'm very good about I love to make different meals every night. I'm in the kitchen most every night. I'm not a batch cooker. But I definitely respect it and think maybe I might need to move towards that a little bit more. And my main reason why is because we ended up throwing away a lot of food. How do you work with families to kind of repurpose? I know you mentioned like the rice and everything? Is this something that you're planning out ahead of time, like, we're going to look more of this so that on this night, we can have this? Because I feel like for myself, I'll look in my kitchen, and I'm looking around and I'm like, Oh my gosh, we have all this. So say tomatoes from diced tomatoes and a half a jar we only use like, Are you helping them prepare that in advance, like you're only going to have half diced tomatoes here. So let's then work on using it here. You know what I'm asking, you know, those half diced tomatoes in a sauce, maybe make a bigger sauce and free some of it. So you don't have to have that half a can in what you're doing, depending on what you're cooking. But yeah, and when I when I start working with people, and they want a meal plan, and they want a meal prep, if they like a structure, and not everybody likes a structure, you know, we'll write things down for the week, you know, and then we'll see how things flow. And once you know what you're going to be making and it can be loosey goosey. You could say listen, I want chicken this one day I want whatever protein you know tofu tempeh a fish with another another day, it doesn't really matter. But once you have an idea of what you want to make, and maybe a vegetable you want to make with it. As you get good at this, you can figure out well what else can I do with it. So let's say you were making your roasted broccoli on a sheet pan one night, okay, so maybe you're gonna have that roasted broccoli one night, but then when you're gonna make that chicken tikka masala sauce, and you're gonna throw the broccoli in, and you can throw it into the last minute because it's already cooked. So now you've used up your leftovers, there's very little food waste. And if you know, generally what you're going to be cooking for the week, you can see where those commonalities are, and figure out how you can use your leftovers for that. Okay, do you help families? And this is a question again, do you help families like look in their refrigerator and come up with more creative ideas to leave based on the food because that's where I think I struggle, I'm definitely a recipe, I have to have a recipe. So when I look and I see all this stuff, I'm, you know, the things that I like to transition my people, the women that I work with, on is being dependent on recipes, and knowing how to cook and had a flavor things. Because if you're not dependent on a recipe, at some point, you can open up that refrigerator door and say, Oh, I see a b and c but I know that goes with this spice I have in that spice I have, and I know how to use it. So it's not just meal planning and meal prepping. It's learning how to cook and globally looking at the ingredients you have and how you can use them. You know, sometimes you may have, maybe you actually have meal planned and you had a really nice dinner planned and then something happens and the kids are at school later or their sports event goes forever or something happens at work and you're exhausted and oh my god, don't make me make that meal. I put on my little sheet here, please, Linda. So I want people to be able to know how to react to those situations calmly and easily by looking at what they have and what they can do. quickly instead it's all part of a process. Okay, and are there pieces of like kitchen tools and equipment that help families make meals quicker? Absolutely. And you recommend? Sure. I'm gonna give you two inexpensive ones because Okay, let's start with the inexpensive because not everybody has a budget to do the expensive ones. But actually, if you ever get to video, I brought them to show you. So one is a microplane. Actually, this is a zester, and you can great your citrus peels on it. So you get that nice lemon or orange or lime. You could also do it with your ginger. You could also use it for your garlic, so you're not always chopping your garlic. I swear by Zespri there, but I also have a microplane, and this one is actually by a company called a microplane, it's handheld, you know, they have fancy French mandolins, which you can have and you can, you know, pay more money for and that's great. And they have different blades. And you can get wonderful different cuts. And that's really great. Start off with a microplane, that's under 20 bucks, it hooks to the end of your bowl or whatever you're doing. Mine's got an adjustable for different sizes on the side. So you can just say how thick or thin you want it. So if you're making cucumbers or something, you just microplane on top and all your your things are the same size. But you can also if you cut your onion in half and do it, you've got real onions cut, and I'm a big crier with my onion. So the less time I have to cut an onion, the happier I am, boom, my onions are done in a second. If you want to make potato chips, holy cow, boom, boom, boom, your potato chips are done in a second. So I must use this a million times a week, if I'm making a salad and I want put some red cabbage in, I'm not gonna cut that whole thing up. I'm gonna cut it in quarters, boom, boom, boom on my right microplane. And it's the same kind of cut cabbage, you would have bought pre cut at a more expensive price in the grocery store. So there's a million things you can do with a microplane, I swear by it well, and adding a little bit of red cabbage in with a salad or something just creates more nutrients and as well as more. I mean, nutrition is absolutely there. But you know, you want variety in your color and everything too. So anything you can do to add, you know, you can do your carrots on whatever you want. Radishes, you know, it's a great, great, easy, inexpensive tool. And we're Where did you get that? You can buy it at what it used to say Bed Bath and Beyond, you can buy it my target you can get by him at buy on Amazon. Any kitchenware store, probably even in the grocery store, but getting good brands, some of them aren't so good. microplane is really good. Alexa was really good. And like I said, they're usually under 20 bucks. Okay, because I've got the big one, but it's a pain to take. Yes, it's a pain. Yeah, I like that. That's great. Okay, so moving on, with dinnertime. And you had mentioned that the kids all the kids in the neighborhood, when they would come over, they would think that like the house, family time at your house or dinner time at your house was a lot of fun. So what are you doing game wise with your kids to make this a more fun atmosphere, I got games up the wazoo that we play at dinner time. And it depends on the age of your kids. And if you really want to start simple and don't want to do anything luck, forget the Mad Libs, you know. And if your kids don't know what a noun is, you can just say, Okay, I need the name of a person, place or thing. Or I need a word that ends in ING if you need a verb. And you know, I mean, you can make it easy for anybody to play it. And as your kids get older, you may want to put some censorship rules in or maybe not, but it gets to be really, really fun. So that's a really basic, easy thing. Because you don't want to go sit at the dinner table and look at your kids and say, How was your day and they say fine, what you're doing school nothing. And you're thinking yourself, you were there for eight hours, something must have happened, and you're not getting the conversation flowing. So you want to do things at your dinner table that will engage your kids and especially if you have some people call them picky eaters, I like to say selective because if they hear they're a picky eater, then they're going to dig their heels in even more and you don't want that to happen. But if you have something fun going on at the table, even if you've cooked something that they said they didn't like to eat, they're going to be distracted by having the fun and they're going to end up getting that dinner in their stomach and maybe actually like it over time, but the distractions help on many levels. It also is a great stress reliever at the end of the day. You know the kids are working hard and they have to behave in school hopefully. You know you're doing all your stuff your partner's doing things? And what do you get to sit down and let your hair down and be yourself? And if you don't take that opportunity to do it with your family, then what are they going to get to know you? And when are you going to get to know them. So we play a lot of games. So Mad Libs is one of them. You can take we have a game called headbands, you can buy it in the store, again, probably 15 bucks, or you can do it yourself. And what you do is you take a card with a picture on it. And the person who has it puts the picture card on their forehead without looking at it. So everybody at the table can see what it is except the person who's holding the card. And they have to get to it. It's a picture of so this is what a game you can play with little kids, you know, they know what a house looks like, they know what an apple is all that stuff. And it's like 20 questions, and they have to guess, only asking yes or no questions. What's a picture of? So not only is it a fun game, but it teaches them logic and teaches them thinking. And it's incredibly hysterical when they're so off the bat, no matter what clues they're getting. And you're thinking it's so obvious, and they don't know. But it's a really great easy game. You take your Caribbean trivial cards from any game you have, you don't need the board, play the damn cards, you know, get conversation going, you could do round robin stories where somebody starts a story and does three or four lines into it, you know, you're making it up, and then the next person adds to it. And it's amazing to see where your kids thought processes are and where they take that story. So there's also things like there's a crazy non religious holiday every day of the week. I mean, stupid at beyond belief holiday. So you can plan your meals sometimes or your conversation around those holidays. So April, and it's April. So April is National Poetry Month. So, one April, I said to my kids and my family, it's National Poetry Month. You got to humor me and you've got to come to the table with a poem at dinner tonight. Well, you can imagine that what over like a lead balloon. Nobody likes poetry. Oh my god, you're out of your mind. Mom, this is awful. I said, Why are you thinking so small? A poem can be a song lyric. It can be a TV jingle. It could be anything you want it to be. You have to come to a table with you can write a poem. I don't care. Come to the table with a poem. We're going to honor poetry this month. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So my son comes down with a poem he wrote called, I hate poetry, which was actually very, very funny. My daughter did some nursery rhyme because she took the easy way out. And that was fine. Because she replied, My husband wrote a rap song, the worst, horrible rap song you could ever imagine, sang it on the top of his lungs, were a pain in our pants fallen out of our chairs. It was probably one of the most memorable dinners we've ever had. And he to this day, he tells people, I want to write a rap song, do you want to hear it? And we just shout, no, you don't want to hear it. So you can, there's all kinds of things you can do to bring a lot of life to your table. I love all of the ideas. And I think it's nice that you mentioned with your selective eaters, like this takes freezing the stress off of them from feeling like everybody's watching them waiting for them to finish their meal or wait till they eat that green beam. You're all having fun and interacting with one another, which so many of us I mean, we do a lot of game nights and things. But I haven't really we usually do it right after we eat. But I like being the thought of just doing it during dinner because it also helps us to slow down. I think we rushed through meal time, a lot of times just because it's like, it's just one of those things that we got to do this so we can get to the next thing. So this provides more of an atmosphere, like when you go out to dinner, just kind of hanging out talking to one another playing a game, that kind of thing. So I love that idea. Yeah. And we still do it today. And my son is much older, and he brought a girlfriend home one time for dinner. And I said to her, you know, we play games at the dinner table? And she said yes. And she said, I said, Did Mexico you you have to play with? And she said yes. And considering was the first time she had ever met us. It broke the ice because we didn't say well, what do you want to be when you grow up? But what are you studying are all those ridiculous questions that we feel like we need to know the answers to. She just had fun with us. And my kids to this day will say what are we playing at dinner tonight, mom? So that's a great thing. And they like you said they like to linger because they're having fun. And that's a precious time. You can't make up. Yeah. So let me ask you, were you a teacher at some point? No, I'm a lawyer. Because it's such a crazy, like everything that you were mentioning. I was thinking to myself because I was a teacher. Prior and it these were types of things that we would do as teachers so I was just curious if you were one. So I I'm thinking of like conversation starters. And I I, because of what you had mentioned, I think this provides even more opportunity, because I feel like those conversation starters, although they're great for little ones, because they do provide for a lot of imagination. But as they get older, you don't see that as much my kids like kind of roll their eyes now, because I have 1715 and 11 year old. So they kind of rolled their eyes at me when I pulled that out and asked them a question. So I do really love this idea. You have a place like where we can go to get more of these ideas, because it sounds like they're not specific to games, like you mentioned, like board games, but they're really kind of things that you've come up with do you have, when people work with me, obviously, I pepper, everything I do with wanting to make it a holistic experience. So you're not only meal planning and prepping and cooking, you're having a great time at the table. And you're also, truthfully, you're mimicking a great way for your kids to role model for how they want to be, and how they want to have conversation skills and all those wonderful things. So it's always part of what I do when I work with people. I will say that I have an Instagram site and a Facebook group called easy weeknight dinners for busy moms and a bell boost a secret Facebook page, where I do post periodically among many other things. Today is like yesterday was Louie, Louie de. And he said, Well, you know, the old rock and roll song Louie Louie. And so I posted something saying it's Louie, Louie de get up and dance at your dinner table. And, you know, so it's periodically, I'll put that on my social media not every day. But when you work with me, you get a lot of that as well. Okay, and how when we work with you, are you? Is it one on one? Is that what you mostly do? I do mostly one on one at this time. I'm working on doing a group program, I have a VIP day in case somebody just wants, you know, to get a sample of how I do things, but mostly one on one and they can set how many sessions they want to have. When they feel you know, when they feel comfortable. It's usually three to six months. We do it by zoom if that works for them. Okay. Okay. And where can we find you? I know you said you're on Facebook and Instagram, right. So I have a website Ballard boosters, secret.com. I also have a freebie for your audience on easy one dish recipe guide. And if you sign up for that you'll become on my newsletter. So you'll get my newsletters that also has ideas and suggestions and sometimes a little humor. Because you get everything you do. So you'll stay abreast and so if I have a new course coming out or a new program, that's a great way to get to me. My email is Linda at Bella boost a secret, feel free to reach out to me at any time. I'm happy to chat, I offer a 20 minute dinner review on it to just help you feel where you are. It's freak phone call to see if we're both gonna mesh with our styles. And if you like what you learn on that call, let's do business. Okay, perfect. Can you leave our listeners with one thing? If we're thinking of one thing that we can work on and focus on this week to help raise healthier humans? What would you recommend our machines do? I always tell people dinner doesn't have to be complex to be delicious and fun. So take the pressure off yourself. You know, you don't have to make a perfect meal every night. Nobody's really judging you. And if they say they don't like it. I don't take that as a no, just like I told you at the very beginning. I always say to my family when I put dinner on the table. Is this a thumbs up? or thumbs down? If I get a thumbs down? I am not crushed? I say to them, okay, what would make it better? What would you do differently? Now you're getting your family, especially your kids to think about the tastebuds their texture of feelings, and have them articulate well, what would you do? I said, Okay, maybe I'll try that next time. So now they already know this is not the last they're going to have this. You're not defeated, because now you're going to give them some skin in the game. Because now you're going to try something they suggested, which means they're probably going to like it more because it was their suggestion. You're showing that you value their opinion and all those wonderful psychological things that go along with that. And you're all going to learn. So don't make it complex. Make it fun. It's food. Nobody's going to die of starvation. Have fun with it and have fun with your family. Excellent. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day for this. It's really my pleasure. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to listen to our podcast. You We hope you found this information valuable and can incorporate it into your family's life. Make sure to check out our show notes for all the important links available. Come join us on Facebook and moms raising healthy humans community page. Also, please check out our wide range of memberships, family monthly focus ideas, challenges, live events and on demand and live workouts, meal plans and so much more head to form fit online.com And as always, keep moving