Shownotes
In this episode, Carol Ann Kates shares practical tips on how single moms can save time, money, and reduce food waste while managing busy schedules. Her insights on planning, storage, and shopping smarter aim to empower you with confidence and clarity around food routines, so you can focus on what matters most. Your family.
Key topics covered:
- Strategies to extend produce shelf life and reduce wasteHow to plan grocery shopping around sales and store ads
- The importance of quality over quantity in produce selectionTips for freezing milk, eggs, and other perishables to save trips
- How to decode sell-by dates and food safety
- The art of shopping on a budget without sacrificing qualityTricks grocery stores use for impulse buys and how to resist them
- Creative ways to use leftovers and leftovers to stretch meals
- Simple meal planning tips for busy single moms
- Resources for further learning and support
Timestamps:
00:00 - Overcoming meal prep overwhelm for solo moms
02:10 - Introduction to Carol Ann Kates and her background in grocery business
04:40 - How to buy and store produce for maximum freshness
06:50 - Planning grocery shopping around weekly sales and specials
08:20 - Recognizing quality produce and avoiding wasteful purchases
09:55 - Extending produce life with storage tips
11:14 - Understanding sell-by dates and food safety tips
12:50 - How long can you keep canned goods, dairy, and pantry staples?
15:19 - Highlights from Carol Ann’s bestselling cookbooks and resources
17:03 - Surprising items you can freeze to cut down midweek store runs
19:01 - Freezing meats and seafood for convenience and freshness
20:30 - Tricks grocery stores use to promote impulse buying at checkout
26:52 - How to manage leftovers and prevent waste in busy households
30:57 - Practical tips for single moms to plan meals with limited time and budget
32:16 - Final words and ways to connect with Carol Ann for ongoing support
Many moms don’t realize that simple grocery and meal planning tricks could save you thousands each year, without sacrificing your family’s favorites. If you’re overwhelmed by meal prep, waste, and tricky grocery store tactics, this episode is your insider guide to smarter shopping, better storage, and making every dollar count.
Perfect for solo moms juggling work, kids, and endless chores, or any parent wanting to master grocery shopping and meal prep. Carol Ann’s tips will inspire you to eat smarter, spend less, and enjoy family dinners more. Hit play and start transforming your kitchen today.
Resources & Links:
Contact Carol Ann Kates: www.carolannkates.com| Email: carolann@carolannkates.com | Instagram: @carolannkates
Books: Secret Recipes from the Corner Market | Grocery Shopping Secrets: Insider tips to reduce your food budget.
Subscribe to get my free grocery shopping secrets checklist.
Follow for more expert tips and strategies to empower your solo parenting journey.
https://solomomstalk.mysites.io/podcast-2-copy/grocery-shopping-secrets-for-single-moms-carol-ann-kates
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Transcripts
Hello, Solo Mom. Have you ever gotten so overwhelmed that you can't think of anything to make for dinner? Or you are at the grocery store and you didn't make a list or you are just...at a loss as of what to cook, what to buy and what to prepare for your family? Today's guest, Carol Ann Kates is the award-winning author of the cookbooks, Secret Recipes from the Corner Market and international Amazon bestseller, Grocery Shopping Secrets. She's an expert on how to shop, select and store produce for maximizing home cooking outcomes and minimizing time and money spent. As a former supermarket and deli operator, Carol Ann shares grocery insider wisdom, the same expertise you used to receive when patronizing the neighborhood grocery. So if you're one of these moms looking to save money and time while shopping and preparing meals, storing meals, this episode is for you.
Thank you for listening.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:My guest today is Carol and Kates Welcome Carol. I'm glad to have you at Solomons Talk.
Carol Ann Kates (:It's great to be here with you.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Absolutely. Before we get into what you do, could you tell us who is Carol Ann Kates?
Carol Ann Kates (:Alrighty, ⁓ my father was a grocer. He owned a small corner market and I grew up in the grocery business in the corner market, stocking shelves, putting out produce. My dad was a real stickler for quality. So he taught me how to select superior perishables like other parents teach their children the alphabet.
After my parents died, I was living in Denver. Our stores were in Northern Colorado. After my parents died, I inherited ⁓ co-ownership of the markets. So my husband and I moved our family. We have three children, moved our family to Northern Colorado and got involved in the business. ⁓ At that time we had two stores. ⁓
square feet. This was in: J. Rosemarie Francis (:⁓ dear.
Yeah.
Carol Ann Kates (:Our
sales dropped from 390,000 a week to 190,000 a week. The road was closed for six months. Our supplier at the time said that they would turn what we owed them into a short-term note and we could pay it off over five years. However, the day the road opened, they sent a gentleman named Jack
I called him Jack the Ripper and they tried to take us over. They said, us a million dollars or give us your keys today. ⁓ We ended up fighting them in federal court and won because they had RICO violations, but it cost us a million dollars just for attorneys. We had to sell one of our properties and lease it back to pay our legal bills, but it was the end of a downward spiral.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:We filed for reorganization in February of 2001. We had our plan approved in August. And then 9-11 happened and Super Walmart opened and our creditors forced us into bankruptcy. Because we personally guaranteed the loans for the business, we also had to take personal bankruptcy.
So I have been in a position where I lost everything I had and really struggled. had to have a garage sale every Friday to put food on the table. ⁓ After the stores closed, I started writing about ⁓ mom and pop fighting the big corporations in a attempted takeover.
They bugged our houses, they bugged our office, they had goons in my husband's office. ⁓ It was pretty stressful. I drove my husband crazy. He said, you have all these wonderful recipes, why don't you do a cookbook? One of my favorite jobs at the store was to write a recipe for our newspaper ad. So if we had pork chops in the ad, I wrote a pork chop recipe.
n't doing social media. So in:He asked me to do a blog on how to save money at the grocery store. So that is how I came upon grocery shopping secrets. I pulled my information out of my cookbook and I spent a year ⁓ expanding it. So ⁓ it covers all the perishable products you can buy in the store.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Okay.
Okay. All right. yeah. That's one of the questions I was going to ask. How did you shift from the difficulties and challenges you had in owning a grocery store to writing a cookbook about recipes? But you did that for me. So thank you. All right. Yeah. Okay. All right. So one of the things that
Carol Ann Kates (:Okay.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:moms struggle with. I think even though we're a solo mom show, most mothers will probably struggle with this. We go out, we buy a lot of stuff. I'm like that. I love fresh vegetables and fresh fruits and I buy a ton of it, put it in the fridge and a few days later it starts to die. And it seems that one of your specialty is helping us preserve those fruits and vegetables.
Can you give us a couple of tips on how to do that? And maybe we start from the shopping part, yeah?
Carol Ann Kates (:I think we should start from the shopping part. I think one of the hardest things for moms is deciding what's for dinner. And we have to cook dinner every day and hopefully they're gonna like it. I think one of the most important things to do if you're trying to stretch your food dollars is to plan your meals in advance.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Okay.
Yes.
Carol Ann Kates (:So where I live, the supermarkets come out with their ads online on Wednesday. So you can go to their website and see what's gonna be on sale for that week. Plan your meals around what's on sale. ⁓ That way also too, one thing when I did recipes for the store, if we had pork chops and...
J. Rosemarie Francis (:All right.
Carol Ann Kates (:Peeled tomatoes in the same ad, then I would combine those into a recipe. So you can find other things that are on sale and use those ⁓ in your recipes and what you're planning. I think that's one of the most important things. I go to the store and I see women grab the flyer to see what's on sale, but that would have been available to them and they could have had that already decided. I think it's really important to shop from a list.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Right.
Carol Ann Kates (:If you're planning your meals in advance and for example, your fruits and vegetables, you can buy them in different stages of ripeness. I bought a cauliflower. Now, cauliflowers, when they have a little bit of brown on them, little brown spots means they're starting to deteriorate. I was at the grocery store and all of the cauliflowers had little brown spots on them. And I asked the clerk, do you have any?
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mm-hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:cauliflower that doesn't have brown spots. She said no, this is all we have. It just came off the truck. And one thing I have noticed is the quality of food has really deteriorated over the years. So I had planned to make that recipe on Tuesday, but my wheat got discombobbled and I didn't make I didn't use the cauliflower until Sunday. So by the time I went to use it,
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Yeah.
Carol Ann Kates (:the brown had gotten inside of it and I had very little. So I think it's important. My dad taught me that it's the quality of the ingredients you use is more important than the recipe. So ⁓ he called it garbage in, garbage out.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mm-hmm. ⁓
Carol Ann Kates (:But I believe every day your supermarket will sell some produce that can be classified as garbage. So have you ever been shopping and seen a tomato or some other food that's all shriveled up and has fungus on it? And you think, does
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mm-hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:the produce clerk think I'm blind? That I would buy this? So I think shopping, my book has all sorts of tips about
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mmm.
Yeah.
Carol Ann Kates (:selecting the very best produce. So it doesn't matter if it's the good, the bad, or the ugly, you're going to pay the same price for it. So you want to try to get the best because it's going to last longer. I store all of my vegetables in ⁓ a storage bag. Some of us will choose to use
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Right. Right.
Carol Ann Kates (:the plastic storage bags that the supermarket has and others of us are going to want to use recyclable ⁓ eco-friendly bags. But I think putting your vegetables into a storage bag will extend their shelf life. I don't do that with my fruit, but with my cucumbers, my lettuce, I like to have them stored.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:⁓
Okay, so when you say storage bag, mean like a Ziploc bag?
Carol Ann Kates (:No, just
a plastic bag. And I have found that, for example, my celery, sometimes my husband will get in and use celery and he won't be sure it's all covered in plastic. The ends will deteriorate faster because they haven't been covered.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Okay.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Okay, all right. Thank you. ⁓ shop for the freshest ingredients. Plan ahead, shop for the freshest ingredients and store vegetables especially in plastic to keep storage to keep it fresh longer. Okay. All right. Thank you very much for that. So, sorry, go ahead.
Carol Ann Kates (:Yes.
And one thing, okay,
one thing too is the FDA believes that the average family can save $1,500 to $2,000 a year by eliminating waste. And so one, did you have a question? Do you want me to go on? Yeah, so one way we'd,
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mm-hmm.
No, it's fine. Yeah, you're giving us tips. Good.
Carol Ann Kates (:use a lot of waste is throwing away our produce that is what we think too ugly to eat. But I think it's important to keep your pantry tidy and that's easier said than done because so often I need a can of tomatoes and I put it on the list and I buy it where I already had one that was tucked away in the back of my pantry. So knowing what's in your pantry and also keeping your fridge
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mm-hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:tidy because that way you know get a thing of celery stuck there in the back and then it goes bad but where if you really know what's in there and are using it it helps. Another way we ⁓ have a lot of waste is not understanding our sell by dates. So that sell by date means that your supermarket must take it off the shelf on that day.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Right.
Carol Ann Kates (:But food will be good for several days past the sell-by date. So for example, eggs will be good three to four weeks past their sell-by date. So to know if an egg is not good to eat, you do the float test. If you put it in a bowl of water and it floats, you shouldn't eat it. ⁓
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Hmm.
okay.
Mm-hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:Milk will last three to seven days past the sell by date. So how do we know if it's not any good? We give it a good sniff and if it doesn't smell good, we don't eat it. Our canned goods will keep two to three years past their sell by date. And how do we know if they're not good? If you, the can is bulging or puffing or if you open it and there's black mold and you don't want to eat it.
Our condiments like pickles will last for years. And how do we know if they're not good? If the liquid is cloudy, then we should throw it out. So I think understanding the sell-by dates is important. ⁓ Kids probably eat a lot of boxed cereal. ⁓ Most food ⁓ experts recommend eating your cereal within two weeks after you open it.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Wow.
Carol Ann Kates (:White flour and rice will last for several years. However, because it's healthier for us, the brown rice and ⁓ whole wheat flour will only last ⁓ a few months past its sell-by date.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Wow. I find the expiration date of the can very interesting that it would last what, three to four years, you said, after the sell-by date?
Carol Ann Kates (:It
can last two to five years past the cell button ⁓
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Wow, because I throw those out as soon
as they pass the expiration date.
Carol Ann Kates (:Yes, but you do need to be ⁓ really conscious when you're using things past their sell-by date that they are good. ⁓
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mm-hmm.
Yeah, obviously. Thank you. That's very useful, I think, ⁓ because I know people who just, I see that date and I'm like, this expired, it's no good anymore, and I just throw it out. So that's a very useful tip, actually.
Carol Ann Kates (:Yes, and actually ground beef will come, will be good one to two days past its sell by date. And we know that ground beef isn't good anymore if it's slimy or starts to turn gray. And also chicken breasts ⁓ is the same with chicken breasts. So I think that's information in my book that is really helpful.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Right, right. Before I ask any more questions, tell us about the books. You have two, right?
Carol Ann Kates (:I have two books. have a cookbook, Secret Recipes from the Corner Market. All of the recipes were eaten by my children and my husband, and they didn't make it into the book unless they got a high mark, which was a nine or above. It was picked in the top 10 favorites by the Denver Post. It has won three national awards, has 359 recipes,
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Okay.
Okay, that's good.
Mm-hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:So it's a really big book. It's a hardback. And then my grocery shopping secrets book ⁓ has won 10 awards. And when I did my Kindle campaign, it was number one in my categories in the US, France, and Australia. So it is considered an international bestseller. It is a paperback. ⁓ I think doing hardbacks these days is ⁓
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mm-hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:cost prohibitive but it's also available as an ebook so you can download it on your phone and take me shopping with you if you have any questions on buying any particular ⁓ produce item.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Right. Yes, that's very good. That's a good combination you have there. So we read the tips and we go get the stuff and then we come home and we cook it using your recipe. So that's perfect. All right. Okay. So time is our scarcest resource. You mentioned in your book, I believe that we can freeze way more than just meat and veggies, even things like milk.
For the mom who is tired of running to the store midweek, what are three surprising items we should be freezing to save us from those emergency grocery trips?
Carol Ann Kates (:⁓ You can freeze milk ⁓ half and half and ⁓ cream To freeze it you put it in an ice cube tray and put it in the freezer when it's hard then you can Take it out and put it in a freezer bag mark the date on it because for example milk You don't want to keep much more than about a month ⁓
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:You can freeze eggs. ⁓ Let me go back to milk. ⁓ When you thaw milk, it's going to become grainy and slushy. So you can't put it on your cereal or use it in your coffee. But you can use it like in macaroni and cheese or for baking. So it isn't going to be like having fresh milk. ⁓
You can freeze eggs and when eggs were so pricey they're not quite as expensive as they were but for example I made cream brulee at Christmas time and you only use egg yolks so I froze my egg whites so I wouldn't waste them. ⁓ What else that busy moms use?
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mm-hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:You can
J. Rosemarie Francis (:I'm not much of a freezing, so.
Carol Ann Kates (:freeze lunch meat. To freeze lunch meat, like to section it off in ⁓ the serving size that you're going to use on sandwiches and put either wax paper or parchment paper in between them so that when it thaws, it'll have a nice serving size.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Okay.
Okay.
Carol Ann Kates (:That's probably something you use a lot. Lunch meat? No? you don't eat meat?
J. Rosemarie Francis (:No, I don't eat prepared meats. we ⁓
don't eat prepared meats. Yeah, we don't. ⁓ One of the things I noticed the other day, someone ⁓ froze green bananas, which is a starch. I don't know if you're familiar with green bananas, it's just like potatoes, but they're bananas. But it didn't keep in the freezer.
Carol Ann Kates (:⁓ okay.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Is that something you're familiar with? It just mushed out.
Carol Ann Kates (:You know, a lot of the fruits ⁓ when you saw them are not going to be like they were when they were fresh. But with bananas, if you freeze them, then they're good in smoothies. Do you do smoothies? You know, you can... ⁓
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mm-hmm.
Yes, but
not the green ones. So the green ones, people from the Caribbean will boil those and eat them just like you eat boiled potatoes. And you notice that when you freeze them green, they don't keep. Yeah.
Carol Ann Kates (:no, I have. We don't have green bananas where I live, so I haven't worked with them.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:That's all right, thank you. Okay, all right, so I'm going to just ask you to tell us, well, before I go there, tell us what is Carol Ann grateful for today. Amen to that. Yes, yes. All right, thank you. So.
Carol Ann Kates (:⁓ I am grateful to have another day around the sun.
⁓
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Since you've served in the deli meat department, can you tell us what are the... So sometimes we go to the store and we want the convenience of things that are pre-cut, but sometimes they're a little pricier. How much time versus money can we save buying pre-cut as opposed to just doing the cutting ourselves or buying...
What's enough for a meal?
Carol Ann Kates (:Well, that's really important in the produce department because there's a lot of expense that goes into cutting the fruit. You've got the container. ⁓ I was in the grocery store the other day and they had a big thing of mixed cut fruit and it was ⁓ $22.99.
So you know you're going to pay a lot more per pound if you're buying the pre-cut, ⁓ pre-washed fruits and vegetables. That's one thing I really think we should avoid. As far as the deli, ⁓
I guess a couple of things I'd like to share about shopping in the deli is if you're buying the ⁓ salads, ⁓ salads, leftovers are really only good three to four days. So if you're buying something that's chef prepared and it says chef prepared, then it could have been on its third day in the deli case. So you would want to eat it that day.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mm-hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:The things that are in the containers like Reese's if it's a brand name and it's not chef prepared It has a lot of preservatives. So it's going to last a little longer ⁓ One thing I think shoppers should know is that Supermarkets do from time to time have trouble with refrigeration or with their heating units So if you're in the deli and you want to buy
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Hmm.
Hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:Rotisserie chicken and it's not hot that's because the temperature isn't Right and you should pass It's also true in that if you're going to get something from the freezer case, and it's not cold I don't know if you ever notice in the store, but where I shop right on the hour every hour They say it's time to check temperatures So that's one thing to be one thing to be aware of I
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Hmm.
Okay.
Carol Ann Kates (:As far
as buying, what are you referring to in the deli specifically?
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Well, especially meat, if you, like, you know, cube beef, for instance, I'd rather buy a steak, cut it out myself, but some people will buy it cubed because it's already done for them. I mean, is there any time or money isn't saved, obviously, cube versus steak?
Are there any tips you can give us there on what's best and what you know if it makes a difference at all?
Carol Ann Kates (:I do sometimes buy meat that's already cubed because it does save time. don't think you're going to see a price difference ⁓ per pound. For example, when I make green chili, I buy the already cubed up ⁓ pork and a lot of that that's going to come is going to be scrap.
going to be scraps from other things. So I don't think you're going to see a savings there. ⁓ One thing I would like to share about the meat department is sometimes we're really tempted to buy meat that has a marinade on it or a rub. ⁓ In the grocery industry, when meat starts to reach its starts to go past its prime,
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Okay.
Hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:we either put a rub on it or a marinade on it and raise the price and call it value added. So I'm not saying not to buy that, but I'm saying that if you do buy that, eat it that day.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mmm.
Wow, I've always avoided that. okay, ⁓ wow, that's good to know. That is good to know because I know people who buy those season meat. So that's good to know. Thank you.
Carol Ann Kates (:Another
thing I think is important to know is if you're buying shrimp and unless you live on the ocean where the shrimp is going to be freshly caught it has been flash frozen. So if you're buying shrimp out of the case that has thawed it will have been thawed and you don't know how long it's been sitting there. So buying the frozen shrimp
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mm-hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:and thawing it yourself is going to give you a better quality because you know it's just going to be thawed when you use it.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:better quality
Wow. Those are some good tips. I like those. Thank you, Carol Ann. I appreciate you. So ⁓ I'm going to ask you, so you've been on the other side and I'm asking for more of your secrets. What are some of the tricks? We know that when at the checkout counter, they'll have the magazines, they'll have the candy, they have all kinds of stuff right there that, you know, you'll
you'll impulse buy when you're checking out. What are some tricks that grocers will use to get the tired mom to buy stuff they wouldn't normally do, it's not on their list, et cetera?
Carol Ann Kates (:It's placement like you said it's placement at checkout counter ⁓ It's placement on the shelf So it's going to be more at eye level or easy arm reach They will ⁓ Put items together so you might see parmesan cheese with a fig jam and crackers So they combine things that you think
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:are important. That's why we try to shop from the list. ⁓ It's really hard for my husband when he does the shopping. He always comes home with several things that aren't on the list. I don't know if your moms take their kids shopping, but when I took my kids shopping, was mommy, I want this, mommy, I want that. And so I suggest letting your kids put an item on the list that they want.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:and then letting them pick that and put it in the cart.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:That's a good idea. That's a very good idea because the other option is to risk a meltdown or leave them at home.
Carol Ann Kates (:And I've had plenty meltdowns, especially with my son, and it's not fun, is it?
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Nope, it's not fun. Yeah,
that's actually a good tip because it actually gets them involved in the grocery shopping and, you know, give them a little important part. I think I like that. I actually love that. Yeah. Thank you. All right. I really appreciate you, Carol Anne. ⁓ I want you to tell us how we can get in touch with you, your website, give us your social, all of that.
Carol Ann Kates (:Yeah.
My website is carolyn at carolynkates.com. I am on Instagram at carolynkates. I also am on Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter at carolynkates. have started TikTok, but I only have one post up yet.
⁓ I do come out with a weekly recipe every week. You can sign up for it on my website and get my ⁓ free cookbook for soups. ⁓ In every recipe I include ⁓ shopping tips on how to buy the product that's in that recipe. Last week I had a wonderful story. I listened to a mom ⁓
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Okay.
Carol Ann Kates (:My daughter sent it to me. My daughter cooks for three teenage boys and she has said, what are we going to do but cook dinner every day until we die or is there like an end game? And she said, I go to the store and I try to think of healthy dinner ideas and ⁓ then I buy all the right ingredients and all the right quantities and then hope and pray that they'll like it instead of they say, what's
this. So I always have a little story too.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Yep.
Yeah, that's fun. Yeah, I three sons, so I understand. All right. OK, so sorry.
Carol Ann Kates (:Oh, are
we? I did want to say one thing to you too, because my daughter has three sons and she buys Nature Valley granola bars in bulk. And sometimes we just think that going to Costco or Sam's is going to give us the cheapest price. Costco has a 48 count box for 17.49 or 36 cents per bar.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:Sam's has a 36 count box for 11.28 or 31 cents a bar. So sometimes we think that the package that has the most in it is going to be the cheapest, but that's not always right. So we need to go by unit price.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Yeah, well, we're to work with a calculator. Okay, all right. I appreciate you, Carol Ann, Kate. Before I let you go, give us three quick tips for a single mom juggling food, recipes, groceries, and the kids' own weird tastes.
Carol Ann Kates (:Yes.
⁓ I think planning meals in advance is going to save you time and trying to shop once a week. ⁓ Using ⁓ the online ad when it comes out here, it comes out on Wednesdays. I don't know when it comes out and where you live, but going to that ⁓ and trying to get creative with what you have. Use your leftovers. ⁓
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Mm-hmm.
Carol Ann Kates (:My husband loves to just go in the fridge and make breakfast with whatever he can scrounge out of the fridge. So use your leftovers, get creative with what you have. I like to, if I've got leftover mashed potatoes, I like to make potato pancakes for breakfast and then put a fried egg on it. So find ways to use what you have.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Pretty awesome, thank you. Any parting shots?
Carol Ann Kates (:No, it was wonderful to meet you. You're in Chicago? Oh, in Austin, okay.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Yes, likewise, I appreciate you. I'm sorry. I'm actually in Austin. Yeah,
we just use an essential time. Yes. Yeah, I appreciate you. And I should have this out next week. So I'll send you a link. And we'll also link to your books on Amazon so people could reach out and grab one.
Carol Ann Kates (:Okay.
that's great. Thank you so much.
J. Rosemarie Francis (:Yeah,
absolutely. Thank you very much, Carol Ann. Take care. Okay, bye bye. Don't hang up.
