The Habit of Meal Planning with Holly Erickson

Jessica Honegger [00:00:04] Hey, welcome back to Going Scared. I'm Jessica Honegger, founder of the world changing brand Noonday Collection, and I'm so glad to have you here for today's conversation. Our Going Scared community gathers here every week for direct and honest conversations that help you live a life of courage by leaving comfort and going scared. I can't think of OK, maybe outside of brushing your teeth, but the habit of cooking dinner and eating dinner, which ultimately means we got a plan dinner. I put this out there on Instagram a few months ago that I was going to start taking over meal planning in our family from Joe, and I have never seen more impassioned response on anything I've ever post on Instagram. So I thought, Wow, we need to do a podcast on this habit of meal planning. And so of course I had to have on Holly Erickson of the Modern Proper. Holly Erickson is the second half of the Modern Proper, which is a food blog and Instagram account, and is now a book that's about, guess what? Weeknight Meals. I love talking to Holly because she's living this. Her husband is an entrepreneur. She's got three kids that are eight and under. She cooks. She really cooks, and you're going to hear my daughter actually babysits for her kids and often cleans up her kitchen for her, which, you know, I love that she's also training my daughter on how to be a good babysitter. Modern Proper was born out of this idea that they wanted to pull together easy meals for the busy person, meals that are healthy and great but simple, and that you can throw together if you want to have friends over last minute, or if you just have one of those weeknights where you got to feed the fam and don't know what to do. That is mainly what we talk about today. What are those six Go-To recipes that Holly has on hand? And let me tell you, I took away about three new recipes that are going to be new staples in our family. I'm excited for you to give this show a listen. Holly, I first just wanted to ask you, what is this look like in your real life? Like, how has this come to be? Because you and Scott, your husband, you all are both entrepreneurs. You've got three kids. How have you guys created healthy dinner life in your family?

Holly Erickson [00:02:38] So the last two years, I've taken over the recipe development for the Modern Proper food blog. And so I have, at any given time a list of 40 things in the queue that will eventually get on the blog. And I am responsible for doing all of the recipe research for them and doing all of the recipe development and doing all of the recipe testing. So at any given time, I have two to four recipe tests in my fridge to grab a dinner for whenever we need it. But on a normal week where I'm not doing some heavy recipe testing, I I actually learned this trick from our friend Micah that I have these she has these like she does the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday thing where it's like, These are the tacos on Tuesday, Monday, I, you know, make this dish or whatever. And so my kids definitely know my four to six repertoire that they really love that are our go tos. And so they'll get a mix of recipe tests, something different, something new. You know, you have to try these vegetables or whatever they're not used to. And then I mix it with just a few things that they love and we kind of rotate it. And once or twice a week, we may rely on, you know, getting a pizza or something like that.

Jessica Honegger [00:04:05] So, OK, I want to hear what your repertoire is because I find this so interesting. Like everyone has their yeah, their are four to six. I mean, at the end of the day that we probably eat about eight of the same meals, you know? Yeah, I mean, maybe there's like a tiny twist to them. So what are yours?

Holly Erickson [00:04:26] They love any sort of like spaghetti, spaghetti and meatballs or spaghetti and like a ragu sauce. I love making any sort of like noodles like chow mein noodles they love, like chicken chow mein. We have a really great recipe on our site for that. My son is dairy free, I should add. So a lot of our stuff, we do dairy free. I have a really great Thai fried rice with basil that they absolutely love. And then they they love tacos, any kind of like we have some sheet pan chicken dinners that they love. I try to sneak in a salmon and like asparagus dinner every couple of weeks. My son does not love salmon. My daughter does like it. And then I have a couple of cheat meals where I'll just keep like my favorite Indian simmer sauce in the cupboard or like a, you know, spaghetti sauce. And then I always keep like some frozen naan or something in the fridge or the freezer. And so I'll just make up like a rice and I'll throw in a can of coconut milk into my simmer sauce and I'll dump some peas in and chicken. And that's like one of my cheat meals that, you know in a pinch. I'm like, Oh my gosh, I have non I have my Indian simmer sauce and I just throw it all together and they and they like that, as well - peas and all, they'll eat the peas.

Jessica Honegger [00:05:44] That's great. I see that. I don't have that. What's your favorite Indian simmer sauce?

Holly Erickson [00:05:49] You know, I would have to look up the brands, but Trader Joe's has some Brooklyn deli spelled Brooklyn like in New York. And then I think Delhi is spelled Delhi. Yeah, they are amazing. They have tikka masala. They have all kinds of I just look for this. I look for my old and I just make sure it has no dairy in it, which they normally don't, because our coconut based. Yeah. And it doesn't even require you to add the coconut milk. I just always do. And it kind of spreads the dish feeds more mouths.

Jessica Honegger [00:06:21] Something else that you seem to do effortlessly and you've been remodeling your house. And so we haven't seen each other in our homes in a while, which I can't wait till y'all start entertaining again because it's like your house is so fine and you just kind of pull things out. And that is such a gift where you can pull things out. And it looks intentional, but it looks effortless. Is it effortless? What about when you're just randomly because you're really good about this? You know, you randomly have friends over spontaneously, you got your pizza oven, which you can talk about. What are those sort of go to? I'm having some friends over, and I think for a lot of us, that feels overwhelming. I know sometimes I like seeing some friends at church or some people I want to get to know and I'm like, I need to have them over for dinner. And that very thought is like, I want to have them over. But I'm also overwhelmed by the thought of that, and I would love for it to not feel that way, and I think especially pandemic wise, we've gotten really out of the habit of just having easy casual come over for dinner tonight. So what is easy casual, come over for dinner tonight, look like for you?

Holly Erickson [00:07:33] Well, first of all, I'll say one of my favorite articles as someone who just loves to host is super social and wants people over all the time every night. I read it was early Facebook days and I was quite a bit younger, but I think it really made an impact on me. It had the S-word in it, so I'll bleep it out and say crappy instead. [00:07:54]But the article was called How to Have a Crappy Dinner Party and See Your Friends more often. Hmm. Which was just it was so good. There were rules that they were setting out, which was like, You must only cook food that is already in your fridge. You cannot go to the grocery store to go prepare anything better than what you would already have on hand. You cannot pick up your house. So it has to just be exactly how you came home from work and your house looks the way it looks. And the third rule was, you have to act jokingly surprised when your guests show up at your door. But the idea of the article was, you know, with these few things in place, if you want to see your friends more often, you can see your friends more often you just don't have to go to the lengths that you normally would to make sure your house is perfect and make sure you know you're prepared [52.6s] like I've had friends cook dinner for us and it is the simplest like beans and rice bowl. And I'm like, Wow, this I know because I cook food on like this took 30 minutes to prepare and I am so happy and so satisfied and glad they didn't bend over backwards, slaying in the kitchen for hours because this is comforting and all I really want is to hang out with them and enjoy, you know, some, some simple food. So I think I think expectations is something that like we have this expectation that if we invite our friends over that, we have to prepare this elaborate thing. But most recently, I'll use an example. We have some friends who love to travel and we love to travel, and they've just started taking their kids to different countries. We haven't done that. We have a three-year-old at home yet, but we the the show The Amazing Race came back on. Finally, after like years, and so we started inviting them over like, you want to come over on Thursdays and watch The Amazing Race with the kids. And so I'll just make like a super simple pot of soup. Like one of my favorites I made the other day is this is just an easily, you know, you grab any sort of dumplings from she's vegetarian. So I grab Whole Foods, grab some veggie dumplings and then I grab some chicken dumplings for everybody else. And it's so simple. It's like six ingredients. Dump it in, it's like shredded carrots, which you can buy from, you know, pretty shredded. It's it's just so easy. And that's all we had. We didn't even have bread or anything because there's dough on the dumplings. So it's just kind of like this filling one pot, six ingredients. And that's all we had. And it and everybody was happy, you know, it wasn't like a four-course meal. And then my last thing that I can think of right off the top of my head is my daughter is nine, and she is obsessed with setting the table. So if I let her set up the table and I ask my kids, Hey, can you help pick up a little bit? I feel a lot more like I can stay in the kitchen just doing my thing, you know, doing a few dishes, if I can. And then if the guests come in and they see, you know, that the table looks beautiful, I'm like, That's my daughter's all all her. You know, the napkins might not look exactly the way they would look if I put them together, but all of our friends appreciate that. Even people who are new that we're inviting over that we don't know very well. I mean, they they definitely appreciate those little touches.

Jessica Honegger [00:11:25] See, I never have cooked with dumplings like, I don't think

Holly Erickson [00:11:29] ever the frozen ones, just the frozen.

Jessica Honegger [00:11:31] I know. But I mean, even that that's what I think is so interesting. And what gives me ideas is when I talk to other people about what are your six staples? Because I mean, sure are dumplings are absolutely delicious. And that does that sounds really, really easy. So what are some of those things when you say cook from what's in your fridge and what's in your pantry? I know, you name sort of the simple dinners that your kids like. What about those simple ingredients that you know I could have someone over on Thursday night any time? Like you tell me, Hey, you have to have friends over tonight, and I would not have to go to the grocery store. What would you pull together like tonight if I'm like, Hey, we want to come over tonight for dinner? What would you pull together from what you have on hand right now?

Holly Erickson [00:12:14] We would do if we have pizza leftover. You mentioned that we had a pizza oven, pizza dough is super easy to make and does not take very long to like rise, so I always have. I use the Trader Joe's bruschetta for my pizza sauce. I just love it so much because it has some olive oil and tomatoes. It's just I don't like that thick tomato sauce, so I can either really quickly whip up like we always have mozzarella, we always have random pizza. Like I'll even I'll even like brown some sausage and cook up some bacon and just freeze them in the freezer. I have like frozen cubes of pesto in the freezer. Just lots of random things for we could just throw together a pizza night. The grill, I could thaw out some meat I always have, like chicken thighs on hand and normally like all of my condiments that I could use to make, you know, some sort of quick marinade. Let's see what else I have.

Jessica Honegger [00:13:11] What's a quick marinade for chicken thighs?

Holly Erickson [00:13:13] OK, this would work for chicken thighs as well, but like a quick marinade for like salmon, we normally always have salmon in the fridge. And then like either Scott could grab some veggies or people always ask, Hey, can I bring anything? Sometimes I'll be like, Can you grab a couple of veggies that we'll roast? I have salmon. Or like, pick up a loaf of bread, I have salmon and some veggies, but I'll throw together like a little bit of brown sugar, a little bit of Dijon, a little bit of soy sauce. I like to use tamarind to keep it gluten free, a little bit of olive oil, you know, that kind of stuff, just like you're making a really easy dressing or something and you can marinate. Or if you have dressing, bottle dressing, Italian dressing, all of those make a great marinade for like any sort of chicken that you have and you can throw it on the grill or you can throw it in the oven. You don't always want to throw in a cast iron pan because some of those marinades have a lot of sugar, honey and they'll burn. But. And then another one that I love keeping on hand is frozen. Like, I'll keep tortellini like you buy in the fresh section, but you can keep it in the freezer like it'll it'll freeze. And we have a really and I always have like sausage in the freezer, like ground sausage. And so as something, I do have to go quickly to the store. But like, we have a great tortellini sausage soup that everybody loves. And normally if I make that, I'll just have to grab some fresh kale and some I normally have heavy cream on hand because that's what I put in my coffee. But that's one that, you know, if you don't have that on hand, you'd have to grab that too. But just things that come keeping like, you know, 10 of your favorite recipes that are under like six ingredients is, I think, really helpful to have, because if you want to do a quick like, have somebody over and then you know, there's always like when we lived in Vancouver, Washington, right outside of Portland, we would always have friends over on Tuesday, but we would just pick up Antonio tacos like we would just get all these carnitas tacos, like we'd get plates of them and then I would just make chips and guacamole and have people over.

Jessica Honegger [00:15:12] That's why I go to yeah, my go to is literally it is only Tex-Mex. It is who it is that it's like or Mexican, you know, tacos or. And actually, we just found a food truck where you can buy carnitas like in our neighborhood. It's close. It's really close. Yes, and it is so delicious. And I'm like, Boom, we have a new meal. We have an easy dinner plan. OK, so you mentioned that you when you're not recipe testing, you do the whole Monday night's this, Tuesday night's this, Wednesday night's this, when do you plan that out and when do you shop for it? Are you flying by the seat of your pants every day?

Holly Erickson [00:15:55] I normally plan stuff out on Monday, which a lot of people like to plan out on the weekend, but I like to look like I'll do something real easy tonight. Like maybe that Indian summer sauce or something I have on hand, but I'll go grocery shopping today and look at like, what are the few things we put between two and three, sometimes four blog posts that per week. So I'll look at like I'm pretty far ahead. So I'll look at what I'm going to make this week, and then I'll kind of just plan around that like, Oh, did we have tacos last week? Maybe I'll throw some ground beef and some salsa into the crock pot and make some taco meat, you know, for this week. And I'll just kind of plan it out like two, should I make some taquitos? I'll grab a shredded or I'll grab a rotisserie chicken and shred that up, and I just add in sour cream or salsa and roll them together and make some baked taquitos. I'll look at like what's on my on, my work to do list, and then sometimes I'll be like, Oh, I'll make a reel of these quesadillas or something, and I'll, you know, go from there. So I just normally do that on Mondays, and then I'd do all my shopping and then I'm ready because we have child care help on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. So normally Monday, it's just me and my three year old and we hang out and I do my grocery list while we're playing with MagnaTiles or whatever, and I'll just be researching, you know, all of my things for the week.

Jessica Honegger [00:17:17] Do you ever get tired of cooking?

Holly Erickson [00:17:20] [00:17:20]There have been times when I've wanted to throw in the towel on the business portion of things like, Oh my gosh, this is, I'm working too many hours. This is too much. But no, I don't think I'll ever, even if I stop doing what I do for a living. I think I still would love to host and cook. Sometimes it gets to be too much. Just from the business standpoint, when it's like, we have a lot, you know, with the cookbook, it's like we're keeping the blog running. We're also writing a cookbook now that's come to an end because the cookbook is going to, you know, it's officially going to be out April 5th. So we kind of have this in-between, and I'm back to kind of enjoying, you know, the lazy testing stuff in the kitchen and stuff like that. And my kids love to help. So they're it's kind of a whole fun new thing right now. [46.5s]

Jessica Honegger [00:18:07] What does that look like? How have you encouraged your kids to help?

Holly Erickson [00:18:11] [00:18:11]Well, I have these knives from I think it's Opinel is how you say it's I think it's a French company. I might be pronouncing it wrong, but there are these little chef knives that have a hole that you put your front finger through. So you're like holding the knife. But instead of your finger, your pointer finger being on the side of the knife, you tuck it under. And so, you know, I'll just give them jobs like peeling carrots. I'll give them jobs, like chopping things. I'll give them jobs like stirring things, mixing things, blending things, that kind of stuff. And they and they love it. [35.7s]

Jessica Honegger [00:18:47] OK, so you have a book coming out with your business partner, Natalie, and it is The Modern Proper, Simple Dinners for Every Day. I know there's a million things you could have written about. You have had this wildly popular blog. You get so much traffic to your site for people who just want to grab recipes. I have a friend who basically she only cooks from your website, guys. And I want to know why this? Why simple dinners for every day?

Holly Erickson [00:19:14] Yeah, this my business partner, her husband actually just left yesterday and we had like a six hour session planning session and just not rebranding per se, but just kind of like honing in, you know, before this book comes out. Getting back to our like, who, what, where, when, why, whatever. And it was super fun, and we always learn so much when we do that. So when we decided to write this cookbook, we originally started playing around with like, you know, sides and would we put in salads. And when we, you know, like sections, different sections and the more we thought about it, the more we were like, Man, I cook brunch once in a while and I cook, you know, lunch once in a while for myself. But 90 percent of the time when I'm grabbing a cookbook off my shelf, I am grabbing it because I'm making dinner. And so we were like, Man, how do we just make a cookbook that everybody's using all the time? That it's not something that just sits up on a shelf and looks pretty, that it's something that, you know, gets splatters on and folded pages and all that good stuff. And we were like, Man, I really think that we should just do dinners like all dinners. We kind of started down the dinner, the weeknight dinner path in 2016. Our blog was a few years old and we got nominated for the blog awards in the weeknight dinner category. And at that time, we were doing all sorts of stuff, you know, like zucchini muffins or some craft, some home thing. [00:20:57]And when we got nominated for that, we really were like, Man, we really are weeknight dinner girls. Like, that's like the majority of what we're doing. And I think that we should pivot and just really focus on family dinners and not just family dinners, but dinners. You know that people can invite their friends over and cook for their partner, cook their family or their parents, whatever. With that in mind, we set out to just have a cookbook with 100 dinners in it. And yeah, we try to keep it really simple in the sense that, you know, some of them take 30 minutes, some of them take a little over an hour, but they're all going to be like, We're not going to send you on a wild goose chase to find any, you know, ingredient that you would only find if you live in New York and you have some specialty market you down the street from you, that's kind of where the simple comes in like simple ingredient wise and simple, as in you know you, you might spend more than an hour making something from the book, but it's it's not going to be a difficult, you know, real in-depth, the type of meal. [71.1s]

Jessica Honegger [00:22:09] Well, weeknight dinners is what I know. Our audience, our Going Scared listeners are hungry to learn about, and I think it's because. As we you know, I think especially in the last couple of years, there's so much decision fatigue anyway that even having to think about dinner feels just like a nightmare for a lot of people. And so having just some go to simple recipes to go to and, you know, we have that in our family were the same. We've got Taco Tuesday, my husband, all my kids hunt. And so we literally kill our own game and that is what we mainly eat throughout the year. Sound like a pioneer family. So we have venison tacos on Tuesday night, and then we usually do something with sausage because venison sausage. And then we do usually grab a salmon and we don't usually have frozen salmon, so we usually will grab that fresh from somewhere is another one. And then during the winter, there's usually a soup happening. Now, of course, this is all my husband because what happened is he asked me to take over and help out. And what's hard is I find that if you're going to cook the dinners, you also need to be the one to do the grocery shopping. Yeah, right. Because again, you kind of know the ingredients you're grabbing, and I am a little bit more fly by the seat of your pants kind of person. So I took over and I kind of went overboard because I'm like, I am going to make this amazing. So I did like, you know, fancy stuff and then work really hit probably the roughest patch we've ever had in 11 years. And I was like, Oh, bye, I'm out. Like, Unless you want me to go by the El Rincon rotisserie chicken every single day, like I cannot do this, honey. And so he took back over. But now we're at a more stable place again, and I'm like, OK, how can we go together on this? I think that is what is challenging is how can two partners, two people in marriage carry this together? And they don't have to because, you know, I know there's give and takes. And, you know, usually I think there is one person who is the primary cook. But what does that look like for you and Scott, because you said you kind of took over a couple of years ago. So I'm just curious what this dynamic is like in your marriage? How do you kind of do the food thing and kind of do the household things? What does that look like to partner together?

Holly Erickson [00:24:45] Well, if you came to my house right now, you would smell delicious banana muffins that my husband made this morning for the kids before school. He is on breakfast duty nine times out of 10. He also travels a lot, so when he is gone, I'm the one up making breakfast that we are big, don't ask me why I have been asked a million times and I just I just do it and I love it, and I want my kids to look back and remember their childhood that way. But we are hot breakfast like every morning I am. So I was at a women's luncheon thing at a church one time and they asked a question and it was like, you know, free yourself from the guilt of a see how many more people just feed their kids cereal in the morning. But I was so surprised. Not from a judgmental, you know, way. I just was so surprised when they asked how many people serve hot breakfasts like most mornings and there were like six of us in the like 100 who raised their hands and I was like, Oh my gosh, I didn't. I did not realize. I mean, I grew up eating cereal.

Jessica Honegger [00:25:51] Like my husband loves eggs. And so and yes, he does the breakfasts in the home. So it's not some, you know, amazing reason behind. It's really like Joe likes eggs, you know? But there is something it is a nice start to the day, but I have got to give all credit to my husband because and also where the family like that, you get what you get, you don't whine about it. And yeah, our dinner's ever since they were little. So our kids eat what we eat. And so of course, they hate it when we have nights where anything that has like mushrooms or bell peppers. But when it comes to breakfast, it's so funny we each one of them gets their own custom thing because one of my kids does not like eggs, which completely blows my mind. Oh my gosh. And then one of my kids loves smoked salmon, and so he's like bougie. He gets like smoked salmon and cream cheese and pita chips, and then someone else loves smoothies. And then Joe and I like eggs. So but we don't. You know what? We never eat cereal in the morning, ever.

Holly Erickson [00:26:52] Yeah, isn't that wild? Yeah, I do love that. I love knowing that about you.

Jessica Honegger [00:26:56] Yeah, but baking muffins is a whole nother ball game girl.

Holly Erickson [00:27:00] Yeah, he makes scones. He makes.

[00:27:04] Okay. So he's a cooker too.

[00:27:06] Yeah, he's like considers himself an amateur baker so he doesn't cook dinner very much. If I'm out of town, he'll normally grab a pork chop and force the kids to eat some sort of vegetable like health. Some cauliflower into the broccoli into the oven, and that's kind of grab a baguette that's like his extent of his salt and pepper. You know, he'll salt and pepper a steak, or he'll salt and pepper a pork chop and give it to the kids. But I'm always worried my kids are going to choke on the nights that I to cut that up small. But yeah, he he's got some back pocket things, and I think the back pocket things are just so it's like, have your, you know, a dad or a mom or, you know, a parent who doesn't cook all the time. It's like just to switch the pizza night for like some easy back pocket, you know, recipe that you don't even need a recipe for. It's just, you know, you just have to know how high to have the pan when you put the pork in or whatever. So he's getting better at those kind of things. [00:28:08]But as far as, like the household, things go, yeah, he'll cook breakfast and, you know, I'll normally clean up his dishes throughout the day if I'm cooking or prepping anything. But he loves to help. If I'm like, Oh my gosh, can you please like, chop up this these mushrooms for me? Or can you please? He's good at following recipes, too, so sometimes if I have a marinade, I'll ask him while I'm at the grocery store picking up what I need. Hey, can you get that marinade going and throw the chicken in? I just have like four ingredients I have to go grab from the store, so he's giving little jobs to parents or partners is also a really good thing to get in the habit of. [37.1s] Hmm.

Jessica Honegger [00:28:47] Totally agree. This whole conversation is convicting because listen, I like when I say I haven't been doing anything. I think I need to find that ground where it's not all or nothing, where it's not like, Oh, I'm doing all the grocery shopping and I'm coming up with epic menus every night. I'm seven on the enneagram. So that is very seven that it has to be epic and new. And I want to blow my kids' minds and show them, you're going to remember a mom who knows how to cook, you know? Yeah. And instead, I just need to help my man out. I need to do some things, and I feel like I'm getting into a place where emotionally, I think, you know, I have such a creative job and I expend so much creativity throughout my day. That dinner does feel like such a just task, and it feels like that to him, too. It's just like I will say, I'm going to share three tips with our listeners right now. I just discovered chicken tortilla soup from Costco, and it's really good. OK, so there's a good cheat. The other cheat we found are those Kevin meals, and they're available at Costco and we there's like the Thai Basil one, and we just add some extra coconut milk to that and some rice and some veggies. And so that's like a huge cheat meal for us. And then, of course, you know, they we found this taco truck that has carnitas, boom just buy that. And then, you know, our local grocery store has really good queso. So there's so many ways to cheat. And I guess I need to not say that they're cheating. I can see that

Holly Erickson [00:30:16] they're not to their cooking. One of my favorite cheat things that when you talked about Costco, Costco used to me, I haven't. Since moving to Austin two years ago, I have only been at Costco a few times, but they used to have these panko crusted chicken breasts at Costco, and they're just freezer, you know, keep in the freezer. I would just grab the fixings for a Cobb salad. So easy, whatever cheese you have. You know, you either can make your own dressing or you can just have blue cheese dressing, ranch dressing, whatever. And I would just cook up some bacon, which we always have on hand hard boil some eggs, which we always have on hand, and then pull out those panko crusted chicken breasts. And I would just make like a really good. And the kids, it's so, you know, do you can deconstruct it and give the kids, you know, chicken strips that you slice up and you can give them some hard boiled eggs for protein, extra protein and you can give them veggies. And those are some of my other favorite meals is meals that you can break down for the adults. You have something for the adults, you have something you know, bigger and then you can break it down for the kids if you have younger kids, which is always fun.

Jessica Honegger [00:31:20] I love that and you put ranch dressing on anything for the kids and they'll eat it, let's face it. Are we eating veggies or are we having ranch dressing? It's hard to tell. Well Holly, we're so excited to purchase your book, the Modern Proper: Simple Dinners for every day. It's available now for preorder and it will be out in April. So I'm already putting it in my cart so I can just get it right away. And this really does serve as an inspiration for me to get back into it. I'll keep everybody posted on Instagram. I, like had this big moment and it was almost keeping myself accountable, like, I'm going to be doing this now, and I've had people be like, So how's that going? And I'm like, It lasted two weeks. Oh wow, joke.

Holly Erickson [00:32:04] And so I'm going to ask you next time I feel how it's going.

Jessica Honegger [00:32:09] OK, OK, you do that. Thanks for coming on, Holly.

Holly Erickson [00:32:12] Yeah, thanks for having me.

Jessica Honegger [00:32:21] You can follow Modern Proper at @modernproper on Instagram, or you can find their website at modernproper.com. And stay tuned. Their book is coming out in April. And if you want a sneak peek, head on over to Modern Proper and check it out. Thanks so much for tuning in to today's show. Our music is by Ellie Holcomb and I'm Jessica Honegger. Until next time, let's take each other by the hand and keep going scared.