Ep 218: Family Meals Made Easy, Tips from Aliza Sokolow, author of Children's Book: This is What I Eat

This week on Your Child Is Normal, Dr. Jessica Hochman sits down with chef and food educator Aliza Sokolow, author of the children’s book This Is What I Eat, to make healthy eating feel simpler, more joyful, and actually realistic for busy families.

Aliza shares the behind-the-scenes story of how she went from architecture to food media, to working with Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution in schools — where she saw how powerful basic food education can be.  Aliza talks about why how you present food matters, how to build routines without turning dinner into a battle, and easy ways to get kids involved (from grocery store scavenger hunts to soup, pesto, and banana bread). Plus: smart shortcuts to make cooking for your family easier. 

Follow Aliza:

• Instagram: @alizajsokolow
• Substack: This Is What I Eat
• Website/prints: sokolowphoto.com

Your Child is Normal is the trusted podcast for parents, pediatricians, and child health experts who want smart, nuanced conversations about raising healthy, resilient kids. Hosted by Dr. Jessica Hochman — a board-certified practicing pediatrician — the show combines evidence-based medicine, expert interviews, and real-world parenting advice to help listeners navigate everything from sleep struggles to mental health, nutrition, screen time, and more.

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YouTube channel: Ask Dr Jessica

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Transcript

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This is Dr Jessica Hochman, and welcome back to your child is normal today. We're talking about one of the biggest daily stressors in family life, feeding your kids, especially when they're picky. You're busy and dinner feels really hard. My guest is Chef and food educator, Aliza socolo, author of the children's book. This is what I eat, a kid friendly book celebrating fruits, vegetables, color curiosity and where food actually comes from. Aliza has a unique background. She's worked in food media and styling, joined Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution and worked with kids in schools where she saw firsthand how powerful food education can be. She's also been a private chef, as you'll hear more about in this episode today, a lot of our conversation is about picky eating, why presentation matters more than we think, and simple, realistic ways to involve kids in cooking, which hopefully translates into eating more fruits and vegetables. And also, before we get started, if you wouldn't mind leaving a five star review, wherever it is you listen to podcasts, I would be so grateful. Now, let's get started. Aliza, I'm so happy to have you here. I think you are so talented, and I wish I had even a sliver of your abilities. So I'm so hoping to talk to you where I can learn and maybe maybe use some of your knowledge in my own personal life. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. You know, I feel like we are what we eat. So pretty much anyone that eats have got some good insight for you. I'm a firm believer that the foundation of our health comes from what we eat. And I think even though we live in a land of plenty, there's certainly no lack of food around us, it still is such a tricky thing for us parents to figure out how to get our kids to eat healthy. And I just look at the way you cook, and I think there's so much that many of us can learn from you, guy, I agree. Where should we dive in? So first to start, I would love to learn about you and learn about yourself and how you got into cooking. So I I was a swimmer growing up, and I understood that food was fuel, so what I was putting in my body was either going to make me swim fast and have energy or hold me back from what I was doing. And also, my friend's mom was the UCLA nutritionist to all of the athletes. So I would call her and be like, so what do I eat so that I can swim fast tomorrow? And she'd be like, pasta. I'm like, great. Carbo loading. And then I went to college at UC Berkeley, and I graduated with a degree in architecture, and it was the height of that recession, and I graduated, and I couldn't find a job doing anything, and I wanted to do some sort of hospitality, and I got a job working in the art department on a TV show, and that show was a food show, and I became a food stylist. I saw all of these food stylists doing teeny tiny architecture for this TV show. And I was like, This is great. Your projects are done at the end of the day. It's still very tactile. And I saw that there was a design element to the food, and then I was working, I think, either on like top model or some dating show, and Jamie Oliver was coming to town, and one of the producers connected me to get an interview to become the assistant to his food stylist, and he had a show on at the time. This is like early 2000s where he would go to his backyard, and it was called Jamie at home, and he would cook something over a fire in his beautiful English countryside backyard. And so I applied for the job, and I got it, and it was a Ryan Seacrest show, and I had worked in the office for months gathering the ethos of the Jamie Oliver food way of eating and cooking, and I unboxed a million knives, and I was sourcing All of the produce and proteins and everything that was very in line with how he cooked, which is eating things that are local and more farmers market based. So I got this job working for him, and we started working in schools, and I worked with kids with type two diabetes, and they had never really eaten vegetables, and I understood that what we were teaching these kids was so much greater than food access and how that was being sourced, so sort of the roundabout way how I got into working in food, and I've worked in restaurants since, and I've gotten back into the food education space in the last few years, and it's since my book came out as well, and I just really care about educating parents, adults, humans, on food education and understanding what you're putting in. Your body. Sounds like you were really able to find a career that melded your natural talent as an architect major, I'm guessing you were very, very good at design and just seeing how your food comes out, it looks amazing. And combine that with your passion for the purpose of educating children, that's pretty fantastic that you're able to really love what you do and you're so good at it. Thank you. I think it's really fun also. So much of architecture was the art component of it. I would say it's like very right and left brained, because there's the creative tactile component. So like most people, I don't think use both sides of their brain, but being able to translate that into eating and teaching other people how to eat to show that it it can be beautiful, and a lot of what I do, especially in my book, is based upon colors. And the concept of health to children is a foreign concept to Why would an adult or parent give me something that isn't healthy when they're like, try this. It's healthy. Or how we're selling something to your kid, when you're like, I don't know if you're going to like this. Well, of course, they don't like it. Imagine if someone presented a dish to you at a restaurant and I was like, I don't think you're going to like this, but here, here you go. Same concept. When I eat fruits and vegetables, I know it's because I have, like, an innate love for them. When I'm driving, I'm always eating raw carrots that probably have dirt on them, or, like, cucumbers. I genuinely love eating them. But when you make your kids snacks after school, or there's something that they know that they're going to have every day at the dinner table, like every night we eat salad first. And like that is something they know they're getting every day. Serve it with some joy like that, and not like an as ever, Meghan Markle sort of way, but like this is what you're going to eat. It's delicious. And teach them how to plant I was in Israel maybe a decade ago with my little cousin, who was like, four at the time, and he didn't speak English, and he took me to show what he had planted, and pulled a carrot out of the ground. And I was like, Oh, see, there's so much where you don't need language, or really any other form of communication than this is the life cycle, like I put a seed in the ground. Now there was sun, I put some water, and that's something that's very universal. So true. It's so true. So there's so many nuggets in there that you touched upon that I think are helpful to think about, especially for parents with kids who are quote, unquote picky eaters. The first is, I love what you said about how we present it to our kids matters, because I think we're probably all a little guilty of this to some degree, where you give your kid a vegetable and you hold your breath and you make a face, and you are shocked if they eat it and swallow it and act like maybe it wasn't so bad for them. You give your kid broccoli and you just assume they're not going to eat it and maybe they actually enjoyed it. But then, on the contrary, you give your kid a cheeseburger or cookies, and you know they're gonna love it. That's like the one all kids like broccoli because it looks like a tiny tree. And when I go to schools to do book events or like, I do an apple tasting activity, every time my second grade teacher, who I'm still in touch with we did an apple tasting event in second grade, so we talked about the texture and the color, and I learned there's like a term for picky eaters today. It's called, like, food neophobia. Food neophobia, okay, that makes Neo means new so phobic of scared of new food. Yeah, that seems to be the thing, but to have those, like small education bits of when you do hold your breath, there's so many different fun experiments you could do with different colors in food. If you roast purple cauliflower, which you can even find at Trader Joe's, and you put lemon juice on it, it turns pink, and that is something really cool that like it's delicious and exciting, or the lot to do with the presentation, though, when you do give your kid broccoli or something new, I think it's so true what you said about presenting the food to your kids with some joy, the Presentation does matter. Also, you're not a short order cook for your child, like you're the adult in the room. You're in charge, and this is what's for dinner. You're not making three separate dinners, and if your kid's going to have a meltdown, that's fine, that's that's what they do. But you can't make your kid yourself nuts trying to please your child for dinner. If you get some routine, like my salad every day that's at dinner, or whatever it is, you always have some vegetables that are cut up and get your kids into a habit. If this is what we do and you're not. Making them a different dinner. It's hard to find the time to cook in the first place, let alone make an additional meal to please your children totally and to please yourself. And like I think for adults, not everything needs to be a meal. For kids, I do think that the breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks in between. And also, if you have younger kids when they come home from school, you can have dinner at 430 and then if they need to eat a little bit something later, fine. But I've seen a lot of friends who they have dinner when they get home, and then if they want a little something later, great. But I, I'm very into the eat dinner when you get home and then you can, like, have a little something more at your 630 time. But Why eat a bunch of pretzels and then eat dinner? Like, two hours later? I don't know who designed the dinner times in the US, but I I think changing it is a great idea. You know, I'm thinking of a couple things in response to that. One, my daughter told me yesterday that she is absolutely the hungriest when she gets home from school, she's not that hungry during lunchtime, she rarely finishes her lunch, but when she comes home, she's ravenous. And so I'm a fan of following your body's natural cues, and so her natural rhythm seems to be when she's really hungry when she comes home. I'm sure that's true for a lot of kids. And then the other thing is, I spent a semester abroad in Spain, and that's how they do it. There. They all have a later lunch that's big, and then dinner is very light. And so what you're saying resonates with me, because we don't have to follow the typical norms. We can follow what our bodies are asking for completely. And when I worked in restaurants, I would eat dinner at like, 430 because service would start at five, 530 and I still do it like, when people are like, do you want to have dinner at 730 I was like, not really, but I like special occasion, yes. But I think you know, if your daughter is the hungriest when she gets home from school, eat dinner. Why don't you get most of your like, nutrition in when you're the hungriest? And that's great. And I think it's really fantastic to eat when you get home, and then if you're hungry or later, you can have a healthy snack. I'm really a fan of intuitive eating, eating when your body tells you that you're hungry, and also, why do you have to go to bed with a really, really full stomach. I don't think it works either as like sounds like we should be having dinner together at four o'clock. I agree, and I'm all for it. So now I would love to ask you about your book. You recently wrote a book called this is what I eat and what inspired you to write a book specifically one to target kids, three to seven, to have them eat healthier. Well, the biggest change you can make in like setting a precedence for eating in children is two to five and getting them to try as many things as possible, which is also why it's a lot easier to change children than adults to change their eating habits. But I was a book kid, my sister and I loved books. We were so into books. And my grandmother, who was a professional artist, used to draw professional drawings of fruits and vegetables. And my sister and I really took it into like we would join her, but I had a deep love for fruits and vegetables and art, but I wanted to do a children's book after working with those kids in schools with Jamie Oliver, and I understood that art and colors and shapes and sizes were things that kids could grasp, and health, as I said earlier, is not a concept that makes sense to anyone, because why would you give them something that isn't healthy, but to get a deep love and curiosity for healthy eating as we know it, as adults, but for fruits and vegetables, things that if they had a nutrition label, There's nothing to put on an orange or an apple, or why would I do that? But my book has a list of all the different fruits and vegetables, from largest to smallest, so from pomelo to to pomegranate seed. And then there's pages that have all of the red vegetables. And, you know, the entire rainbow, and then a page on giving back, because I grew up going to Jewish school, and every Friday we would bring a canned item of food, and they would donate it to a food pantry. And I think that when you have access to food, you also have to think about people that don't have food, and to me, that's that's a blessing that both I can give and food is the one thing that keeps us all alive and going. So I really made the book for other kids who are tactile and arts and crafts kids and. Just, I think it's really important that kids even can do a scavenger hunt at the grocery store, the farmer's market, and we say, let's find something purple today. It's just a different way of looking at things, and I think it really helps with the sales pitch at dinner time of hey, we picked out these three orange things. Let's try them together. Absolutely, I really do think kids respond to games activities. I think it's true that a lot of what it takes for kids to try some fruits and vegetables is merely exposure. So the more and more they see the fruit, the more and more they see the vegetable, they're more likely to try it and eventually feel comfortable with it in their diet. I also realized something, if you take an apple and just give it to a kid, they'll probably not know what to do, but if you slice it and you put it out, they'll eat it. It's just fascinating. If you open an orange and put that out, kids are more likely to eat it. Then if you just hand it to them, and some of it is not difficult. It just takes a little bit of effort. And I think that if you just have some, like vegetables cut up with some dip or piece of cheese or humus, or whatever it is, sort of like your protein and carb, your vegetable carb really helps sustain your your energy levels, which was very helpful to everyone's mental, emotional health of having meltdowns and being tired and getting through the day. That's a really wonderful tip, because I do agree that if I just buy the actual vegetable and put in my refrigerator. The likelihood of my own kids reaching in the refrigerator and eating a bell pepper hole isn't that likely, but if I take the time to cut it up and put it out with some dips, they'll eat it. I just remember being in college, in my architecture studio eating like, orange bell pepper whole, like an apple, and like, multiple people would be like, That's so weird. And I'm like, No, it's so good. It's like, ready to go. Here we are. But most people need it sliced for them. And if you slice and have it out, they're gonna need it, you're the opposite of food neophobic, definitely. I'm more of a vegetable fruit fan girl, and I feel really good. Yeah, it's true. All right. So a big question that I have, and this is also a question for myself. It's very common where both parents work or both parents are really busy, and I find that, in general, most families are stretched thin. Parents are working, they're busy, they're exhausted, and they don't always have time to cook. So do you have any tips to share with parents who think it's too hard and too time consuming with the reality of modern family life, truly being a human being in the world is really not easy for anyone. It truly isn't and if some people can afford a lot of help, and that is wonderful. I do see one of my best friends, and her and her husband work full time, and they have kids, she meal preps on Sundays and makes sets out that time every week, and it is really helpful to her. And I'm always like, so what's for dinner today? Because she works from home and otherwise travels a lot, and she spends that really annoying time meal prepping, and it's sort of like setting out your outfit the night before. If you have to go somewhere early, you don't have to choose your outfit. It's already set and ready, but has a set of things ready to go. And that is really helpful. And even, like the dip snack thing, if you've got bean type dips or make some tuna or some high protein snacks, if you set aside some time to prep, it's really going to help you throughout the week, and also, by Friday, you're going to not like anything that you've prepped. But at least if you have that for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, it's going to help you a lot. These have been fantastic tips, but for a parent like myself, who can often feel short on time, cooking can feel overwhelming. What are some simple ways to start involving kids with cooking? So I think this could be a real start to finish process. So if it's we're going to the store and we're buying these things together and getting home and prepping them. Something I do with my friend's son is we chef Henry and I. He just turned six. We make soup together, and that's something that he really enjoys chopping everything, and loves to do soup, because we can sort of put everything into the soup, or even I made pesto with my other friend's son, because they have a lettuce grow, and had a bunch of basil. And I was like, let's do something with this. So it's a lot of the going to pick something, and then getting home and making some something together. And. Or if you're ever watching a cooking show, then there's like something that looks delicious there to say, hey, let's make that together. I think that just starting really small, but doing things like making pesto together and putting that on pasta, or doing a big soup, but going to the store together and buying everything and then bringing it home is a lot easier than here. Look what I bought. I completely agree that the more you can find ways to involve your kids and whatever facet it may be, whether it's shopping with them at the store, whether it's growing it in your garden, whether it's watching a TV show with you and helping brainstorm on what to make for dinner that night, it becomes more of an activity. And I think it's something that when they have ownership or stock in the process, they're more excited to do it. So I definitely agree with that point. I think the more you can find ways to involve your kids, the more likely they are to be excited about the meal. Bring that joy into the meal, and it becomes something that you all do together. And it's like, very exciting to eat something that you made. Things with soups are very hard to mess up, which is why I love them. If you do, like, a vegetable puree, really hard to mess up, like, what do we have in the fridge? And it's funny that you say that, by the way, you're reminding me what a bad cook I am, I think, because I'm pretty sure I've messed up some vegetable puree soup. So well, I'll have to give it a try. To Text me when something happens. But, you know, I have a sub stack, and I someone was like, wow, you do a lot of soups. And I'm like, Yeah, because they're so easy to do, and there's so much nutrition involved, and there's also so many science projects you can do when you are cooking, like, I regrow avocado pits into little trees, and I have one that I've had for a few years now, and it's growing. And this is something, even if you don't live in a house, if you have a window, you can take your avocado pit and put it in some water and put it in the sun. And same thing with a potato, you can put that in water with some toothpicks, and that grows. And you can put it in soil, or even a scallion, you can put that in water, and that regrows. So there's so many fun things that you can do with cooking to turn into a project that will last a very long time. Something that I'm so impressed with is how you beautifully present food. And I look, I looked at what you made the night that I met you, and I found it really artistic, really beautiful. And seeing that presentation, I do really believe it makes it more tempting and desirable to want to eat the food. Do you have any tips for me or for parents listening on how to improve the presentation of our food, to make it look more appealing for kids. I don't know about like plating for dinner. I'm into the salad thing at the beginning. That always looks beautiful to me. Also, making your own salad dressing at home is a really great thing for kids to learn how to do. I think that is like a failed project, project that they'll really like eating, and that's something really great in terms of, like food styling, I do just think, like cutting things up is really nice to have on a plate. And like, if you do a dip thing or have some like protein, whether that be like cheese or some meat, and cutting up fruits and vegetables, they always look nice. And I'm sort of leading the witness here when I ask this question. But are there any ways that you hear parents talk about food in front of kids that you wish they'd avoid? Yeah, is the most truthful thing you can say to your kid, for I told you this when I met you, that with women, I'm always like your skin regenerates every 30 days from what you eat. So what do you want your skin to look like? And that sort of sits with people and like food is medicine. Yes, there's a line that I use all the time when I have to succinctly say what I want parents to think about, what I want kids to think about. I tell kids, if the food comes from the earth, it's good for you. It's really that simple. And I know that that's also a line that you believe in. It's true if you can pull it from a tree or pick it from the ground, and it comes from the earth, and like we're pulling it from the ground, because it's really the the dirt and the sun and the rain and all of it, that's what keeps you healthy. And along with the nutrition label of things from the earth. It's just an apple, like it doesn't have 40 ingredients. It's real food. I do think kids model after our habits, after our behaviors, and if you can show them genuinely that you really love the taste of whole real foods, they will follow suit. It might not be tomorrow. It might not be next month, but eventually you are their best role models. They will take after you and the like putting something on your plate 30 times that whole thing of like, just multiple exposures, they're gonna try it because that sweet potato has sat on their plate every night without four. Forcing them to eat it, but it's there, and eventually they'll get curious enough to try it. And I do think modeling healthy habits even with words like they're going to see what you do, not what you say. So it's if you're into eating healthy, they're going to be like this, just what we do. Now I will tell you, I'm interested in cooking. I'm interested in trying new recipes with my kids, but the part that holds me back often is the mess. And I don't know if you have any advice about how to clean up or ways to get our kids involved in cleaning up. Do they put their dishes in the dishwasher every day after dinner, or did they just put it in the sink? To be honest, they often put in the sink and then, with some nagging, they'll put it in the dishwasher. I think I also was a kid that just like, put it in the sink, and that was not good, like, it just isn't and they need to start washing their dish off and putting it into the dishwasher, and that needs to be the new habit, yeah. But also, I'm empowering you, to empower them, to say, You know what, we're making some changes here, and stick with it, and that's gonna make them a better adult. And you have to start really young. So with the cleaning up after cooking, I think it's a lot of clean as you go. And when I cook, I have, like, a bowl that sits out where I put all of my scraps. And I always have a little bowl that I like put scraps in. And then when I teach cooking, especially to kids, which they don't like, this rule is that you have to clean up before you eat. I like this Well, I really appreciate this conversation, because I have to tell you that one of my goals for the new year is I want to cook more with my kids. I want to have more family dinners. In my mind, we don't do it enough, and I would like to be better. And when I think about what my personal roadblocks are to cooking more, it's the preparation, it's the fact that I get discouraged if I do spend the time to cook something and they don't eat it, and then it's the cleanup afterwards. Talking to you has really given me some motivation to to work on these goals. Great, and I have tips for all of the things you need for your kitchen as well that can help you and make your life faster and easier. An immersion blender is a great thing to have for making soups, because you don't have to put anything into a blender. You just blend it in the pot. It's a lot of like also investing in tools that are going to last for a really long time. I agree. If there's some products that are that are valuable and worth it and you're going to use them, it's worth the invite. Also, I guess I'm a trader joe's proponent. They have a lot of items there to help people who, like, don't have a lot of time to cook. And like, they have mirepoix, so like, onion, carrot, celery, pre chopped for you that day in a container. That's the start of every soup or stew or whatever it is, and that is there to help you as a parent that has zero time. And, like, other preach, I love Trader Joe's same and, like, I think that's a really great trick, and they have a lot of pre washed vegetables, and they're not expensive, and a lot of them are organic. There's just, like, a lot of tools out there that can help you and make your life faster and easier. And I like realistic tips. For example, going to Trader Joe's, having the mirepoix mix already done for you, I think is a great tip, because you can still cook at home, but take some shortcuts. So I think that's the shortcuts, easy and healthy, like you can do them. I share a lot of recipes on my sub stack, and usually the first thing I say is this is really easy and hard to mess up, because that's what feeding yourself should be. You just need to nourish your body and feed yourself, and that's really important to remember. Those are the words that I want to hear. This is really easy and hard to mess up, if you let a recipe with those words. Those are, those are all my recipes. Even, like a turkey bolognese, and I would often put, like a container of bone broth in it to get even more nutrition in so, like having some of those tips and tricks, but there's just so much that we can do that just take, like, a little bit of time and patience and also freezing things like soups, great. Like if you spend all day cooking, just make a double recipe and freeze it and have it two weeks later. That's a good tip. That's a good reminder. Okay, so I thought it would be fun to end on a lightning round of questions, where I just ask you a few questions and you and just briefly, tell me what comes to your mind. Does that work? Yeah, alright, one food that kids surprisingly love to help make that they love to help make. Kids love a loaf, like a banana loaf or a zucchini loaf. Because I feel like everyone has bananas that are always going bad. I think a loaf is a movie and you don't have to add. Sugar to it, because bananas have so much sugar in them, a healthy shortcut. You fully support the Trader Joe's pre chopped things. Do you believe in tasting as you go? Yes, yes. For the most part, I taste as I go. Is there a food myth that you wish would just go away, that kids don't like vegetables? That's a myth. I love it. It's because someone's like carrots. Yuck. No. You guys do that to yourselves. You people who are serving your kids things with faces be like, Do you want a carrot? This is so sweet, delicious. Kids like vegetables with a smile, let's smile. I think they're so good. Like, how lucky are we? I mean, total myth. Kids like vegetables. You just they just do. I don't know. You've got to listen to the last hour of us chatting. One thing that I noticed is that parents will write off the vegetable if they don't like it. One time. You have to keep trying. Also, maybe you made it wrong, if you, like gave them a raw potato. I wouldn't like that. Either maybe roast it a little different, or cook it in something else. There's a million different ways to cook things. Try it out. One thing you hope kids remember about food when they're adults, do intuitive eating. Don't restrict yourself so much that you binge. Like, if you want to have ice cream, eat it. Maybe don't eat it every day, but like, eat it. I want to have ice cream, I'm eating it and I'm loving it, and I'm savoring it and enjoying it, just everything in moderation, including moderation, as they say, if there's one message that you wish parents could take away from your book, what do you hope it is to eat the rainbow truly, and talk to your kids about where their food comes from. It's really interesting, and then take your kids shopping with you, because if you can get that into your kids mind and that they can understand eating and what keeps them healthy, that's a gift that they carry with them everywhere, just like making their bed, they understand what their body needs, and it's just like part of their daily life and living. And I'm curious, where do you get your inspiration from? Is there a certain cook that you follow, or a certain recipe book that you you know, you get a lot of ideas from people are like, what's your favorite cookbook? And I'm like, I rarely use a cookbook, to be honest. I just go to the farmers market and I see what's in season, and I'm a really basic eater for the most part when I was a private chef, I worked for the Osbornes, most recently for Ozzy and Sharon, and I would make them the most beautiful salads and vegetables. And Ozzy had never, he was never really into eating salads. And I got that man to eat beautiful salads every day, and he would have, like, seconds of them, but mostly I go to the farmer's market. And this week, like Asian pears are in season, and I'm going to make a salad with that and some candied walnuts and some goat cheese and some pomegranate seeds. And I look at all the colors together and the textures. I love things to be very crunchy, but all my inspiration is from the farmers market and what's in season. And like, I know that one farmer, Mike Cerrone, when he shows up with his apricots, that means it's the first day of summer. And when He comes with his apples, to me, that's the first day of fall. I've really, like, turned these farmers into my family members, and I've known them since I was 23 years old, shopping for Jamie Oliver, and they dictate how I eat and what I eat. And it's like, it's very special, like, meet your farmers that will make you want to eat healthy, because they're going to teach you more than any chef or any issue of a food magazine. Ask them how it tastes best, like that's cool. First of all, I love picturing you getting Ozzy Osbourne to eat more to eat more vegetables. That's an amazing story. I also made a lot of ice cream, but that was, like, used to, like, find things on Tiktok and be like, I want you to make this. And I'm like, I love that. But he, I would make him the most beautiful salads. I also made this, like lobster cob as a special treat quite often, and I put beautiful vegetables and everything, and doing salads for like him, or I'd make this like Thai crunch salad, where I would mandolin three different kinds of peppers really thinly. The stuff I made for him made vegetables so great. It was just the best hearing about the love and the passion that you put into cooking. Yeah, it really is inspiring. I would love for listeners to find your work. I mean, you have the most beautiful Instagram page. I find it so inspirational to to want to cook and to want to cook in a healthy way. So just please tell everybody, where can they find more about Elisa Sokolow, follow me on Instagram at Elisa J socolo And then, because my book is called this is what I eat, my sub stack is also called, this is what I eat. And I still sell some of my prints, and I have a line of cards with all the photos of my fruits and vegetables on my website, which is socolo photo com, but everything's on my Instagram page and my website, the sub stack is really, I think, where it's at these days. I put out a lot of recipes that are healthy and hard to mess up, and for the most part, I have some really great vegetable forward dishes and yeah, and you can send me a DM or an email, and I always responded. I want you to cook, so get out there. I feel like after this podcast, I'm going to take the time to meet the farmers at my local farmers market, and I'm going to get myself to make my first loaf. So thank you so much. I'm inspired. I'm hoping to make my goal of making more family dinners, and I'll make sure and keep you apprised as I do it. Please do and your kids are going to start putting their plates in the dishwasher starting today. That's right. I like being empowered in that way. I encouragement, I say, even in like the world and the crazy times where and if I can be in charge of my three feet around me, I can't control anyone else, but I can control my three feet and putting your dishes in the dishwasher, great way to do it. I agree. All right. Thank you. Thank you for all the tips, and I look forward to to continuing to learn from you. Thank you. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of your child is normal. Also, if you could take a moment and leave a five star review, wherever it is, you listen to podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. It really makes a difference to help this podcast grow. You can all.