Episode #79: Bri McKoy is a cookbook author and military wife who has moved seven times in 12 years. She went from burning everything in the kitchen to learning to cook as a way to create community. Have you ever wondered how to make good friends in a new city? Bri has repeatedly accomplished this task with some towns proving harder than others.
Bri's husband, Jeremy, has been deployed four times since they were married. Cooking helped Bri make friends while he was gone. She is now the author of a beautiful and helpful cookbook, The Cook's Book, Recipes for Keeps and Essential Techniques to Master Everyday Cooking. I am so inspired by Bri's story. I think you will be too!
We covered:
FIND BRI MCKOY:
Website, Instagram, YouTube
* All transcripts are available on the main Buzzsprout "Dear Nina" site. Click on any episode and find the transcript tab.
Let's connect over all things friendship!
Episode #79: Bri McKoy is a cookbook author and military wife who has moved seven times in 12 years. She went from burning everything in the kitchen to learning to cook as a way to create community. Have you ever wondered how to make good friends in a new city? Bri has repeatedly accomplished this task with some towns proving harder than others.
Bri's husband, Jeremy, has been deployed four times since they were married. Cooking helped Bri make friends while he was gone. She is now the author of a beautiful and helpful cookbook, The Cook's Book, Recipes for Keeps and Essential Techniques to Master Everyday Cooking. I am so inspired by Bri's story. I think you will be too!
We covered:
FIND BRI MCKOY:
Website, Instagram, YouTube
* All transcripts are available on the main Buzzsprout "Dear Nina" site. Click on any episode and find the transcript tab.
Let's connect over all things friendship!
[00:00:00] Bri: We finally decided that we need to not wait for an invitation. I think that when you are new somewhere, it's easy to assume, people are going to come and introduce themselves. So we were kind of waiting for that, Oh, you're new here. Come have dinner. You're new to the neighborhood. What an arbitrary rule that we have to wait until someone invites us over just because we're new
[00:00:29] Nina: Welcome to Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship. I'm your host, Nina Badzin. I have such a treat for you today. Bri McKoy is a military wife who has moved seven times in 12 years. and went from burning everything in the kitchen to learning to cook, to find friends and create community.
She cooked her way through her first cookbook the first year she was married and wanted to learn really how to cook, not just follow a recipe. Her husband, Jeremy, has been deployed four times since they were married. And cooking helped Bri make friends while he was gone. She is now the author of a beautiful and helpful cookbook, The Cook's Book, Recipes for Keeps and Essential Techniques to Master Everyday Cooking. I am so intrigued by Brie's story. I think you will be too, and I haven't heard that much about it.
I wanted to save it fresh for the listeners so welcome Bri.
[00:01:19] Bri: Hi, Nina. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:22] Nina: And where do you live now? Just so we know.
[00:01:25] Bri: St. Louis.
[00:01:26] Nina: okay. My husband and I met in St. Louis. We have that connection. I went to WashU in St. Louis and he was in grad school there. So when I was a senior, he was in grad school, four years older. And I'm from Chicago, he's from Minnesota, so we're very Midwestern and we have a very special place in our hearts for St. Louis.
[00:01:43] Bri: We've been here for a year, and we have absolutely fallen in love with it.
[00:01:47] Nina: I want to go all the way back. So you get married. When you married Jeremy, did you know that was going to be part of the deal?
[00:01:55] Bri: oh yes. I mean it was actually very much almost a deal breaker because I had grown up in Colorado Springs my whole life. I had traveled and lived in different places for small periods of time, but none of this getting up every few years and relearning a whole new city. And so we actually almost didn't get married because that was a really big deal to me. It took a lot for me to get over that hurdle of, I really love this man and this is just part of his life.
[00:02:21] Nina: I understand that because I grew up and went to the same school system, K through 12. My mom still lives in the house where I grew up, where my father grew up, his parents built that house. And now I've been in Minnesota for the past 23 years. So I really, except for that brief time in St. Louis, I’ve lived such a different life than you have. So that's why when I heard about your story, I was like, we have to talk because I think people who live like I live have sort of um, maybe not everyone, but I sometimes have a fantasy of, what would that be like to have the chance to, okay, you know what, I don't like how I did things in this town. I'm going to do it a little differently.
[00:02:58] Bri: That's so funny because I will fantasize about what is it like to have the same neighbor? To watch your kids grow up together, to like, see a city change.
[00:03:05] Nina: I'll bet. Okay, so you got married. It was almost a deal breaker, but you loved Jeremy so much. Where were you living at that time when you got married?
[00:03:12] Bri: So, I was living in Colorado and Jeremy was already in Florida. Our whole relationship was long distance because he was already stationed in Florida. He grew up in Colorado and so that's where our connection was. He was visiting family in town and we ended up meeting and hit it off, but he was already living in Florida. We literally got married, went on the honeymoon, and then I moved to Florida right away.
[00:03:33] Nina: What part of Florida?
[00:03:34] Bri: We were in Fort Walton Beach, Destin area, so the panhandle.
[00:03:38] Nina: so tell me about that first town and like how you went about making friends
[00:03:43] Bri: Well the first one was a little bit nice because Jeremy had lived there for about a year. So he was plugged in, he had some friends. I kind of felt like I had instant community through that. That was really lovely. Although I will say, it was a transition to go from feeling like they were my friends also.
I felt very much like, these are Jeremy's friends. I would come to the party and be like, oh, it's Jeremy's wife. We really wanted to create additional community where it felt like, these are our friends. We got plugged into a local church and we started a community group right away. That was wonderful.
And then we also started having single airmen over for dinner and I would cook but I couldn't cook so I would make burnt meals. But they were like, this is a home cooked meal. It's not Taco Bell and I was like, it's also burnt chicken, but I don't know.
[00:04:35] Nina: Bri we have this in common because I've also become, not an amazing cook, but a cook and I didn't cook anything when we were first married. I was 23 when we were first married and we're Jewish and we make Shabbat dinners on Fridays. It's not like Bryan was like, now, you're going to start making dinner.
It wasn't like that, but I wanted to invite his family over and the first time I actually made a meal myself, I served not burnt chicken, maybe worse. I served raw chicken. Cause, cause like, you know, like the big chicken breasts, they cook a lot longer, which you don't know really now at this point in your life, you probably have such a better sense without barely need a timer.
I just like, no. Oh, the chicken's probably done. Or, Oh, I should pull the legs just know like that chicken breast is definitely not cooked enough, but it only needs four more minutes without. Temperatures without anything. I just know but back then it looked cooked, but it
[00:05:24] Bri: my gosh. I called my chicken dry but you won't die, a Bri specialty, because I was so nervous that I was going to serve raw chicken that I was like, yeah, you're going to be chewing on a piece of chicken for 20 minutes, but I promise you're walking out of this house not sick.
[00:05:38] Nina: There will be no salmonella on breeze watch. Because yeah, they look they cut into it. It was his grandmother. I remember like it was yesterday. It was 23 years ago. Okay, so you had these single men. Actually, I was thinking about your age when you first moved. To Destin because I'm sure you were young
[00:05:53] Bri: I was 26 when I got married and there were plenty of single people around us so that actually was great because we kind of became home base for a lot of them. They come over for a home cooked meal, come over for the holidays. what I really fell in love with was the community happening at the table. That's what I fell in love with. And so because of that, I was like, maybe I should learn to cook.
[00:06:16] Nina: you were gonna have the community either way. You may as well have a little pride in the meal that they were eating, right?
[00:06:22] Bri: Maybe we can enjoy food.
[00:06:23] Nina: it is a usefulness that way. But I like your point that and it's a good message for people that whether the foods, Quote unquote good or not people are just so grateful for an invitation. Don't you think?
[00:06:33] Bri: They are. They're so grateful. And I think back to some of my favorite memories around a table where someone had me over to their home and very rarely can I recall exactly what we were eating, but I can always recall how they made me feel. I felt welcomed or I felt enjoyed or I felt listened to. That's what I remember.
[00:06:51] Nina: That's such a good point. Okay, so you're in Destin, you're inviting the single guys sometimes, you're learning to cook. Did you find it was a challenge? This is my assumption, so you'll tell me if I'm wrong, so I'm going to just say that differently. I am making an assumption that it's, it was hard to make friends because People knew you would be leaving.
[00:07:07] Bri: Oh, I still feel that way.
[00:07:09] Nina: When I moved to Minneapolis, it was a little hard just because I was new, but I knew we weren't leaving. It's a different kind of patience you can give yourself because you're like, I'm here, I'm hunkering down. So people just get used to me. I'm here. Did you know how long you'd be or do you not know when your next deployment's going to be?
[00:07:25] Bri: We generally know it's about three years. And it's so funny because we'll have new friends over like in St. Louis. We had new friends over. someone had asked , Oh, how long are you here for? Jeremy's like three years. I'm like, or longer. We don't know. The military is crazy.
I'm like, don't tell them that. Because I feel like I would kind of say, you know, Oh, they're only going to be here for three years. Do we need to really invest in them? Which is probably bad on my part,
[00:07:47] Nina: It's natural.
[00:07:49] Bri: Where you're like, okay, how much energy, time, emotion do I have to invest in this relationship? There's one really hard place we lived, but every place else, the people have been like, oh that sucks, okay let's capitalize on the time we have.
[00:08:02] Nina: Yeah, I guess unless you only want to be friends with other military people and which has nothing wrong with that, but I would think it would be kind of limiting if you are only friends with people like right.
In your same exact community. If you want to join a church or something else, and meet people outside, yeah, I could totally see being sheepish about the three year thing, especially then another year goes by and another year and now you meet someone new and now it's only one year
[00:08:24] Bri: Exactly. Florida was the only place we lived where we were as close to military community as we were. Because there were those single airmen coming over, we were closer to the base and it was just understood, we're all gonna leave.
But everywhere else that we went, especially when we lived in California, I remember that community of friends who had all lived there for a decade, and we kind of squirreled our way in. They were like, what do you mean you move every three years? It was such a hard concept, because they were like, we don't know anyone who moves every three years. In fact, if someone moves here, they don't leave again, because they fall in love with it.
[00:08:57] Nina: Which town was this?
[00:08:58] Bri: This was Hermosa Beach, so it was right outside of Los Angeles.
[00:09:01] Nina: Oh, you really went far. Was that right after Destin?
[00:09:04] Bri: After was South Carolina. That one was the hardest place to make friends. We ended up living in a town where everyone grew up there and had always lived there. I think they had created such a tight knit community . They were very friendly to us.
The people that we were meeting, so friendly. But we were always like, are they having dinners without us? Are they, hanging out without us? But what's interesting it was the last year that we lived there. Once they invited us in, it was like we finally got in and now we're like family. I've never seen anyone more sad when we left than our community in South Carolina.
[00:09:38] Nina: We're going to pick this apart. I get a lot of letters from people. I've been writing about friendship for almost 10 years. Because I live in Minneapolis and have been here the whole time, definitely there's like a local, I mean, I get letters from everywhere, but definitely people know about it more from Minnesota because that's just how it is.
And Minneapolis is known as, there's a thing called Minnesota Nice, and it's exactly what you're subscribing. I actually defend Minnesota a lot because what you're describing, I want to be like, see, it's not just here. I think some places are easier than others, but Minneapolis isn't some especially worse place.
What you just described is exactly the same thing where a lot of people are from here or they come back here, they marry each other or whatever. So they've been here. And in fairness. People only have so much time in their lives. So even though I was once new here, now I've been here 23 years, do I have, a ton of free time for every new person?
I don't. And so I have a little bit more sympathy, I think, for people in towns like this, where they do have their cup full already. And it would be nice if they'd make more time, but I sort of get how they get in that position. But for someone in your position, they still need to find a way.
To make friends and make community. in a place that's hard like South Carolina or like not the whole state But where you were what were some of the things that you were able to do to finally break in?
[00:10:55] Bri: We finally decided that we need to not wait for an invitation. I think that when you are new somewhere, it's easy to assume people are going to come and introduce themselves. So we were kind of waiting for that, Oh, you're new here. Come have dinner. You're new to the neighborhood. What an arbitrary rule that we have to wait until someone invites us over just because we're new. And so that was the biggest lesson we learned in South Carolina was we can go first.
You know what? Maybe you haven't invited us to your house for dinner, we're going to invite you to our house.
[00:11:29] Nina: Yes, Bri. I'm clapping but not to actually clap because it's annoying on the microphone You know as I know that as a podcaster, but I'm really cheering. I had an episode not that long ago The title was something like be your own social director. I believe that so strongly. So strongly. You're going to wait forever and ever. You're just going to wait.
[00:11:48] Bri: It's so true and it goes back to something that I have now have great sympathy and compassion for are like, people are busy. They already have a life , that is warp speed happening when you have lived somewhere for a really long time. You have your rituals, you have the places you go, you have your play dates, you have all of those things.
Whereas Jeremy and I, when we come into a place, we literally are like no plans on the weekends, Why don't we insert ourself into their life that is already happening?
[00:12:15] Nina: And not everyone will say yes, but you don't need everyone to say yes. That's what I want people to get is you issue the invitations and okay, some people are going to kind of kick the can down the road and blow you off. And some people are going to say yes, because even if they've lived in that town a long time, maybe they're kind of don't feel a sense of belonging with the people around them. Maybe they're just kind of fed up with certain things. , or it's not even not getting along, but they get tired of each other. And you're a fresh face , with the desire to have people over, you serve meals.
[00:12:46] Bri: that helps a lot.
[00:12:48] Nina: After South Carolina, where did you go?
[00:12:50] Bri: Then we went to California that was really fun. It was so serendipitous because we ended up living in this duplex. It shared a laundry room. And so right after we moved in, I went into the laundry room to do laundry and our neighbor that lived below us, she was in there. And obviously, well, you would hope that you become good friends with the people that you share such close quarters with.
I instantly liked her and we instantly liked her husband, but they had such a strong community and immediately moved us into their community. They brought us with them everywhere they went, and to the point where within four months of being there, we were being invited to people's weddings, we were being invited on vacations with them. That was my favorite because you can't really recreate that.
[00:13:33] Nina: You've really experienced both extremes of, being. Really lucky to be welcomed in like that. That's incredible that I have seen that Minneapolis. It did not happen to us when we moved here. I, it was a little bit more like your South Carolina one where I, maybe not quite as hard, but definitely I had to do a lot of the planning and the inviting, and I just.
Got comfortable with that. If you can be comfortable with the fact that you're not gonna be keeping track, you're probably gonna have to be the one that initiates more often then you can really build a life, but the other extreme how wonderful they have somebody be so Inviting and inclusive of you so you could like relax for a second.
[00:14:09] Bri: It was so nice. That was also the community that they were like, what do you mean you're leaving? We don't leave. I was like, Jeremy, you got to get out of the military today. And so I just never wanted to talk about it. Everyday operations are going to move forward. We're just friends doing life together. Yes. Yes.
[00:14:25] Nina: Now with Jeremy, I'm sorry to skip over that this point I should have brought it up earlier I assumed Jeremy was gone sometimes for long periods of time.
[00:14:32] Bri: and actually, that is so hard. He was gone the most in California. So that was extra special that the community was basically built in. It would have been so hard if he was gone as much as he was, and I didn't know anyone. it was nice but then everybody, people are like, are you really married?Is there really a Jeremy?
[00:14:50] Nina: Okay. I'm just following you on your journey here. So California. What was next?
[00:14:54] Bri: DC. All the way back.
[00:14:57] Nina: I have assumptions about DC that it would be easier because it's more transient, but you tell me
[00:15:01] Bri: you would actually think that, but a lot of people had told me, oh, it's really hard to make friends in DC. And I was like, what are you talking about? It's a very transient place. two things happened while we were in DC that have skewed my view of what it's like the first was the pandemic.
[00:15:16] Nina: well, yeah, that that's a bummer I didn't realize that was the timing. That's
[00:15:19] Bri: Yes, it was terrible. The pandemic happened four months after we moved there and DC they really did fully shut down everything and, that was hard. But then when things did start to open up and we started to meet people and make friends, the reason it's hard in DC to make friends is because a lot of people, and this was our experience.
Care a lot about their work, you know, a lot of people work on Capitol Hill or whatever they're whatever they're doing And so anytime we would hang out it was all people want to talk about his work
[00:15:49] Nina: It's a really good point. Yeah
[00:15:50] Bri: was so hard. Me doing social media or writing a cookbook, they're like next. And it's a very connections driven. Who do you know? Do you know someone that I wanna know? You don't. You can't offer me anything. so thankfully we did find a handful of friendships that were just gems and we kind of had a rule, like no talking about work when we hang out. I was like, do you, do you want to talk about like a TV show you watch and they're like, no, the stock exchange. And I'm like, okay,
[00:16:12] Nina: I love a TV talk and it's like such low hanging fruit and if you can't talk about TV, it's like, now we've got issues. So it was Destin, I'm going to say, I'm keeping track, well, Florida, South Carolina, California, DC. So we have three more places. I know we land in St. Louis. So, but what's in between? So now what's after DC?
[00:16:30] Bri: we do land in St. Louis, but we moved in. Um, we moved in Florida three times.
[00:16:35] Nina: Oh my goodness.
[00:16:37] Bri: actually, this is really great because it changed how we move. So Jeremy was living with a bunch of guys before we got married and then he just got an apartment for us and I move in. it was a really dangerous part of town and he was gone a lot in Florida also.And so I didn't feel super safe. we moved to another part of town that also was, on the wrong side of town, as in, , location wise. Now we're, like, driving forever to get to the places we want to go to. So, finally, we moved a third time to a place that was where our friends were living, close to base, and everything like that. So three houses in Florida in three years and we were like, that was so dumb.
[00:17:17] Nina: Yeah, don't do that.
[00:17:18] Bri: That was so dumb. And the military only moves you once. So once they move you, we had to pay for the move the second two times. And we're like, that's dumb. How do we figure out where we want to live? Every state that we've lived in, we've been unfamiliar with and most states, especially California, DC, and we even found in St. Louis, they have so many little towns that have their very own vibe.
How do you just move and know this is the location I'm going to want to hang out. So what we do when we move now is we take a month, the military will hold your stuff in storage. So we move to the place with just our suitcases. we book an Airbnb one week out of the month in a different location.
[00:17:58] Nina: This is brilliant. Such good advice.
[00:18:01] Bri: It was especially helpful in California because Los Angeles, you know you have Hollywood, we stayed in Hollywood for a week and we were like nope. And so busy.
It was so loud. It was so crowded. This is too far from the base. This is too far from the locations we know we'll probably frequent. Or maybe not our vibe. And that's how we ended up in Hermosa. Which I don't think we would have. I think we would have just gone to Hollywood or everybody lives in L. A. we did that in St. Louis. Because St. Louis has all these little pockets of neighborhoods.
[00:18:26] Nina: Would you do that again? Would you do the Airbnb plan?
[00:18:29] Bri: Oh yeah, we did the same thing in DC. Again, DC, so many different pockets. And we just thought we're for sure gonna end up in this part of DC and then we stayed there for a week and the commute was awful or it was too crowded or whatever it was.
And so we finally landed on, Alexandria, Virginia, DC was a five minute drive, but you weren't in the chaos of the city.
[00:18:49] Nina: Do other people do that? Have other people learn from you to do that? Or did you get that from someone else?
[00:18:54] Bri: we have never heard of anyone who's done it. , we just kind of came up with it on our own, but now we have told a bunch of different military families, especially cause You have to pick your place real fast.
[00:19:03] Nina: one other question about moving and then I want to go on to the cooking because that's like such a unique part of your story and excuse my ignorance on this. Does Jeremy, is he ever presented with options like, okay, it's time for the next place you have these two choices, or is it , this is where you're going?
[00:19:16] Bri: Oh, this is a great question. So basically what happens is when it's time for him to be re stationed, maybe a year out, he logs into a system that's based on your rank, based on your job, and based on where you've been, and kind of where you're going in your career, here are all of the places you could be stationed.
And then he can rank them. So then he goes in and he ranks them. DC was the highest on his list from the last move. . Most likely you'll get placed in one of your top five. So you don't know, a hundred percent, but you kind of have an idea.
[00:19:47] Nina: And then what about Colorado? , I assume you guys have family there?
[00:19:51] Bri: Yes, we both have family there and Colorado has not been an option for his job track. It was just kind of crazy. Cause there's a lot of bases there.
[00:19:58] Nina: There's one more friend question. You have an online presence, like a big online presence, and so how did that get started and has that helped fill in the holes a little bit?
[00:20:07] Bri: Yes, that will bring us to St. Louis. I started my food blog when I was learning to cook. I was like, I'm going to start a food blog because that's what everyone was doing in 2010.
[00:20:16] Nina: started my blog in 2010 as well.
[00:20:18] Bri: Yep. It's like you start a blog. I was actually working for a nonprofit full time. I was being connected to other bloggers because the area that I worked in was influencing marketing.
So I was actively reaching out to influencers to connect them to the nonprofit, and through that work, I also just got to meet these amazing bloggers and writers, then was eventually approached by an agent that was like, Hey, you also have a food blog. I wrote my first book, Come and Eat, and then really started to hone in on Instagram. That was when Instagram stories kind of rolled out
[00:20:54] Nina: And you were like an early adopter probably.
[00:20:57] Bri: Yeah, cuz I was like, oh food. Yes. This is so good to show people on video how to do food. The space just kind of grew from there and then what was nice is when I moved to St. Louis, I always share my journey of where I'm moving to and I had a handful of people reach out to me and say like Hey, um, I'd love to meet up for coffee. You know, I listened to too many crime podcasts is the issue and I was like, I don't know. Do I trust the image behind the profile? But then I was like, this is ridiculous. I need friends.
[00:21:29] Nina: Oh my gosh, I have a lot of thoughts about this. That is a good thing, but it's so different from your original move to Florida where everything was truly organic and same with even South Carolina. By the time you get to St. Louis now, internet's so much bigger. , now I'm being a historian of the internet at, you know, social media is so much bigger.
Your follower count is so much bigger. Then you're in a different position of, I am sure, and now I'm putting words in your mouth, not wanting to hurt feelings. And now you're going for a million coffees and it starts to be a blurry line between friendship and fanship.
[00:22:02] Bri: Yep, it happened when we were in DC and I was not comfortable at that point. And so I just told people, and I really meant this. I had too many people reach out and I just said, Hey, I can't say yes to everybody. So I think what I'm going to do is do a meetup. And I did a meetup. I was like, let's do a meetup. So then it felt like I wasn't saying no, but I also wasn't doing one off coffee dates with every single person that reached out.
[00:22:25] Nina: It's kind of like what I was saying earlier about, you know, being new in a town versus for me at this point, 23 years later, you can't spend every day, on coffee. I love this meetup idea. So you're a good problem solver. And it also provides community maybe for people with each other.
[00:22:40] Bri: Yes, especially my DC meetup, there were actually two, events in DC and there are people there that like became friends and now they meet. It's so great. So I really liked that option, but I think when we got to St. Louis, what happened is I was desperate because we were coming out of a pandemic and we had so few friends in DC.
The friends we had were amazing, but we had so few. I think when I got to St. Louis and someone reached out and was like, do you want to get coffee? I was like, yes, I do. I got coffee with her and it turned out she didn't know this and we didn't know until we had coffee that they live in our neighborhood.
[00:23:13] Nina: Oh, that's so convenient.
[00:23:14] Bri: And so the second person that reached out, I was like, yes.
[00:23:17] Nina: And did that work out?
[00:23:18] Bri: yeah, she lives in the neighborhood, right next to ours. And we've hung out with them a ton.
[00:23:23] Nina: Did they know each other?
[00:23:24] Bri: They don't. But what's really funny is they know the other people that we've hung out with.
[00:23:29] Nina: I bet you become someone who introduces people to each other. Because you have people over.
[00:23:33] Bri: Yes, there were two friends that I was like, I can't believe you all don't know each other. You all kind of run adjacently in the same circles, and so we're having a dinner to introduce them together.
[00:23:43] Nina: Oh, that's great. Okay. So cooking, cause I want us to get to that before we are done. So you definitely got from burning the chicken, overcooking the chicken so it wouldn't be raw to really being comfortable in the kitchen. And I just want to hear about that a little bit.
[00:23:56] Bri: so I set out to learn to cook mostly because, like I said, I love having people over, I loved what was happening at the table. I cooked my way through a cookbook the first year, it went okay, but I really felt like it was hit or miss. a recipe would turn out really great or a recipe would totally fail.
And this is also, you know, at this point I have now started my food blog and it was kind of the same, sometimes a recipe really takes off and it's delicious and sometimes I'm still burning chicken. It had occurred to me that maybe I had become a really good recipe reader, but not a good home cook where I could see the chicken is burning. And what do you do? Before I was like, the chicken is burning, but the recipe says two more minutes.
So then I kind of pivoted from just cooking from cookbooks, cooking from blogs, and I was like, I really want to understand what does it mean to sear a chicken? What does it mean to properly chop an onion? What's a dice versus a slice? I would watch videos, I would take online classes, I got to this point where I really felt like I had confidence in the kitchen, which I think is different than perfection.
I don't think you can teach perfection. I'm going to burn another chicken, But with confidence, you know how to pivot. I can see the chicken is burning and I know that I just need to take it off the heat and reassess. I over salted the butternut squash. I just need to add it to a blender and make a soup at this point.
[00:25:13] Nina: I have over salted many a tray of roasted vegetables. I mean, still even currently, but I had never thought to make a soup. See, this was so educational already.
[00:25:21] Bri: Well, I wrote my book come and eat and that didn't focus on cooking as much. I was trying to nail in the point of it doesn't matter what you're serving. It matters that you're bringing people to your table. It's a great way to make community and things like that. after that book came out. So, a bunch of people were like, great book, great book, but how do you cook?
And I was like, oh, I'm not a teacher. but then again, that's when Instagram stories rolled out and I was like, maybe I'll just turn on the camera and see if I can teach someone how to cook.
[00:25:47] Nina: And your book really does do a nice job of that. I encourage people to get it, especially it'd be a great gift because it does explain a lot of things. There is a science to it. I cooking is. I’ve figured it out myself, not probably to the level you have at all, but if cooking's a ladder, I'm on a rung on that where I do have a better sense now of confidence and the art and the science of it. There's both.
All right, Bree. I'm going to force myself to wrap us up to ask, what are you working on next? And which I know by the way, a lot of what you're doing is you just had this book out and you probably hate that question, but you're so full of energy and life. I'm curious, like, what is the next project on your plate?
[00:26:24] Bri: Thank you so much. That's so kind. I actually am in the midst of launching a YouTube channel. When my first book came out, I was like, Instagram stories and this cookbook came out and I'm like, food is so visual. There was an idea of starting a podcast just like, people need to see it.
[00:26:38] Nina: YouTube's the right thing for you for sure. I totally get what you're saying. Cause I've now forced myself to, yammer on TikTok. And so I have four kids. Two of them are teenage girls. just being in a new medium now, I just think you'll get a kick out of this. One of them, my 16 year old, comes into my bathroom, opens my makeup drawer, and says, Oh my God, mom, you have been influenced and she's right. I said, you're right, Rebecca. I've been on TikTok for six weeks and I own more makeup than I've had in my whole life.
You can't just get on a platform and make content. If you're going to do it well, you have to learn how a user uses it. So I'm just scrolling and . Looking at things and I'm like I could do I my eyeshadow that way or I could so I'm a monster I am so influenced. I need to get onto the cooking one
[00:27:25] Bri: I've been on makeup tok. I need that eyeshadow. I need that moisturizer. Yep.
[00:27:30] Nina: Okay. Well, Bri, I will have all the ways people can find you in my show notes. And I find that that's the best way to do it, but it's Bri McCoy Go find her new book. It's the cook's book and I just wish you the best of luck in St. Louis. one of my happy towns.
[00:27:46] Bri: Thank you, Nina. This was fun.
[00:27:47] Nina: Thank you so much for being here and listeners I say this every week. I mean it very deeply when our friendships are going well, we are happier all around and to just further Bri's point and my point, if you're feeling that loneliness, you make the invitations, and don't wait, and that will help. It's still hard, but that will help. Have a great week!
Bye!