Parenting
Iris on parenting · June 16th
storyflo · parenting
Jun 16, 2026 · 2 min listen
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Iris on parenting · June 16th
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I’ve been creating and testing recipes for years. At this point, I’ve tested thousands of recipes! Through trial and error, I have learned the secrets to creating the best tasting plant-based recipes without having to use meat or dairy. If you don’t know much about my background, I started my career as a holistic health coach and nutritionist helping women lose weight, feel good in their skin, improve their health, and so on. I started sharing recipes on social media to simply help my clients with meal ideas! Fast forward years later, I’m now the founder of HealthyGirl Kitchen and have 12+ million followers across social platforms (crazy!!!). Over the last few years, I have written two NYT-Best Selling cookbooks, HealthyGirl Kitchen and Life Changing Salads. Many of the recipes in my books have been tested 4, 5, or more times. A LOT of love and time went into them! Beyond that, my further credentials are that I am a toddler mom to a 3-year-old and have been cooking and eating a plant-based diet for over a decade! As soon as I made the transition all those years ago (at age 18) to a healthier lifestyle, I knew I wanted to help others do the same. As a food blogger, one of the scariest trends we are seeing right now in the digital age of AI is the way consumers are relying more and more on AI-bots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude for recipes. Users are asking AIs to generate recipes for them, but also to answer basic recipe questions, come up with recipe ideas, and the like. I feel really passionate about raising awareness and warning users about the dangers of using AI for recipe development. No one wants to spend precious time and money on a recipe just for it to fail! 9 times out of 10 a recipe that comes from an AI is going to be a fail. Here’s why. It is impossible to program tastebuds, real life experience, and learned hand-skill into an AI platform! Food bloggers, on the other hand, have devoted their whole lives and careers to developing beautiful recipes from scratch that are tested, tasted, and loved by many. AI platforms might be using recipes from multiple food blogs, combining them, and calling it a “recipe” but that “recipe” has never been made before. Following a “recipe” from ChatGPT is essentially winging it! So, the problem is, while the recipes you get from Chat might feel convenient and customized to your needs, they’re made up and AIs have no way of knowing if the recipe will actually work. Instead of relying on AI to do something that’s actually already been created for you, with HUMAN TASTEBUDS in mind… look to your favorite food blogs for recipes and cooking resources. There are thousands of incredible blogs out there with recipes for everything you can think of. I suggest finding a few go-to blogs you love and can come back to again and again for recipe ideas, questions, etc. And don’t forget, there are real people behind those websites that are happy to help. Have a question about a recipe? Leave a comment or email us! We are ALWAYS more than happy to help answer your questions about a recipe, think through some meal ideas for you and your family, or anything of the like. Food bloggers rely on their blogs (and cookbooks!) as a primary source of income. Without traffic to their sites, they’re unable to make a living. More specifically, 42% of food bloggers make money solely from traffic to their blogs from ads. Talk to any food blogger in today’s current environment and they’ll almost certainly tell you they’ve felt a steep drop in traffic with the rise of AI. This is another harsh reality of AI replacing jobs. It would be especially painful to see AI take away jobs in such a creative space. Artificial intelligence bots will NEVER be able to reproduce the type of content that food bloggers devote their lives to testing, tasting, styling, photographing, etc. It is critical to support your favorite bloggers & recipe developers! In return, you can feel good about knowing the recipes you make have been professionally tested and vetted! In light of all of the recipe & food blog chat, I thought I’d share the Top 10 Recipes for June this month at HealthyGirl Kitchen that our community is LOVING. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Loved a recipe??? Don’t forget to leave us a 5-star review on the blog! Your support means everything—thank you so much!
I survived our first tradeshow of the season and my kids are out of school! We spent the morning at the beach to celebrate! I hope you guys are wrapping up school and activities and ready to chill too. Our garden just gave us our first batch of tomatoes last weekend and I’m SO excited for summer tomato recipes. So excited that I made a cute little round-up of Tomato Girl Summer ideas!! Gingham Dress / Striped Tote / Gingham Polo / Gingham Napkins / Tomato Rug / TKEES Red Flip Flops / Tomato Candle / Gingham Tote / Tomato Puzzle / Sunnies / Gingham Suit / Obsessed with this recipe round-up for summer: Scoopable Salads for summer & what to scoop them with!! (think cowboy caviar + chips but lots of options!) via Similar but this looks delish from NYT Cooking: Fresh Corn & Black Bean Salad with Corn Chips Did I already share this? Quinoa Salad with turmeric quinoa - genius hack and I think I’ll make all my quinoa with turmeric from now on! And also this balela recipe I’ll probably live on all summer! via One-Pot Summer Squash Pasta with Lemony Ricotta - we have sooo much zucchini in our garden still! I just got a Hatch alarm clock and I’m so excited to set it up! This Clare V x Left on Friday Pool Float Key Fob is adorable I just got this tumbling mat and wasn’t sure if my kids were too old for it but they LOVED it and immediately started boxing on it. I think it would be fun for movie nights too! Also got this cute, comfy bath mat from House of Noa for our bathroom.
Starting high school is not easy. And if you're the parent watching it happen, it's not exactly easy on your end, either. You want to say the right things, but you're not always sure what those things are. So much has changed since we were all fifteen: the phones, the apps, the social dynamics, and it's easy to feel like our daughters might tune us out before we even finish a sentence. But here's the thing: some nuggets of truth have not changed. No matter what year it is or what social media platform she's on (the kids are still “snapping,” apparently), there are things that have always been true for girls navigating the world, and they always will be. A viral video making the rounds right now, posted by @meshmom45, puts five of these truths into words. Here's what every girl should know before she starts high school. "If a guy has his choice of girls his own age and keeps pursuing younger ones, ask yourself why," the OP says. “The right person won't rush you, won't pressure you, and won't ask you to grow up faster than you're ready to. Trust the adults who love you," she adds. "They've seen things you haven't yet." The OP breaks it down clearly: "The girl who says you're being dramatic. The boyfriend who gets angry when you say ‘no.’ The friend who keeps pushing after you've already answered. People who care about you respect your limits. People who don't will keep challenging them. Know the difference.” "Anything you send can be saved, shared, forwarded, screen recorded," the OP warns. “Before you post or send something, ask yourself: would I be okay if everyone at school saw this? Because one day they might." “Go places with people you trust. Keep your phone charged. Watch your drink. Listen to your gut. "If something feels weird, leave," the OP says. "You do not owe anyone an explanation. 'I'm heading out' is a complete sentence." The OP recommends that families have one simple “code word” that means a whole lot more. “A word that means ‘Come get me’ — no questions, no lecture, no punishment. Just help. Most teenagers don't get stuck in bad situations because they don't know better," the OP explains. "They get stuck because they're scared to ask for help. Take that fear away before you ever need it." As parents, we don't have to have all the answers, but we can do our part to give nuggets of advice to help our kids head off on the right path. Whether it's setting up a code word at dinner tonight or sending this video to your daughter with a simple “hey, watched this and thought of you,” that's enough.
Back in 2016, I wrote a post titled Odd Food Jobs: How to Make Money Beyond Your Blog While Still Doing What You Love. It was originally published on my recipe site, Feed Me Phoebe, and you can still read it here. It was a reaction, in part, to questions I was getting at the time about whether someone could actually make it as a blogger, which was in many ways, a generational follow-up to a piece Amanda Hesser wrote back in 2012 with her advice to aspiring food writers. The takeaway from both: you better be willing to take on a lot of odd jobs to make it work. Flash forward to 2026, and here we all are gathered on Substack, where the question has morphed into: can anyone just starting out on this platform scale enough to make real money? Now that I’ve been writing Munch Menus for over a year, I feel prepared to weigh in on the reality of starting a Substack when the landscape is already oversaturated (similar to how blogging was in 2016), in an economy where people are struggling to pay for groceries and may not have the extra $7/month to support a writer they benefit from and admire. But I think it’s also interesting to take a look back and see how my “mix of business” or assortment of odd jobs has changed in the last 10 years as a blogger, food writer, author of multiple books and now, this newsletter. I’ve paywalled the majority of this post since it contains real numbers, and because, as you will learn, it is really hard to make enough money to justify the time I spend creating useful content here. For some background, I’ve been a freelance writer and content creator since the dino-era of blogging back in 2008. When I took the leap and quit my day job in 2009, I did so in classic 22-year-old fashion: quickly and recklessly. With plenty of guts and optimism, and zero game plan for how I was going to cobble together an income. After only nine months of blogging, I had a cookbook deal that gave me a (very) small cash infusion. But more importantly, it gave me the confidence that I could find a way to get more. And I did so by taking on pretty much any food-related job that involved buttercream and not my naked body. Making ends meet involved some unconventional and certainly unglamorous sacrifices. There was a 6-month period when I actually sublet my bedroom every weekend to help cover my rent. (A story for another time). But all in all, I’ve been making it work now for 18+ years as a full-time self-employed Jill of many trades. My menu of freelance hustle has included: private cheffing, teaching cooking classes, freelance recipe development and testing, cookbook writing, freelance writing, photography, sponsored content on social, food styling and photography, retreats, online courses, and talent fees for on-air or event appearances. Most traditional bloggers, like myself, were still making a living from their websites. My blog income was divided evenly between advertising and sponsored recipe content. Affiliate links weren’t much of a thing yet! At the time, social media was still a tool for driving traffic to your main website and not a money maker in and of itself. One of the biggest ways my income has shifted over the course of 10 years reflects how brands stopped paying for blog content and started doubling down on Instagram. We are now seeing the pendulum swing back, but instead of traditional blogs, Substack is where brands want to be seen. What I wrote in 2016: A series of algorithm changes from the biggest traffic drivers—I’m looking at you Google and Pinterest—crippled my traffic. I was down 40 percent in April, a nosedive that I’m just beginning to claw my way out of. These changes are even more worrisome for people who rely only on their blog to pay the bills. To offset the uncertainty of blogging, in 2016, I taught cooking classes in people’s homes. I taught a food blogging course at a now defunct culinary school in NYC. I developed dozens of recipes for Food & Wine’s website. I was on-camera talent for a series on AOL’s site. I did a private cheffing one-off job for a celebrity client that required cooking over 5 pounds of meat for one day’s worth of meals. His name rhymes with Shayne Pohnson. And then I got my first advance payment for my (second) book The Wellness Project, which I spent the previous year writing.
Like many of you, I watched Kier Starmer on the news yesterday morning, proudly announcing that the UK would ban social media access for under 16s. The Government are planning to fully enforce the legislation by Spring 2027, banning access to user-to-user platforms including Facebook, X, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube (though not YouTube Kids). Communication apps like WhatsApp and Signal are not included in the ban. For under 16 gamers, restrictions will also apply to livestreaming, Discord and Twitch. Starmer’s announcement was met with much celebration and claims of “giving children back their childhood”. I watched news reports where parents were excited about their children playing out on bikes, getting involved in crafts and having the sort of childhood they themselves had. It sounds idyllic doesn’t it? The problem is, I don’t think this rose-tinted view is going to happen. I have many reservations about the new legislation, including: Putting some children at more risk LGBTQ+ and Neurodivergent teens who have found solace and support in online communities will find themselves without the important online friendships they have relied upon. For teens who are questioning their sexuality and gender identity, who have been able to explore their feelings with their peers and who may not feel confident enough to have these discussions ‘in real life’ (or indeed don’t have a support network, or supportive parents) we are closing a vital lifeline. Some neurodivergent teens who struggle with friendships and feeling accepted in their schooling and IRL communities rely on the relationships they develop online. The online gaming community is a perfect example of this. We may think there is enough support for these teens elsewhere, but there really isn’t. We’re cutting off vital lifelines for them and celebrating it. Taking away opportunities I have read some amazing stories of young entrepreneurs who have started business because of social media in their teens, in fact - my own son (now in his twenties) was one of them. I know of many young people who passed their GCSEs because of teacher influencer and revisions accounts. Then there are the cookery accounts, the song-writing accounts, the craft accounts, the sports tips accounts and the booktok community. These are all going to be sorely missed and are going to leave a real gap for our young people. Not all social media is bad, a fact that is being hugely overlooked in my opinion. Giving parents a false sense of security What happens when a teen turns 16? And we suddenly let them into these sites and apps? They’re jumping off a cliff into the unknown and their brains are no better equipped to deal with what they find than the day before their birthday. Without access there is little education. Without access there is little communication. Without access there is little support. Some may argue it’s like letting a teen drive a car the day they turn 17, but few do this without intensive lessons and learning. Where and how is this going to happen? We may be putting 16 year olds into more danger if they have not developed the understanding beforehand. Not holding the corporations accountable It seems to me that this ban is happening because the corporate giant tech firms have not done enough to keep children safe. A ban takes away any motivation they may have had to do this. It absolves them of responsibility. There need to be stringent safety measures employed and I worry that now the newly 16 year olds will have even less of these when they do have access. Not holding the parents accountable I’m not one for parent shaming, but we have to talk about the elephant in the room. No, parents can’t control what their children come across online, they have no ability to direct the algorithm, but they do have a duty to educate and support their children. They have a duty to learn about internet safety. They have a duty to set good examples of social media usage themselves. We can’t just ban children and not talk about the unhealthy relationship with these apps the parents themselves have, or the example they are setting for their teens as they wait to come of age. Parents, like tech cos, need to do a lot more. My concern is the ban will make them more complacent. Banning teens from anything never works Teens are clever, they can be cunning, they often know a lot more than us adults about anything tech related. They WILL find a way around the ban. They WILL be driven underground to apps and sites of their own making. The Government simply won’t be able to keep up with this. In Australia over 60% of young teens are still accessing social media, despite their ban. It hasn’t worked there. It won’t work here. The biggest problem here is that when teens do things in secrecy they don’t get the education and support they need from their parents and carers.
So I recently had to go away for a month, which was a big deal for me because I've never left my kids for that long before. I was worried about how they'd manage without me, especially since I have four of them now. But luckily, I have a great support system. My mother-in-law and sister were absolute lifesavers - they took turns living with the kids and helping out.
My friends were also really helpful, taking the kids out on weekends to give my family members a break. It was a huge relief to know that the kids were being taken care of. Having that support made all the difference, and I'm really grateful to have such a strong network of people who could help out.
It's funny, when I think about it, having a good support system is really what made this trip possible. I don't know what I would have done without my family and friends pitching in. They were all so willing to lend a hand, and it made a huge difference.
I think what I learned from this experience is that having people you can count on is essential, especially when you're facing a big challenge like being away from your kids for an extended period. It's not always easy to ask for help, but it's so important to have a support system in place.
In the end, everything worked out, and I was able to take my trip without too much stress. I'm just really thankful to have such a great support system, and I know that I can always count on them if I need anything in the future.
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