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Welcome to Her Health Code, the podcast that helps women in midlife feel better in their bodies without the confusion or overwhelm. We’re two health coaches sharing real talk, personal stories, and our best coaching tips that help you reconnect with your body’s wisdom. Think of us as your health-savvy girlfriends, here to help you crack the code to feeling vibrant and strong again.
Jess & Michele (00:00)
Welcome back to Her Health Code. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm Jess. And I'm Michelle. And today we have something super exciting for you. We are starting our new monthly chapter, our new monthly series, which is all about the next chapter for women in midlife. And so today's guest is Carol Ann. She is a well-renowned author and she is a recipe maker and she has got so much knowledge and wisdom. We are so excited to get started with our interview with Carol Ann today.
Thank you for joining us, Carol Anne. So special to have you here and we're honored that you accepted our invitation to be a guest today.
Carol Kates (00:37)
Well, I'm excited to be with you today, with both of you.
Jess & Michele (00:41)
So Carol Anne, let's just get started right away. Can you tell us a little bit about your life before everything changed for you?
Carol Kates (00:48)
Yes, I grew up in a corner market. We had a little teeny tiny store It was so small that carts could only go in one direction And it would be pretty busy So if you forgot a can of beans, you would have to start all over again to go get that can of beans My dad was a simple grocer who loved produce and he taught me how to select superior produce
before I learned to read. ⁓
Jess & Michele (01:19)
Wow.
Carol Kates (01:20)
When my parents died, we had two grocery stores. At that time, I lived in Denver with my husband and two children. We moved to Fort Collins to get involved in the business after I inherited my half interest in the grocery store. When we moved to Fort Collins, we had two grocery stores. By 1999, we had six grocery stores.
We
owned nine pharmacies and a bakery production facility, which was picked in-store bakery of the year by Retail Bakers of America in 1999.
We opened a big new store on the corner of Drake and Worthington in Fort Collins. was 63,000 square feet. had talking milk cartons. It was really state-of-the-art. It had a big deli with a take-home meal section. The delis were named for me, Carol Ann's Delis. Two months after we opened that store, the city closed the road in
⁓ We were doing $390,000 a week at that store before the road closed. Afterwards, were doing $190,000. Our customers couldn't get there. We got behind with our supplier. They had agreed to turn what we owed them into a short-term note and we could pay it off over five years. But the day the road opened, if the road was closed,
for six months. The day the road opened, our supplier tried to take us over. They came in and said, give us a million dollars or give us your keys today. It was pretty stressful. Even our attorney didn't know what to do. Every time they would make an offer and we would agree to it, they would call the CEO back in Minneapolis and he would reject the offer it
⁓
By midnight, ⁓ no deal had been made, so everybody retreated home. We had a friend come visit us the next day. My daughter was in a carpool that night going somewhere, and she said something that she was concerned we might go bankrupt.
And she had said that in front of the mother who was driving the carpool. And the mother called me the next day and said they'd like to come over.
So they came over and shared with us that they had had to take bankruptcy. But in talking with us, we didn't really share much with anyone, but we did with that couple. He suggested we sell one of our properties and lease it back in order to get the money to pay our supplier.
So we did find our supplier in federal court and the case was dismissed because they had legal violations. But it did cost us a million dollars. We did sell one of our properties to pay our legal bills. Things turned around slowly. We did get another supplier. Things turned around slowly. But we hired a man who had helped grocery stores go through reorder
We filed for reorganization in February of 2001 and had our plan approved and then Super Walmart opened and when Super Walmart, when another grocery store opens it takes three or four months to get your sales back and our creditors wouldn't give us that option. So we were forced into chapter seven. We were in our 50s.
We had a friend tell us that nobody in town would hire us, that we would have to start another business. So it was a really stressful time. We lost our health insurance. We had a garage sale every Friday to put food on the table. I just took a step into the garage and just left it there. And that's how we paid our bills, how we fed ourselves.
Jess & Michele (05:06)
to say the least.
my god.
That's a lot for anybody, especially in your 50s when you think, all right, now I'm going to be on a cruise control. So when that business ended and you had to start all these garage sales and trying to just make a way for yourself, not only how did that feel logistically, but what about personally? How are you feeling during this time?
Carol Kates (05:41)
⁓ Well, you own a respected business in town, everyone wants to be your friend. When your bankruptcy makes the front page of the paper 11 out of 14 days, everybody you know and everybody you don't know knows your dirty laundry. We lost friends because we weren't good enough.
We were sued and my husband took a job doing turnaround management and he was on the road.
flying to different cities looking at companies that were struggling to help them get turned around. So he was on the road. And one of our suppliers, who was a good friend, sued us for fraud. They owned a produce company and our attorney told us at the end to pay all the local people first. So we had paid him.
But the people, the supplier that took over swiped our checking account before the check could clear. So he sued us for fraud. If he would have filed with the bankruptcy judge, he would have been the first to get paid because produce is the first. But I was thinking about...
thinking about it and my husband was on the road so I had to go see our attorney down in Denver and he said to me you need to go see this man and ask him to drop the lawsuit. So I went to see him and I didn't make an appointment because I didn't think he'd see me but I waited in the waiting room and when he came out I spoke with him.
And I said, you know, I've just been to see our attorney and there was no fraud. The people that took over and I'm not going to use any names, swiped the account before you got your check cashed. I said, if you would have filed in a timely manner, you would have been the first to get paid. So he did drop the lawsuit. And I think about that as a
important step in my life personally because it got me back on track that I had the courage to do that.
Jess & Michele (07:45)
That was a big ask of your husband to send you somewhere on your own to make a big ask like that. That's a lot to put on someone's shoulders for sure, but it sounds like in the end it gave you back some confidence.
Carol Kates (07:53)
Yeah.
Yeah.
It did, and actually I went to see the young man's parents. His father's father was my dad's best friend. And so I went to see them afterwards. And his wife said something to me that if there wouldn't have been so many egos in the business that I would have been great running it.
But she also told me that most women leave their husbands when they lose their money. So why did I stay with my husband? Because I loved him. And it wasn't his fault.
Jess & Michele (08:30)
Yeah, it was very circumstantial. obviously this is all leading to a very difficult period in your life. What did you do to cope and to get through this time? There's so much going on with the loss of your business
Carol Kates (08:44)
I don't think I coped very well in the beginning. I guess I was talking with my oldest daughter and we closed the stores right before Thanksgiving.
and it was Thanksgiving. I had to go shopping. I had to cook Thanksgiving dinner. I had to be thankful for what I did have. So we went to the King Soopers which is a Kroger, and we got our shopping done and we got to the check stand and the checker said to me, do you have your King Soopers card? And I burst into tears. And my daughter very quickly said, no, we don't. We're here for a funeral.
So she gave us the gift. Yeah, I really struggled. I think I was in a depression and I was thinking that I was menopausal.
And I was struggling with depression. I did self-medicate with alcohol. Remembering that my daughter was, my youngest daughter was supposed to go get her driver's license. And she came home from school ready to go get her driver's license and I wasn't ready. And she said to me, don't care about anything. And I was remembering that. So I think it was doubly hard
Jess & Michele (09:53)
you
Carol Kates (09:57)
for me because I was in menopause. We didn't have the money to go to the counselor or to get medical treatment. I'm the kind of person that when something happens and I don't know how to fix it I find someone who can but at that time of my life I didn't.
I thought that writing this story about mom and pop fighting the big corporations would be a good story. We lived our own personal version of the firm during that time where we had goons at the front door and the back door and they had someone in my husband's office. So I joined a writing group and I started writing.
Jess & Michele (10:41)
Alright.
Carol Kates (10:43)
And when we had the stories, people used to come to me when they needed something written because they said I had a way with words. So I started taking writing classes and I started writing little stories. I started writing my memoir. I have written a historical fiction book.
⁓ In writing I drove my husband crazy My favorite job at the store was to write recipes for our ad So if we had pork chops in the ad I would do a pork chop recipe and as I got better at it I would include multiple items in the ad in the recipe. So he said you have all these wonderful recipes. Why don't you write a cookbook? So I spent I my recipes had been written over about a 15
year period. I had to redo because the style and recipes is important. had to learn how to...
Jess & Michele (11:30)
Wow.
Carol Kates (11:37)
write a recipe. I included a history of our business in the store. I put some old ads in. I included grocery insider wisdom on how to select and store perishables. My cookbook was picked in the top ten favorite by the Denver Post and it's won three national awards. It's a nice book, but I put my heart and soul into it as a tribute to my family for what we lost.
I did as I've been writing. I didn't do social media or podcasts. I was very old school and in 2001 I started a blog to really do social media and get my recipes and my wisdom out there. I was working with a young man named Bobby Crew who writes horror and likes snakes so we have nothing in common.
Jess & Michele (12:28)
you
Carol Kates (12:29)
blog on how to save money at the grocery store. 2001 is when food inflation started. The supermarket industry will tell you the worst year for food inflation was 2022. That's when Putin invaded Ukraine and Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe and that year wheat prices soared 34 % per metric ton. So after my blog on saving money was successful I spent
spent
a year, pulling my, I pulled my shopping information out of my cookbook. It's been a year expanding it and included things like how to freeze, milk and eggs, and created grocery shopping secrets, which was, when I did my Kindle campaign, was an international bestseller on Amazon in the U.S., France, and Australia.
And it's won 10 awards.
Jess & Michele (13:23)
That's amazing.
Carol, I just want to pause one minute and take the listeners back to that one pivotal moment. It sounds like taking that writing class was that big moment that changed the trajectory of your life. Am I right?
Carol Kates (13:38)
I think it was joining the Writers' Group. I became friends with people who liked to write and we really bonded. We became a really solid support group. So I think I had a good friend who self-published a book about Fort Collins. She was a journalist.
Jess & Michele (13:41)
joining that writers group.
Carol Kates (14:00)
and she started the writing group.
I did self-publish my cookbook because if you're going to get a publisher, takes several years. have to finish the book, then you have to find someone, you have to find an agent to represent you, then you have to find a publisher that will publish it. It takes several years if you're lucky. And I wanted to get it out. We were a very well-respected business in our town and I wanted to give our customers a happy memory.
Well, I learned about the publishing business. I joined Colorado Independent Publishers and learned about publishing and marketing books. ⁓
Jess & Michele (14:30)
Hmm.
I love that. And it all started with
one brave step.
to do something different. mean, that writers group sounds like something that was completely just new and different for you, but it was one thing that you did that took you on this journey. It's amazing. So what would you say to some of our listeners that are feeling really stuck and that they're in midlife and they're in menopause and they're feeling like their life is over? What would you say to them that was the hardest part of recreating yourself and starting a whole new business, a whole new you?
Carol Kates (15:15)
I think after what I went through, I lost a lot of self-confidence. And I think that one small step at a time,
My husband gave me a little plaque, which I still have today in my family room, that is a Winston Churchill quote. If you think you're going through hell, just keep going.
Jess & Michele (15:38)
I love it. I do love that. That's amazing. So is that kind of the little mental mantra you would tell yourself in your mind as you were navigating all of this?
Carol Kates (15:48)
Yes, yes. And even today, we had some damage to our bathroom and we had to have our bathroom redone. And so we hired a young man to repair it who did a nice job on the tile, but he banged up the walls and the...
Jess & Michele (15:50)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Carol Kates (16:06)
cupboards and he didn't clean up after himself and our garage is a disaster and so I just tell myself when I'm trying to clean it up one thing at a time. Let's get one thing done. One step at a time.
Jess & Michele (16:15)
One thing done.
Well, you've done so many amazing things, Carol Anne. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you help women budget their groceries for the week? Because I know a lot of women are really struggling because the prices in grocery stores are so, so high right now. Can you give us some of your tips and tricks on how to help women shop better and make better meals for their family?
Carol Kates (16:44)
Okay, so I think that the most important thing in my book is learning to distinguish the good, the bad, and the ugly. I don't know if you've ever been in the grocery store and seen a shriveled up tomato that has fungus on it or a shriveled up pepper and you think does the produce clerk think I'm blind that I would buy this?
Jess & Michele (17:06)
you
Carol Kates (17:07)
So, you know, the produce is not as good a quality as it used to be. And for example, with cauliflower, I was shopping one day in the store for cauliflower and when cauliflower starts to deteriorate, it will get little brown spots on it. And I said to the produce clerk,
Do you have any cauliflower that hasn't started to tear or turning brown? And she said, this just came off the truck. This is all we had. So if that's all you they have, you buy it if you want to make cauliflower. But that week I got my week was discombobbled and I didn't get that cauliflower made for five days. So by the time I was able to prepare it, it had turned brown deep inside. And so I lost most of it. So I think you could really save money by
learning the good, the bad from the ugly.
I also think it's important to, I think the FDA says we could save $1,500 to $2,000 by eliminating waste. So one thing I think people throw away a lot of food because they don't understand the sell-by dates. So my book is full of information on using food beyond the sell-by date. So for example, eggs will be good for three to five weeks beyond the
How do tell if the egg is bad? You put it in a bowl or a pan of water and if it floats you know you shouldn't eat it. Milk is good for three to seven days past the sell-by date. How do we know if milk isn't good? We give it a good sniff. If it smells bad we shouldn't eat it. I think it's also important to pay attention to unit pricing. Sometimes we think
Jess & Michele (18:45)
you
Carol Kates (18:55)
it by going to Costco or Sam's and buying a big package that I'm going to save money.
Nature Valley Sweet and Salty Granola Bars that they sell for $17.49 or $0.36 a bar. Sam's has a 36 count package for $11.28 or $0.31 a bar. So you can see that buying it at Sam's versus Costco, you're going to save money. And also, just because you buy it at Sam's or Costco, it isn't necessarily going to be cheaper.
So I think that's another important thing to think about
you
Jess & Michele (19:32)
Absolutely. You have to make sure that you're knowing what's on sale, right? And being aware of each week what's going on in the stores. Absolutely. We definitely make our rounds. Yes, yes, yes. We like to definitely shop at a few different stores trying to hunt for the best deal.
Carol Kates (19:37)
Yeah.
Yes.
Jess & Michele (19:52)
Yeah, does take time, but it's worth it. I think in the long run, you save a lot of money So Carol Anne, we're always talking about food on our show. We're kind of obsessed with talking about food and meal planning. we actually have, once a month, do, at the beginning of the month, a meal of the month.
We call it our mom show. And we give a couple of new ideas that we have for recipes that we're going to make that month So do you have any tips for women? A couple of quick meal ideas that they could put on the table that takes not a lot of time and ⁓ also budget friendly. ⁓
Carol Kates (20:24)
you
My favorite fast meal, which is really not a recipe, but I like to salmon.
I put a little bit of olive oil on it, some minced garlic and chopped dill, and I cook it for 25 to 30 minutes at 350. And then I do roasted garlic and roasted new potatoes, and I toss those with a little bit of olive oil and, believe it or not, Montreal steak seasoning. And I can have that prepared. The prep time is about 10 minutes, and dinner's ready in about 45.
the vegetables 40 to 45 minutes at 400 and the salmon. So I put that in first. That's my favorite easy no recipe meal.
Jess & Michele (21:11)
That's a good one. And it's healthy. Yeah, it's so good for you. Yeah, so good for you. So I just want to take us back one more time back to that time in your your life when you were really struggling and life was really hard.
What about that time gave you that resilience? you were really struggling, were not using the bet, you were using alcohol as coping, were kind of in a dark place, your kids were still at home, at least one of them was at home. What in your mind pulled you out of that space to say, you know what, I need to do something still, I'm not done yet?
Carol Kates (21:46)
I think that, I think it was putting myself in a chair and writing that cookbook. Taking, salvaging the work that I had done with the recipes for the paper and putting them into a nostalgic, helpful book. ⁓
⁓ I think that it took me back to happy times, but it also helped me make a happy memory of something really hard.
Jess & Michele (22:19)
good advice for anyone who's going through something. I feel like a lot of times, you you just feel stuck and you feel lost and you don't know what to do. And sometimes it just takes that one thing that maybe is near and dear to your heart to focus on it.
Carol Kates (22:35)
It was
something it was I put my heart and my soul into into it and it it I Don't know if I have closure and working on that memoir, know It's been 25 years and you have to be healed to do a memoir
with some introspection and you ladies have really helped me because I was in menopause when that happened and my coping... ⁓
The way I handled it was somewhat hormonal.
Jess & Michele (23:10)
but in that time of life, think it's hard for any of us to really kind of discern between what is, is hormones? What is life? What is, what is reality? I think when we're in it, it's hard to see, you know, it's hard to see beyond that.
Carol Kates (23:25)
Yes, it was really hard for me to see beyond that and I don't think until I visited with you ladies that I understood even this in this much time that menopause did affect me.
Jess & Michele (23:41)
how are your kids feeling about just how you were able to pick yourself up from the ashes and literally recreate yourself? mean, they have to be so beyond proud of you and just filled with pride that they watched basically you pick yourself up and recreate yourself.
Carol Kates (24:00)
Yes, think my daughters are very proud of me. I think my granddaughter is very proud of me. I'm in a program called National Authors in Grocery Stores, which Kroger participates in. And so I go into the grocery store and sell my books. And my granddaughter came in and took a picture of me and put it on her social media and said, is my almost 76-year-old grandma out
Jess & Michele (24:22)
you
Carol Kates (24:27)
Selling her books.
Jess & Michele (24:30)
I love that. I
love that. You are definitely proof that you are never too old to do any of your dreams. Not at all. And that must bring you so much joy. But Carol, is there anything else in your life that you turn to for joy at this time?
Carol Kates (24:39)
No.
I really like to garden. I love gardening. My grandson is playing baseball and I love going and watching him play baseball. He's hit two home runs.
Jess & Michele (24:59)
Wow, how old is he?
Carol Kates (25:00)
He's 16. He's just started pitching and some days he does great and some days he doesn't. And so I think back on my own life and I go, yeah, some days you do great and some days you don't. It's part of our community and it's fun to watch them on life's journey.
Jess & Michele (25:02)
wow!
Exactly.
Mm-hmm. Yes. Because that's what it truly is, right, Carol Anne? It's a journey. Some days are great and some days we're on our butt, you know, trying to get through it. Yeah. Some days you're wondering what's going to get you out of bed.
Carol Kates (25:33)
Yeah.
Yes!
Jess & Michele (25:37)
Ha ha ha!
Carol Kates (25:38)
Yeah.
Okay.
Jess & Michele (25:39)
Anything else that you would like to share with our listeners, Carol Ann, before we wrap up our discussion today?
Carol Kates (25:46)
I have an aunt, Tommy, who once said when we were going through the attempted corporate takeover, don't ever give up.
Jess & Michele (25:56)
Mm-hmm.
Carol Kates (25:57)
we as women should never give up. As we get older, we feel like we're invisible, that we don't have any worth. And I think especially in our culture, it's hard because we value youth and not wisdom. And the world changes so much that the wisdom from my generation isn't necessarily wisdom other generations want. But don't ever give up.
Jess & Michele (26:21)
I love that. I love that too and I it makes me really sad to hear you say that because I as I get older and older I realized that wisdom is gained through our lives and through experiences and through our interactions with others and through the good and the bad and to say that Not being able to gather wisdom from our elders
that it's not relevant to the younger generations. I think that we're kind of in a time and a place where it feels like that right now, a lot with especially technology and AI. But I really do hope that we can keep our humanness and value each other's wisdom, because it's really how we stay connected to each other.
Carol Kates (27:07)
Yes.
Jess & Michele (27:08)
Yes, absolutely. But also you know, as women, I think, too, you said, in our culture, we aren't valuing women as they get older. And I just really think that that is sad. And I hope that it begins to become a new story now that we're writing here, I think, with
Carol Kates (27:09)
you
Jess & Michele (27:26)
the knowledge of what happens to women during this transition, we could become more valuable, not less. Yes, and that was really our hope for trying to do something like this, this series really showing and highlighting women's chapter two, because we believe that life's not over when we hit midlife, that it's literally just the beginning of a second life. New chapter.
Carol Kates (27:46)
Yes.
Well, it has been for me.
Jess & Michele (27:50)
Thank you for sharing that with us and for being our first guest on our new chapter. Yes, thank you so much, Carol Anne. In fact, I want you to read that ⁓ Winston Churchill quote one more time before we close for those ladies that didn't hear it.
Carol Kates (28:04)
If you think you're going through hell, just keep going.
Jess & Michele (28:08)
I love it. I love it. Thank you, Carol Anne, so much for joining us today. You have been truly such a blessing and so much wisdom and so much information.
⁓ We will actually leave all your information for our listeners to check out your books and check out your blog so they can connect with you as well. Carol Ann has a beautiful social media as well, so we'll link to that so that people can connect with you. And do you have anything else that you would like to share,
Carol Kates (28:37)
There is a place on my website to get my free soup recipes, my favorite free soup recipes. You can get my blog and then if you're interested in my memoir, I will be updating things when my memoir comes out.
Jess & Michele (28:45)
Ooh, we will definitely check that out. Yes, we're definitely there. I love soup.
So Carol Anne, when is that going to come out?
Carol Kates (29:00)
I hope to finish it this year, but you ladies have given me a whole new twist on the end.
Jess & Michele (29:07)
Yay.
Please let us know when it's finished and we can have you back on. Yes, we would love to do that. That would be great. And I can't wait to see how what the twist is and how it finishes out for you. Absolutely. Yeah, you can give our listeners an update as well. Okay, thank you, Carol Anne. Thank you, Carol Anne. Have a blessed day.
Carol Kates (29:20)
Yes.
Okay.
You too, it was wonderful to meet you.