[Excerpt] You’re in Good Company: The Gift of Friendship, Motherhood, and Showing Up by Ashlee Gadd

We need community. In the rush-rush of the every day, we can feel alone and also feel like we don’t have the time to cultivate the relationships that serve as refreshment to our souls. We are excited to share with you an excerpt from Ashlee Gadd’s new book You’re in Good Company: The Art of Friendship, Motherhood, and Showing Up (March 17, 2026), “which is a collection of essays, recipes, and reflections on the importance of saying yes to friendship—especially within the context of motherhood. It’s an ode to good food, deep friendships and real hospitality.” (Press) We thank Booked PR for making this feature possible!

You’re in Good Company is a beautful book– not just the words but aesthetically, too. It screams spring. It’s the full package. It’s the perfect gift. You can buy the book here (remember, every pre-order helps our author friends). Read it and share with the women in your circle. The world is better when we support and encourage each other. You are not alone.

Good Mothers Bake from Scratch and Other Lies I’ve Believed

By: Ashlee Gadd (Excerpt from You’re in Good Company)

I am standing at the kitchen counter, spooning banana mix into a muffin tin, when my daughter makes a proposal. “How about dis…?” Presley begins, pausing for dramatic effect. “How about I put four chocolate chips on each muffin because dat’s how old I am?”

I smile at her logic. Once every pink polka-dotted liner is filled with batter and topped with exactly four chocolate chips, I place both tins on the middle rack and set a timer. Presley runs out of the room and returns with her plastic step stool, placing it directly in front of the oven. I watch in amusement as she takes a seat and stares at the dirty tempered glass like a television.

“I’m gonna watch da muffins bake,” she tells me.
The boys are at basketball practice tonight, which means we’ve got the whole house to ourselves. Per Presley’s request, our girls’ night agenda includes baking, watching Beauty and the Beast, and painting our nails. Before we move on to the movie and manicure portion of our evening, I return the vegetable oil to the cabinet, put the carton of eggs back in the fridge, load the mixing bowl and spatula into the dishwasher, and finally, toss the cardboard box that once held the muffin mix into the recycling bin. It’s the last step that haunts me for a second. The box mix. The short-cut. The scam. A trace of guilt flickers in my chest as a tiny voice in the back of my head reminds me: Good mothers bake from scratch. I swat the lie away, but it comes right back like a boomerang, ready for a debate.

Obviously real bananas are superior to a packet of powder, nutritionally speaking, but the aesthetics win, too. Baking from scratch involves a multitude of steps, kitchen gadgets and tools, visible remnants of flour and sugar smeared across the counter. When you’re done baking from scratch, you’re left with a noticeable mess to clean up: evidence of your time, your energy, and of course, your love. A box mix, on the other hand, is a quick fix. The drive-thru of culinary offerings. One bowl, one plastic pouch of beige powder, usually water or oil, and perhaps a single egg. In the end, there is no mess left behind. No evidence of time or energy or love. No evidence of anything at all. The batter practically makes itself. Like magic. Like . . . cheating.

Ten years ago, maternity clothes and baby gear shuffled in and out of my house like library books. Back then, just as one friend would deliver a baby, someone else became pregnant. My inbox held a constant slew of baby shower invitations, registry links, and of course, Meal Train calendars.

As a grateful recipient of two postpartum Meal Trains myself, I dutifully committed to bring dinner to every new mom in my orbit. And even though I had two little kids at home and could hardly put a nourishing dinner on my own table, I fulfilled every Meal Train sign-up by cooking from scratch: chopping, slicing, blending, pounding, frying, and occasionally almost burning whatever Pinterest recipe du jour I had printed that day. Sweaty and stressed, I’d drop off the meal, then head back home to clean my disaster of a kitchen at peak witching hour, often before pouring bowls of cereal because I forgot—or was too exhausted—to double the ingredients.

After the birth of my third baby, a friend signed up to bring us a meal and offered to grab our favorite takeout. Name the restaurant, she texted. Tell me your favorite thing on the menu, and I’ll drop it off at 5 p.m. I will never forget staring at my phone, dumbfounded, processing this new-to-me permission. Wait a second. It’s okay to sign up for a Meal Train and drop off food you didn’t make from scratch? I had no idea this was an option. That would be amazing, I texted back, along with a sandwich order from my favorite deli.

It had never occurred to me that the old adage “fed is best” could apply to mothers, too. But food is food. Dinner is dinner. With that perspective in mind, homemade casseroles and pizza deliveries are equivalent gestures of love. For so long, I viewed shortcuts as a form of cheating, but what if shortcuts are actually a form of grace? What if shortcuts free us up to serve more often and—even better—with a more cheerful heart?

“[W]hat if shortcuts are actually a form of grace?”

[Adapted from You’re in Good Company by Ashlee Gadd and Coffee + Crumbs. Copyright Ashlee Gadd© (March 2026) by Zondervan. Used by permission of Zondervan, http://www.zondervan.com.]

Get your copy of You’re in Good Company, here!

About the Author

Ashlee Gadd is a mother, writer, photographer, and founder of Coffee + Crumbs. She is the editor and contributor of You’re In Good Company and the author of Create Anyway. She has spent the last ten years helping mothers harness their creative talents into powerful storytelling at Coffee + Crumbs—a beautiful online space where motherhood and art intersect.

For more Ashlee:

Coffee + Crumbs

AshleeGadd.com

@CoffeeandCrumbs IG

@AshleeGadd IG

Coffee + Crumbs on Substack (for our Substack girlies!)

Until next time, keep witnessing!