The Lazy Genius Podcast - #111- What I’ll Be Cooking This Summer

Episode Date: June 3, 2019

Hi friends! We’re in part two of a three-part series that celebrates the changing seasons. Summer teaches us to slow down and be flexible. It’s a time to play and have fun on purpose. Last week, I shared my summer reading goals and what’s on my TBR list. This week, I’m talking about summer foods, and I mean ALL the summer foods. From breaking down breakfast to sharing the 21 meals on my Summer Dinner Queue, this episode has it all. Stuff Mentioned Last summer, I did a whole series on Summer Strategy. Listen to The Lazy Genius Summer Strategy episode about food here. If you want to take a stab at grilling or just need a refresher course, listen to The Lazy Genius Grills. (Also, check out my guide to marinades here.) Check out my Summer Dinner Queue here. If summer breakfast is bumming you out, this can help. Summer is the best time to shop your local farmers market because so many delicious things are in season. Here’s a beginner’s guide to shopping there. If you missed last week’s episode on reading, listen in here. Download a transcript of this episode! This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon presents Laura versus Fruitflies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen. These little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. everyone you're listening to the lazy genius podcast i'm kendra adachi and i'm here to help you be a genius

about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't today is the second episode in a series we're getting ready for summer you guys it's june so it's pretty much summer now last week i talked about how i am approaching my summer reading and today i want to share how i am approaching summer meals I did an episode last summer in 2018 on a food strategy for that summer. And then I have done an episode on grilling, which is obviously like that feels very summer. I will put both of those episodes in the show notes so you can listen and get more ideas. But for today, I want to share how I am personally approaching food this summer for my actual family. Let's just, let's jump in.

Let's start with breakfast. We eat all kinds of things for breakfast, usually a combination of cereal. muffins, eggs, bacon, toast, fruit. It's short order. I mean, I basically make like a Denny's Grand Slam a lot of times, but it's fun. It's easy, especially in the summer when we don't have to go to school. You know, we have time to kind of make breakfast. So breakfast will be whatever people want from whatever we have. That is usually how we do it and it works great. So we're going to stick with it. That covers breakfast. I also have an episode on breakfast. So if you want to look in the show notes for that, you can listen to.

some breakfast ideas. Now lunch and dinner is where things might shift a little in the summer based on what we usually do. So for lunch, we usually do sandwiches and fruit and stuff like that for the kids' lunches, like just what they take to school. And then Kaz and I will eat leftovers or if we're home, like we'll make a cassidia or something easy. But I will say in the summer, sometimes it's nice to have the option to flip lunch and dinner, to have a meal that I cook for lunch and then just throw stuff together at dinner. All of that depends on what we're doing that day, if we're out late into the afternoon at the park or the pool or something. So I like having meals that can be flexible for either lunch or dinner, which brings me to my summer dinner queue. I've

talked about a dinner queue before. It's basically a curated list of meals and recipes that fit your needs. It's a way to limit the internet to what you'll actually make and eat. And then when it's time to choose what you're going to have, you choose from that list, not from everything. I will have as many of the recipes that I can for my summer dinner queue listed in a post and I will share the link in the show notes or you can check the blog on the site. But I'm going to run through them here to give you an idea of what I'm thinking and why. All right, so I want meals that can be prepped early, cooked completely and reheated, or cooked from start to finish really fast. Because most summer schedules, especially with kids at home, they're varied, right?

They're unpredictable for good reason. That's part of what makes summer summer. I want meals that can be on the table without a lot of thought. And that's kind of the goal with summer meals anyway. We all feel a little weird in July when we're desperately craving routine. but summer does teach us how to slow down and be flexible. It is time to play and have fun on purpose. I am not great at that as a person, which is one of the reasons summer is hard for me.

But I also love that my family can experience a different pace than usual and not be at the mercy of my meal plan. There have been many afternoons where we're having fun at the park and I have to cut off the fun because there's no food ready at home. And we need to eat. So having a perspective on summer meals that fits your life and your desire for your summer and then choosing a collection of recipes that fit that perspective. It will be a huge help as you move through your summer. So I want quick cooking, easily prepped, maybe easily made

completely ahead meals. I am looking for recipes that use the grill or the instant pot, almost exclusively. I mostly use the pressure cooking feature on. my instant pot, but there are one or two recipes where I'll use the slow cooker function. I'm not a huge fan of slow cooker meals, so I don't usually make them. And then for any recipes that do require the oven or the stove top, the food needs to be in there for just a couple minutes. This is not a season for roasting things for an hour in the oven. So I have 21 recipes on my summer dinner queue, and I am perfectly happy just rotating through that list a few times. In fact, I could have a rhythm where, like, I plan three weeks of meals at a time

and repeat it three times, including the prep and the make-ahead plans, you know? The grocery list are already made. I understand the timing of, like, the bigger meal prep day better. It can basically be a machine that runs itself if I want it to. Now, of course, there are things that change on occasion, like where you have dinner out or with friends, or, you know, you're at the pool and you just decide to get nachos and have that for dinner at the pool. It's fine. But having a baseline plan is more helpful to me than having no plan at all. You might feel differently, but don't feel like your plan has to be set in stone, right? If a meal gets thrown off, save it for the next night, just scrap something else on your list that's like a little bit more shelf stable and won't spoil

so you're not like, you know, knocking over dominoes of unmade meals and then you have like a lot of waste. that's actually another thing I didn't mention about my recipe choices. Most of the meals in my dinner queue are easily moved to other days and they don't depend on a ton of fresh produce. I can use the bounty of summer farmers markets to bulk up lunches or to use asides for dinners, but the main meals are based on food that can be made and frozen or just not made at all if we have a change of plans. Okay, again, these are all going to be in like a blog post with links and all that, but here's my summer dinner queue. Here are my meals. Number one, burgers and a side. It's on the grill. The side can be corn from the farmer's market, tater tots, carrot sticks and chips.

It doesn't matter, but burgers are always a win in my house. Number two, ribs and aside. Same thing. The trick here is to cook the ribs until they are mostly done in the oven in the morning before it gets too hot too and then finish them off on the grill before dinner so it is fast again all these links will be there if there's a link it's in the post and if i know i'm going to be home all afternoon i could cook them on the grill from start to finish like the whole time but i like the flexibility that ribs give us number three hot dogs and aside are you sensing a theme meat on the grill and whatever side i have number four barbecue chicken legs and aside that is the last of a grilled meat and aside. Number five, grilled pizza. I tried this for the first time a couple of weeks

ago and it was magical. I used a Neapolitan dough. You can learn more about the differences in pizza dough on an episode that I will link to, but I just stretched it out the dough over a well-oiled grill. I closed the grill. I let it cook for a couple minutes, like literally like one or two minutes. Open the grill, flipped the crust. It's like really puffy. Flip the crust. And then I put sauce and cheese and toppings and everything on the side that was just cooked, right? And then I closed the grill again for another couple of minutes and it was delicious. It was crispy and quick. It didn't require the oven. We will absolutely do that weekly. Number six, terriaki pork and pineapple skewers and rice. Now, this is really, this is all it says. It's just taking pork

tenderloin that you cut into big cubes. You season them well. You know. with like salt and black pepper or something. Skewer alternately with pineapple chunks and grill them. You flip it a couple times, brush on terriaki sauce from a bottle. Every time you flip so it doesn't like burn too much. And then you serve that on rice. That's it. There's no recipe really.

That's what it is. Number seven, Greek chicken dinner. That's kind of what I call it. This is like grilled chicken breast that's been marinated in lemon juice and olive oil and dried oregano mostly. that's usually what I do. Sometimes I'll add garlic if I remember. I do have an episode on marinades as well that you can check out if you want to kind of learn about that a little bit. And then I will grill like skewers of that chicken or just whole pieces of the chicken and slice it up. We eat it with

non-bread. Satsiki, if I feel like making it, maybe we have like cherry tomatoes or hummus or it's just whatever we have around or I feel like making. The kids mostly eat just chicken and bread anyway for the record. So like if we just have chicken and bread, we have chicken and bread. It's fine. Number eight, shrimp or chicken veggie couscous. This recipe is on my blog. So obviously there will be a link to it. It is one of my favorite things to cook in the summer. It is simple and fresh. It's almost like a pasta salad kind of with Israeli cusscuses, little little tiny balls of pasta. So good with like tomato and zucchini and shrimp and garlic and basil. Oh, so good. So that is one of my favorite things to eat in the summertime. That is typically a dinner that is not received as well by my children,

but they can get over it, and then I can eat the leftovers for lunch. Like some meals, I don't want to eat hot dogs all the time. So sometimes they can eat shrimp veggie couscous salad. They will not die. Number nine, curry rice in the instant pot. We, that is one of our, like, top brainless crowd pleasers in our family. And because of the instant pot, it's really easy to make without heating up the house praise. And also I can just like turn on the button before we leave to go do something cool and come home and dinner's ready. It's so great.

Okay, number 10, pork and mushroom lettuce wraps. These are also on the blog. They take just a few minutes on the stove top to just saute up ground pork and mushrooms. What I love about this recipe too is that that that meat mushroom mixture, it can be completely cooked ahead of time on like a meal prep day and even frozen. Like you can keep it in the fridge or just freeze it. and heat it up, even in the microwave, or on the stove top again really quickly. So it's a very versatile dish when it comes to time management, which I love. Number 11, pork cutlets and rice.

Pork cutlets is a recipe, not a really fair word for this, but it's something that my mother-in-law makes, who is Japanese, by the way. So it's not written down anywhere, but it's not really a recipe that you measure anyway. You just slice a pork tenderloin. That's the ones that are like to look like a log, right? It's not like chops. It's like long and skinny. It's like cylindrical. It's a pork tenderloin.

And you slice the pork tenderloin until like half inch slices. You don't want them super thick like an inch, but they don't need to be like crazy thin either. And if they're all like a little different, you don't have to measure with a ruler, just kind of like a slice, like a half inchish. You season those. slices with salt and pepper on both sides, and then you bread them, like you do chicken fingers

or fried chicken. So first they go into flour that is seasoned with salt and pepper, then in egg wash, which is just an egg thinned out with a little bit of water, and then finally in Panko breadcrums, which are like a crunchy Japanese breadcrumb, and then you fry them in a skillet in like shallow oil over medium to medium high heat. You flip them once to get them golden brown on both sides, and then they are great with what is called tunkatsu sauce, which is almost like Japanese ketchup or with actual ketchup. And we just eat it with rice. We'll usually have like carrots or broccoli next to it or something if we need a vegetable,

but they're really good. And I have more time to make him in the summer because my husband is home for like a month in the summer. So it's a good summer meal. I hope this isn't like remarkably boring. I hope this is helpful. Okay. Number 12.

Chicken vingers and aside. I do the same process with the chicken that I do with the point. court cutlets, including breading them in Panko breadcrumbs because they're so crunchy and lovely. I usually use chicken breasts for chicken fingers, not thighs. They hold up really well, and they make the chicken really tender. I like making chicken fingers, even though it's more work. And summer is my favorite time to do it, again, because Kaza's home for a lot of the time. And it's a great finger food to like take outside. They're so great to put on salad for a lunch the next day. I'm just a huge fan of homemade chicken fingers made this way. They are so

dagam tasty. Like, oh my gosh. So that's number 12. Number 13, sloppy joes. My kids are like meh on sloppy joes, but like they need to be converted to this very kid-friendly food that's also tasty. It is a great thing to make ahead on a meal prep day and just heat it up, right? Heat up the meat filling along with some sort of side. And like, so even if it's not, even if it's not made ahead, it's still quick. Like really from start to finish, it doesn't take very long. And I have always found really good success with Rachel Ray's recipe for Sloppy Joe's. I don't necessarily have my own.

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crowd pleaser in our house. The soup can be made in the instant pot. I prefer it on the stove. So maybe if it's not as hot of a summer day, I will cook it on the stove. Or I might just make a giant batch and freeze it in gallon bags. like freeze them flat. So they sort of like stack up like books on a bookshelf. But so that is something that I can like make far, far ahead and just having the freezer or make it in the instapot so it doesn't heat up the house that much. And I tried grilled cheese

in a cast iron skillet on the grill. And it was real good. Like I used the grill as my stove because I didn't want to heat up the house. And so I just took my big old cast iron skillet out there. And it worked really well. So that is also another option. You can put a pan on your grill, like a real sturdy one, like cast iron. And it works really good. Let's see. And the key, by the way, the key to like I have found, the key to a really good grilled

cheese is great bread. I need great bread. And I like a bread that has kind of like an open crumb, like a bigger crumb, not too, too tight. And because it gets really crunchy, lots of butter, right? and don't necessarily blast the heat because it burns too fast before your cheese melts. And you want the crust to like develop at a leisurely pace. And then also don't necessarily press your grilled cheese down, like weigh it down.

I used to do that. But what I'm doing is I'm closing up the air holes in the bread, which makes the butter not get in there. And so it actually gets tough. It doesn't get more crunchy. It just gets more tough. So just kind of let it breathe when you make your grilled cheese. Let it breathe. Okay.

Number 15. we're almost there. This is a Japanese noodle bowl called Yaki Soba. And I have a post on my blog. It's basically like the block of ramen noodles, except you don't cook it in a bunch of boiling water. It's not like soup. Again, there's a post that kind of explains how to make a noodle bowl. And there is like a different kind of spice packet that goes with traditional Japanese package jaccioba than with ramen. but it's the same general idea. We usually make ours with ground pork. You guys, ground pork is like such a delight.

Ground pork, carrots, either like shredded on a box grater or I actually will use a vegetable peeler. I like a Swiss. I think it's called a Swiss peeler. It's where the blade is perpendicular. It's all right. Yep. Perpendicular to the handle.

So like the, it goes the other way. So you can just kind of like move your hand up to down over and over again. And it's so much easier to peel things than than the traditional one where the blade is going the same direction as the handle. So I will actually use that Swiss peeler and I will make like carrot ribbons with it and saute those up because they saute really fast. That was a lot of talk about carrots. Ground pork, carrots and mushrooms. That's usually what we put in ours. And it's just so good. It's so good. I will sometimes like saute up the meat and vegetables, but not the noodles. Like I just make the filling part and then like save it. Like that's a meal prep thing. And then the next day or something or that later that night, I'll cook the noodles and then just like reheat that stuff again in the pan with when the noodles are getting cooked. So it's like ready and less than 10 minutes that way. It's just so great.

So yaku is number 15. Number 16. can you tell them like running out of breath? I'm trying to not like kill your ears with this, but I hope it's helpful. Number 16, um, hold fast because we are going to cook, change your light chicken on the dagum grill this summer. Okay. So trust me, basically you're going to prepare it the same way, like on a sheet pan and everything, right? But you put it in a hot grill and you close the lid. Check it occasionally, but it like, it turns out. It does pretty well.

This might be a good time to get an instant read thermometer, by the way, since you can't guarantee the timing on a grill the same way you can in the oven. But like, you can do this. You can create an oven outside on your grill and kind of like get adjacent success on Change of Life chicken. So if you try it, I've had people try it and it actually worked. So if you try it, put it on Instagram or something. Show us all so that we all have the courage to do it.

But I'm doing it the summer and I'm really excited because it's like such a staple. It's so easy. And then I just do it outside instead of, you know, you don't want your house to be heated up by a 500 degree oven for an hour. Like even with the most efficient air conditioning unit, it's still kind of a bummer. 17. Non-Pisa. Not like non-N-N-Bread. N-A-A-N.

I love non-bread. Oh, my goodness. For quick pizza inside. because you can put it under the broiler. It doesn't take very long. So I will usually use just like pepperoni or freezer meatballs as a protein topping. So it's really fast. We always have pepperoni in our house always. We'll just throw in whatever we have. You know, it doesn't matter. Sprinkle with some cheese and put it on under the broiler. It's definitely different than actual pizza. Like you're not going to expect like the same kind of pizza experience as if you were

to make a homemade dough, obviously. But it's still really tasty. It's like a, you know, it's like flat bread pizza. And again, you just put it under the broiler. What you could do is if you really like a crunchy bottom of the non-bread, but you don't want to heat up the oven fully, is you can, don't top it yet. Kind of do what I did with the grilled pizza is put the non-bread under the broiler and kind of like crisp up one side, take it out of the oven, flip it, top it, put it back under the broiler. Number 18. Asian chicken and broccoli. There are not. enough Asian recipes in my summer dinner queue. So we will do this one a lot. We will riff on this a lot. I make a marinade with like orange juice and soy sauce and saracha, little brown sugar sometimes.

And like marinate the chicken in that and then saute the chicken in the instant pot. If you like, it doesn't take very long to cook on the stove. But if you're like, oh, I don't want to do the stuff. You sauteed in the instant pot on the saute function or whatever. And then you, close it up and you cook it through, right, on the instant pot. And then you can like add the broccoli for a minute after or whatever. Honestly, I will more than likely just make this on the stove because it doesn't take very long. But, and I prefer the way it cooks on the stove a whole lot better. Like you get more caramelization on the chicken. You don't risk the broccoli getting mushy. Like sometimes happens in the instant pot. So I will more than likely do this on the stove. But it is very easy to do

that kind of thing, just like a marinated chicken thigh or breast in the instant pot, saute it first, and then close up shop. Close that steam valve, man. How many tang times have I made something in the instant pot and I forgot to close the stupid steam valve? I have ruined so many eggs, so many eggs doing that. All right. Number 19. I had to find my place of my list because I'm not doing this for memory, by the way. Number 19 is salmon and rice. Fish cooks so fast. on the stove so it doesn't take, you know, it doesn't heat up the kitchen or it's salmon is beautiful on the grill. It's such a great summer meal. And I'm telling you, salmon, like well-salted salmon, you don't have to put marinade on it. I do sometimes, some sort of Asian situation.

Again, I have a marinate's episode, if you want some help with that. But like salmon and white rice, like sticky white rice is one of the most transcendent combinations on the planet. Like it is Oh, so good. So don't skimp on that one. And for some reason, my kids like salmon. I don't know. I mean, they mostly eat it. So what are you going to do?

I'm not going to run away from that. 20. Number 20. Two left. Breakfast. We're going to have breakfast for dinner. It is so fun to make pancakes or cinnamon rolls or biscuits. And then like a whole mess of bacon, you know?

My kids are never bummed when it's breakfast for dinner. And on days when we know we'll be home or especially like when there's a thunderstorm in the forecast, like a yummy, sticky breakfast makes a really, really great dinner. And then 21 bowls. I just did an entire series on dinner bowls. And they're such a great summer meal because you can use whatever you have. We will likely have a dinner bowl like once a week, if not more, just because like if you have those like pork mushroom lettuce wraps and you have some filling leftover, like put it in a rice bowl. You know, like, it's just such a great thing to do.

And this is what I want to say as we wrap up this episode. Having a summer dinner queue doesn't mean you make everything in order and then repeat it. We'll have burgers or hot dogs once a week easily. We will have grilled pizza once a week for sure. Other stuff gets filled in to create like a little bit more variety throughout each week, even though I'm only working with 21 meals. So as you look at your summer dinner queue, especially if it's a lot less than 21 things, remember that some of those will be a delight to have once a week, if sometimes more than that.

And others, you might just have once a summer, right? It's all great. It all counts. And now I don't have to stress out so much about what's for dinner or how a meal plan because I have a dinner queue that fits my needs. Like, I'm not going to really make anything that's not on this list. So unless I get like, super duper inspired. And the purpose of it is fun. Otherwise, it's like, no, we're just going to have this stuff. And everybody's going to be happy.

So it's a win-win, man. Now, your needs might be different. You might not have a grill. You might still have a nine to five job. And now you just have to deal with cooking dinner when it's hotter, but you have exactly the same schedule. The point here is to decide what you need from your summer meals and look specifically for recipes that fit that.

that, even if it's just like five or six. That's a week. And you could repeat it until you find another one that you add to the rotation and then repeat again and find it. You know, like, it's really fine for it to start super, super small. If you need some ideas on what to put in your dinner queue, especially if you have parameters that are maybe different from mine, from the meals that I just shared, or your family has different dietary needs or whatever, I would encourage you to ask other lazy geniuses in our Facebook group. There is a Facebook group, and everyone is so helpful to each other. So if you have a specific idea of what you need, ask for recipe ideas in that Facebook

group. I'll put a link in the show notes for that too, so you can join if you're not already part of it, or ask your people in your life, ask your friends, ask the other moms at the pool, ask people that you work with, ask your sister. Just know what you need specifically, not like, what do you like to cook in the summer? because guess what? Their needs might be very, very different than yours. So name your needs for yourself and then it can help you communicate that better to other people when you're asking for recipe ideas. Also, check the blog for, again, for my complete summer dinner queue with as many

links as I can offer. If a link is available, it will be there. If it is not, that just means it's like what I said where I'm just sort of riffing and throwing things in a bowl. which is good to get practice at that. So summer could be a really low risk time for that, because then you can just like grill hot dogs. Grilled hot dogs, by the way, this is the final thing I'll say. I would only microwave hot dogs because it's like, well, it's quick. And that's what makes the convenience of hot dogs so easy. Sometimes I would put them in a skillet, like I was living in a penthouse or something. Like, oh my goodness, we're eating hot dogs cooked in a skillet. Are you kidding. If you want to go crazy, put a little butter in a skillet, don't put the hot dogs in the

butter. That's too much. I mean, you can live your life. But no, you put the bun in, like, medium low heat with a little butter, like crisp up that top of the bun, like where the opening is for the hot dog. It is a delight. But the best is there is nothing like a hot dog cooked on a grill. Like, it's like not even the same thing. It's not even the same food. A hot dog cooked in the microwave and a hot dog cooked on the grill is not the same food. So if you can put them on the grill, like sometimes even in the winter, I'm like, turn on the grill, you guys. If we're going to have hot dogs, we're going to have them right. So just, just so you know, it is worth that little bit of effort because it makes maybe you as like a grown human person not loathe having hot dogs for

dinner as much because they're actually quite magical on the grill. Okay, that is it for now. thank you for listening to this episode. I will be around this Thursday, around 1215 Eastern, hopefully school is ending, all the things. It's kind of a little nuts. But I'm hoping to be able to be there. If I'm not, I will announce on Instagram that the time has changed or whatever. So if you follow me on Instagram, which I hope you do, I'm at The Lazy Genius. You can kind of know. But that is sort of our placeholder for our lives is Thursday around 1215 Eastern time. All right. Well, until next. time, you guys. Be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra and we'll talk soon. You ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life?

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