The Lazy Genius Podcast - #121 - How to Build a Fall Dinner Queue

Episode Date: September 2, 2019

One of my favorite ways to approach a new season is to have a dinner queue to pull from when deciding what to eat for dinner. In this episode, I’m going to share my reflections from my summer dinner queue and give you how I’m taking what I learned as I build one for the fall. Companion Links For This Episode Grab your copy of The Holiday Docket at the early bird price of $22 from now until September 5. If you’d like some practical thoughts on how to plan for fall, listen to The Lazy Genius Plan for Fall Routine. I reflect on our Summer Dinner Queue in this episode, which I first talk about in What I’ll Be Cooking This Summer. The three cookbooks I’m pulling from this fall are The Ultimate Instant Pot Cookbook by Coco Morante, The Roasting Tin by Rukmini Iyer, and Made in India by Meera Sodha. If you’re reaching for rice bowls, here’s a series on this: Basics, Flavors, Hacks & How-Tos. Or maybe a noodle bowl is in your future. Here’s How to Make a Pretty Bowl of Noodles. See the beginning of my Fall Dinner Queue here. If you’re on Instagram, I’d love for you to join me for an Instagram LIVE on Thursday around noon EST. 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

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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. Hi, 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's episode 121, How to Build a Fall Dinner Cue. One of my favorite ways to approach a new season is to have a dinner queue, which is basically a predetermined list of recipes to pull from when deciding what to eat for dinner. In this episode, I'm going to share my reflections from my summer dinner queue and give you how I'm taking what I learned as I build one for the fall. Then I'll lay out the simple process of creating your own. First, a quick reminder

that this is the last week to get the holiday docket for the early bird price of $22. If you haven't heard me talk about the holiday docket yet. It is a downloadable, super streamlined, efficient, but soulful way of approaching and planning for the upcoming holiday season without feeling overwhelmed. It's essentially the lazy genius guide to celebrating well. I talk about how I'm using it in my own life in just the last episode. So if you're a new listener, welcome. And you can listen back to that episode number 120 if you would like some practical thoughts. There's also a link in the show notes, or you can go directly to store. Dot the lazy genius collective.com.

One of my favorite parts of this job is thinking through difficult and challenging seasons and tasks for you and then creating a tool that makes it easier and more focused on what matters. The holiday docket is my version of that for this holiday season. And I love, love, love, love it. And I hope that you do too. Okay, let's talk about how to build a fall dinner queue. First, a quick reflection on my summer dinner queue. If you're interested in listening to that whole episode,

It's episode 111, what I'm cooking this summer. We repeated so many of the same meals. We had so much pizza and hot dogs. We grilled so many burgers. We stayed simple and repetitive and it worked great. And that's what I learned. Repeats are okay and maybe even ideal, especially for certain seasons. I often wish for the days like before I had kids where I could piddle around with dinner

and make different recipes and go to the grocery store for one ingredient. because who cares if we eat an hour later? Now that's, that doesn't work anymore. Those days are very much gone. And sometimes it's easy to long for them at the expense of the way things are now. Repetition somehow feels like giving up or like a cop out. If you repeat, you're doing something wrong. And that is just not true. Repetition in meals is just one way of eating. It has no moral value. You can repeat the same seven meals over and over again week after week and not be a bad person or a bad cook or a bad anything. it's just the way you've chosen to do it, and we can all choose to do what makes sense based on what matters to us. And that's your first step in building a fall dinner queue. Name what matters for you

in this season. Quick, limited ingredients, no complaining children. You want complex recipes because you need a hobby to take your mind off a difficult transition you're in. Name what matters, which will help you choose the recipes that support what matters. Now for me this fall, matters is this. Foods that I want to eat. Well, foods that the adults in the house want to eat. One of the things that drove the food choices this summer was avoiding complaint for my kids. I shared in my summer series that one of my least favorite things about summer is whiny children. Winnie children happen in all seasons. Let's be real. But it's harder for me to handle them when they're whining in the hottest season, like when I'm sweating. I don't like to listen to

whining when I'm also sweating. So in the fall, when I have more alone time, more structure, more margin, it's not as hot. I can handle a bit more wine. So this fall, what matters to me is making some new foods, some new meals. Not crazy or like completely at odds with what we usually have. I'm not brazing pig brains or anything. I just mean new things that have green vegetables, roasting asparagus instead of just potatoes because my kids like potatoes. Making curries and soups that aren't just the three curries and soups that my kids do like that I make all the time. I want to try some new recipes this fall because I miss cooking that way. And I want to again for this season.

Knowing what matters, then informs what recipes I choose. Now, new recipes are literally everywhere. So the way that I'm going to be a lazy genius about them is to limit my sources for those recipes. I'm going to build my fall dinner queue from a list of a few brainless crowd pleasers, which I'll share in a minute, and then recipes from just three cookbooks on my shelf, just three. It's easy to pull down 10 and flip page after page, get on Pinterest, food blogs, all the things. But this fall, I'm limiting myself to three cookbooks to ensure that I'll actually cook from them. If I build it big and say, cook for more cookbooks, I likely won't do it. But if I say,

always look for new recipes from these three books and nowhere else, I'm more likely to actually do it. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm never going to look at those other books again, but just for the next few months, These are the three cookbooks I've chosen. In case you were wondering, these are the three cookbooks for my fault. I have chosen the ultimate instant pot cookbook by Cocoa Morante. You guys, how hard was that? I love her two instant pot cookbooks. She's two.

This one takes a lot of classic dishes and just instant pots them. It seems like a really great option for still making dinner on busy days because that happens in the fall without it always being hot dogs, you know? The second book is the roasting. 10, which is a book I bought when I was in London last year. It's not really sold in the States. I'm so very sorry. But it's basically a book of sheet pan dinners. I love change your life chicken, and we make it often. But I'm excited to cook from this book to find a few recipes that are like change your life chicken, but not. The chicken needs some friends. And then the third book is called

Made in India by Mira Soda. I love Indian food. And most of the time, soda's my family. but we usually make just like two recipes all the time and I want to add some variety. This book will definitely help me do that. So I'll fill in my fall dinner queue with new recipes from these three books to meet my personal goal of making new things. And then I will complete that dinner queue with brainless crowd pleasers that my kids love. I have five categories of recipes for that and these categories really help make the planning easier. So those categories, are one basic like American foods like burgers hot dogs pizza that kind of thing we eat all three of those fairly regularly and that's great we love it second category rice bowls I have an entire

podcast series on rice bowls that I will link to in these show notes but we have food on top of rice all the time and mostly everyone loves it the third category of like our brainless crowd pleasers is noodle meals spaghetti meatballs yaku soba noodle bowls those are on the website. Homemade hamburger helper. That's also on the website. Fourth category that I've been waiting for for the fall is soup, chicken noodle soup, chicken and rice soup, chili, tomato soup and grilled cheese. Those are all always a good idea. And then the fifth category is basically change your life chicken. We will eat a lot of it this fall because it does change one's life. I will list out some of these recipes along with the links in a blog post so you can just sort of

see it all. But ultimately, having a list of meals written down. in a queue waiting to be chosen and plugged into a day is a time saver and brain saver of pretty epic proportions. It's massively helpful to me and it might be to you too. So to build your own dinner queue, name what matters, then choose recipes that fit that intention. Aim for as many meals as makes you comfortable. But I have about 15 brainless crowd pleasers that I'll rotate with the new recipes. Some weeks are better without new recipes. Some weeks are better without new recipes. and some weeks can handle three or four. I will always serve the new recipes with familiar things for the kids like bread or fruit or whatever. So each week, as I reflect on the week and I talk about

that reflection process in the last episode, I can know which weeks can handle more new recipes and which ones just need what we know works. And that's the simplicity of a fall dinner queue. I hope that helps you approach your meals in a new helpful way this fall. If you have any questions about how to build a fall dinner queue. I will be on Instagram this Thursday at noon to answer your questions. So be sure to follow me on Instagram at The Lazy Genius. And don't forget that you have just a few more days to get the holiday docket at the early bird price of $22. It'll go up to $39 on September 6th. So get it before then if you want some help celebrating well this holiday season. I can't wait for it to help fill you up and get you excited about the next few months rather than dread them.

Okay, short episode. That's it for today. Thanks so much for listening. go build your dinner queue. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra and I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to becoming you wherever you get your podcasts.