The Lazy Genius Podcast - #140 - Time to Create Your Winter Dinner Queue

Episode Date: January 13, 2020

I love putting the proper importance on food and meals and gathering around the table but not wasting energy on the wrong things. Those wrong things look different for everyone listening, but today we’re going to figure out what matters and what doesn’t around your winter table. Stuff Mentioned The list of actual meals my family is eating from my Winter Dinner Queue this season. Hope*Writers is opening its doors to new members now through Friday, January 17th. If you already know you want in, you can click here to join using my affiliate link. If you’re interested in the From Dreaming to Doing webinar hosted by Lazy Genius mascot Emily P. Freeman, click here. Here’s how I built my fall dinner queue and here’s what we ate last summer. If you need a refresher on brainless crowdpleasers, here you go. And here’s a link to last week’s episode on planning your time this winter if you missed it. 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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Visit vw.ca to learn more. SUV-W, German-engineered for all. 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.

I'm really excited about today's episode because it's about food. And I love food. More specifically, I love putting the proper importance on food and meals and gathering around the table, but not wasting energy on the wrong things. Those wrong things look different for everyone listening. But today we're going to figure out what matters and what doesn't around your winter table in this 140th episode. We're going to talk about your winter dinner queue. What a winter dinner queue is. Say that three times fast. Why it's important, how to make one. and how I make mine. I also have a blog post that lists out all of the meals that are on my queue if you're interested in seeing it in black and white. They aren't all actual recipes or like links to recipes. Some are, but not all of them. So just a heads up on that. But the list is

there all the same. First, before we get into it, I want to let you know about my favorite resource, if you are a writer. And it's called Hope Writers. I've been a Hope Writers since the community started several years ago, and it's been a huge part of my writing life. Their library of resources, it helped me write my first book proposal and a really good one, I think, because I signed a book deal out of it. It helped me narrow in on my message. It's helped me find my audience. Being a hope writer, it's just been such a gift because the point of this online community is to bring you creative and personal success. Now, creative success is in your actual writing, however that might look, whether it's publishing or writing on the internet, but it's also personal success in

that you still feel like a person with a soul, because writing is really personal and often difficult and even lonely. So having a group, having a community of like-minded people, it makes such a difference. Hope Writers is a membership site, which means you pay monthly to be a member and gain access to everything Hope Writers offers. They only open to you. doors for membership two or three times a year. So now is one of those times. They are accepting new members now through Friday, January 17th at midnight. If you would like to learn more about Hope Writers and just get some great advice on being a writer, lazy genius mascot and my real life friend, Emily P. Freeman, is hosting a webinar on Wednesday, January 15th about how to go from

dreaming about writing to actually doing it. There's a link in the show notes for you to reserve your spot for that webinar. I am a proud, very proud affiliate of Hope Writers. And by being an affiliate, I do get a percentage of the membership fees for folks who discover Hope Writers and join through me. But I hope that you know that I'm not an affiliate in many places, nor do I share ways for you to spend your money that I don't think are incredibly valuable. I take your attention and trust and your actual dollars very seriously. So anytime I share something like this, I'm not blown smoke. Hope Writers is a great community, and they have an incredibly dedicated staff that can help you figure out if this is a right community for you. So you have until Friday to join this time around or at least explore what it's about.

So you can check the show notes again for a link to get you there, including to save your spot for Emily's webinar on Wednesday. Cool. Okay, let's create our winter dinner queue. First thing, what is a dinner queue? A dinner queue, and this is queue like your Netflix queue, it is basically a chosen list of meals you're going to make for dinner. And if you're new here, you might think that this is weird because isn't the entire internet a list? Aren't all my cookbooks a list, Kendra? Yes, they are. But that list is way too big. Most likely your dinner overwhelm is because there is too much to choose from. A dinner queue limits those choices

to ones that make sense for your life. A dinner queue can be 10 meals you repeat, 30 meals you do for an entire month and repeat, or maybe even more than that, if you're not a fan of repetition. My winter dinner queue has 35 meals on it. But a few of them are recipes I haven't tried before. So it might be by the end of the season that that list is actually smaller since not all the new recipes might work. So that's what a dinner queue is and why it's important. It's a pre-made list of choices that are not overwhelmingly long and we want to limit overwhelm as much as we can. Now, how do you make one? I have a few. talked about this in other dinner queue episodes, but here is the basic idea. First, name your season.

That first includes the actual season. Right now, where I am, when I'm saying these words, it's winter. And where I live in North Carolina, winter is cold, but often like sporadically so. Like in my 10-day forecast, there is both a 71 degree day and a day with a chance of snow. So who knows? But for the most part, I am not grilling, right? I'm making warm bowls of cozy things because it is mostly cold. Winter is a great time for that kind of food. So first name the season that you are in. Also, name the season you're in as in the season of life. The next two or three months could be extra busy because you just got a new job and you're adjusting to a new schedule. Maybe you're like my friend Haven who just had a baby. And since she already has two small boys, it's like she's

going to depend on meals from other people and lots of spaghetti probably. Different seasons of life create unique circumstances, especially around food since we have to eat every day. So name the season you're in and don't expect something of your meals that your season isn't prepared to sustain. It is not fair to you or your people to set yourself up for failure and frustration when you don't have to. And the good thing about seasons is that they change. We think in small are chunks of time on purpose so that we stay present where we are and limit the amount of doom and gloom we feel that it'll always be this way, right? It won't. So let's just think about the season we're in right now and leave the next one for whenever it comes. So once you name the Earth season

and your life season, you are better equipped to give yourself some parameters on what should be on your dinner queue. If a meal doesn't make sense for this winter and for your schedule and priorities, it doesn't go on the queue. That doesn't mean it never will. It just doesn't belong here now in this season. Your parameters might be meals that are prepped in advance since you get home from work so close to dinner. They could include teaching your teenagers how to cook for themselves. So the meals need to be really simple and kind of basic skills that they can build upon. When I had tiny babies, one of parameters was meals I could make with one hand since I was always holding a human. Anything counts. Just give yourself some parameters on what makes sense right now, which will make

choosing the actual meals so much easier. The next step is to initially fill your dinner queue with brainless crowd pleasers. Again, if you are new here, this is a concept I talk about often and it's so important. In fact, there is an entire podcast episode about it in the show notes if you want listen. But a brainless crowd pleaser is a meal that is easy for the cook to make to the point where where you can kind of like go on autopilot. You don't have to constantly consult a recipe. And it's a meal that is generally pleasing to the people eating it. A crowd pleaser isn't necessarily a general crowd pleaser in the sense like you're having a big party or something. It's whatever pleases the crowd that's regularly around your table. That might just be you.

that might be you and a spouse or a roommate or you and your gaggle of, you know, picky children. That's what mine is. We want meals that are easy to make and will be met with as few complaints as possible. You might not eliminate those complaints altogether, especially if they're coming from children, but it helps to keep them at bay to the extent that you can, right? So list out some brainless crowd pleasers and then fill in the gaps if there are any with recipes that you've saved on Pinterest or that are in that new cookbook you got for Christmas. just choose as many recipes to fill in the queue to the point you'd like it to be filled. Maybe you'll only want a dozen recipes for now. If you already have 10 great brainless crowd pleasers, just grab two recipes you're excited to try and call it done.

Don't make your queue longer than it needs to be. Otherwise, you're back where you started. You'll have too many choices and you'll still be frustrated about getting dinner made. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa. Whether it's Verde. Roha or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk.

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You've made your winner dinner queue. It's pretty simple, really, but those simple things are often the most impactful. Okay, so I want to spend a couple of minutes explaining what I am doing with my own winter dinner queue. So my cue is 35 things and I counted of those 35, 20 are brainless crowd pleasers. So that's, what's that math? I don't know. It's more than half, whatever the percentage is. The other 15 are new recipes I want to try. Now, my queue is usually not that loaded with new recipes. I have far fewer. But I mentioned in last week's episode, that one of the things that matters to me this season is enjoying being in the kitchen.

And something that brings me a lot of joy in the kitchen is learning new methods of cooking and new flavor combinations and just being inspired by great food. I don't usually have as much time for that. But this winter, I do. I have more time for that than I will for at least the spring and summer of this year. So I decided to add more new recipes than I usually do to my winter cue. Now, none of those are just like huge swings in terms of completely new foods that my kids will definitely not go for. I'm not doing that because I still want to mostly keep the complaining

at a minimum. But all of the new recipes use ingredients we often use. So they're, you know, they're not like new and scary. And there are mostly variations on methods or types of meals we already eat. So for example, one of the brainless crowd pleasers on the list is chicken noodle soup. My middle son Ben loves chicken noodle soup. And the other two kids will eat it without a ton of complaint. It's like not their favorite, but it's not a huge deal. Now that vehicle is familiar, right? Soup with chicken and carrots and noodles is familiar. One of the new recipes I want to try is not actually a recipe written down anywhere, but a riff I want to attempt and that is Asian-inspired chicken noodle soup. There will still be chicken and carrots and noodles. But the noodles, but the noodles,

will be egg noodles, which is a little different. I might even buy like longer noodles at the international grocery store to give it like a little fresh take for me. And I will do things like saute fresh ginger and a little garlic in the beginning of the soup to create kind of a flavor base. I'll still use chicken stock, but I might add some dashi, which is a Japanese soup stock. It's made of seaweed and fish. It's fine. It's delicious. Maybe some soy sauce. So in many ways, the recipe is familiar. Like the meal for the family is familiar. We do Asian flavors a lot and other brainless crowd pleasers. My kids are half Japanese. And we do that kind of soup often as well. So this marries both worlds, right? It isn't anything like super crazy or super adventurous, but it is new. It's still

inspiring me as the cook and it offers a little bit more variety. So that's one of the versions of a new recipe and why I'm making more this season. Now, here's another thing that might be helpful as you put together your queue or more specifically, I guess, as you plan meals from that queue, because making the queue doesn't necessarily plan your meals. It makes your choosing easier. But in terms of assigning them to a day, you know, you have to make that step as well. So I mentioned on Instagram sometime a few days ago that I meal planned our entire month of January. Now, I don't usually do that. I don't usually plan a month's worth of dinners. But this month felt like it would work. Part of that is because, like I shared in last week's episode, our schedule is pretty relaxed this month. There aren't a lot of

things going on, which is really nice. So it's easy to assume that our plans won't drastically change. So if you want to try making a plan for the entire month, here is my kind of quick order of operations. First, categorize your dinner queue. Now, that all depends on the kinds of foods you normally make. But my categories are rice meals, pasta meals, soup, and then kind of a catch-all other category. We eat a lot of rice meals. And as much as we love them, I don't know that we would make an entire week of meals that all are rice-related, right? We want to spread it out. So I categorize the winter dinner queue and did, I did include the new recipes in those categories, by the way. So, for example, we have 11 rice meals, seven pasta meals, four soup meals, and then 14 that count as other.

Now, I didn't break down the other category any further because kind of the balance of numbers is sort of fine as it is, right? If it was 25 other meals and then like five rice and five pasta, then yeah, I might break it down further because who knows what's in that 25. But that's enough breakdown for my own purposes at this point. So if I look at the numbers, here's what I'm working with. The entire queue is 35 meals, which is more than I need for a month, not just because there are less than 35 days in a month, but also because we have dinner out with family sometimes, we'll go over to a friend's house or have dinner with our church community group once a week. Also, when I look at the numbers, if I have 15 new meals on my queue, new recipes I want to try, and we're to just like roughly

assume I cook through the entire queue just about every month, right? We'll say every five to six weeks. That means I'm making a new recipe almost every other day, if not at least every two days. I don't want that. I want to make something new like maybe once a week, more likely once every two weeks. So for me, it's not as straightforward as just writing down the next meal that's on the queue in the next block on the calendar. And it might not be that straightforward for you either. The way to think about it is in terms of categories and then spacing out and rotating through those categories. So as I look at my categories, I am missing new recipes, a category of new recipes. I do want to space those out, just like I want to space out the rice meals. But what I did on my

list and said, rather than creating like an entire new category, I just like wrote a little like asterisk or whatever next to the new thing. I just put like a little star next to them. And then that way when I'm choosing based on the category of the kind of meal, I'm able to more easily see how often I'm choosing new recipes. Okay, so all of this is really, really personal. You get to decide how to do this, what your categories are, how often you want to repeat things, all of that. But having the cue, it helps that so much, especially if you break it down even further into categories that make sense for you. So we do about, give or take, one pasta a week, two rice is a week, one soup a week maybe, and then fill in with the other things,

all paying attention to not putting too many new recipes on the calendar at once. Also, choose the right day for making something new, especially if you're planning ahead. Choose a day your home. Choose a day that's close to like a meal prep day, maybe on a weekend, if you do that so that you're making the process even easier. I would also add as a final like month-long meal planning tip to have one meal each week that can be easily scrapped. In other words, something that doesn't rely on fresh food, right? For us, that is always something like grilled cheese and tomato soup. The ingredients for that are always in our house. They will always get eaten in other things. And the ones that, you know, like the ones that will go bad,

they'll get eaten other things. And the things that don't go bad, well, they don't go bad. So if we really need to scrap a meal because of like a surprise invitation to a friend's house or, you know, a school fundraising dinner at the local pizza place or something, we have a meal that we can just scrap and not have waste from. Right. So that could be really helpful to you if you're planning in a month in advance. So that's it. I want you to go make your winter dinner queue. Think about your season. Think about your season of life and what you need from your cooking experience right now. set appropriate expectations, then choose recipes that fit that season. Start with brainless crowd pleasers, so there are always easy options on the docket and then fill in with new recipes to try that fit your needs. If you want to take it a step further, try planning a week or two or even a month in advance and categories will help you get there. And remember, you are the boss. You're the boss of this meal plan. If you need to switch meals, do it. If you need to scrap a meal, do it. A meal plan is just a plan. It's not set in stone and it's not a failure if you change it. In fact, like sometimes it

changing means it's working for you that you're like able to roll with it. You can move things around with whatever comes up in your life and you can more easily make a dinner that fits in with whatever's happening during your week or your day. The plan is just a place to start. It's a literal placeholder for your dinners. So change the plan if it needs to change. It doesn't mean it's not working or that you're a bad planner. It's completely neutral. It's just a tool. I hope this episode gets you excited about planning your meals this winter. And I love that thinking about things like this really do enhance our lives. You're funneling your energy in a direction that makes sense for you. And you're eliminating the need to make decisions further down the road because you're already making some of

them now. You've already put them on your queue. It's great. And you're choosing meals that makes sense that you'll be excited about that don't feel overwhelming or too much or whatever. We started, well, we ended 2019 and carried over into the start of 2020 a ton of sickness in our family. And I got to tell you, having this month's meals planned has saved my sanity in massive ways. it's such a worthy investment of your time to make this dinner queue. And if you want to spend those extra few minutes actually plugging meals into the calendar boxes, do it. You won't regret it. Even if it changes, it still helps, I promise. Okay, that's it for today. You can check the show notes for all the links to all the things that will help you along if you'd like a little extra help

in this. And remember, there is a link for registration for that Hope Writers webinar on Wednesday. doors closed for membership on Friday. And if you need more information about that, all the links are in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening to you guys. I'm so appreciative. I love being back here with you at the start of 2020. And I look forward to seeing you next week. In the meantime, 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 time. 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.