The Lazy Genius Podcast - #151 - The Lazy Genius Eats Outside

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

Whenever I share something about eating outside, the questions pour in on how to do it. Breaking things up a bit and getting into the fresh air sounds really good right about now, so lets Lazy Genius eating outside. Helpful Companion Links The Lazy Genius Cleans the Kitchen is a good refresher on how to reset your kitchen after a meal, so apply the same dishes zone principle to eating outside. If you have ideas on how to eat outside with more ease and fun, share them on Instagram using #lazygeniuspicnic. And as always, you can find me @thelazygenius. 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

Hello, everybody. Welcome 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 episode 151. The lazy genius eats outside. If you're listening to this in real time amidst the COVID-19 outbreak, breaking things up a bit, getting into the fresh air within your own home confines. All of that sounds really. really good right about now. You know, cabin fever is like a real thing. But regardless, actually, of what big things are happening in the world, eating outside is something we like. It seems easy. Somehow, though, we don't do it very much. Anytime I share something about eating outside, just like a real-time experience, there are always questions about how to do it. Somehow, people let the how stop them. And I don't want that to be the case, especially now when I think we need we need things like eating outside. So that's what today's episode is. Short and sweet. We're just going to lazy genius eating outside. We're going to go through four different categories that you need

to consider. Convenience, cooking, comfort, and cleanup. Yes, they all start with C. You are welcome. So first up, convenience. Eating outside, it does feel a little inconvenient sometimes. You have to like take the food a farther distance than you would your table. Or like, all these trips. maybe you don't actually have somewhere to eat outside. So some of those things can be like actual roadblocks. It can feel like a surprisingly long list of things that are feeling inconvenient about the process. So we want to change that. Do you know why the picnic basket is such a great invention?

Everything is in it. You've got the blanket, obviously, but like the inside of most picnic baskets, it comes with plates and forks, a corkscrew. you have a limited amount of space where you can actually put your food, which is sort of nice. Like it limits what you can bring. And then you just carry it with you and you set up a meal. You can do the same thing for eating outside at your own house, like even if you're just walking at your back door. So I want you to think about gathering your own picnic kit or an actual picnic basket that you bought at a yard sale that you never use. Make sure everyone has utensils and stuff, you know, that they'll need. choose dishes that won't break.

Sunglasses are even kind of a nice touch if you have kids, but they don't really wear sunglasses otherwise, you know, when you're eating on a sunny day. Have blankets that you can put on the grass or a wipeable tablecloth. You can put on like, you know, an old patio table or picnic table. Put your food in the actual picnic basket if you want. Even a laundry basket, it doesn't have to be a picnic basket. or you can put everything on like a big platter or cookie sheet, a sheet pan and just carry it all out at once. Again, just think about what goes inside a picnic basket. Think about if you're packing a picnic

lunch to take somewhere, do the same even if you're just walking outside for dinner. If you don't want to pack it all up with like Tupperware and lids, just put things on a big sheet tray. So, and remember that picnic baskets, they don't have fine china or anything breakable, right, on purpose. Don't assume, here's where we get tripped up, I think. Don't assume that because your trip is shorter, that you can take your regular table stuff outside. That's, I think, what makes the process really inconvenient. So gather a picnic kit and use things that you would use if you were actually going on a picnic somewhere else. The second part is the cooking. Another way, a great way to have fewer trips and less mess is to have fewer dishes, which means you need to think critically

about what meals work better outside. So just think about recipes or meals that don't need to stay at a certain temperature, right? It's okay if they get cold or if they like sit for a minute while people are gathering or running around playing tag in the middle of the meal. It's also important to remember that not every meal works great outside. Spaghetti might be an example, especially if you don't have a table to sit at. Grownups might be able to like hold a bowl, you know, and eat. And eat it and do the thing with one hand. But asking a kid to sit on their butts on the grass and eat spaghetti without making a huge mess is like a mildly ridiculous request. And if you're a parent who gets frustrated by that kind of mess, like skip the spaghetti. Skip the anger. Skip the spaghetti.

So meals, just think about meals that are good to eat outside. Meals that we like to eat outside, anything obviously that's like typically served at a cookout or a barbecue, depending on what part of the country you live in, the word matters. So obviously burgers and hot dogs, barbecue chicken and ribs, you know, grilled food that you eat with your hands. We also, not even on picnic days all the time, but we really like dinner in a bowl. We like bowls of food. So soup and bread, rice bowls, you know, anything in a bowl. Basically, for that, like just serve the food from the kitchen and then everybody takes their bowl out to wherever you're eating.

I think that's another place we get stuck is we think we think we think we. you have to serve everything outside too. And you super don't. Fix your plate or your bowl in the kitchen and then just carry it outside. It's much easier. Or you can fix bowls for everybody and put them on that big sheet tray and carry them out yourself. I will also advocate, avoid anything that requires a knife and a fork.

I think that single utensil meals are best outside, especially if you're sitting on a blanket on the ground. That's just a little picnic tip. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Okay, the third thing to consider is comfort. So eating outside is lovely, but it can legit be uncomfortable. If you just sit like straight on the driveway, that's not cushy or nice. That's not great. Even things like direct sun and shade matter. So just think about comfort. And that's going to change on every day, probably that you decide to eat outside. So you can grab patio furniture cushions and take them to a different part of the yard maybe if you need to. You can use more than one blanket on the ground to make it more cushy and comfortable. What we like to do is use a waterproof blanket, like an actual picnic blanket on the grass first, and then put a couple of other blankets on top of that. Just be sure you don't choose something that you don't mind getting

food on. And then think about the temperature and where the shade and the sun are. Again, very, very simple things to consider, but sometimes we skip eating outside because we like sat directly in the done even on a mild day and it was uncomfortable. And so we just wrote it off, right? So think about the comfort you need for your home and then tend to it. It will make a difference. And it will make eating outside more attractive for you more often. And the fourth thing to consider is cleanup. So you likely already chose a meal that will make this a little easier. But the thing that's tough about cleanup is all the pieces to carry inside. It just kind of feels like annoying and over. overwhelming in it's a relative place in the world. So how can you make that process a bit easier?

The sheet pan or the basket that you use to carry everything outside will help carry everything inside. So load everything onto or into one thing and carry it back inside. Using dishes that are not fragile, it also helps with the piling too because you're not afraid of, you know, breaking something. Paper plates are obviously an easy solution here. If that's your thing, so you can just you know, throw stuff away. But even if you don't have paper plates, even if you don't use those disposable stuff for your meal, still bring a little trash bag outside with you when you start your meal. There's always some trash from the meal. And by gathering it up while you're still outside, somehow it makes the cleanup process easier once you're back inside. You're not like sorting through

all the different things. If you have listened to my episode on cleaning the kitchen, I'll put it in the show notes for you. You know about the dishes zone and the fridge zone. Basically, the basket or the sheet pan or the platter or whatever is like a portable dishes zone. Carry all of that inside on or in one thing and then put that on the counter. Then you can go back outside and get the ketchup and the little trash bag and whatever else. But consolidating the stuff in whatever ways you can, it makes the process both visually and practically a lot easier. and that's it. Now again, I know this feels really simplistic, but sometimes we need things broken down into the easiest parts. To have a pleasant experience eating outside, consider those four things

that matter for your process, convenience, cooking, comfort, and cleanup. Make choices in those four categories that support the meal being a pleasant one. It is likely that, that you kind of subconsciously tend to two or three of these, but it's that fourth one that keeps the experience from being pleasant. So like maybe it's comfort. It's just never very comfortable eating outside because you don't have a place to do it. So think about that one thing then and your experience will likely change quite a bit. If you have ideas on how to eat outside with more ease and fun,

please share them in the comments of this post like in the show notes or on Instagram. and we can use the hashtag lazy genius picnic. Maybe this week we can all try and picnic collectively. If you do, tag me. I'm at the lazy genius. So yeah, go eat outside. We need outside time right now. We need those like old ways and old pleasures of picnics and going slow.

So hopefully this is a good reminder to you to enjoy the process of eating outside. And even though I will say it's still worth doing when it's not super convenient or comfortable. it's even better when it is convenient and comfortable. So tend to those things and it could turn the experience into something that you'll do a lot more. Okay, that's it for today. Until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week.

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