The Lazy Genius Podcast - #174 - Try a Meal Formula this Fall!

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

Now it’s not fall yet in weather or on the calendar, but it’s getting close. And while you might not think you’re the kind of person who would do a meal formula and very well could be right about that, I’d love to share with you how you might put one together to help your meals come together even more easily over these next few months. Helpful Companion Links The original meal formula episode from this past summer and the actual formula if you want to see it Leave a comment on an LG recipe if you’ve tried it and loved it or saying how you changed it up for your people. Here are some of my favorites for quick access: Change Your Life Chicken, Change Your Life Shawarma, King Biscuits, Trashy Tamales, Fearless Chicken Tikka Masala, The Chickpea Bowl, and Homemade Hamburger Helper Join me over on Instagram @thelazygenius to see behind the scenes kitchen stuff and Meal Plan Monday 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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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. This is episode 174. Try a meal formula for fall. So I'm such a big fan of meal formulas, and we had our first real one this past summer. You're welcome to go back and listen to that episode. It's episode 164. But now it's not really fall yet in weather or on the calendar.

but it's getting really close. And while you might not think that you're the kind of person who would go for a meal formula, and you very well could be right about that, I would still love to share with you how you might put one together to help your meals come together even more easily over these next few months. And as everything around here, I really hope to share tools and principles with you that you can use however you need to based on what matters to you, right? This is not a copy and paste situation.

Hence the whole like, try it thing. So just listen and you can give the ideas a try and see if they might work for you. Before we get into this episode about food, I have something to ask you regarding food. So I have a few like recipes on my site, some of which you guys have tried. Change your life chicken, change your life shwarma, king biscuits, trashy tamales, magical pancakes. I want them now chocolate chip cookies, fearless chicken masala, the chickpea bowl, homemade hamburger helper. The list is long and delicious. Now most of the time, I get the kindest DMs from you about how much you enjoyed a recipe. And a lot of Instagram stories as well.

It is all so incredibly kind that you would share your words with me and the recipe with your followers. And I'm grateful for every single word. Now, one way that Instagram has changed the food blogging rhythm for many of us, even as just as consumers, is that we don't leave comments on recipe posts anymore. We have direct access to our favorite recipe people, you know, through DMs. But if you think about it, like when you look for a recipe on a food blog, you look for comments to see if the recipe was good or not. If I search a dish on Google and I have one option that's got 54 comments and another option that only has one, I will absolutely click on the one with 54, right? We want social proof when it comes to recipes. So here's what I'm asking. If you have made

a recipe of mine. I would absolutely love it if you would go and leave a comment on the actual recipe post so that other people who happen upon it or search it very much on purpose, they have that social proof right there on the post. Now, this is something that you can do for other food bloggers and other recipe posts you enjoy too. It is such a huge way to help people who are creating content for you. And if you substitute something, if you make a change, if you make something that is dairy full to be dairy-free and it works, like that kind of thing. Like, share those things in the comments. Think about what you would like to see if you click on a recipe post.

What would be helpful? And then share whatever that is. So it would be a huge help to me and to other people who come looking for, you know, a new way to cook chicken to see your comments. So thank you. Thank you for doing that. I really, really appreciate it. Okay, let's talk about a meal formula for a fall.

That's hard to say. here's what is often true of fall food. We don't have to be forced to make it, right? I think we generally like really dig moving into cooler weather and cooler weather food. So I think the problem with cooking in fall versus, you know, say cooking in the summer is that we want to make everything. We have what feels like so many options, too many options. And we let our excitement sort of spin out. without having a place to put it. So the fall meal formula is is a little different than the summer one. It's it is similar, but there are some key differences. We can use a similar structure, but the perspective shifts a bit. If you have kids or you live in a hotter part of the country, cooking in the summer

is a bit of a bummer. Now, a lot of times people will say like, oh, I just grill all the time. But what if you don't have a grill? What if you don't have AC and you hate heating up the house with the oven? What if you spend a lot of time at the pool or outside or wherever because it's summer and you don't enjoy coming home when everyone is hungry and cranky and you're trying to figure out blah blah, blah. That summer food energy is like it feels familiar for a lot of us. Fall food feels different. Fall food is naturally really comforting. Soups and stews, like hot balls of stuff.

I think that's actually the official term for it. hot bowls of stuff. So what we want to do with this fall meal formula, it's not that we're trying to like take every bit of decision making out of our dinners like we are with the summer. We want to put a little structure around our excitement and not get burned out or not feel let down when we make our first two pots of soup and then we're like weirdly out of ideas. You know, I also think another aspect of fall cooking that's important is to distinguish between practices and plans. There are certain things that you naturally already put into practice. Like maybe you eat soup once a week. Maybe you like roasting a chicken and eating it for a couple

of meals or making casseroles or whatever else. It doesn't matter what the thing is. But think about the things that you already do that already exist in your cooking during the cooler months, your practices. I want you to distinguish between those practices and any plans or goals you have for your fall cooking. Maybe you have big plans this year where you want to learn how to roast that chicken or you're feeling really inspired to make a few new recipes or whatever it is. fall is the season it's the season where we often have the most practices in place and the most plans right we have the most like starry eyes around dinner and if our meal formula it doesn't accommodate both of those things i think it affects our motivation and our energy in the kitchen

especially as we get closer to the holiday gauntlet and and we kind of want an excuse to shut down anyway. So with those things in mind, let's talk about how you might set up your full meal formula. First, we're going to start with categories or buckets. You can use whichever word makes them a sense for you. So you can categorize or bucketize anything that makes sense for you, but you need some kind of lens that turns your current meal situation of like what will we eat tonight, where you're choosing from the entire world of recipes, into a very kind limitation that can help you make an easier, more thoughtful decision. So you can create buckets based on the type of meal that you make. Soup, roasted stuff, casseroles, meat and three, tacos, pizza,

breakfast, that kind of thing. The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road, that's the Volkswagen Tiguan. Its sleek exterior makes a first impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available full leather seats and wood accents. Under the hood, the available 201 turbocharged horse power engine gives it a fun to drive edge. The refined Tigwan, you deserve more style. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SUV, German engineered for all.

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your energy level or the amount of time that you have. Maybe you need meals that are ready in less than 20 minutes. You need ones that are quick, but need prep beforehand in order to be quick. You want low and slow. You want ones that are tended to while you're home in the afternoon, right? You could make your buckets based on energy. You get to make your buckets based on whatever you want. But having buckets is really important when you're creating your formula. You need a place to start. So think about how you naturally want to categorize or bucketize your food. Our family's fall meal formula categories are soup, rice bowls, always rice bowls. We love rice bowls. Pasta, breakfast, pizza, sheet pan meals, and then kind of just like a catch-all of other

family favorite meals that don't fit into one of those categories. Miscellaneous or whatever. Now, what do you do with your categories? I'd like you to put a few practices in each category and then a few plans. This is where we pay attention to the difference. Basically, it's the difference in things that you love, but it also gives you a place for things that you're wanting to try. And that's not just recipes themselves. It could be a cooking skill. It could be that this is the fall when you actually figure out how to use your instant pot. So let's say you have similar categories that I just listed that are buckets based on a type of meal. As you list out some meal options under those bucket labels under those categories, you could focus on making sure there are a couple of instant

pot recipes within each category so that you're putting yourself in a position to practice using your instant pot. Does that make sense? You get to be intentional about your plans for fall food. as well as give plenty of space to continue engaging in the practices that make you love fall food and fall cooking in the first place, things that you go back to again and again that you usually only make when it's cold outside. Okay, now, this all might sound like a little general, but that's on purpose. I'm not going to give you a list of recipes to cook this fall. I know that's kind of what you want is for somebody to just tell you what to do. but you also know from doing that a lot and then not following through with what that person said,

it just doesn't work. This is where you get to name what matters to you about meals this fall. And then you can name your own practices and plans, if you have any. And then from there, you get to create categories that make sense for your life. So name what matters. Name what you want to do often, what practices you want to have. Name what practices you want to have. Name what. Name what what plans you have, what skill you want to learn, or what cuisine you want to try if you have one of those. And then you create buckets or categories that makes sense to how you already eat and think. And then from there, you just list out a few recipes or meal ideas under each category. Now comes the formula part. When it's time to decide what's for dinner, whether you decide that

every day, once a week, or once a month, you have limits. So you're not choosing from everything that has ever existed, but you are choosing instead from what matters to you, meals that already serve what matters to you. So you can have one long list of meals that you're going to cook from this fall that are generally broke. They were made based on categories, but you don't necessarily have to keep them in categories. You just have your list and you try not to repeat as much as you don't want to repeat. Or you could use your categories and that list to build what I call a meal matrix. We've talked about this before. You could choose to cook from one category a night. You could even assign each day its own category. You know, like Monday is one particular

category, Tuesday is another, and it always stays that way. So that you know that when you're planning your meals that week, you only have a few options that will work for your regular fall practices and plans. You've already named those things and they're already set up by category assigned today's. However, if that feels too restrictive or like too much, you just cook from that one long but manageable list. And that's, that's really it. It's very simple, but it's very freeing. And remember, you can also like always add or take away from recipes on your list. You just, you make this work in whatever way serves your life the most. The list itself is actually what I call a seasonal dinner queue, which is a familiar term for some

of you have been around here a while. It's just basically a list of meals that makes sense for the season you're in. But this episode just goes a step further and giving you a little bit more guidance and how you might choose the meals that go on that list. So what's your practice? What's your plan? What really matters about meals in this next season on the calendar or this next season of give yourself a limited number of choices to create the most freedom. And then you can even decide once, that's a lazy genius principle to decide once by creating that meal matrix, if that sounds fun. If it doesn't, don't do it. Regardless, the point here is to bring you joy in the kitchen. You do whatever does that, even if it's the opposite of what I

just shared, right? You have to do what works for you and what you care about, whatever brings you joy. If cooking a big, long, elaborate meal gives you joy, figure out how to make that work. If cooking, like, having as little hands-on presence in the kitchen as possible brings you joy, then you can create systems around that. Like, you get to decide what this means for you. Always. Always, always is what matters to you. Always. And that's how you could try a fall meal formula. So thank you for in advance, by the way, for leaving a comment on recipe posts on the blog. I really, really appreciate that. I'm so grateful that you listen today.

Please feel free to share. If you come up with a cue, if you come up with a fall meal formula, if you want to share like a regular practice, like one thing that you always love making when fall comes around or something that you're really excited about, like be sure. If you want to share that with your people on Instagram and tag me, I would love to see what you're doing. I would love to see how all of our food for fall comes together in our own unique individual ways because they should be unique and individual.

They should only serve what matters to you as an individual, not what I tell you to do. Okay? Like, can I, can I, can I, uh, can I drive that point to the ground anymore? You do what matters to you. I'm so grateful that you listen today. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter. I'm lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra.

And I will 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.