The Lazy Genius Podcast - #214 - Your Guide to Summer Meals

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

The energy around cooking this summer is a bit of a situation. So we’re going to talk about how you think about your meals, cook them, and eat them through the lens of how you might eat on vacation. If you’re going on vacation and have to feed your people, this episode will obviously be very helpful to you. Helpful Companion Links Check out The Lazy Genius Way (affiliate link) if you’d like to read more about how I use Lazy Genius principles every day. The Summer Meal Formula, a list of summer meals that are easy-ish to make And here’s the 21-meal dinner queue that I leaned on heavily last summer 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. Today is episode 214, your guide to summer meals. The energy in my DMs and in the weekly question box on Instagram and just like generally in the air is a touch desperate right now, understandably so, about cooking food this summer. schedules are different. Numbers of bodies in your house are different, and we're also very tired from this last year. So making decisions and continuing to feed ourselves and other humans, I mean, it just feels like it will never get easier.

So I have a little book coming out next March that can help with that a little bit, which is very exciting. But until then, this episode is for you. I'm going to share five tips for cooking your summer meals. And all of them fall under one umbrella. I want you to cook like you're on vacation. Cook like you're on vacation. We're going to talk about how to think about your meals, cook them and eat them through the lens of how you might do all of those things on vacation. And if you are going on vacation and you have to feed your people, then this episode will obviously be very helpful to you. Now, here's what this episode is not.

It is not a list of meals to make. That episode is episode 164 called the summer meal formula. It explains how to put together your own summer meal formula, the actual recipes and stuff. And then there is a blog post that is linked in those show notes, and probably these two, where I share my specific meal formula from last summer, complete with links and all the things. So if you have not listened to that episode or you need a refresher, just press pause real quick, go listen to episode 164 and then come back here. Now, you don't need that episode to understand this one, but the two, together are an impressive duo, like Tina Faye, Amy Polar-level partnership here.

All right. So let's talk about how to eat on vacation. Because I really think that's the key to eating in the summer is to eat like you're on vacation. Approach it the same way. Now, there is a good chance that we might approach vacation meals differently. Let's be real about that. For some of you, you're like, um, it's vacation. I'm not cooking at all. And this is fair. when I say eat like you're on vacation, I mostly mean you're taking most of your food to someone else's kitchen far away with different schedules and needed flexibility. Right. Now, if you eat like this at home, you obviously get to stay in your own kitchen. You're not going to someone else's. This is the perk of this whole thing. You get to stay in your own kitchen. But the overall approach, it could be similar and like help you

a lot. So let me break it down. The first component of eating like you're on vacation, is you have very little variety, right? Think about it. You think through how you can use ground beef a couple of ways. You have tacos more than once. You can only eat what you brought with you. But no one really minds that much. The expectations are lower when you're on vacation. Everybody snacks and assembles and knows that there isn't much variety and is okay with it. Which leads me to the second component. The second component of eating like you're on vacation are the two tent poles of snacks, And assembly. Okay, there is so much snacking on vacation. Bowls of apples, bags of chips, cereal, popsicles, popcorn, plates of stuff you just cut up, kind of like a snack platter. And people just,

you know, munch throughout the day. There are also so many meals that you just put together, that you assemble tacos, sandwiches, rice bowls, oven nachos, a bunch of like grilled meat and then whatever sides you can scrounge up. For some reason, We do not let ourselves lean into snacking and assembly when we're at home. But summer is the perfect season to embrace snacking and assembly. Okay, number three, the number three, the third component of eating like your own vacation is leftovers and weird meals are essential. Think about your last day or two of vacation at your, you know, your beach house or whatever.

There are so many random foods left, right? And everyone just eats whatever is there before you pack up and go home. It is acceptable on vacation to eat like that. But again, we do not embrace that rhythm during the summer when we are at home. Let whatever food exist in whatever meal when you're trying to phase out the food from the past week. Number four. We'll bring all this together, by the way, you guys. Number four, make eating out special and intentional.

When you're on vacation, that's what happens. When my family went on vacation as a kid, we could only really afford one meal at a restaurant, like per trip. So when we went, it was so much fun. So much fun. It was something that everyone looked forward to. And it was part of the plan. Right. We're going to go out on Thursday night. You can do the same thing at home in the summer. Now, your budget might not be one that you want to eat out like one meal a week during the summer. That might be too much. But maybe you could do one every two weeks. It's likely also that you're throwing away a good bit of food from over planning and making your summer meals a little too complicated. So you might have more cash available for a fun meal

out than you think by eating a little more simply, even going to just like a cheap burger joint or something. But as you plan a week, like just for the summer and its particular vibe, make eating out special and intentional. Not necessarily fancy or expensive, just special and intentional. And then number five is let meals be as big or small as you need them. to be. Depending on your life or like your, you know, imagined vacation, breakfast might make more sense as the biggest meal. I think about if you go to a pool, right? Mornings are kind of slower and you're filling the time until you can actually leave to go to the pool because most pools don't open until midday. So you might make pancakes and bacon and I don't know, whatever else for a big summer breakfast.

And then you just take sandwiches and snacks to the pool and you have something really simple for dinner. Dinner doesn't have to be the biggest meal. And dinner doesn't have to look like fall or winter or spring dinner either. You don't have to do, you know, meet and three or create a ton of variety if that is not important to you. And that's the thing, right? You need to prioritize what matters most to you. If sanity or flexibility, if those things matter more than variety during the summer especially, then eat that way. If your garden matters more than having a stock. pantry, eat that way. If versatility in what you have in your kitchen, if it matters more than having a concrete plan, right? You don't really have a meal plan. If you want to have more versatility and

like spontaneity, then eat that way. You decide what matters most to you. But I think it could be really interesting for us to think about eating like we're on vacation when we're at home. Now, how can you do that? How can you eat like you're on vacation when you're at home? How do you find that rhythm? This is a placeholder, you know? This is not something. that you need to copy exactly. We don't do copying here. That's not a thing. This is just a rhythm for you to think about where you maybe could begin and tweak and make it work for you. Okay. So if you want to eat like this, if you want to take these components of eating like your own vacation and translate them into your summer life, first thing, you're probably working on a week rotation, right? Most vacations

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First, we'll talk about a scrounge day. So what happens on the scrounge day? That's the eat whatever is there for whatever meal you want day, right? Cereal boxes are low. There are bits and bobs from all the other dinners. You eat up just whatever is in the fridge or the pantry, even if it doesn't make much culinary sense. And that is, listen, that is the expected way of things. There aren't a lot of rules because you need to eat up the food.

If a kid finishes off a bag of chips for breakfast, it's, I mean, it's not the worst thing in the world. I actually really love those days on vacation. It's like going to a weird version of Golden Corral with a very eclectic buffet, right? So that is scrounge day. Now, let's talk about the replenish day. The replenish day is when you make a new plan. plan or you repeat the old one another week. You know, you just do the same thing again. You get groceries. Maybe you batch cook some things so that they're ready for later in the week. It doesn't have to be the

entire day. You just know what your general assembly meals and snacks are. You pick that stuff up at the store and you get it ready as much as you like. And you do that often when you leave for vacation, right? Now, scrounge day and replenish day could go on the same day. That way you don't have to think about what meals are on days that you're cooking or planning for later, right? If that's your call, if you want to combine them. Now, if that doesn't work for you, you could always make your, like your special and intentional eating out meal to be on replenish day. So you're not having to plan anything, right? You're doing all the replenishing and you just know, we're going to eat out tonight or we're going to get takeout or whatever. So decide if you like the idea of combining

the two or if you'd like to keep them separate. And then I want you to look at your energy and your family's weekly rhythm. When does it make the most sense to put the replenish day? That's where you start. What's the day where you have the time and the energy to think and do that? That's kind of you're like, we're about to leave for vacation day week after week during the summer. Keep that day of the week fixed until it doesn't work anymore.

Okay. now decide if you want scrounge day to be on the same day or not the same day as replenished day. If it's not the same day, scrounge day always goes right before replenish day. And then you can use the summer meal formula, which is from episode 164, or, you know, these five tenets of eating like you're on vacation where you're okay with less variety. You're embracing snacking and assembly meals and these weird buffets of leftovers. You're eating out intentionally and you're kind of removing the rules and expect. expectations you have around what a meal is supposed to look like, right? You kind of create those other

five or six days based on kind of that, is fulcrum the right word? I don't remember things from science. But like that one sort of locked day of like this is our replenish day. This is now going to be our scrounge day. And then you kind of fill in the other days with those tenants in mind. Okay. Now, that's kind of the idea here. Now, I don't expect you to adopt this. completely and every single week of the summer. But I do think it's likely that I have said something that is kind of recalibrated your summer cooking brain just a little bit to help you adjust even one notch to a simpler approach to your summer meals, right? That summer meal formula episode will also help you. It is so dagam helpful. Oh my goodness. But the idea here is very simple.

eat like you're on vacation. Eat with simple accepted limits that lean into the summer season. Adjust your expectations of what meals look like in a season that doesn't typically look like any other season, right? I love batch cooking like you often do on vacation, you know, kind of part of that replenish day. I love batch cooking in the summer especially because you're not having to heat up stuff every single day, especially when it's hot. kind of helpful thing. But this very simple mindset, however you would like to implement it, is a super helpful one and it's only for a season. Try it one week and see what happens. Pick a replenish day, plan like you're going on vacation and just see how that week feels. Now, if it does not work,

don't throw the whole thing out. Just adjust what didn't work. If you have the expectation that this is a full system from A to Z and if one letter doesn't work, you have to throw up the whole thing, you will be very frustrated. So you need to adjust your approach to summer meals every week, week after week. You'll learn what works and what doesn't. You're very smart and you'll make changes that makes sense for you slowly. You'll have a better idea of where and how to apply lazy genus principles to your summer meals simply because your expectations are seasonally appropriate and you're just paying attention to what's working and what's not and then starting small with what you see, right? I hope there's something in here that helps you have, just take a deep breath about your

summer meals, whether they are at home or on actual vacation. Okay, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week, it's Latoya, whose last name, I'm pretty sure is Jenkins. Not entirely sure. But I met Latoya on my mini book tour last August during the release of the lazy genius way. I would. I would literally like tell Instagram like, hey guys, I'll be at this bookstore in an hour if you want to come and do a socially distant book signing. It was so weird. And also one of my most favorite days ever because I really named what mattered that day on my book launch day. I did not want to be stuck to a screen refreshing Amazon rankings. I didn't want to work. I didn't want to work. And or the work that I did do, I didn't want it to feel like work. I also knew that I needed. some detox time by myself. And one of my favorite ways to get that is to go for like a long drive on backroads and listen to music. So on August 11th, 2020, the day my book released, I drove around North Carolina, which is where I live. And I met up with people at random places. And I stopped at the

Jenny's ice cream in Charlotte. I told Instagram I would be there a little bit before I got there. And so if nobody came, it was like, I'm still going to get ice cream. Well, Latoya was there. She actually, it's funny because she was randomly visiting from Ohio. She lives in Ohio. But she was in Charlotte. And she was with her daughter and we sat outside with a couple of other folks and we ate ice cream. And we took like really silly socially distant pictures. And it was just lovely. Anyway, I am celebrating Latoya as our lazy genius of the week because she tagged me in a post where she made a change like shwarma, the chicken shwarma, a staple summer recipe. A staple, y'all. You got to try it. and she has some other like really great recipes on her feed. I didn't actually know that about her. It's food that feels really accessible to most everybody with the recipes right in the caption.

So you can check out at the 419. That's all the numbers spelled out. That is the Ohio area code, I believe. So at the 419 to see what Latoya is sharing. But also she's just like a really lovely human in general. And I love having her as a lazy genius. I'm sure that's true of like every lazy genius of the week that they are lovely humans, but she's one of actually gotten to meet in person, which is fun. So I can vouch for it.

Thank you for being very awesome, Latoya. Okay, that is it for today. Thank you so much for listening. 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. 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 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.