The Lazy Genius Podcast - #239 - Five Lessons Learned From Soup (No, Really!)

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

It’s winter, and most people have big soup energy this time of year. I have such energy. I love a good soup. I wish my kids liked soup more than they do, but they don’t hate it as a concept. We’re working on it. But today I want to share five lessons learned from soup.   Stuff Mentioned Claim The Lazy Genius Kitchen preorder bonuses at thelazygeniuskitchen.com! Haven’t read The Lazy Genius Way? Grab it here or check with your library about getting a copy. Bri McKoy is a cooking teacher I trust with my whole being. She’s offering The Everyday Kitchen Masterclass right now. It starts on January 10th, 2022! Bri’s soup recipes: Pizza Soup, Chicken Zoodle Soup, Homemade Cream of Mushroom Soup, Chicken Taco Soup Episode 54: The Lazy Genius Makes Soup 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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you, German Engineered for All. Hello there. 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 is episode 239, five lessons learned from soup. No, really. It's winter, and most people have, like, big soup energy this time of year. I have such an energy.

I love a good soup. I wish my kids like soup more than they do, but. Like they don't hate it as a concept. We're working on it. It's fine. But today I want to share five lessons learned from soup. These lessons are soup specific. Like in the actual application of these lessons, it does involve making and or eating soup.

But I'm using lazy genus principles to share these lessons. So this is an episode that shows how versatile and helpful the 13 lazy genus principles are. And today we're just applying a few of them to soup. So before we jump in, in case you don't know, I wrote a book that came out in August of 2020 called The Lazy Genius Way. And that book outlines the 13 principles, gives tons of examples of how to apply them. We did a survey a few weeks ago, and one of the questions was how many of you have read The Lazy Genius Way? We had over 10,000 people answer that survey. And like 75% of you have, you have read it, which is amazing. The book is so helpful and it is, for the record, it is not like kind of a regurgitation of the podcast

episodes. It is the foundation for them. The book is kind of the legend or the guide of how to lazy genius anything. So if you are in the 25% of people who have not read the book, I highly encourage you to check it out. Okay, so let's jump into the five lessons learned from soup. lesson number one have house rules for your soup okay so set house rules is a lazy genus principle the idea here is to have built in rules or guardrails or decisions that support what matters most to you my guess is that for most of us one of the things that matters most about soup is the experience of soup okay no matter how woo-woo you are soup is it means it makes us feel things. Like holding a cozy bowl of soup on a cold day, like that is an experience in

itself. It's, um, it's simple. It's maybe isn't going to like cause you to write a song about it or anything, but the experience of soup is usually something that people really value about soup. Even if you've never said those words before, which I realize is kind of a weird sentence, but here we go. So I would encourage you to have house rules for your soup. to enhance its experience. You serve soup in pretty bowls. Maybe as I say that, you realize that you don't have deep, cozy bowls that makes sense for soup. And so your experience isn't quite what you want it to be. You know, it could be that you don't have what you need. So a house rule could be that soup gets served in pretty bowls. Another, this is true in our house, soup is always served with bread. Always.

I have sister Schubert yeast rolls in the freezer at all times. Sometimes I'll make rolls for from scratch or like a loaf of, you know, no need crusty bread or buy a bagget from the store. The point is we always have bread when we have soup. Like it's just, it is a rule. It is a house rule. It's part of the cozy experience. And it also helps my kids who are picky have something that they will for sure like because they all like bread.

Maybe you turn on the fake fireplace show on Netflix when you eat soup or you light a real fire if you have a real fireplace to add to the experience. There are lots of ways you can enhance what matters about the experience. of soup by setting a house rule to support that experience. So that's number one. I'm serious. set house rules for your soup. Number two, soup is the best food to batch. Batching is another lazy genius principle and you are likely already very familiar with us. Batching is just doing something all at once rather than spreading it out over time. Soup is a great batched meal because you could make a giant and have two dinners worth or a dinner and a week of lunches or a meal to have now and a meal

to freeze for later. Soup is a batching dream. I think that that's so true that it's sad to make soup that is only for one meal. It's so easy to double like why not do it? So soup is the best food to batch. Number three, when it comes to soup, let people in. You guessed it. Let people in is another lazy genius principle. And this takes a couple of forms. Okay, the first one is letting people into the process of enjoying soup. It's an easy meal to share. We already talked about how you could batch it and make extra.

It feels very communal and it's easy to stretch for big crowds. So if you know that soup is on the menu, consider inviting neighbors over for dinner or packing up a batch for a family with young kids. Even if the kids don't eat the soup, the grown-up or the grown-ups in charge of those kids will likely enjoy that soup for dinner or even a few days of lunches that's already made. So if you're making soup, think about how you might let people into that. You don't have to every time. Sometimes we just make soup for ourselves.

We don't have to go beyond that. That's okay. I'm not trying to like soup guilt you here. But it's a great meal to consider how you might let people in. We'll be right back. AI is moving fast across the enterprise. But without visibility, it's just chaos, different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways. ServiceNow turns that chaos into control.

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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. The second way that you can let people in when it comes to soup life is to limit your soup experts. Limit where you get soup recipes. I would like to point you in the direction of one, Bree McCoy.

Brie McCoy is a real life friend of mine and my favorite internet kitchen partner. I like to teach you how to do things in and around the kitchen. That's what my next book, The Lazy Genius Kitchen, is all about. More on that later. but Bree is the person to really teach you how to cook. Bree is a brilliant cooking teacher. She knows flavor. She uses a salt like I do.

No bland food, please. And she is an utter delight to experience. She has some fantastic recipes on her blog of delicious soups that I have, in fact, cooked myself. Her chicken pot pie soup is so good. Her lemon chicken soup is like really simple and bright and just a delight. I have yet to make her pumpkin chili because my kids are barely, dipping their toes in the chili waters right now, but people rave about Bree's pumpkin chili.

So basically a way that you can let people into your soup life is to have a small collection and maybe even a single person to trust when it comes to soup recipes. Don't go all over the internet. Whose food do you consistently enjoy making? Do they have soup recipes? Then make their soups. That person for me is Bree. You can choose your own person or two, but that is a way to simplify the season of

making soup and a different way of letting people in. Which leads me to number four. Start small. This is one of the more foundational lazy genius principles because of how hard it is for us to do this. But starting small is often the only way we can move in the direction of things that really matter to us. Instead of building it big and buying an instant pot and a soup cookbook and making a soup schedule and getting a different Dutch oven that you think feels prettier and more legit than the one

that you already own, start small. Pick a soup recipe and make it. Like for real, just make soup one night. Don't overcomplicate it. Don't mechanize or systemize it right away. Just make soup. Start small. Start small with one soup recipe you love and make it again. Start with one new soup recipe that you want to try from a recipe creator that you trust and love and make it. Don't. Don't. get soup paralysis because you're building it too big or you think you need to find a dozen soup recipes to get you through the season start small pick one make it and then do that again and the number five you must go in the right order most soups can and dare I say should follow one specific order of operations I think that the most flavorful balanced soups are ones that involve

sauteing your vegetables first, at least like the aromatics, things like onion, celery, carrot, bell pepper, garlic, ginger, that kind of thing. If you make soup and you just dump like a diced onion into a pot of liquid, that onion is not going to have the opportunity to reach its full potential. It's not going to taste as good as it could if it were sauteed with butter and salt. It's also not going to have as pleasant of a texture when it's more or less boiled as opposed to sauteed. So I very, very much believe in soups being developed layer by layer, not just dump and stir in a particular order. That includes any meat as well. You can certainly add raw meat to a pot of soup and cook the meat in like the simmering liquid. And sometimes that

might actually serve the soup better. It might be a better plan. But nine times out of 10, you will get a better soup by browning any meat beforehand, getting some flavor. So the lesson is that soup benefits from going in the right order. Go in the right order is a lazy genius principle. And it applies to so many things from cleaning the bathroom to having a conversation with your teenager about their attitude to making soup. Now for the soup one, I have an entire podcast episode dedicated to how to make soup. But I also have a really fantastic, hold please, it's book plug time.

have a really fantastic pre-order bonus for anyone who would like to or who already has pre-ordered my second book, The Lazy Genius Kitchen. I mentioned it earlier. It comes out in March of 2022, which I realize is like a long way away. But to give you some fun from that book while you wait for it to arrive, we have a bonus that is available just in the month of December. And it's all about soup. You'll get beautifully designed downloads of how to make soup.

In other words, like the steps. of how to go on the right order. You will also get three soup recipes written out like real recipes and not like my Instagram highlights where I just like sort of tell you how to make stuff. It's very official. So there's a recipe for my tomato soup for chicken soup and for a sausage tortellini soup. Plus we will share a link to a video that shows you how to make soup in the right order. All of that will be emailed to you after you pre-order the lazy genius kitchen and then go

to, this is important, you have to tell us you ordered it by going to the lazy genius kitchen.com and give us like your order information. Once you do that, we will email you all the lazy genius soup goodies. And if, by the way, you have already pre-ordered the lazy genius kitchen and you got your November pre-order bonuses, the December soup bonuses should already have been delivered to you. So those are, they should be waiting for you in your inbox. Okay, book plug. the point. Soup teaches us that going in the right order matters. And if you like soup, I feel very confident in saying that your soup game will be elevated big time by following this order, no matter the recipe you're using. And those are the five lessons learned from soup.

I would really, I would really like for you to make soup this week. Like just one time. Name what matters to you about the experience. You can sit in a cozy chair with the bowl resting in like a cloth napkin or a tea towel to protect your sweet hands from the heat, but to give you like a soup experience that really reaches down to what you love about the coziness of soup and of this season in particular, name what matters about soup. Like that's a thing. I promise that's a thing. It might feel weird, but it's the elevation and intention around regular, ordinary things

that makes those things memorable and part of a life that we really treasure living. That got real hallmark real fast, but it's the truth. Soup is just one of those things, especially when you apply a handful of lazy genius principles to it that can really like enhance your life in a beautiful way. Okay, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week it is Melissa Wall. So this lazy genius of the week is a little different than usual. usually we have like tips and stuff right but Melissa tagged me in a post on

Instagram I'm at the lazy genius by the way and the post was a video of this like adorable holiday shopping event lots of wooden trees and pretty Christmas decor and all kinds of things it was so lovely in her caption she said that going to this particular Christmas event is one of the ways that she lives in the holiday season and enjoys it kind of like an opening ceremony that Christmas isn't Christmas without this thing, right? Well, she shared that she couldn't go to the event that she loved so much because she had had surgery, but that her parents face-timed her from the event and brought her along with them. And y'all, it kind of made me cry.

It was the sweetest thing to see how her parents knew how important going to this little Christmas shop was. They knew it mattered to her. And so they took her along, even though she couldn't physically go. I just loved the post so much. in that same elevation and intention of the simple things that I just mentioned. We get a deeper, wider, more wholehearted life when we focus on the things that matter to us, when we start small with them, when we engage in rhythms and routines and intentions in a small, gradual way, and when we let people into those things that matter.

Sometimes they show up in really beautiful ways, like taking us to a Christmas shop on FaceTime. It's just so dear. It's so dear. So, Melissa, thank you for tagging me in that post. I hope that you are recovering well from your surgery. And congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. Okay, that's it for today, friends. There will be links in the show notes for all the things,

including where to go after you pre-order the lazy genius kitchen. So you can get your lazy genius soup guide as a bonus. We'll link to some of Breeze soup recipes because she is my recipe queen. And we'll also link to the older episode of How to Make Soup so that you can listen to a very detailed description. description of the right order of making soup if you are so inclined. I am so grateful you're here, and 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. 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.