The Lazy Genius Podcast - #287 - How I’m Making Dinner Easier for the Rest of the Year

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

It’s early November, and we’re about to hit the gauntlet if we’re not already in it. Dinner is one of those things that just keeps happening no matter who you are and how you live, so today I’m going to share what I’m personally doing to make dinner easier from now until after the holidays are over, and hopefully it’ll give you some ideas on how to make yours easier, too.   Helpful Companion Links The Lazy Genius Kitchen Episodes you may find helpful: #121 - How to Build a Fall Dinner Queue, #279 - How to Fix Dinner When You’re Never Home 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

Hey 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's episode 287, how I'm making dinner easier for the rest of the year. It's early November and we're about to hit the gauntlet if we're not already in it. Dinner is one of those things that just keeps happening no matter who you are and how you live. So today I'm going to share what I'm personally doing to make dinner easier from now until after the holiday. holidays are over and hopefully it will give you some ideas on how to make yours easier to. The first way I'm making dinner easier is by paying attention to my expectations. This isn't as much of a struggle for me as it used to be, but I have to tell myself whenever I get squirrelly that repetition is okay. Chicken four or five days a week is okay. Spaghetti once a week is okay. Not making anything new for an entire season is okay. I don't need that permission as much as I used to, but that is a huge. part of dinner feeling easier. You can repeat stuff. You can really do anything that helps your life

if it matters to you. We often feel guilty for lots of choices around dinner and I'm just here to tell you that you don't need to hold guilt as well as dinner. Dinner is hard enough on its own. The second way I'm making dinner easier is by limiting my choices. Choosing from every recipe we have ever encountered is a sure road to feeling overwhelmed. So allow me to remind you of the beauty of the dinner queue. A dinner queue is a curated list of recipes that work for your season of life right now, as well as the season in nature. For us in North Carolina, it's fall, it's getting cooler, so we get to eat chili and soup more. It's pretty great. I think cold weather foods, they feel a lot easier for a majority of people. So it's really nice to narrow down the list of

what you might cook for dinner for the rest of the year. Might even be more fun because of the kinds of meals you might want to make. Most of the dinner cues that I have made have around 30 meals in them, and they haven't really changed a whole lot over the years. I'll put a link to past fall and winter dinner cues in the show notes, but really the point is just to choose what works for you, whether it's three or whether it's 30. The third way I'm making dinner easier is by planning meals for the rest of the year. Now, I know that sounds insane, especially for those of you who are new here and don't know that I'd do that sometimes, but hear me out. It's already the second week in November. So there's just a handful of weeks left in the year. What I like about monthly or

long-term meal planning is how helpful it is during busy seasons. And November and December are for sure busy for most people. But here's the key. And this is laid out in detail in the lazy genius kitchen, by the way. That's a book I wrote about making your kitchen and everything that happens within it work for you. The key with long-term meal planning, should you choose to do it, is to not plan chronologically. That is the absolute most important element of this. If you just go from day today, today, you will lose your mind because there's nothing to orient you. You don't really know what kinds of decisions to make because you're not taking your calendar into account. So it's also really overwhelming because you're like looking ahead at all of these weeks in front of you and you're

like, I have to fill all of these. So here's what you do instead. You plan your meals or just kind of mark off the days even where you know you'll be doing fun things, holiday things, office parties, family gatherings, dinner out, or a favorite meal in for birthdays, that kind of thing. Then once those are marked off or planned, then you're going to do the same for days that are super busy. Look at your calendar and notice where you could really use an easy dinner, whether it's takeout or a brainless crowd pleaser. That's a meal that is mindless for the cook to make and relatively pleasing to whatever crowd is eating it, put easy dinners on hard days. Then you can use what I call a meal matrix if you have one to fill in the rest of the meals using meals from your dinner queue.

Now a meal matrix, it is a structure of when you eat certain meals. They can serve you in different seasons of your life. You can change your mind at any time, things like Taco Tuesday, pizza Friday, or something else I love, planning pairs where you always plan the same two meals back to back. Like you make change your life chicken one day. And then the next day you use the leftover vegetables is the base for soup, that kind of thing. So give yourself some structure on when you eat certain things. And then you really can plan for a long time at one time.

It's pretty rad. It's not necessary. But for me, it definitely makes things easier. Now, to be honest, I have not done this yet for this November and December. I have not planned for the rest of the year. And the reason is it is a little weird to meal plan publicly because I kind of would like to share the process with you in real time, but it can be a little weird for me to do that when so much of what goes into meal planning is what a person does individually in their

own lives, like when they're out of town or who they're celebrating or however they're going to do it. So it feels, it feels really personal, if I'm honest, to go through that process on Instagram or something because there's just a lot of personal stuff that exists in a moon plan for all of us, right? So I'm trying to find a way to do that, to share it where it's helpful, but it still feels like I'm honoring my family's boundaries. So we'll see what happens there. But this is something that I always do in really busy seasons, and it's just the best. We'll be right back.

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 fourth thing I'm doing to make dinner easier for the rest of the year is limiting my new recipes

by choosing ones that I'm super pumped to make. all I'm going to choose. One that I cannot wait to make that I think my kids are actually going to eat is the instant pot wild rice soup from pinch of yum. I saw it on Instagram a couple weeks ago and my mouth was a gape. It looks so yummy and something that would not cause a lot of complaining or resistance for my tiny humans probably. Actually, they're not that tiny anymore. Like saying it's taller than I am now, but you know what I mean. Now, this is an important part of meal planning, no matter how often you do it, that doesn't get talked about a lot. There are just so many new recipes out. there and you might feel various kinds of pressure to cook certain ones for a variety of reasons.

But the most excited will ever be to cook a new recipe is when we discover the new recipe. Let me say that again. The most excited will ever be to cook a new recipe is when we discover the new recipe. So if you're not experiencing some kind of like emotional elation or allegiance or having a party in your head when you find something new, you'll likely not have enough umph. in the moment that it's time to cook that thing, you know, once it's planned. So if integrating new recipes into your life is a bit of a challenge, only choose recipes. And one or two is great.

Like don't go crazy. But only choose recipes that you cannot wait to make. You cannot wait. I think that that does more for your meal planning and dinner success than having like a huge line of recipes waiting in the wings that you just never ever get to. The fifth thing I'm doing to make dinner easier. is having regular grocery pickup days. I do grocery pickup every week, but it's on different days depending on when we have enough of what we need, you know, but recently, like just in the last month or so,

I have been scheduling my grocery pickup on the same two days a week. That way, I'm never more than three days away from getting what I need. So that one is short, but it's really helped me have what I need when I need it for my recipes without thinking too hard. And then the sixth and final thing I'm doing to make dinner easier is asking for help. I ask for help from my kids by asking them what they want to eat. Annie always says breakfast. Sam always says spaghetti. And Ben always laments that Annie and Sam have chosen the same things again. But it still really helps. I also ask my husband for help when I need him to kind of lighten the dinner load. Now, here's the thing. I like cooking. I'm better at it than he is. I'm faster at it, which in some cases is good. And it's my job in our division of labor. We have

really even split in things and meals fall to me with the exception of cleaning up. He almost always does that. But there are days where I have planned something and I just don't have the energy to make it or to make it to completion. So there are days when I will text him before he's left work and I will say, what's your margin like? I am feeling real beat and I would enjoy a nap or a walk before dinner if you don't mind finishing dinner. But if you don't have the margin for that either, I'll just take some time after dinner. It's no big deal. And he will answer honestly right back. If he can, great. If he can't, also great.

Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do, but that doesn't mean we have to resent the situation or the person who cannot help us with it in that moment. But I do at least ask, and I'm glad I do, even if the answer isn't always what I would hope for, right? So to recap, I am making dinner easier for the rest of the year by giving myself permission to repeat meals, limiting my choices with a dinner queue,

planning the rest of the year at once by using a meal matrix and going in the right order. Only choosing new recipes I am pumped to try, scheduling regular grocery pickup twice a week, and asking for help. I hope this gives you some ideas on how dinner for the rest of the year can be easier for you too. Now before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week, it's Bonnie Nordval. Bonnie sent me this. Hi, Kendra. Love Your stuff. Your podcast is in my ear while I toil at a monotonous manufacturing job, and your practical ideas are much appreciated and often implemented. Thank you, Bonnie. I recently discovered a way to lazy genius my return home from a household supply shopping trip. I realized that packaging

drives me crazy, all the tags and boxes and random bits of cardboard. I dumped all my loot onto the table and immediately freed everything from its packaging, collected an entire shopping bag of debris, then swiftly put everything away. I guess this was an example of batching. Instead of wearily unpacking each item as I needed it over the next few weeks, complaining every time, it was all done and my new supplies were ready to go. Thanks for the inspiration. I love this Bonnie. Yes. Okay, so did batch her unpacking for sure. But I actually think the lazy genius principle that stands out the most here is the principle of going in the right order. Go in the right order. There are practical right orders for things, in my opinion, making soup, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the kitchen.

But if you've read the lazy genius way, my first book, you already know that the right order for most things is to name what matters, then calm the crazy, and then trust yourself with what comes next. Bonnie did that. Bonnie named what matters, having what she needs easily without complaining about it. But then she calmed the crazy by getting rid of the packaging of her items. Now that third piece of trusting yourself, it is evident here too because sometimes when we come up with a solution like this, we think it's silly or too small or too something, right? Do I really need to stand here and open up all my things and take off all the plastic and the cardboard? But Bonnie said yes. And it made Bonnie's life better and easier and less complaining. And remember, this is the goal. We are making incremental changes

every single day and trusting that those choices are good for us, even if they might not work for someone else. So this is so great practically, but also theoretically. So thank you for sharing this with me, Bonnie, and congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. Okay, that's it for today, you guys. Be sure you subscribe to the podcast and not just listening to an episode because this Thursday, we have a bonus episode on holiday decorating with the one and only Michael and Smith, aka The Nestor. It is a short and sweet conversation about how to decorate for the season and the holidays without losing your mind, and you're going to love it. So subscribe to this podcast, so the episode will automatically be in your podcast app when you're ready to listen. And thank you

so much for listening today. I'm so glad you're here. Until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra and the Nestor and I will see you on Thursday. 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.