The Lazy Genius Podcast - #318 - 10 Foods I’m Stocking This Summer

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

Summer is here, and summer food is a bit different than food in other seasons. There are a lot of things that can impact the way we eat in the summer. Today, I want to get specific about the 10 foods I’m stocking this summer. These are foods that will be a huge part of making summer cooking and eating easier. Ultimately, I hope it helps you see that having a list of your own would be good and what could be on it.   Helpful Companion Links My Summer Meal Formula post from a few years ago Episode #164: The Summer Meal Formula Smoothie Booster Cubes Episode #31: The Lazy Genius Makes a Smoothie Bri and Kendra Eat Stuff (BAKES): Barbecue Edition  How to Make Yakisoba Noodles I buy on Amazon (affiliate link) Sign up for the Latest Lazy Listens email. Grab a copy of my book The Lazy Genius Kitchen or The Lazy Genius Way! (Affiliate links) 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 am 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 318, 10 foods I'm stocking this summer. Summer is here, and summer food is a bit different than food in other seasons, I think. Some differences might be that the schedules are unusual. So when you shop and cook changes, right? Summer produce from your personal garden or the farmer's market is bountiful, and that might impact your menu. Maybe if you have kids, everyone is around more and eating more, which changes things compared to

when they're in school. Or maybe you have your college kids home for the summer and you forgot how much they ate. Or you think they're going to eat with you, but then they make plans for dinner without telling you and go somewhere else. There are so many things that can impact the way that we eat in the summer. Now first, there are a handful of resources you can look at today aside from this episode. If you Google the phrase, lazy genius summer food, you will get several great blog. blog posts and podcast episodes to check out. I am particularly fond of a very old episode, Episode 164,

the summer meal formula. It's actually a pretty brilliant way to think about summer food. And I'm going to re-listen to that episode myself in the next week or so to put together my summer meal formula for this year. You can also get my book, The Lazy Genius Kitchen, which offers a five-step process to lazy geniusing anything, but specifically in six very relevant areas of life in the kitchen. The chapters on planning and prepping are particularly helpful right now. And even the chapter on the table, since the way that we gather in the summer is different than in other seasons. Dinner does not have to be the most important meal of the day from a gathering standpoint. So thinking through that is really

helpful. So anyway, there are resources on my website, particularly that summer meal formula episode and the book, The Lazy Genius Kitchen. So you'll have your handbook on how to approach food in any season. Now, today, I want to get specific about the 10 foods I am stocking this summer. These are foods that will be a huge part of making summer cooking and eating easier. Now, your list is probably quite different than mine, but I'm sharing mine because you might not have even thought about having a list at all. It's like our episodes about what's saving my life. The practice of naming what saving your life is helpful. So when I share my list, it's really less about my list and more about what my list does to inspire yours.

Same today. This is my list of 10 foods that I'm stocking the summer. But ultimately, I hope it helps you see that having a list of your own, it would be good. And what could be on it, right? So let's jump in. Number one, hot dogs and hot dog buns. Of course, this is a summer staple, but if it's going to be a staple, it should be around. Now, in general, I don't love hot dogs.

I'm like, they're fine. But a hot dog on the grill, holy moly. That is a different story. I will gladly invite grilled hot dogs into my life this summer. Now, there are several reasons why this is a summer staple food that we will order again and again. All the kids like hot dogs, they are ready in a blink. And when we are coming home from the pool or camp or, you know, something where everybody is hungry and we need something really fast, we have something fast. It's really the perfect summer food.

We can do all kinds of sides, right? Corn on the cob. Tater tots are frozen fries. Chips or crackers or whatever crunchy thing comes in a bag. Hot dogs are an essential summer food for us. So clearly they're going to be the top of the list. But remember the point of this list. I mean, sure, it gives you ideas.

But there might be another food that hits all these points for you that are not hot dogs. Casadillas come to mind. Not only one of my kids likes cassadillas on a regular basis. So casadias are not. They're not a slam dunk summer food for us, you know? But they might be for you. They're just as quick as hot dogs. So stock tortillas and cheese and you're good to go, right?

They can be served solo. They can be served with stuff. They can be made fancy with other fillings. But ultimately, like you can make one of these things in the microwave and it's not terrible. In fact, I will, pro tip, I will microwave cassidy is first to give the cheese like an extra a melting boost. That way when I throw them in a hot skillet, well, the cheese doesn't like fall on the ground. The shredded cheese doesn't because it's melted. But when I put them in a skillet with a little

oil and I fry them up, it goes so fast because you don't have to wait for the cheese to melt. I've been doing that for years and it's like one of my favorite things. So whatever your hot dog is, actual hot dogs, cassidias, cereal, whatever. Stock it for the summer. Okay, number two, smoothie bags and maybe smoothie booster cubes but I'll get to that. Smoothies are a lot more of a staple in our house during the summer than in other seasons. My kids, it's so funny, as picky as they are, they are also like very closely connected to the weather. If it's hot outside, they want something cold.

If it's cold outside, they want something hot. They're almost embarrassed for me if I offer them a smoothie in the winter. They're like, mom, it's so cold outside. why would we want a smoothie? It's such a vibe. But in a summer, like, smoothies are pretty common, right? Now, is it hard to get out the two bags of fruit and peel a banana or whatever to make a smoothie? No, it's not. But if we're about to head out to the pool or I'm working and a kid wants to make a smoothie solo without like messing up the ratios to the point of not even drinking the thing, a smoothie bag is a great option. This is basically applying the lazy genius

principle batch it to smoothies. You get some quart freezer bags and you portion out a smoothie in each bag, right? And I only put in a fruit. Like that's it, not yogurt or juice or whatever liquid you use because then it's just going to freeze in a big block and not work for you. But I will put in like the banana, strawberry, mango, maybe a few avocado cubes for creaminess. Some spinach if the kids aren't going to be weird about it, like whatever. Then I just have to add that bag to the blender along with some yogurt and liquid. I actually have an entire episode about smoothies, like for real. It's very early, episode 31, but it's literally like, it's a smoothie episode. It's actually pretty solid. And it has some recipes ideas in it too. So it might be worth listening

to. Also on the blog, there is a post about smoothie booster cubes. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. But a smoothie booster cube is like, you know, you know, know all of the like the seeds and the greens and all the things that you blend together to like boost the nutritional value of your smoothie if you blend all that together and that's like so many other bags to pull out right if you blend all of that stuff together and then freeze it in ice cube trays then you can put like that vitamin boost or whatever into your smoothie via a cube or two and you can even put those smoothie cubes in your smoothie bags So you can check those out and see if you're into the idea.

You know, like I said, there's a blog post about it. But the point here is that we have smoothies in our house a lot more often in the summer, and I want to not only stock the ingredients, but I want to stock them in a way that makes the smoothie making that much easier. We'll be right back. It's something else here now, something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls Scarious Hell.

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or to find the ice cream scoop at all, even though it's always in the same place. Then they forget to put the container back in the freezer, which leads to melted ice cream. It's just a whole thing. I don't know why my family cannot just eat a bowl of ice cream like a person, but it's way more complicated than it should be, which is why in the summer, when we eat a lot more ice cream than normal, which is still a lot, frankly, having fudge pops and those Costco chocolate dipped ice cream bars and fruity popsicles and ice cream sandwiches and stuff that's just grab and go, that is the way to do it for me in my house. Okay?

So that's number three. Individual frozen desserts instead of just gallons of ice cream. Number four, taco meat. This is not a home run meal like hot dogs generally are, but some kind of like taco nacho burrito rice bowl situation usually gets us to at least like second base in the game of dinner baseball it's pretty doable works great but if we don't have some kind of meat sam won't my kid won't get protein because he does not eat cheese you heard me correctly again it's such a situation feeding multiple children also full disclosure i don't love cheese

is like the main thing i shared that on instagram a couple weeks ago and some of you are still learning to trust me again, it's okay. But because of all that, like, we need meat close at hand. We cannot get by only cheese. We cannot live by cheese alone. So ground beef that is seasoned with spices like chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, cayenne, stuff like that. And then frozen, that is a dream for us. You don't even have to thaw it before putting it in whatever you're making sometimes. Like, you can nuke it in the microwave for a minute. You can even let it warm up in the skillet with your cassidia. You can watch it come to life in the oven on top of nachos, like fully frozen it doesn't matter. It's just so easy to have that particular meat around for like another version

of quick dinners when I don't want to cook or I don't have a lot of time to. Plus it's such an easy thing to make a huge batch of, right? So we will for sure stock cooked taco meat, even though of all those things that just said tacos are the least likely of the meat cheese tortilla situations that we eat. Okay, number five, just bear chicken breast chunks. That's the brand is just bear chicken breast chunks. I get these at Costco. I'm sure there are other places you can get them. They are the best grown-up chicken nuggets. They're bigger than popcorn chicken, but they have like that same irregularity as popcorn chicken compared to like those very uniform nuggets that come in like dinosaur shapes. I love these things so much. The boys like them pretty well too. but I eat them more than anybody else does.

I will throw a handful of the chicken breast chunks into the air fryer and then toss them with like some kind of sauce. So Korean barbecue sauce, American barbecue sauce, or I'll just leave them plain. I eat them on top of rice bowls, in salads, and a wrap on their own. I currently, I have been having them for lunch like maybe twice a week in recent months. They're just so good. And because the kids also like them, they are a great. quick like a snack or lunch or dinner component where I don't have to leave my house. Like they're just

right there. And they taste real. You don't feel like you're eating kids chicken nuggets that aren't really chicken. They're super tasty and I love them. And since I can cook them in just a few minutes in the air fryer, it is a great way to not have to turn on the oven in the summer, which is something that a lot of us do try to avoid. Okay, so that's number five, the just bear chicken breast chunks. Number six, speaking of barbecue sauce, I am going to stock good barbecue sauce. So Brie McCoy, who is my favorite recipe, kitchen cooking people of all the peoples. She's also incredibly adorable and smart. We have a, can you call it a show?

We have like an Instagram live show called Bree and Kendra Eat Stuff, which that's an acronym for Bakes, which is also like confusing to people because we don't bake anything. or and Bree doesn't even like dessert. So, but anyway, it's called Bree and Kendra Eat stuff. We are currently on a short break from that show. But what we do is we take one type of food and we taste test a lot of them to find the best one. And we have actually done one on barbecue sauce. Now here's what stinks. I just went looking for that episode of Bakes. Some of them are in my feed. Some are in Breeze on Instagram. But daggummit, if I cannot find the one on barbecue sauce. I found the one on pickles, on chips and salsa, on cheddar cheese. My favorite one, which was when I was

at Bree's house we were in person trying like fast food sauces but i cannot find the barbecue sauce one maybe lea will create a miracle and find it after the fact and put the link in the show notes for you but i scoured both my feet and breeze to no avail no matter the point is that we discovered that stub's barbecue sauce is a delight now it is a bit more tangy and a thinner texture than most barbecue sauces you come across but i like it especially for port So good with pulled pork. But I also love sweet baby rays. I can't remember if that was like another winner from the tasting, if that was like top of, top of those like sweeter, thicker barbecue sauces.

Or if there was another one that was better, but I think it was sweet baby rays. It's such a solid choice when it comes to barbecue sauce. And because in our house we're going to have those chicken nuggets and because we'll do barbecue chicken and barbecue pork too, I want to have sauces at the ready so that I can make those meals when the time comes. Like I've got meat in the freezer. I don't have to go to the store because the sauce is already stocked. Now, another barbecue sauce I want to stock is Korean barbecue sauce. But here's the problem. I get this Korean glaze sauce from a local fried chicken place called Scratch, which we love.

And I will use that. I will get like extra glaze because you can get like you can pick a sauce to go with your chicken. And nobody uses sauce for their chicken. So I'm just like all the Korean glaze you can give me. And then I put it all in one container. and I make that last for like several weeks after we get it. I will toss those just bare chicken bites into that sauce and serve it with rice and spinach in a bowl and it is beyond delicious. But I've never, I'll use it as a marinade and like a stir fry or something, but I've never made

or bought Korean barbecue sauce type stuff outside of the leftovers when we order this fried chicken. It's the only one. So I really do need to remedy this. Now part of me is like a little like, meh about it because I don't want to waste money on something that's not as good as this particular glaze because it is also good. But I'm telling you guys right now that I'm going to work on recreating that sauce. If I do, I'll share the recipe. But the main point here is knowing ingredients that offer you a really quick win for summer meals. We generally want and sometimes even need our food a little faster because we're more relaxed everywhere else. We're playing outside or at the pool or going to a museum or a park or just staying inside in the AC watching a

movie and nobody wants to move. A great barbecue sauce is going to be hugely helpful during those times. Okay. Number seven, yaku soba. Yaki soba is a noodle dish that we eat constantly and we will eat it even more during the summer because everyone is home at lunch and Sam will cook it himself, praise. It is basically Chalman that comes in a ramen. type package, right? It's just a block of noodles and a packet of seasoning. But this is not soupy. You cook the noodles and water, but all the water gets absorbed and then you add the seasoning. I have a loose recipe of how we make yaku-soba with ground pork and vegetables on Instagram. I'm pretty sure it was like a live, an Instagram live where I cooked it in real time,

but we eat that thing always. And it is so sad when we're out of yaku-sova, which is why I'm going to stock it. I recently discovered that Amazon's our favorite brand, a brand that is hard to come by in my local Asian market. So now we just order a huge box. I'll put a link in the show notes so you can check it out. It's even on subscribe and save, which is kind of magical. You can just have Yaki Soba delivered to your house. Amazing. We'll be right back. Okay, number eight, grocery store donuts. Now we get donuts. Okay, hear me. Grocer store donuts are not the best donuts. We get donuts from our favorite local donut-y donut world about once a month maybe. Annie, who always wakes up first, she will come into my bed

and before even say good morning, she will say, can we get donuts? And about one Saturday a month, I will say yes. But there is something really nice about having like a sweet snack. I didn't have to go out and get or make to go with the eggs and the bacon and such. And in the summer, when these kids are home, always, and they're out of the school rhythm, We really like having a bag of powder donuts or donut holes or something around. They're like a special fun little breakfast edition without me having to leave the house to go get them. So that's number eight. Number nine, stuff for smores.

Okay, we have a solo stove that we love, one of those smokeless stoves and worth money. We love it so much. And on summer nights where it's not like quite as hot and you don't mind sitting in front of a fire, we'll make smores. Now, often the kids will surprise me by asking if we can make smores. and it is the worst when I have to say no because we don't have the ingredients. So that's why they're stocked, right? And those ingredients are shelf-stable, so they'll survive beyond the summer. Now, if you want some ideas of ways to change up your s'mores, here are a couple.

Use Reese's cups instead of Hershey's chocolate, a delight. Instead of the graham crackers and chocolate, you can use those Keebler fudge stripe cookies. That and a marshmallow. Like, now I'm not saying that's the tastiest situation, but sure is easy. two ingredients. Use cinnamon graham crackers instead of regular for like a more Mexican chocolate smore flavor. Spread Nutella or cookie butter on the graham crackers. You could use any kind of candy bar instead of like Hershey's.

I have seen someone put bacon in a smore for a salty sweet situation. I've never tried it myself. But go to town. Bacon's on top of donuts now. I mean, it can't be terrible. But smore supplies are essential for the summer, at least in our house there. And finally, number 10, this is more of an event than like a stocking of an ingredient, but it's still food. So my kids, they're kind of like, man, about cereal. They all eat it,

but in fits and starts, it's not a staple for us, which is such a shame. But for some reason, at the start of the summer, they get really excited about cereal. So one of the things that we do, we've done this for a couple years, is the first week of summer is we go to the store and we get summer snack supplies, one of those things being cereal. Everybody, every kid and me too, everybody gets to pick two boxes, one favorite and one new one to try. Now, if they don't like the new one, no shame. You don't know what you like until you try it, right? Now, the reason that particular choice is important is because when a kid asks for a new thing, I buy that new thing with the expectation that they will eat it. But they don't always. Like sometimes the marketing is better

than the product, right? I remember being a kid and asking my mom if I could get Sunny D because the commercials were so cool. Now, we did not have a lot of money growing up. So for her to say yes to this request was a huge deal. And I didn't like Sunny D. I got it. And I didn't like it. So I didn't drink it. Now, I tried to pretend like it wasn't there. I remember, I remember, I remember being Like if you don't look at it, maybe it's invisible and I won't have to drink it. I also remember thinking, like it was a little bit weird that she wanted me to drink it so that it wouldn't be a waste. But now as a mom who buys groceries, I understand that.

It is a lot to get something new for a kid, especially not knowing if it's going to be eaten. It feels wasteful, right? It feels wasteful. You want them to eat the thing that you're like, okay, fine, we'll get this thing. And that's why this choice of like this summer cereal situation, why the choice is important. Because if a kid does not like the new cereal they chose, no worries. Now they know. Now they know they don't like it.

The expectation of finishing that cereal is removed from the beginning. It's just a fun thing to explore for three bucks, right? And sometimes we find different things when we explore. And that's good. So I like this choice of getting cereal to try without the pressure of having to like it. So that's number 10. Number 10 is our beginning of summer cereal trip. Okay, so those are the 10 foods I'm stocking this summer. Hot dogs, smoothie bags,

individual frozen desserts, taco meat, just-bared chicken bites, barbecue sauce, yaku sova, grocery store donuts, s'mores supplies, and our start of the summer cereal trip. I hope that this list inspires you to not only make your own list, but then actually stock those things so you can make your summer food that much easier. Okay, before we go, let's start. celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week it is Emily Heller, who sent me this fantastically simple idea just a few weeks ago. Emily writes, I love supporting kids and I love supporting kids lemonade stands in the summer. And I try to stop every time I see one,

but I don't always carry cash. Now I just stock the center console of the van with ones so I can be prepared all summer. Boom, go entrepreneurs. Emily, this is magical. What a beautiful, thoughtful thing. While supporting lemonade stands does not matter to everyone. you named what matters to you, supporting kids who are willing to make a stand and sell that lemonade. And you used two lazy genius principles to support that. First, you decided once that when you see one, you'll stop. Done, right? No going back and forth. Unless you're in some like high speed car chase. You're going to stop. Great idea. Okay. The other principle that you're using is to put everything in its place. You need cash for lemonade stands. So you put some in the place where you'll be when you see the stand, which

your van. It's so fantastic. I just love this idea and the application of lazy genius principles so much. So thank you for sharing it and congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. Okay, y'all, don't forget to sign up for the latest lazy listens, which is our biweekly podcast digest that gives you a robust summary of the last two weeks worth of episodes with everything written out. So like this whole list of 10 things plus links to anything that needs links. If you need them, it will all be in that email that goes out every other Friday. The link is in the show notes to sign up, or you can go to the lazy genius collective.com slash listens.

All right, y'all. Thank you so much for listening today. 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. 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.