The Lazy Genius Podcast - #329 10 Things to Do When You Don’t Want to Cook

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

It is likely a time of transition in your life. We are going into a new season, fall is coming, school has started, and all of this impacts our energy and schedules no matter what our lives look like and who, if anyone, lives with us in our homes. But you know what doesn’t change? Dinner. Dinner does not change. This week, I’m joined by the happiest cooking teacher on the internet, Bri McKoy, to talk about 10 things to do when you don’t want to cook.   Helpful Companion Links Get Bri’s new book, The Cook’s Book (out August 29!) Fearless Chicken Tikka Masala Episode #97: One Simple Step That Changes Meal Planning Forever Episode #245: How I Personally Meal Plan 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. (Note: The interview portion of this episode is not transcribed, as per usual with Lazy Genius interview episodes. Thanks for understanding!)   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

Hi there, you are 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 329, 10 things to do when you don't want to cook. It is likely a time of transition in your life. We are going into a new season, right? Fall is coming, school has started and all of this impacts our energy and schedules no matter what our lives like and who, if anyone, lives with us in our homes. But you know what does not change is dinner. Dinner doesn't change. We have to keep eating food and therefore probably making food for ourselves and our people. I do think that the transition to cold weather, which might be close to happening, maybe where you live, is often an exciting time in the kitchen. In theory, we start making soup and chili and warm comfort foods. And for the first little bit, cooking is not so bad.

Maybe it's even fun. but it does not take long for that sparkle to dim and we get days, sometimes even like a long string of them, where we just don't want to cook. Today is your answer to that dilemma. I'm going to share 10 things to do when you don't want to cook, but not all of these 10 things are from me. A little bit into the episode, I will be joined by the happiest cooking teacher on the internet, Bree McCoy, who will complete this list of 10 with her own amazing expertise. If you are listening to this episode on the day it releases. Tomorrow, August 29th, Bree's new cookbook, The Cook's Book, enters the world.

And I have been anxiously awaiting this for literal months. I will share more about the book at the end of the episode. But right now, let me just say that if you had to go on a deserted island that also miraculously had like a working kitchen and maybe a grocery store to access, you know, products and stuff, you, and you could only take two books with you. The only two books that you need are the lazy genius kitchen and the cook's book. I'm not even kidding. I mean, I'm kidding about the island part, but like these two books in tandem hold the answer to just about every kitchen woe there is. I tend to the kitchen itself in the lazy genius kitchen

and the planning and all that kind of stuff. And Bree tends to the cooking. You might notice I don't post a lot of recipes around here because that is not my expertise. It most certainly is Breeze. and you will hear that today. I am so excited about this book and that she's going to join us a little bit later. But for now, let's get started on the 10 things to do when you don't want to cook. Number one, don't cook. We're going to kick things off with a big old dose of permission. Sometimes when you don't want to cook, just don't. Don't do it. There are days and even whole seasons where finding the energy and time to cook something yourself is just too much. You can be lazy about cooking.

You can. It's okay. Now, maybe it's not how you want things to be long term, and that makes sense, you know? A lot of us do find some joy in the kitchen sometimes. But it doesn't mean you're doing something wrong by choosing to not cook when you don't want to. So get takeout, eat cereal, whatever. But number one, when you don't want to cook, don't. You don't have to.

Number two, be kind to yourself. When you don't want to cook, it's easy to let negativity creep in, especially towards yourself. You might think that you should have a better stocked pantry, right? Or you wish you had better skills to whip something up really fast, like the people on the internet say you should do. You think cooking, it shouldn't be this hard, right? So it shouldn't feel this hard when you don't have the energy to do it. It's very easy to leave kindness at the door.

and beat yourself up a little for not wanting to cook. And I'm just telling you right now, that's not great. You deserve kindness. So before you do anything else, be kind to yourself. It gets a whole number on this list. Be kind to yourself. Number three, choose a brainless crowd pleaser. All right, it's been a while since I've talked about brainless crowd pleasers.

So let's have a little refresher. A brainless crowd pleaser is a meal that is brainless for the cook to make. and then relatively pleasing to whatever crowd you're cooking for, be it one person or 10 people. It's basically the type of meal that you just don't have to think about it when you make it, right? And you also don't have to deal with the anticipation of your people hating it. Meals that are easy to make that no one complains about, those meals are essential to sustain life in your kitchen. If every recipe feels hard or requires extra effort and attention from you, that is not going to last long. and neither will not knowing if your people are going to like the meal each time. You need easy wins

at the ready. And that's why I encourage everyone to have a list of your own brainless crowd pleasers, even if it's just one thing. Now, every person will have different meals for this. The only priority is that the meal is brainless and a crowd pleaser. That's it. That also does not mean that the meal is traditionally easy, meaning it takes no skill, or that the meal is simple, meaning it does not have a lot of steps or ingredients. There's a difference in easy and simple. For example, my chicken ticcimassala recipe, which is on my website, is so good. It is not simple or easy, especially the first time you make it. It has a decent number of ingredients. Most of them are spices, so it's not simple in that. and it takes a few steps and it takes a little bit of time.

And the first couple of times that you make it and you stir in that wet masala and it's like spattering everywhere, you're going to get a little thrown by the sizzling. It's not easy off the bat if you've never made it. But it's worth making it and getting used to it because it's so delicious. But I have made that recipe so many times that I could do it with my eyes closed. it is absolutely brainless for me. So when you think about your list of brainless crowd pleasers, don't feel like it's just spaghetti, hot dogs, and microwave cassidias,

even though it could be those things. It's whatever fits in those two categories, even if they might not fit in someone else's. Having that list on your fridge or in a notes app or tucked into like a favorite cookbook or something, it is so helpful on days when you do not want to cook. you don't have to think about it. Just look at your list and pick one. Since the thing is brainless, it's almost like you're not cooking at all.

I mean, you are, but you don't have to muster up any extra energy to make this particular meal happen, right? And that's about as close to not cooking as you can get. If you would like to hear more about how I use brainless crop pleasers and my own meal planning, try episode 245, how I personally meal plan. All right, that's the first three things. Now let's level up this list and bring in the wonderfully talented, always delightful, Brie McCoy.

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Number four, something that I love to do when I don't want to cook is I create a little theme tonight. It gets me really excited about what I want to eat and what I want to cook. It almost always involves a taco. I really like making CrunchRat Supremes at home, although I call them tacos in a blanket because you all, Taco Bell, has the trademark on CrunchRop Supreme. We don't need like legal corner when we have dinner. We just need to make our dinner, right.

We just want to eat a taco. And so I will, I'll just get everybody in the family excited about it. We're going to chips and salsa. These can be all store bought, queso, play fun music, eat tacos. We also like doing that with like a Mediterranean themed night. So it's just like a nice thing tonight. Oh, I love that. Like if you have, if you have like a red and white checker tablecloth when you make spaghetti,

Yes. That really elevates spaghetti in a beautiful way. It does. Light some candles. Play, play. I don't know. What do people, what do people play when they listen to Italian food? I don't know. Google it. Google it. Yeah. We'll do us. We always go to Spotify and we're like, we're an Italian restaurant, play music. Yeah, 100%. In an Mexican restaurant, play music. Spotify knows. They're like, cool, we got you. It's great. They know. And they nail it many, many times. What a great. I love that because it's immediately adding fun when you are feeling the least fun.

Exactly. It's like, how do we get the energy up, up, up? Yeah, a theme, man. Lean into a heart. I love that. That's great. That's great. The next thing that I love to do is I will make a big chunk of meat, whether it's just go grab a big chunk of meat, a hunk of meat, whether it's pork or a roast. And I will make it and I eat off of it the whole week. But you all, listen, this is, this is where the key is. You have to go ahead and meal plan, like lock into that lazy genius. You have to meal plan what you're going to use that meat for. Otherwise, you're going to get sick of it.

You're going to have a fridge of a chunk of cook chunk of meat. And like, what do I do with this? Yep, yep. Exactly. You're just going to be like, or you're going to get tired of it so fast. So what I'll do is I really like making a roast. I even call it get out of takeout. mode roast because it is so easy and it's so versatile.

And then I plan the first night barbecue siders. The second night cheesy cassidias. Next, I'll do like a loaded baked potato with the shredded meat. And then last and this works really well is like a soup because you're probably getting to the end of the meat. And it's also a way to like clean out your refrigerator if you do a vegetable soup. So get that hunk of meat. I love that.

And what's great too is when you make your list of like, here's what I can do with my chunk of meat. keep that list because the next time you make the chunk of meat, you already haven't decided. And you can do that with multiple kinds, whether it's like a pork shoulder or a roast or is your pepperuccini roast? Is that the takeout one? Yes, that's the one. Y'all, it's like a roast and a can of pepperuccine pepper.

And that's like kind of it. That's it. That's it. And it's so good. It's so good. Yeah, it's so good. We make it our house. So I love that.

Make a chunk of meat and then have your list of things that you're going to use it for. That is incredibly wise. Don't just be like, oh, we'll eat on that because that's the same is when you go to the store and you feel like idealistic and you buy four vegetables that you don't have a plan for. And then you end up just throwing them into the garbage in six days and feeling really bad about it. It's really hard to buy like things that die. I can't think it's not show stable. It's really hard to get those things without a plan because unless you feel super creative,

which listen, this episode is about when you don't want to cook and most of us, most of the time, don't. So you got to have a play, you guys, even a tiny one. You got to. Got it. Oh my gosh. I'm just realizing like cooking is overwhelming, but then I'm realizing like everything is just dying as soon as it comes home.

Like it's the, it's like it's just dying. table, baby. Like, it's a timetable. You got to, you got to get it before that stuff turned black. It's the way it goes. Oh, man. Okay, so that's a great number five. Number six. The next one I will do. This one, I do a lot, especially if I'm just like super busy and I can't bring a whole meal together is that I will commit to only making the side dish. So we have a restaurant here and they have a fantastic bucket, a fried chicken. It's very fancy. But once you start adding the sides to it, it also gets very expensive. Right. So what will, do is I'll be like, we're going to get that bucket of chicken because I'm not making fried chicken. But you know what? I'll make the sides. I'll do my grandma's sour cream salad or I'll do mashed potatoes or grill corn, something really low key. And I have to say, there is something, I feel very accomplished just making the sides. Yeah. Like it helps get me out of a rut. I'm like, I did cook tonight. I cooked. Yes, you did cook. And you could do, depending on what is easy for the person or what you have like access to.

Like there are certain, if you're just like, I feel really comfortable roasting a chicken. Right. You roast the chicken and then you go to like the grocery store that has like the fancy deli part or the restaurant that's got really great sides and you just buy sides. You know, you could do it the other way. You don't. You're absolutely right. You don't have to cook everything.

If you're just like, I'm going to cook something. I'm going to choose to cook something. And then I'm going to let someone else who cooks help me with the rest of it. And it's always cheaper that way too. You're right. Always. It's always cheaper. It feels like a win-win.

It's like I did my part. I'm not stressed out. Go to me. I did my part. You do yours. Restaurant. Do it. Oh, I love it so much.

I love it. That's so good. And it's so I think it's, um, any time that we can feel permission, that we can receive permission to not do all or it's not all or nothing. Like the kitchen is a place where we feel like it's always all or nothing. And the more that we can experience partial, it's as many partial things as possible, the more freedom and confidence you have there.

And it's like more fun. There's less pressure to like, it's hard to love cooking if you're doing every single daggum bit of it. Every day. Every single day. Multiple times. Multiple. Molly.

Come on now. I love that. That's so good. It's too much. It's too much. The next one is I will make a soup and I will make it early in the day. You all, soup is for all seasons. I don't know why.

I always was like soup is only fall in winter or like cold weather. No, soup. I will have soup all season long. Like you eat it all year long. And what I will do, yes, it is. And it's, I like to make it early in the day. I will literally put a calendar event on my calendar at like 12. And it says, Bree has an appointment with soup.

Soup does not like to be canceled on. Soup can be very upset. And so I will make- We want to take care of, we love soup. We don't want to be needed to soup. That's so good. We don't cancel on soup. Soup's a good time.

And so I will like literally make the whole soup at like noon. And the great thing about making soup early in the day is that, you know, it reheats really well and it just gets better with time. And so once I cook the whole batch of soup, I let it cool. I put it in the refrigerator. Dinner's here. All I have to do is pull it out and put it on the stove and it's ready and it's done. And I cooked, but I did not cook when I was so tired at 6 p.m. and already starving. I love. This is another place where it's like, hey, we got to like, we got to rejiggle the things that are in our heads about how dinner works. You have to make

dinner between 430 and 630. Yes. And we think, though, we think that like the only option is like, well, then I have to make it on Sunday four days before in a prep. container like color labeled and all the things. It's like, no, just make your soup at 12, man. Yeah. Having an appointment with soup when you're feeling pretty good and you're probably already in the kitchen making your lunch anyway, even if it's just like throwing together a sandwich or something. You're already there. You're already in it. So just like make some dinner then. It's so good. It's so good. And I feel like it points to one of my favorite principles of yours is what can I do now to make this easier later. And it's like, oh, I can chop my vegetables for soup right now.

I can pull together a really easy, delicious soup right now. So we're having appointments with soup, you all. I love it. Calenders in the calendar. I can't wait to see like the screenshots that people take of their calendars and post them on Instagram. They're like, Brie, I made an appointment with soup. It's going to be so great.

Okay. Next, these are so good. I'm so happy for everyone. They're going to be so, they're going to be. This is only like a few of them. What a great list this is. You guys, we're going to be so happy, even though we're not happy in the kitchen. This is so good.

Doing it, you all. We're doing it. We're doing. We and Kendra are here for you. We are always. So the last one I have, and this one is thinking a little bit more of future, don't want to cook self. So if you are in a season and you notice, like, wait, I have like some energy in the kitchen.

I always will double batch something. And I, for example, I love Greek meatballs and they freeze really well. And they make a dish really delicious and simple. So what I'll do is I'll do a double batch of my meatballs. But the game change. here is when I go to freeze the second batch, I put on the bag when I'm going to eat them again because else I'll lose them in the freezer. They'll get lost. So I put the date like I'll, and it's usually three weeks out. So maybe we like September 8th. It's not, it's not when it goes

bad by. It's when am I eating it again. And so it'll be like September 8th. And then I put it in my calendar. So when I'm milk planning three weeks out, it'll pop up. You're having Greek meatballs. Go get them out of the freezer. Wow. This is like next level. We're leveling up. This is next level of freezer cooking. I've never thought about like, hey, you know what? We're just, we're just going to choose now. Like, it's just an inter-like, I'm going to look at a few weeks if this day doesn't have anything on the calendar yet.

We're going to do it then. Like, this is fantastic. Oh, my gosh. That's so smart. I love it. I love it. I had to do it because I kept throwing freezer items out because they would get lost. And I was like, I forgot.

I froze this suit two years ago. Three years ago, right? The freezer is just where it's like, it's where things just go to die. Like we, I mean, again, we're back to like just our kitchen is just entropy. Like everything is moving towards death. And so we have to enjoy it before it dies. That's a great way to do that. Oh, it's so true.

Well, rescue the items. Rescue the items. Right. We did it. We solved the problems. We did. We've solved all the problems. Get the Lacey Genius kitchen and get the cook's book.

And you'll be fine. Like, it'll be fine. You will be thriving. Before I get into my final couple of them, I would you just, tell us like why you are excited for people to have the cook's book? I am so excited to get the cook's book into the world. This is the cookbook that I always wish I had, not only when I was learning how to cook, but also just a resource I could reach for over and over again.

It has the most delicious weeknight meals that you want to repeat all the time. Your family will love them. And also just some really simple foundational techniques that will help you feel more confident and find joy in the kitchen. We'll be right back. All right. Let's finish up our list with two more ideas for when you don't want to cook. Number nine is use a meal matrix. I'm almost positive. I talk about a meal matrix in that episode I mentioned earlier, episode 245, how I personally meal plan, because I totally use a meal matrix. If I don't put that in the episode, that's crazy. It is a fantastic structure to help making,

decision-making in the kitchen easier. A meal matrix is a way to use the lazy genius principle decide once in your kitchen. You just decide one time that on a certain day of the week, you're going to have a certain kind of meal. Done. So almost every week, we do pasta Mondays, pizza Fridays, and we get takeout on Saturday. That's almost always how it goes. And then somewhere in the middle of the week is a rice bowl of some sort. So the type of pasta changes and the sauce and all those things, the type of pizza changes, whether I do homemade or we order from, you know, different pizza places. And then a rice bowl can be like a dozen different things. But rather than choosing from every recipe ever and meal planning from scratch, a meal matrix makes it so that you

already have categories ready to go. That's why people love Taco Tuesday. Every Tuesday you get tacos. That's so fun. Done. Right? If you have not tried this, Or maybe this even fell by the wayside during the summer. Take this episode as your encouragement to try it out or bring it back from the dead. If you know there are days during a week that are usually busier and you need to relieve some of that decision fatigue in your day, make a meal matrix for that day just for that day only. You don't need to do it for the whole week. My meal matrix is four days a week and one of those is takeout. So just do it where you need to it. Holy moly doesn't make dinner easier when you don't want to cook. In fact, I think one of the

reasons we often don't want to cook is because we don't know what to cook. A meal matrix smooths out that frustration. And finally, number 10, start small. When you don't want to cook, start small. Don't immediately start thinking of everything you need to do. That will not get you off the couch and into the kitchen. Just get going with something really small. If you don't want to cook, just choose something, right? Just make a decision. That's how you can start small. Whatever the decision is. You can choose like, yes, I am going to cook. No, I'm not going to cook. Is it going to be partially cooked? We're going to get takeout. We're going to make hot dogs. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Just make a decision. Or maybe you just get up and you get out the instant pot.

Or maybe you fill up a big pot of water for some kind of noodle later, right? you don't have to do everything all at once or even think about everything all at once. When you don't want to cook, it is so easy to be overwhelmed by the meal in front of you in its entirety. So just start small. Do one thing at a time. And whether the momentum picks up or not, you're still moving in the direction of something that matters to you. Now, a fabulous way to start small in your kitchen right now in this moment is to buy the cook's book by Brie McCoy, like for real. I don't adequately know how to explain how fantastic this cookbook is. I always say that the lazy genius kitchen, my book, it's not a cookbook and it very much is not.

It has two recipes in it. It is not a cookbook. The cook's book is totally a cookbook. It's full of recipes, but it's also not just a cookbook. It's so much more than that. Bree teaches you how to actually cook, even people who know how like me. I learned so much from this book. But she teaches you how to cook using the recipes in the book. For example, the first lesson in the book is about balance and kind of trusting your own taste as you're cooking. Food is like usually good, not because you follow a recipe to the letter, but because you trusted your own palate. You trusted your own taste. You learn to know if something needs more salt or acid or something to make it pop, but you don't develop that skill without practicing. So Bree gives you a way to practice

in the form of her recipe for table side guacamole. You make guacamole. And she teaches you how to taste and adjust. She tells you what to taste for, what you can add, depending on what it is that you want, literally teaching you how to be a better cook. And she does this with so many cooking. And she does this with so many skills. So she'll explain a concept super well. Most are accompanied by beautiful photos to help you. And then she gives you a recipe that will help you practice that skill. It is absolutely fantastic. Also, Brie is an incredibly dependable recipe writer. You know how you'll find a recipe in a book or on the internet or something and you're like, you make it? And then you're like, this is not very good. Like, am I not good at this? Am I a terrible cook? No.

some recipes just aren't that good. Well, I can tell you right now, you will never say that about anything Brie makes. Nothing. Her recipes are always excellent. She understands flavor so well. She knows what it means to season food. And she also likes to make things fun and easy. And she tries her recipes multiple, multiple times. And then she had other people try those recipes multiple, multiple times. She's not playing around here. So that means that these recipes are not only, doable, but absolutely delicious. Plus in the cook's book, you also get a whole chapter on pairing food and wine, which is so fun and feels like a little extra and a little fancy, which sometimes we want in our lives. And she's actually qualified to do this because she like took classes and got

a certificate and like a wine pen and everything. She knows what she's talking about. And then there's another chapter at the end about how to create your own beginner's bar cart to get you into the world of cocktails at home, if you're interested in. that. Nobody makes home run cocktail recipes like Brie. Nobody. I'm just telling you, this book is absolute magic. If you like me, you'll love the cook's book. There's just no question in my mind. It releases into the world officially on August 29th, which is likely tomorrow for most of you listening. So order that book from your favorite retailer. You will be so happy you have it. It'll be the best tool to have around as you enter into this new season. And it'll

help you feel more confident to handle those future feelings of not wanting to cook. Bree is the best, and this book is everything. In fact, Bree, Brey is our lazy genius of the week for writing such a tremendous book, for realizing that recipes cannot exist without cooking knowledge. But cooking knowledge is kind of unhelpful and boring without a recipe to use it in, right? She figured out how to really teach cooking while also giving us a great idea of what to cook. for dinner tonight. Boom. So we're done with the episode. Go get the cook's book by Brie McCoy. 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.