The Lazy Genius Podcast - #459 - How to Easily Feed Your People

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

I could talk about meals my entire life and never run out of things to say.  There are so many decisions, and things like seasons, budgets, and dietary restrictions impact those decisions. It just never ends. You’ll be feeding yourself and maybe others forever. So today, I’m sharing twelve ways to easily feed your people. They work in any season for any family grouping - single to many - and for any cooking level. These are the most dependable meal tools out there, and I’m pumped we’re going to have a whole episode of them. Helpful Companion Links Order my book The PLAN or ask your library to consider carrying a copy. Episode #97: One Simple Step That Changes Meal Planning Forever Fearless Chicken Tikka Masala recipe Erin Moon’s episode of The Lazy Genius Kitchen video series (making regular dinners on a regular basis) Watch the whole series here The New York Times Food app The Cook’s Book by Bri McKoy Cookish by Milk Street and Christopher Kimball I Dream of Dinner by Ali Slagle (I talked to Ali on the podcast a few years ago, by the way!) Sweet Enough by Alison Roman Sign up for our every-other-week podcast recap email called Latest Lazy Listens. Sign up for my once-a-month newsletter, The Latest Lazy Letter. Grab a copy of my book The Lazy Genius Kitchen or The Lazy Genius Way! (Affiliate links) Download a transcript of this episode. Want to share your Lazy Genius of the Week idea with us? Use this form to tell us about it or record your idea and share your voice on the show. 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. This show is not about hacking the system to find more time or hacking your energy to get more done. Hustling to be the best or to make the most out of every opportunity is exhausting and unsustainable. So here we do things differently. On this show, we value contentment, compassion, and living in our season. We favor small steps over big systems. Here we are lazy geniuses, being a genius about the things that matter.

and lazy about the things that don't, and I am so glad you are here. Today is episode 459, how to easily feed your people. I am so excited about this episode. So I could talk about meals my entire life and like never run out of things to say. You, listen, you eat multiple times a day. A sizable portion of you listening are responsible for the meals of children, maybe partners. There are so many decisions with food, things like seasons. budgets, baseball, dietary restrictions, so many things impact all of those food decisions. It never

ends. You will be feeding yourself and maybe other people forever, forever. So I have put together 12 ideas to make it easier to feed yourself and your people. These are the greatest hits of lazy genius meal planning all in one place. Plus, until the like emergency soup rerun from a couple of weeks ago when I lost my voice. We have done only two food episodes on the podcast in the last two and a half years. What? I did an episode about snacks in June of 2024 and then an episode about when you don't want to cook in August of 2023. You guys, that is so much time without talking about meals. Plus, there are so many of you who are new here. You don't know about brainless crowd pleasers. You don't know about planning your

dog dogs. You don't know about my three-fifths rule. You're going to change that today. Today is the day. Today is the day where meals become easier. You're going to get 12 ways to more easily feed your people. These things work in any season for any family grouping, single to many, and for any cooking level. These are the most dependable meal tools out there. And I am so pumped if you cannot tell my voice that we're going to have a whole episode. dedicated to them today. After we more easily feed our people, we're going to have a little extra something where I share some of my favorite cookbooks for dinner recipes. I love cookbooks. I have a limited shelf where my cookbooks go. So I have high standards of what gets space on that limited shelf. So I will share with those. As always, we will celebrate the lazy genius of the week with an audio

message today about a cool meal planning idea. And then we will close with a mini pep talk for when nobody seems grateful. Now, if you listen to this episode, you get to the end and you think, man, I wish I had easy tips like these for my whole kitchen, not just for meal planning. Are you in luck? You might not know this, but I have written three books, one of which is the lazy genius kitchen. It helps you have what you need, use what you have, and enjoy your kitchen like never before. Now, it's not a cookbook. It has two recipes in it. So it is not a cookbook, that it is a handbook, a reference guide that you will turn to again and again to help you think through things like food shopping, planning, organization, even hosting. There is an appendix in the back

with some great one-page resources like how to never run out of food at a party, how to add freshness to repetitive meals and staple ingredient lists for nine different cuisines. It is such a winner of a book. It's illustrated, hardback, great paper, which is like a real thing. And it makes a tremendous gift. We are entering this spring season with like weddings and baby showers and college graduations. Plus we're not far away from teacher gifts for the end of the year.

If you are looking for a great gift, especially for someone like in a transition, like parenthood, marriage, being an adult for the first time, the lazy genius kitchen is it. Wrap it up in a pretty teetow with like a set of wood and spoons or alongside some of your family favorite recipes as a gift and it's going to go over so well. If you are on a budget, it's usually less than $15 on Amazon for the hardback that if you have a little more wiggle room in your budget, consider ordering it from your local indie or even from a Minneapolis indie to help support the small business owners in that city after the really difficult winter that they had. Indybound.org is a great resource to find an indie. You can search

your preferred city. You can even search with specific ownership filters like woman owned or black owned. If you're in the market for a book, whether it's the lazy genius kitchen or something else, buying from an indie is a great way to get what you want while also supporting small businesses, including mine. All right, before we get into the episode, let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors, which makes this show free for you to listen to you. But before we do, here is your quick reminder, as always, about our podcast recap email. We send out every other Friday.

It's called latest lazy listens, and it summarizes the last two weeks of episodes, shares the lazy genius of the week, as well as other segments we have on the show, show, and there's a little extra note for me to help encourage you through the weekend. So if you'd like to get that recap, head to the lazy genius collective.com slash listens. The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road, that's the Volkswagen TIG-1. Its sleek exterior makes a first impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available full leather seats and wood accents. Under the hood, the available 201 turbocharged horsepower engine gives it a fun to drive etch.

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Luckily, Jeff's... saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habanero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Okay, let's do it. Let's get into how the more easily feed your people. I'm so excited. Okay, we got 12 tools. You can use just one and have an easier time feeding your people. But if you use multiple over time, yeah, I cannot tell you. You will be in such tremendous shape in the kitchen. You will not be able to stand at. So let's just jump on in. So your first tool to make it easier to feed you people is having a list of brainless crowd pleasers. Brainless crowd pleasers or BCs, which I will sometimes use. BCs are those meals that do

not take any mental effort to make. They are brainless, right? And they also make the people happy. They're a crowd pleaser. When you have even one or two of these, They're like the buoys in the choppy waters of dinner. They're so good to have and use regularly as often as you need to. Now, here is a really important distinction about brainless crowd pleasers. Brainless does not necessarily mean easy. One of our best BCs is chicken ticam masala. It's not like super easy, especially if you've never made it before.

it's not like a dump and stir. You have to get a lot of ginger and garlic and chop a palatino. You have to be comfortable cooking quickly over high heat because you add like a bunch of spices and tomato paste to those aromatics after you saute them. You have to cut chicken into pieces ahead of time so you can simmer it in the sauce. There's like multiple steps. I mean, in some ways it's kind of a dump and stir, but like you've already prepared the things that you're going to dump and stir ahead of time.

It's not the easiest thing. But because I have made this. dish so many times. I could do it with my eyes closed practically. I don't have to look at a recipe. I don't even have to think. I know exactly what it is. It's brainless, almost meditative, and a win for the family, because most everybody likes it. So it is for sure a brainless crowd pleaser. So as you think through the meals you currently make, don't discount complicated meals from your list, especially if they're brainless to you. The point is to have a list to have a list of of meals that require little mental effort to make.

And they make most everybody fairly happy. This list will save your life. Even if you just have one thing on it, I want you to keep building it up. Like every time you try something new that worked out fairly well, make it again until it becomes a brainless part of your meal prep. And then you can just add that to the list.

It's like, well, everybody likes that kind of. And I'm getting better. at that, let's put that on the brainless crowd blazer meal list. Make it your goal to build up that list. The longer that list is, the easier dinner will be. Number two, choose consistency over variety. Consistency over variety. All right, now a caveat out of the gate. If variety matters to you a great deal, choose variety. That's great. Consistency is not better than variety. I am intentionally speaking to people who struggle to get dinner on the table. And for those folks who feel like dinner is a struggle, variety is going to be an obstacle. That is why an important tool for you is consistency over

variety. I think it is better to slowly build your dinner-making muscles with the same five meals over and over than to keep trying new things and getting discouraged because the dinner making process remains rocky. New recipes are like lauded and we do love the idea of variety that if you have not yet developed the muscles of making dinner night after night without it being a huge overwhelming chore, new recipes are just going to make it harder. They're just going to make it more overwhelming. So consider taking a season, maybe the next month or so, and just make the same dependable things again and again. Get into a rhythm of knowing what's for dinner and making it night after night again and again. Even if it's cereal and eggs, get into a consistent

rhythm. Develop those muscles. It is, hear me, it is much, much easier to add a new recipe or a new technique into a rhythm that's already working. Okay? I'm putting this one at the top. It's number two because I think it's that important. These are not listed in an order of importance, but also I want you to be here. I want you to hear this. If you do not already have some level of consistency and ease in what is for dinner and getting

it on the table, I want you to find it with repetitive easy means. Meals, learn to walk before you run. Walk with spaghetti and hot dogs and slow cooker barbecue chicken and whatever feels like a cop out or too easy in your head. It's not. Those things are not. It's all dinner. It all counts. And you're not only eating, but you're learning how to get dinner on the table without a feeling like a Herculian effort. You know how I say it's more important to learn how to pivot than to learn how to plan. When it comes to meals, I think it's more important to learn consistency rather than learning how to cook. I think it's easier to add cooking and new skills into a consistent rhythm. So start small. Take your time. You're going to be making dinner forever.

So it's okay if you take a while to learn some new things. Consistency over variety. Number three, use a meal matrix. All right. A meal matrix is my name for any type of dinner decision structure. It's like kind of like a plug and play for dinner. Tacos on Tuesday. Pizza on Friday. Pasta on Mondays. Leftovers on Sunday, right? That's one version, like a particular meal on a particular day. Now you can also decide that you'll have like one rice bowl meal a week, one pasta. meal a week, one meal off the grill every week. And then you just put those meals on the days that makes sense for that week's schedule or for energy. You can choose anything for any day. In fact, you can make just one decision per week and still call it your own meal matrix. Like how it's done,

how many days it encompasses, none of it really matters. Just decide some things and do them week after week after week. That is your personal meal matrix. The Adachi family meal matrix is, well, it's evolved over time, as most things do. We used to do pasta Mondays and then homemade pizza on Fridays, like religiously. Now we do the most beloved brainless crowd pleasers on Mondays because my middle kid hates pasta and also hates Mondays. So like giving him his least favorite meal on his least favorite day was just feeling a little cruel. So we adjusted. I also don't make pizza nearly as much as I used to. I spend more of my baking energy on pastries and bread and desserts now. Plus, we found a great local pizza place that everybody likes, even Annie, who doesn't

actually like pizza. She would not eat my homemade pizza, a little weirdo. So my meal matrix, it's adjusted, right? So it's almost always. brainless crowd pleaser Monday. We do Tony's Pizza on Friday. And then on the other days, weekdays, at least one rice and chicken dish, one pasta. And usually there's like a night of leftovers, usually Sunday, but it might adjust. I try to throw a new recipe in there or riff on something familiar. So my kids get used to new things. And then maybe another brainless crowd pleaser or we'll go out. That's seven things. Since our days change week to week, I am also trying to get the kids more involved in making dinner.

The meals are more or less the same, but they're not dependent on the day and depending on who's going to help me with the meal. It all kind of adjusts. But that works really great for me in this season of life, is that things aren't necessarily tied to a specific day. I can decide which meal fits where based on what's going on that week. So use a meal matrix. The fewer dinner decisions you have to make, that's the point here. the fewer decisions you have to make, the easier it is to feed you people. Okay, that's number three.

Number four, use a dinner queue. Okay, I want you to think about your Netflix queue, right? It's helpful to have a smaller list of shows and movies to choose from rather than everything Netflix has to offer, right? The same is true for dinner. If you try and plan dinner from every option ever, you will, as the kids say, crash out. To illustrate this point, I always love to Google the phrase chicken recipes, just to see how many results there are. But the first search result that I just did, it is a list of 105 of the best chicken recipes. So the first one is actually like, here are 105 of the best ones.

Now, there are wildly more than 105, right, way more. But also, you don't even need 105 chicken recipes, especially not right now, when you're just trying to figure out what to eat in an hour. So instead, I want you to have a dinner queue. A dinner queue is a curated list of recipes that work for you in this season of life, whether it's like the rest of spring or the rest of the school year or whatever boundary you want to create. Create a selection, a queue of meals you're going to choose from, some old, some new. That way you're not searching all of the internet when it's time to make dinner. Cookbooks are natural dinner cues, right?

There are a limited number of recipes in one book. Boom. A Pinterest board, some tabbed recipes in a favorite app, or just your favorite brainless crowd pleasers, and just that's it, right? All of those are natural dinner cues. You could go really simple and make your dinner queue, your list of brainless crowd pleasers, and then like one cookbook you already own. And not something enormous like Mark Bittman's how to cook everything. Like something simple that might give you a handful of things to try from a trusted source. And like I said, I'm going to share some favorites of mine at the end of the episode and a little extra something. Here's how our dinner queue works. I have two dry erase like monthly calendars on the wall

in the kitchen. And that way the kids can always look rather than mom what's for dinner. I'll just say look at the board. Or sometimes they just look at the board, but they still ask. But I have these two calendars, which is where our meal plan, and on the side of the calendar where it's like, you know, a place for notes or whatever, that is where I have written down our brainless crowd pleasers, along with a few other options. That is a great cue to pull from when I'm planning. I don't have to depend on my brain. It's right there, right? I also have this little notebook where I write down my favorite new recipes I want to try from cookbooks. I know this might be a little weird.

I prefer cooking from my own notes than from a cookbook. Again, it might be weird. But it's just how I work. What I'll do is I'll read a recipe, I'll get the gist, and then I'll write it down in my own way in a tiny notebook. So that notebook is also part of our dinner queue. It's almost like a little Adachi family cookbook of things that we've tried. So just the point is don't pull from every. recipe that's ever been made ever. Have a small selection of recipes that work for right now

in the season you're in and plan only from those. Choose only from those. It's so much easier. And then you can revisit the queue when a new season arises or when you just like to refresh it. You know, when you move into winter, you go throw all kinds of soups on there, but you might not want those in summer. So you can just adjust your dinner queue based on the season that you're in. Okay, number five, remember that not everything has to be a banger. This is what is so important. It is wildly helpful to remember for the rest of your cooking life. Not everything has to be a banger. Not every meal has to be awesome. Like you can nourish yourself and your people with mediocrity and it's fine. Once you take the pressure off yourself that everything

has to be a banger, you don't feel as scared to try something new. And you definitely feel less discouraged if something new that you tried wasn't great because that's not the point. You're just trying something. Maybe it'll be great. Maybe it won't. But the expectation is not everything's going to be a bangor. I also think it's important to have a gauge for yourself on what counts as a win. And not a win in like, am I good at this or whatever?

Like a win of, would I make this again? Would I make this recipe again? Most new meals that you try, they come with cadiots. Like rarely does a new recipe hit it out of park the first time. We all have different preferences and skills. Everyone's learning. Everybody has different spice tolerances, all those things. That it's so nice to have an idea of what makes something worth making again.

This is not technically counting as a tool, but it's like a little side tool. And it's my gauge for that of like what we keep is our three-fifths rule. We have five people in the house. So if three out of five like something, I'll make it again. If it's less than three out of five, we skip it. That's it. I can count on one hand. It's so sad.

I can count on one hand the number of five out of five meals. One hand. There are not many. We've got a lot of four out of fives and a few more three out of fives. And to me, that is wildly successful. Now, would I like more meals that everyone loves? Of course. Of course.

And when I make something new, I hope it becomes one. I hope it's a five out of five, that I don't consider that the line of success. If I did, I would be constantly discouraged as I make dinner forever. So give yourself like a reasonable measurement or gauge on what makes something worth making again. And don't expect everything to be a banger. It's like the most freeing tool around. That's number five. Number six, put your happiest meal on the hardest day.

I've said this before, and it's a pretty standard approach to put your easiest meal on the busiest day, and I stand by that. But a really good variation is to put your happiest meal on the hardest day. Each week will have a different hard day. It might be Monday, just because it's Monday. And everybody's struggling to get back into the groove after the weekend. It could be Wednesday because, like, the kids this week have standardized tests, and they're just zombies at the end of the day.

It could be a day when you know you have to fire somebody at work. That's going to be a really hard day, you know. Put your happiest meal on the hardest day. This is why I like planning a week at a time. I can make a pretty educated guess about what's going to be busy, right, which gets an easy meal, that I can also anticipate what might be a hard day, and that gets a happy meal. In fact, I am realizing, as I'm speaking, that today,

is going to be a hard day for my family. And I did not put a super happy meal on the menu. So do you know what I'm going to do? I'm not going to adjust dinner because some things are like already prepped actually. And I can't quite yet. But what I am going to do is I'm going to go bake some chocolate chip cookies that I have in the freezer to make dinner a little happier on a hard day. Put your happiest meal on your hardest day.

Food is comfort. Happy food, whatever that is for you. It revives the body and the soul. So like make that part of your meal planning. It makes it more alive, not so like robotic and a chore. Number seven, have your people choose. If you are planning and cooking just for yourself, this one is less relevant. But if you live with other people, especially with kids, have them choose. On Sunday afternoons, that's when I meal plan. If I just don't have it, if I don't have the energy at all, or if it's like, let's let them choose. I'll go around to my three kids and I'll say, hey,

what's something you want to eat this week for dinner? Because they all like different things. I'll get three different answers. Always. I never get repeats because they all like different things. But I will get, that's three days of meals right there. Like, who cares if it's what we just had last week? Consistency over variety.

And I'm being kind to myself in making dinner easier. So have other people choose. Let them choose. Now, if they say something that's like just not doable, like they say steak and budgets are tight, or I don't know your kids like really into top chef and they say some sort of fancy like Nyoki situation you can be like hey great idea that we'll have to say for another week I will go write it down so we don't forget but like what's your next pick and then go with that pick you know let the people choose it might not make your meals more varied but it will

make them easier and that is the name of the game number eight one vegetable per meal now some people love vegetables. Some people have kids who love vegetables. Some people have no problems, getting multiple vegetables into their meals. This tool is not for those people. This tool is an easy decision maker for dinners that seem meat or carb heavy. And you want to get more nutrients into your family that is actually a little bit harder to get vegetables into you. So just have one vegetable per meal rule in your own head. You can release the pressure of adding more than that when you're making a recipe. And you can also just like cut up carrot sticks

or throw cherry tomatoes in a bowl and call it good. Like it's fine. The vegetable doesn't have to be cooked every time. It's also okay for the vegetable to be a potato. Potatoes are vegetables. They're full of great stuff. And often one of the most cost-effective vegetables to buy. Like I'm not a dietitian,

but I think it's okay for you to give yourself permission to eat potatoes. Basically, this tool is like a pressure valve. It releases what's built up over months and years of cooking, maybe for your family or yourself, thinking that you have ruined them or yourself because, like, they don't like salad. Because you're not cooking bountiful green sides every meal. You skip the vegetables all together. It's like the consistency over variety mindset. You might be sacrificing your ability to get better at consistent dinners and get food on the table, but you're sacrificing

that because you feel guilty, repeating meals. Similarly, you might be sacrificing you and your people eating vegetables because you're trying to go for many when you could go for just one and you're allowed to make it a potato. One vegetable per meal. Start there and see what happens. Don't worry about variety yet. Just start with one per meal. Whatever that looks like is good for now if that is something that matters to you.

Okay. Number nine, don't be a freezer hoarder. If you use your freezer for like ready to go meals, it is easy to keep them there. You're like wanting to save them for when you really need them. But who decides that? Plus, your freezer, it has limited space. Eventually you're not going to be able to fit anything else in there. Use your freezer.

Use what you've stored. Grab the bag of chili you made when you double it because a food blogger told you to double it and thaw that chili and eat it tonight for dinner. Use your freezer. Don't hoard what's in there for the best possible time. The best possible time is now. If you tend to be a freezer hoarder, maybe you can make a freezer meal part of your meal matrix for a while. Like once a week, you eat something out of the freezer.

Put it on your busiest day so that it's easier to get dinner on the table. Call it good. I already mentioned that we have Tickamasa la fairly often, and recently I had it on the calendar to make for dinner. Well, the day kind of went upside down a little, and even though Ticka Massala is brainless, I did not have the time, much less the brain. And then I spotted a bag of ticka that I had frozen after making extra a couple of months before. And I was so thrilled that I did think for a moment, should I say that? And then I was like, no, I saved it for right now.

Like this is the time that I need a meal that's ready to go. I think it's a mindset that takes practice, especially if you've been. a freezer hoarder for a long time, but just use your freezer, not just when you're desperate, but it is a general way of making dinner. It will ease the pressure week after week, making it easier, not just making dinner, but it makes it easier to freeze extra again because you're freeing up room in your freezer. Use your freezer. Use your freezer. Number 10. Go one more day. This is a great phrase and a tool from Kate Strickler of Nap Time kitchen. This is her phrase, go one more day. Many of you already know and love Kate. Her black bean

soup is legendary. But one thing she says often that is a tool anyone can use is go one more day. In the world of stocked pantries and endless grocery options, it can feel necessary to always have everything available to you. But budgets and time don't always allow that. And it might stop. a little creativity even, a little resilience in making something unusual for a dinner. Kate says that when she and her husband Nate were young and poor, they would use this rule. Can we go one more day before we have to go to the store? It forced them to eat what they had and find joy in simpler things, not to mention fewer dollars spent on groceries. Plus, this tool makes you eat from the freezer. It makes you scour the pantry

for stuff long forgotten. It makes meals that are unconventional, but no less tasty or filling. If you feel obligated to this sort of unspoken rule of like new ingredients and new things and new meals as often as possible, I want you to practice Kate's idea of going one more day. Just go one more day. Release that pressure. You could do a fridge clean out dinner, make a weird meal. You know, you call it.

It's weird dinner day. where it's just like disconnected things that you have around, make a dinner board of those things, whatever. But try going one more day, rather than continuing to go to the store for foods that make dinner feel more complete, it doesn't have to work like that. And it might be complicating your dinner.

So that's number 10. Number 11, plan your hot dogs. This is maybe my favorite tool. I can get a little yelly about it. too, which is always fun, but let's paint a picture, okay? It's Tuesday morning, let's say. You don't know what's for dinner and you feel bad about it, but you don't have time to figure it out right now. The day is weird with whatever your weird day has, and you just don't know if you're going to have time to make something from what's already home, much less make something that requires a trip to

the store. So in your head, you think, oh, we're probably just going to end up having hot dogs. Okay, a few hours later, you still haven't decided dinner. And you also don't know when you're going to have time to decide. The hot dogs loom large in the distance, making you feel guilty because it's another cop out. Then by the time you get to dinner, you're like, fine, screw it. Let's just have hot dogs. But you're moody and pouty and eat your hot dogs with guilt and annoyance and low-key hate everything. Okay. Same Tuesday morning, new story. You don't know what's for dinner and you're not sure when you're going to be able to know what you have time for. So you decide right. now to plan your hot dogs. You say, we're going to have hot dogs tonight. I might have time for more,

but it doesn't matter. Hot dogs it is. Then you go about your weird day without guilt or the weight of the unmade decision because you already know what's for dinner. Both scenarios end the same way. They both end with eating hot dogs. The only difference is one was planned and you, your attitude is probably different. Y'all, plan your daggum hot dogs or whatever hot dogs are for you. Like plan the easy meal that feels like you're not cooking. You're not, but who cares? Cooking is not a requirement for dinner. Plan the hot dogs. Take away the guilt and the unmade decisions and enjoy the margin that planned hot dogs can provide you. I will shout this from the rooftops for as long as the internet will have me. Plan your

Hot dogs. Okay, finally, number 12. Name what matters. Too many things can matter in meal planning. Like so many. Variety. Nutrition, ease, simplicity. Ease and simplicity are two different things. Experiencing new cuisines, comfort, teaching kids how to cook, learning to cook yourself, eating based on a certain dietary plan. Like, there are so many things that could matter. And under no circumstances, can you choose them all? It just, it's impossible. You know that old saying cheap, fast, good? You have to pick two. I've always heard that in the world of construction and like home renovation. If you want something cheap and fast, it's not going to be good. If you want something cheap and good, it won't be fast. If you want something fast and good,

it won't be cheap. I think the same is true of meals, plus a million other things. You simply cannot have the unicorn meal you think you can have on a regular basis. You cannot have a wide variety of recipes, a hearty supply of healthy vegetables cooked in a multitude of ways in each one of those, and meals that are also quick, simple, budget friendly that are always pleasing to your family. This world does not exist, not without a personal chef, maybe. So you have to name what matters. You have to. I mentioned this recently in a previous episode, I think, but when I did the lazy genius kitchen episode with Aaron Moon, I have a video series on YouTube at six episodes where I go into people's

kitchens and lazy genius their kitchen, a problem in their kitchen. And I did an episode with Aaron Moon, who we love, you can watch her episode in any of the six on YouTube. She said that what mattered to her for dinner, because she's got three kids, she works full time, all the things, she's a busy lady. Her three things were simple, quick and had one vegetable. Now, in order for that to happen, she needed to depend on convenience foods a little bit. Quick almost always requires something convenient. And for it to be simple and include a vegetable, most definitely has to have a little convenience

in there sometimes, that Aaron kept getting hung up on homemade food. She got all weird when we talked about convenience foods or like when she showed me some of the packs of pre-made meals in her fridge, she'd get a little sort of. squirrelly. But guess what didn't matter to Aaron? Homemade food. It didn't actually matter. It frankly couldn't matter. If it did matter more than those other things, then Aaron would have to make different choices for her life, which she would be allowed to do, as do you. That you have to choose what matters to you about dinner, not for forever, just for whatever current season you're in. Name it and plan, choose what's for dinner or lunch or breakfast or whatever.

based on that thing, on what matters. It's going to make dinner so much easier. Now, I know that there are a number of you who, this is where I get feisty, there are a number of you who are women who cook for a husband and children. And when I say this kind of thing, especially like consistency over variety or whatever, what matters to you will often come through beautifully. And you're like, yes, I'm all in, Kendra, thank you, say more. But your husband has a hard time with it because he would like more variety or more meat and three meals or whatever it is.

Now, I've said this before. I will say it again without sarcasm or malice. If it matters enough to him, he can figure out how to cook. He can take over a couple of meals. He can prep on the weekends to make it easy for you to get dinner going after getting all the children to their things on top of your own job. It is not the rule for every family that looks like that. this that has a man and a woman and children. This is not the standard necessarily, but I get enough comments from people that I know this exists a lot. If your husband wants more regular, varied

dinners, and you cannot support that based on the life you lead while he is at work, he can adjust. You do not have to. It is not all or nothing. It's not every day. And it's also not something that happen without some sort of loving discussion. But to expect you to cook more without extending help in that area, especially if homemade and variety matters to him and not to you, then he needs to make it matter himself. And that is all I'm going to say about that. Okay. So the 12 amazing all-star meal planning dinner making tools are. Use your brainless crowd pleasers. Choose consistency over variety.

Use a meal matrix. Use a dinner queue. Remember that not everything has to be a banger. Put your happiest meal on the hardest day. Have your people choose. One vegetable per meal. Don't be a freezer hoarder. Go one more day.

for that one. Playing your hot dogs and name what matters. Even starting with one of these things is going to make dinner easier. You start using multiple? Listen. I'm not saying that making dinner will be like the smoothest thing ever, but it will definitely be easier than it is right now. And that is how to more easily feed your people. RBC Training Ground has discovered potential in over 20,000 Canadian athletes and county. Your story could be. be next. If you've got the drive, they'll help you find your path to the Olympics. Let's see what you've got. Sign up for free at rbc training ground.ca. Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and stretch. Steep. Flip. Or that and enjoy. Via rail, love the way.

Okay, for today's a little extra something, I'm going to share my favorite cookbooks for making Family meals, at least our family meals. We tend to lean on the same set of recipes, but I do like trying to add at least one new thing every week or two, and these are the places that I get them. So first is actually not a cookbook. It's an app. It's the New York Times food app.

Listen, that thing is stellar. I pay $6 a month for access to all the recipes, and there's also a lot of baking recipes because I use those two. I can easily place recipes in different folders, you know like winter dinner summer dinner general dinner whatever um i love the reviews that people leave because people share how they adjusted recipes to work better for them and these are really smart people who are making this food it's good so helpful and then i've only had a couple of us like they're dependable recipes it's like having a whole store of cookbooks in my phone that i can just tap ones

and i'm like oh that looks good and it's like saves it for me in my own little queue i love it so the new york times recipe app, food app. I'm not exactly sure if it's recipe or food, but that's what I, I love that. So the next cookbook, or the first cookbook, is the cook's book by Bree McCoy. Yes, Bree is a dear friend of mine, but her cookbook would be top tier, even if I did not know her. The recipes are delicious, and she teaches you how to cook through the process of making her recipes. And she's such a good teacher. The photos are great. It's just a top-notch book. It's beautiful. It feels good. It's pretty on her shelf. solid. Another favorite is cookish by Milk Street and Christopher Kimball. So these are simply put together

recipes, very easy to follow. And I've shared this before, but my kids like weirdly trust this cookbook. I don't, I don't understand why, but they're like, is it from that, is this from that one cookbook? Sometimes I will lie. It'd be like, yes, it is. Just because it's like, I mean, who cares? I don't know. Maybe that's bad that I'm blind to them. It doesn't happen very often, but otherwise they're going to be like, oh, suddenly they don't like it the same anymore. And it's like, guys, it's just food, calm down. Anyway, they love this cookbook. Now, one thing to note about cookish, that I think is really important is that the recipes are incredibly simple in that they use just a handful of ingredients to pack a punch, right? That's what makes them simple. Now,

if you don't like a particular ingredient, you're not going to like the recipe. Because there's nowhere to hide, you know? So that's just something, it's good to keep that in mind as you're trying recipes from that book, because you're really putting a lot of stock in just one or two ingredients per recipe. Another book I love is I Dream of Dinner by Ali Slagall. Allie's been on the podcast before. It is a great book, especially if you like cooking with traditional pantry staples. Her chicken and rice soup is like, is an absolute go-to in our house. We call it feel better. soup. Her recipes are very simple. Again, like not a lot of ingredients. Incredibly budget-friendly, very budget-friendly. Lots of, like I said, pantry stables. And nourishing on a sole level,

the writing is really great, too. She's a great writer. An honorable mention, just because it's not a dinner cookbook, but it's a baking cookbook that I lean on all the time. It's sweet enough by Alison Roman. I have so many baking cookbooks. I have more baking books than I do dinner books. but this one I reach for all the time. They're just simple recipes, super flavorful, crowd-pleasing, just like good home baking. It is a fantastic cookbook. I love it so much. So for new recipes, I primarily use the New York Times recipes app, the Cook's Book

by Bree McCoy, Cookish by Milk Street, I Dream of Dinner by Ali Slagel, and Sweet Enough by Allison Roman when it's time for dessert. And that's today's a little extra something. Okay, now it's time for the lazy genius of the week. This week we have a voice message from Ferial, sharing her creative take on meal planning. Hello, lazy genius folks. My lazy genius idea is about meal planning. And I generally meal plan once a week, usually on Sunday evenings for the week coming up.

And what I do is I have my own separate. separate Google Calendar for our meal plan, and I will populate an event for each night of the week with the dinner, and I will include a link to the recipe in the calendar event so that no matter who's cooking, me or my husband, we both have access to the calendar, and that person cooking has access to the recipe, and we can move the calendar events around or duplicate them if we're doing a repeat meal. And we've been doing it for years and it's such a great system and we love it. So I hope it helps. Thanks. This is such a great idea. I love the idea of calendar items on a separate Google calendar, especially because you can repeat things if you use a meal matrix, right? So let's say

you have pasta Mondays. You can put like the sauce recipe if you make your own in the calendar item like barrel does, but then you can just like set it to repeat every week or every other week or every month or whatever you want to do. If you use this idea and you find it works, I can even see changing, like once you've lived with it for a while, I can see changing the color of new meals. So you know how often you're trying something new if that is a priority to you. So this is just such a great idea. It's sustainable, versatile, works with a person's way of less. I love this. So thank you for sending it in, for sending us a voice memo too. Those are always so fun to get. Congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. If you'd like to submit your own idea, you can email

hello at the lazy genius collective.com and put lazy genius of the week in the subject line, or you can go to the link in the show notes to submit your audio recording. You can also do that at the lazy genius collective.com slash voices. All right. To close, let's have a mini pep talk for when nobody seems grateful. I think this is a great episode to speak into that. Making meals is just one of many things that so many of you do that might not get a lot of notice or gratitude. It's hard to do so many things over and over again, either on your own or for your family and not feel like anyone notices or sees it or even cares. And if you live alone, there's no one even to thank you for that or to even notice how much you're actually doing. So I try personally to not like depend on that

gratitude, but like, man, is it nice to hear sometimes, you know? So here's my, here's my slightly odd encouragement for when nobody seems grateful. Be the first one to show gratitude. If you live with a partner or kids and you wish they said thank you more, you can definitely tell them that. You can be like, You know, you can honestly say, you know, it's hard to do all that I do and not feel appreciated. I know you probably do appreciate me, but it would be really helpful to hear it more often or even just hear it right now. Like, you can do that. And maybe even should.

And you'll probably have to do it more than once because we're forgetful people. But I know for me, when I am not feeling the gratitude from others in my family, I withhold gratitude. for them. Like, I don't say thank you when they help with something, when they, like, tidy a space, whether I ask them to or not, when they, when they do even what's totally expected of them, I withhold my gratitude because I'm either like a little snippy because they're not showing me any, or I don't even think about it because it's just what they're supposed to do. Well, it could be that the same is true of your people. You always make dinner or you always pick dinner. Or you always them up from practice or you always fill in the blank. It's just a normal part of things.

Gratitude might not be coming, not because they're not grateful, just because it's not anything new. Like, everybody does that. So my encouragement is to go first. Show gratitude to your people, even for things that they always do or are expected to do. That doesn't mean it isn't hard or that being grateful to them isn't important. You going first, if no one else is already going, it helps create a culture in your home of gratitude if that is something that matters to you. If you regularly show gratitude to them, it might spark a little more from them. So yes, it's normal to feel like no one sees what you're doing and it's good to share what you need and also show gratitude first.

We're sometimes a little too hard to want to, but I think that's exactly when it's the most needed. Not for them, but for us. And that's a mini pep talk for when nobody seems grateful. If this episode was helpful to you, or if you've been looking for a way to support the show, please share this episode with someone you know, or you can leave a kind review on Apple Podcasts.

Every mention, every share, they all make such a difference in turning more people, into lazy geniuses, so thank you for being so supportive. This podcast is part of the Odyssey family and the Office Ladies Network. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher, and Angela Kimsey. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. If you'd like a podcast recap every other week, be sure to sign up for the latest

lazy listens email that goes out every other Friday. Head to the lazy genius collective.com slash listens to get it. Thanks y'all 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 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.