The Lazy Genius Podcast - #65: The Lazy Genius Summer Strategy: Food

Episode Date: May 28, 2018

What if you don't have a grill? What if you hate salad? What if your kids run purely on snack bar fries and won't eat anything you make? Let's take a super quick trip down Summer Food Tip Road. Even if you just take one tip from this, that one tip could make a huge difference. Listen in and find one that works for your life. Companion Episodes: The Lazy Genius Grills The Lazy Genius Makes a Salad Download the transcript for this episode! And check out the giant blog post with every summer tip I have! This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, you're listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra, and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about things that don't. We are finishing up our series on creating a summer strategy. And today we're going to talk about food. Cooking during the summer, at least for most of us in the U.S., is a struggle. It's really hot, so we don't want to have to turn on the stove all the time. A lot of people use a grill in the summer, but what if you don't have a grill? Plus, summer is made. of days staying late at the pool are coming home right at dinner time to panic and no food. This episode is going to be real short, but we're going to look at a few strategies to help food in the summer a lot easier. The first point I want to make is a perspective shift for summer food. Summer is not a meat and three sides kind of season. Most of us are snacking throughout the day and don't want to eat a heavy meal at six anyway. If you have a spouse who just doesn't call it dinner if it doesn't have a meat in three sides, I would encourage a loving conversation where you communicate that you cannot maintain that kind of dinner standard in the summer and that

that is okay. Your spouse can be mature about not eating braised short ribs for a couple months. So let's just shift how we see dinners. A lot of folks say that summer is a season for salads. But if you have little kids, that's not really an option. Very few kids choose salad. And those of you who have those magical children, I am genuinely impressed. And I covet your children's palettes. Does mine do not eat anything green at all? So what does the average family do in the summer? It feels a little overwhelming. I'm going to run through a few ideas to get you thinking. Number one, you want foods that cook quickly or don't have to cook at all. Flat bread pizzas under the broiler for a few minutes as opposed to turning the entire oven on. Proteins that can saute

really quickly without adding a lot of heat to the house. So chicken cut into small pieces, shrimp, fish, which cooks in just a couple of minutes. Or on the other end of that spectrum, cook a giant piece of meat like a pork shoulder in the crock pot and use it for several meals. Things like tacos, rice bowls, lettuce wraps, and also rotisserie chickens are magic during the summer. Costco sells them for like five bucks. They're super tasty and you can do just about anything with them, including just eating the chicken as it is. You can toss leftovers in barbecue sauce and pile it in hamburger buns. You can make chicken salad, use it for tacos, all the things. The point, though, is you want to have meat that either cooks really, really fast, can cook really

low for a really long time and feed you for several meals, or you buy something like a rotissory chicken. Another perspective is to have picnic dinners. I think I first heard this kind of dinner described by Emily Freeman, but it's those dinners where you just like pull everything out. You pull out deli meat and salami and cheese and bread and crackers and leftovers and a pie of strawberries and all the things. And you have a simple meal, but it's so good because everybody kind of picks what's, pick what they want. Picks what they want. I can't say words. Because again, dinner does not have to be meat in three in the summer. It's actually better if it's not in the summer. It's so much easier and better with the weather.

And then grazing as a family is just kind of a, it's just a really nice way to connect with each other. I don't know. There's something about just sitting around a pile of disparate foods and having a conversation that's really nice. Besides, I think kids like picking what they want from the pile. And if they just eat crackers rid of her, I mean, it's okay. Okay, I mentioned this in the last episode, but as counterintuitive as it sounds, I think

that the summer is even more of a time to plan your meals. the only exception to this is if you don't have kids or a large family to feed and you love fresh vegetables. If those things are true, then you eat just tomato sandwiches and corn on the cob until you can't handle it and you call it a day, right? But for those of you with families to feed and lack schedules to work with, or if you just really like to eat something different every day, planning your meals is really crucial. The plan doesn't mean it has to happen, but it gives you a starting point. So your first step is to prioritize the planning. You can start with the food, whatever looks good at the farmer's market and prepare simple meals from there. You can start with

the recipes, make a shopping list, go to town. However you do it, planning your meals every few days is so helpful in the summer. Bonus tip. Please plan from one cookbook at a time. Don't look through every recipe holder you own every time you plan. You will become so overwhelmed and hate everything. pick one method each week one location where recipes are one cookbook one Pinterest board search for one ingredient and then choose another method the next week the next step in feeding the heat and the pressure of getting dinner made fast is to either cook dinner in the morning or cook a bunch of dinners all at once or at least have a ton of prep done maybe all at once we've talked about this before maybe if you do a food day or you plan, you shop, you prep, and then everything is like

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An option might be that you have a big saute pan of ground pork and onions and green peppers. You know, when you cook that up really fast, it wouldn't be but just a few minutes because everything is kind of small. you season it simply with salt and pepper and then you put it in the fridge when it's time for dinner reheat half of it in the microwave or in like a little saute pan if you don't have a microwave

and then make rice and a rice cooker because that thing doesn't give off any heat hardly at all and then you have lettuce wraps with rice and this stuff wrapped up in lettuce you put like hot sauce on it and if your kids are weird about lettuce

then they just have a bowl of rice and meat and they'll be fine and then you use so you can use like half of them meat and peppers for that. And then the next day, you can use the other half for like burritos or tacos and you can reheat it in the microwave again. You know, the stuff that requires the heat, it's already been done. Now, if your kids are part of the cooking process, if you do have that weekly food day, everybody knows what you're having. They know what to pull out. They kind of know

how to get dinner together if you've done it together. It's another chance for connection. Of course, there are going to be days where you want everybody out of the kitchen and being patient with tiny hands or complaining attitudes is just too much. You don't want to deal. I get it. And you're not a bad person for not wanting to engage in connection over dinner prep every night. It's okay. But taking really small steps in that direction might surprise you. And planning everything together could be a good first step in that. The next step for summer cooking is to use your appliances wisely. A rice cooker, praise, or an instant pot would be fabulous in the summer.

We have a rice cooker, we do not have an instant pot, but the rice cooker, it doesn't create heat. I mean, it just doesn't. And it provides such a great foundation for a lot of meals, rice does. You can make a lot of rice at once and reheat it later. So a rice cookers are really smart summer appliance. A crock pot is an obvious choice here too. Now, I'm not a huge fan of the crock pot just because I rarely get the kind of flavor I do from a Dutch oven. Like one of those big, like enamel cast iron pots.

I think enamel and cast iron are different, but you know what I mean? One of those big colorful pots. But really, the flavor comes down to the meat or the vegetables being seared and seasoned before they go into the crock pot. if you sear your meat and season and saute your vegetables really quickly in the morning, your crock pot meals will still be ready for you at the end of the day, but they will be extra tasty. Another small appliance that might come in handy is some kind of sandwich press.

If you have one line around from like a Black Friday sale a few years ago or something, make quick sandwiches that are custom made for everybody in the family. Summer is the time to have pieces of a meal and let people choose what to include. like again sandwiches tacos rice or grain bowls flat bread pizzas most of the ingredients can be prepped really early so all you have to do is take stuff out heat something up quickly on the stove or in the microwave if you need to and then like for sandwiches you can just put it in a press really fast and um while a teapot is not an appliance it is definitely something you want to use this summer pasta is such a staple in our house but boiling an entire pot of steamy water at five o'clock

It does not sound appealing when it's 95 degrees outside. So, and even if I cook pasta in the morning, it's still a lot of heat to boil an entire pot of water. That's where your teapot comes in. Boil a kettle of water and then pour it into your big pasta pot. You can either put like half the water in the pot and then boil it while you boil the kettle or boil the kettle a couple of times. You know, boil it once and pour it in the pot, put the heat on, boil up another kettle. The point is the process of boiling water is way faster in a tea kettle than in the stock pot. And the steam and the heat are contained better.

So use your teapot to bowl water for pasta or anything. One of my favorite meal strategies has nothing to do with appliances or even food. And it is to include other people. Get together with another family or two and share the cooking. And do it often. Swap weeks of who's hosting and share the load of the meal. Everybody wins, man. You can naturally, like, move slowly and connect while the kids play.

if there are kids and adults chat, plus the cooking experience is just a lot more fun when you are doing it with other people. I highly, highly encourage, some kind of like summer supper club if you're up for it. And finally, if you have teenagers, have them be responsible for one or two dinners every week. If they don't know how to cook, teach them one recipe and they can cook that recipe anytime it's their turn. remember that the summer gets to be slower so don't push it you know if they don't make it as quickly as you would or whatever it is connection is the key and this is a great way to connect and if you eat the same same thing once a week you're probably doing that now so no harm done right okay so those are just a few quick thoughts for summer food um i'm going to put a lot of these tips in the summer guide

blog post that is available to read today um it has a lot more ideas and tips um that weren't in any of the podcast episodes. Plus, I have a recipe up for one of my favorite summer dishes. It is super simple, and it tastes better warm or room temperature than it does hot. It's the perfect dinner to make in the morning, and you can find that at the Laceyjeetjeet.com slash lazy slash summer food. Thanks for listening, you guys. I sincerely hope you have even just like a sliver of a fresh perspective on the

the summer after these four episodes. We do want to survive the summer, but I really want us to enjoy the summer, not just survive it. And remember that connection is key. Connection is key. So be willing to let some stuff slide in order to connect with the people around you. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't.

I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life, because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it?

I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.