The Lazy Genius Podcast - #76 The Lazy Genius Meal Plan

Episode Date: September 24, 2018

We’ve been waiting for this one, haven’t we? We’re finally talking about meal planning! Getting dinner on the table happens most every day, and we’re still surprised it has to happen. Here are three simple steps (plus one exciting announcement) that will help you get dinnertime under control.   Stuff Mentioned: The Lazy Genius Stocks the Kitchen Salt Fat Acid Heat, this cookbook talks about the principles of creating delicious meals using, you guessed it, salt, fat, acid, and heat Mad Hungry, another favorite cookbook which is about feeding families with a focus on the teenagers taking over the reins. The Lazy Genius Meal Plan Notebook Download a transcript of this episode Note: In this episode, I mentioned two levels of The Meal Plan. I decided to scrap that. We’re all VIPs, so there’s only one level! 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

This episode is brought to you by Defender. With a towing capacity of 3,500 kilograms and a waiting depth of 900 millimeters, the Defender 110 pushes what's possible. Learn more at landrover.ca. Amazon presents Laura versus fruit flies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill.

But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies. Your baby boom ends here. Save the everyday with Amazon. 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 the things that don't. Today is episode 76, the Lazy Genius Meal Plan. We have been waiting for this one, haven't we? finally talking about meal planning. Getting dinner on the table happens most every day, and we are still surprised that it has to happen. I have to make dinner again. There are a lot of perspectives on meal planning, why it's important, who it's for. But in this episode, I hope you find the way that meal planning works for you. You don't need to copy anyone else's plan

unless you really want to, but the lazy genius way might just be your last meal planning stop. This is how I meal plan and I have for years and it still works. In fact, it gets easier because it builds on itself. So in this episode, I'm going to show you how. I'm so excited. Okay, let's do this. Step number one. Have a list of brainless crowd pleasers.

I have talked about this a lot. I talked about it a lot in last week's episode, The Lazy Genius Stocks the Kitchen. So you might already have a head start on this. You might already have your list. But in case you didn't listen to that episode, as a reminder brainless crowd pleasers are recipes that don't require much brain power from you as the cook and generally please the crowd you are feeding this is not a block party crowd or church small group crowd it's just you or you and your nuclear family like the people generally around your table

and crowd pleasing doesn't necessarily mean everyone is thrown a party and it's the most delicious thing ever everyone is just generally pleased small expectations little to no complaining. Don't go for the gold every time with every dinner because you are not going to hit it and you'll just get frustrated. Your list of brainless crowd pleasers, it could be five things. It could be 25 things. You might be surprised at how many you actually have. I listed a lot of mine in the last episode so you can listen to that or check the show notes for the last episode. But please include when you're making your list, please include convenience foods like frozen pizza and Trader Joe's orange mandarin chicken.

include recipes that feel like they're not even worth writing down like spaghetti and hot dogs. Don't necessarily assume that your list is going to look like everyone else's either. One meal that is so easy if you know how to cook it is a quickly sauteed piece of salmon over rice and spinach. Saute spinach. It is delicious with a dash of sesame oil in that spinach. Oh my goodness. And if you already have rice made or it's like already cooked in the freezer, that meal is ready in 10 minutes. Like, that's a real thing. If you know how to cook salmon and you know how to saute spinach

and you know to not put a whole bottle of sesame oil in your spinach because that stuff is real strong, just a drop or two will do. It's very strong. So brainless crowd pleasers, they don't have to necessarily be like all brown foods or all cheap foods or all foods that you find on a restaurant kids menu. Those things belong to, but so does everything if it's a brainless crowd pleaser. There are no rules. It doesn't use her brain and it pleases. It pleases. your crowd it counts so after you have that list of your brainless crowd pleasers you move to step two know what you're planning for making a plan is just giving priority to something you care about that's all it is so if you're wanting to meal plan it's showing that you do prioritize your meals some

you do prioritize dinner so what is it that you care about in that what are you planning for The answers are varied and plentiful. Are you planning because you want to eat more whole foods and you need to think ahead a little bit more for that? Are you planning to expose yourself and your family to interesting flavors? To teach your teenagers how to cook. To eat together every night, even though everyone is going different directions most of the time. Everybody's got their own reason.

For me, the reason I meal plan is because I don't like feeling crazy between 4.30 and 730. I am powering down by then. I have a brain that like never stops kind of. And if I throw the stress of cooking and kids complaining about what I'm cooking and then tons of dirty dishes from that cooking on my already tired brain by that time of day, I become a mean person. And I don't want to be a mean person. So I meal plan so that I don't lose my mind. It's all about selfishly preserving my sanity, which makes my home a happier place to be in. Let's be real. So knowing why you plan is really important, and then that leads us to step three. Once you know your singular purpose, you decide your planning parameters. So step three is decide your planning parameters. Now what do I mean by planning

parameters? If you know why you are meal planning, what kinds of recipes become the most helpful for that reason. Which recipes are not helpful at all. Your planning parameters help you weed out what to choose and what to ignore. This is the trickiest of the meal plan steps. So let me talk you through it and give you a couple of examples to kind of get your brain working and so you can find your own. For example, if you are a working mom, the reason that you meal plan is so that you don't have to make dinner decisions when you get home after a long day of working and making decisions. Okay. Um, you also might need to have dinner ready like 20 minutes after you walk in the door because you work until 5.30. Okay. So if that's why you're planning, what parameters will help you make those plans work best?

What recipes do you need to fulfill that purpose? You need to focus on one, crock pot or instant pot recipes that can be set up in the morning and hang out all day. and two, dead simple recipes that can come together in minutes that aren't even actual recipes, but they're just like a platter with crackers and cheese and salami and sliced apples and hummus. Or a rotisserie chicken and quickly sauteed spinach and a loaf of crusty bread from the bakery. You're just assembling, like already made delicious food. Those are your two planning parameters. So what recipes then do you not want? That eliminates a lot of things.

it eliminates recipes that require a lot of time or a lot of ingredients. You're not making risotto. You're not making casseroles that have to be put together and still bake for an hour. You're not making recipes that are just like a main protein. And then you also have to find recipes for a couple of sides to go with it. You're not doing that. You don't even pay attention to recipes outside of your planning parameters because all that does is overwhelm you. Other ideas for planning parameters.

Maybe the reason that you're planning, maybe you want, your teenage kids to cook dinner once or twice a week. That's why you meal plan. You want to set them up well to learn the skills and to get your kids in the kitchen more. If that's what you're planning for, what are your planning parameters? You want basic recipes, basic recipes that teach techniques and how flavors go together. You might purchase the book Salt, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, which I love, that talks about the principles of creating delicious meals.

Another favorite is a book called Mad Hungry, which is about feeding families. And there's a focus really on teenagers, kind of taking over the reins. You don't pull from the entire internet or the entire cookbook section at Barnes & Noble, know why you meal plan to teach your teenagers just the basics of cooking. And then you choose planning parameters to help you fulfill that purpose and ignore everything else. Let's look at another example. The reason you meal plan is because you will. want to give priority to trying new foods and flavors and recipes from other cultures.

If you're going to spend the time cooking outside of your list of brainless crowd pleasers, you want that meal to be something exciting and adventurous, right? So your planning parameters are really simple. You choose recipes that have an ingredient you don't use very often or are from another culture. If that's the case, you are going to ignore Paula Dean. You are going to ignore the pioneer woman. You are going to ignore your grandmother's collection of recipes from the 50s. You don't have to ignore them forever. But for right now, if that's what you're planning for, then that's your reason for cooking. That's what you need to choose, right? You choose parameters that help you move toward your reason for planning and cooking, and then you silence everything else

that makes you feel crazy. Aw, isn't something we need to travel for. It's something. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. For me, my reason for meal planning is to not feel crazy. I already told you that.

So my two planning parameters are one, choose recipes that require no more than two pots to make. If it requires more than two pots, I ignore it completely. And second parameter, choose recipes that only use a basic list of ingredients. Okay, so by not using more than two pots, I am cutting down on my post-dinner cleanup, right? You know when you watch those cooking shows and everything's like prepped in those beautiful glass bowls and then they just keep dumping food from glass bowl to glass bowl. I'm always like, who's washing those bowls? That's so many dishes.

Not in my house. Not in my house. So I only do two pots at most. And then the other planning parameter is that if a recipe requires an ingredient that I don't usually buy, I don't make it. Now that sounds really harsh, but there's. you have it we only buy a few cuts of meat right a few different kinds of meat that I cook from meatballs salmon filets a few cuts of chicken but not all of them ground pork beef and then like big cuts of both pork and beef that are tough that need to be cooked

kind of slowly like a pork shoulder or like a big um you know rump roast or something um I don't buy steak. I don't buy shrimp. I don't buy any fish that's not salmon. Chicken tenderloins I do not buy. Whole chickens I do not buy. Pork chops. I just don't even look at them in the store.

For this time of my life, I don't even look at them. So by doing that, and I do the same for like produce and pantry staples. It's the same thing. So by doing that, I am cooking from a very select group of ingredients that I'm super familiar with. It is, it cuts down on my shopping because I know. what to always buy. I'm not like buying new things all the time. I'm less likely to waste stuff because ingredients get used in multiple things, right? And I know how to cook that stuff. And so I'm not

getting stressed out by like unknown things. So again, this is just for right now. This is just for right now. This is why I plan now. I've got little, I got three little kids at home. I ain't got time to try a lot of new things. So for example, I don't buy kale and I don't buy artichokes. I like both. Both are delicious, but they don't fit my planning parameters for right now. Eventually, they will. Eventually, I will use them. But in my current world of wanting to stay sane, I have a short list of foods I cook and only cook those foods. So if I'm flipping through a cookbook and I see a recipe for shrimp and artichokes over quinoa, none of which are on my current ingredient list, I'm skipping that recipe. I don't care how delicious it looks or probably

is if it doesn't fit my planning parameters, I don't make it. And what I'm doing too by doing that is I'm limiting my decisions. And that is the hope here. We are trying to limit the number of decisions that you are making. So planning parameters limit your decisions. And that's really the worst part of meal planning in so many ways is you have to choose again. It's so annoying. It's like, really, I have to pick dinner again. So this way you're limiting your decisions. It just makes things a lot easier. Okay, so speaking of limiting decisions, this is the final step in the lazy genius meal plan, and it is to have a dinner queue. All right, so this is where you turn your brain on autopilot, and you bask in the beauty of decisions already made. A dinner queue is simply that. It is a queue

of meals ready to go that fit your planning parameters. You have your list of brainless crowd pleasers, right? You also create a dinner queue of new recipes to try that fit those planning parameters and only those planning parameters. These are not someday recipes or maybe that'll work recipes. These are not ideal recipes, dream recipe. None of those things, okay, don't put a recipe in your dinner queue if it doesn't fit your purpose for planning. in the first place. You can collect your dinner queue. You can sort of gather it up and list it up in a few ways. You can just make a list on paper with the recipe where you can find it like the cookbook page or the website it comes from or the Pinterest board or whatever. And then maybe like

make a note or two about the main ingredients that it uses or like how long it takes to cook or whatever you need to know. You can order or organize your dinner queue digitally. So you can have a Pinterest board that you just called dinner queue and that's just where you put things. You could use Evernote if you like that or just anything similar to Evernote. I don't know if there is anything similar to Evernote, but you could do it digitally. But my favorite way, my favorite way, brings me to some very exciting news. You guys. So I put all this information, this entire meal plan system, into a physical book that you can hold in your actual human hands.

I call it the meal plan because I am incredibly creative at naming things. But what I've done is I've taken these steps plus even more helpful information and I put it in the cutest, sturdiest notebook you can imagine. So you can write down all of the stuff in one place. There are pages for your brainless crowd pleasers for your dinner queue and then actual calendar pages to make your meal plan. I know. There are also companion videos to help you get the most out of your meal plan book. where I explain like all the pages and give you ideas on what to put in them. I have been working on this for months and I'm so excited to tell you about it now.

It's like so exciting. But it's only available for this week. So go to the lazy genius collective.com slash meal plan to get yours. There are two levels. The basic level gets you the meal plan book as a downloadable PDF. So you can just print it out yourself. It's over 100 pages, y'all. It is hefty.

As well as the companion video. to get you started and a bonus class called the Essential Kitchen where I help you get your fridge, your freezer, your pantry, and everything else like poised and ready to make you a meal planning rock star based on what you need, not on what everyone else tells you to need. So that's just the basic level. The reason the meal plan is only available for this week and why I'm not making it open all the time is because of the VIP level. You get all the same things, the PDF, the videos, the Essential Kitchen program. Plus, you get the meal plan book, IRL. You get it in your hands. I will mail it to you in your mailbox. A postman will bring it to you. Are you kidding me? You will see a photo of it on the

site when you go look, but it is this like beautiful black cover and it's the prettiest, like, sturdiest, white pages you can write in so you can write all your stuff in this book and have everything you need to make a meal plan in one place. If your house catches on fire, I hope it never does. But if your house ever catches on fire and all the people you love get out, this is the one thing that you're going to want to save once you fill this puppy up. And as the most fun part of the VIP package, in addition to the actual IRL book, is a private Facebook group where you can share meal plan ideas with other lazy geniuses

and where I will be twice a week for the first month of you're using this system. So I'll answer your questions. I'm going to do some live videos, all the things. So that's why it's really only available for one week because it's all happening at the same time. So if you're listening to this, the week of September 24th, 2018, head to the lazy genius collective.com slash meal plan right now to check it out. It is only available this week. And while I am sure we will make it available again, it won't be for a while because of that awesome Facebook group and because we actually print the meal plan books for you. I just can't wait for you to see them, you guys. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. But if you start with a list of brainless crowd pleasers, and if you know why your meal planning in the first place,

if you choose two at most planning parameters to limit the internet's barrage of recipes coming at you, and if you create a dinner queue to pull from, you can meal plan in literally minutes and not like 20 minutes like two minutes and if you get the lazy genius meal plan system it'll all be ready and waiting for you in one place i cannot wait for you to see this and start getting dinner on the table with less stress fewer decisions and a lot more fun this is the way to meal plan guys it really is i promise you so head to the lazy genius collective.com slash meal plan to get started. Okay, that's it for today.

I will be live on Instagram this Thursday, the 27th, if you have any questions for me about the meal plan system. I'm at the lazy genius. I am more than happy to answer your questions. And it may be that the meal plan is not for you and you've got questions. You're like, man, I really don't know

if this is a thing. Come on Instagram and ask me and I will answer that for you. Absolutely. So thank you for listening. I'm Kendra. And until next time, be a genius about things that matter

and lazy. about the things that don't. Bye, guys. 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.