The Lazy Genius Podcast - #97 - One Simple Step That Changes Meal Planning Forever

Episode Date: February 25, 2019

If you’ve been feeling like you’re not making anyone happy at dinner time (including yourself), this episode is for you! I’ve been talking about Brainless Crowdpleasers for a long time around here, but this week I’m breaking the concept down to set you up for success. I’m describing how to determine what counts as a brainless crowdpleaser and just how many people you should be able to feed with one. And I’ll teach you how to build up your list of Brainless Crowdpleasers and how you stock your kitchen based on your list. Helpful Links The Meal Plan is available until March 7th. Don’t sleep on this if you want to get your meal planning game in shape before Spring! Follow me on Instagram for Meal Plan Monday ideas, Thursday Instagram Lives, and crowd favorite series You’re Doing Great. Listen to The Lazy Genius Stocks the Kitchen to learn how to stock your kitchen efficiently and effectively. Some of my family’s Brainless Crowdpleasers: Change Your Life Chicken, Magic Instant Pot Curry Rice, and Make Your Own Hamburger Helper. Download a transcript of this episode. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi there. 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 number 97. One simple step that changes meal planning forever. Is this magic? No, but this very simple, incredibly practical step, it kind of works like magic. I'll explain in just a second. But first, before you get distracted by a dirty diaper or a load of laundry and forget to finish this episode, I want to make sure you know that my favorite thing I've ever made for you, the meal plan, the lazy genius guide to happy dinners at home, is available now and will be available until Thursday, March 7th. After that, the doors closed tight for at least six months. I'll mention

it again at the end of the episode, but here's your quick reminder to not miss out on this incredibly helpful resource to help you meal plan in a way that makes sense for you. Most meal planning systems, they don't work because you didn't create the system. Someone else did. I'm definitely not asking you to start from scratch and creating some system because who has time for that. But in the meal plan, I teach you the five pillars of lazy genius meal planning and how to order them in a way that makes sense for your schedule, your cooking skills, your picky eaters, and your love of the table. Most of us actually love the idea of the table of gathering and sharing and eating, but we don't so much love the kitchen part. I believe that the meal plan can be the start of that love story of where you start loving your kitchen as much as you love your table.

So click the link in the episode info by tapping that little eye icon in your podcast app. Or you can go straight to the source, store. The lazy genius collective.com slash the meal plan. again, it is available until March 7th, but be careful waiting. I always get emails after a deadline ends for folks that just forgot because there is, there's a live teaching component to this system, and so we have to close the doors for real on March 7th, so plan accordingly. I don't want you to miss out. Before we get going, I want to also apologize because guess what? It is flu season. It is sickness season. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that my family has been

sick basically for all of 2019, but super, super sick the last couple of weeks. I think I'm getting the flu, you guys. I think I'm getting the flu. So I am like recording this a couple days before it comes out, kind of like right under the door at the last second. And so I apologize. Not that my voice sounds the way it does, but like I recognize that I don't, I don't sound like myself. But if there's anything that's going to get me a little bit excited, even though I might have the flu, it is, it is meal planning, which is a weird thing to say. But what do you? you going to do. Okay, so I mentioned a just a second ago that finding, finding your rhythm as a lazy genius meal planner is built on five pillars. And we're going to talk about one of those pillars today,

possibly the most important one, brainless crowd pleasers. Now, if you follow me on Instagram, which I encourage you to do, because then you can see like my sick journey, but you can also see that talk about meal planning every single Monday. I am there at the lazy genius. You have definitely heard me talk about brainless crowd pleasers. They are a pivotal part of my personal meal planning system. And if you are in a season of life where dinner feels like a chore, rather than something you look forward to, I imagine you're going to really love this episode. Brainless crowd pleasers are about to become your new best friend. The one simple step that changes your meal planning forever is making a physical list of your personal brainless crowd pleasers.

I want you to actually write them down and hang the list on your fridge, put it in your planner, put it on your phone, tuck it into like a favorite cookbook that you open a lot. It needs to be somewhere you remember or even better that you can see immediately. Now you might think that you don't need a list that you mostly remember what would go on your list. But when it's 430 and you're scrambling to figure out dinner, you need all the help you can get. You need decisions already made. you need the thinking already done. A physical list will do more for you than you realize. Okay, so I have been talking about brainless crowd pleasers for a while now,

but in the last teaching session of the meal plan, a number of folks in our private Facebook group, which you can be part of, by the way, as part of the meal plan system, said that one of the most transformational things they did was this simple step. Just write down the brainless crowd pleasers. It feels like stupidly easy, but it makes a massive difference,

which you guys is exactly what we're shooting for in becoming a lazy genius. If dinner matters, becoming a genius about meal planning, it can really help. But if you're a lazy genius, you can do one simple step to make a huge impact. Yes, please. So let's define what a brainless crowd pleaser is. That's pretty vital if this list is going to change your life in big ways. A brainless crowd pleaser is any meal that requires very little brain power to make. and is generally accepted by the people eating it.

Again, it's any meal that requires very little brain power to make and is generally accepted by the people eating it. Now, let's go ahead and clear up a couple of spots of confusion. Okay, so first, brainless, it doesn't have to mean easy. It certainly can, but only you know what is required from your brain in order to make a meal. Maybe there's like a recipe that your grandmother taught you that has like multiple steps, but you can basically do those steps in your sleep. it counts as brainless and so does frozen pizza it all counts so long as it's brainless for you

one of our family brainless crowd pleasers possibly the most popular one because everyone loves it and it tastes like real food is chicken ticam masala now it's not super easy it requires making ginger garlic paste mixing up garam masala like a spice blend um i have to have all the ingredients like prepped and ready to go when i start cooking because the first 10 minutes are super hands on with a lot of of smoke, but it's brainless for me because I've made it so many times. I know that ginger garlic paste, it can keep for a couple of weeks, so I'll make up a batch when I have a few free minutes and some extra space in the dishwasher for my food processor bowl. I know that like mixing up the spice blend in the morning, it's going to make the cooking that afternoon easier. I don't really have to think

about it. I've already found kind of the brainless rhythm of what looks like a fairly complicated recipe. Now, it's probably not brainless for you because you've never made it before. That's why it's so important to define this correctly. Brainless doesn't have to mean easy. It just has to mean brainless for you. Now the next spot of confusion I've had with this term is the crowd pleaser part. First, the crowd. I don't mean it is like big enough to feed a crowd. I just mean it feeds your crowd. Your crowd can be just you, you and a partner or you and your family of eight. Crowd just means the crowd regularly sitting around your table no matter the number. And then the second half of that were pleaser.

Not everyone has to jump for joy. You know, I don't throw a party when we have hot dogs and tater tots, but I'm generally happy with that dinner. That's fine. So it counts as pleasing to me. And that goes for your whole crowd, like no matter the number. You need, some meals are going to like elicit a variety of responses from your people. But as long as no one is like having a panic attack or making you feel crazy,

because you just want to make dinner one time and have people not complain about it constantly. It counts as pleasing. Not everyone will be equally happy with every dinner, right? And that's okay. But brainless crowd pleasers, they generally please everyone around the table without requiring a lot of brain power from you to make. Now, you already see why you need this list, right? You need this kind of meal in your life. because by the time you get to the end of a lot of days, you don't have much left to give. If dinner was in the morning and we had like an entire day to recover from the emotional massacre of a new meal that didn't go over well, it wouldn't be so hard, you know. But to end the day like that, to end the day working hard on a meal that is rejected,

especially when you might already have some major insecurities about your cooking skills anyway, no, thank you. You need brainless crowd pleasers in your life. so now that you know what it is make your list you're going to grab a piece of paper and you're going to write these things down you're going to write down these meals everything from frozen pizza to a giant family cheese plate to chicken noodle soup to homemade chicken enchiladas you've been making since you were 16 it can all go on that list there are literally no rules here in terms of the food the only rule is how easy it is for you to make and how likely um you'll like not be met

with dissatisfied grunts by like that one kid who thinks the family should eat spaghetti every single night. I have one of those. So make your list. This episode is brought to you by Defender. With its 626 horsepower twin turbo V8 engine, the Defender Octa is taking on the Dakar rally. The ultimate off-road challenge. Learn more at landrover.ca. Amazon Presents. Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa. Whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one.

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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. Okay, now for the rest of this episode, I want to talk about two things when it comes to your brainless crowd pleasers. How you build up your list and how you stock your kitchen, based on your list. Now first step, how do you build up your list? I have gotten DMs and emails from so many of you

who only have two or three brainless crop leasers on the list. Maybe you have like a toddler who literally will only eat macaroni and cheese. Maybe you are on an incredibly tight budget and you don't feel like you have a lot of resources to get creative. There are so many possibilities here. But here is the truth for everyone. You have at least one. You have at least one brainless crop leaser. Everyone has at least one. And guess what? eat that meal once a week and rejoice in the fact that you have one dinner a week where you're not struggling to cook it and your family isn't complaining about eating it. It all starts with one. And your singular goal in meal planning is to find one more, just one. Then you'll have two. That's two days a week where you're not stressed about dinner. Okay. Now, okay, let me give you a quick pep talk.

You might think, you might think that these meals are a cop-out, that they are throw-away meals that don't actually count that you should be able to cook better or feed your family better or not struggle with this so much. This is zero percent. True. You might feel very alone in this whole dinner thing, but you're not. So many of you feel this way that you should have more than two or three meals that you repeat a lot. But I'm here to tell you that you're actually doing great. All that's left to do when you're in that headspace is to see your two or three repeated meals as a gift. rather than some mark on your domestic record. If you are in a season of life where time or resources are tight,

it's better to be contented. Like, it's better to be a content repetitive eater than a downtroddened cook. It just is. Your attitude toward yourself, your discontentment with who you are in the kitchen is only going to spill over to your table. It's going to affect how your family interacts around the food. If you're discontent with making spaghetti again, it's likely you'll feel a little resentment for your kids who think it's the best thing ever. And they're probably going to feel it.

Now, I don't say that to guilt you. I say that to release you. It's okay to have spaghetti once or twice a week or even every night if that's what you need to do. I think about families like generations ago who only had the food that they grew or families during the Great Depression who were limited to like just a handful of foods night after night after night. Yes, repetition, it might feel boring or frustrating, but it doesn't make you bad. It isn't reflective of who you are as a woman, as a cook, as a provider for your family. It just doesn't. In fact, it used to be that we didn't have a lot of choices and everyone was okay. So I want you to start reframing how you see these brainless crop leasers, especially the repetition of them.

Use that repetition as a gift. See those repeated meals as a deep breath every few nights, which will leave you with more margin to try something new on the other nights. Don't feel guilty about meals on the fly. Don't feel guilty about repetition. That's what this list is there for. It's there to help you create margin in your life so that you slowly start to love your kitchen and find a rhythm of getting dinner on the table. So you can have happy dinners at home more often than not.

Okay, pep talk over. So you build up your list one recipe at a time. Try a new recipe. pay attention to how it made you feel as the cook and how your family liked it. If they didn't complain too much, or maybe like, maybe there's one element that just didn't go over very well, like it was too spicy. Try it again in a week, but cut back on the spiciness. Try a new recipe. Pay attention to how crowd pleasing it was and how you felt making it. And if you think it could eventually make the cut on your list, repeat it until it does.

And then start again with another new recipe. Now, of course, you can add more than one new recipe to the rotation at once to try out and add to your brainless crop leaser list, but don't feel badly is starting with one is all you can do. That is amazing. And you should be encouraged that you're doing it at all. But if you have the capacity or like the cooking skills to like play around with a few over a handful of weeks, go for it. But small steps count just as much if not more than big ones. One new test at a time. Okay. And finally, let's talk briefly about stocking your kitchen. I did an entire episode about stocking your kitchen and mentioned this idea. So you can click the link in the show notes to listen to that episode. I think it's called The Lazy Genius Stocks the

kitchen. But essentially, stock your kitchen, not with what the internet says you should have, but with what your brainless crowd pleasers need. The purpose of a stocked kitchen is to be able to put meals together without having to go to the store to make dinner like essentially on the fly and make that easy. If you're going to do that, you need to stock. You need to stock. your kitchen with foods your brainless crowd pleasers require. So after you make your list, choose maybe like three meals that are like in the top of the rotation, preferably recipes that use more shelf stable products as opposed to like a lot of fresh stuff. And then make a list of the ingredients you need for those recipes and always have them. For example, one of my recipes I always

have stuff for is a rice bowl with chicken and broccoli. I'm married to a Japanese man. So we always have rice. Like, like, I'm talking like a 30 pound bag of Japanese rice at all times. It's, it's kind of hilarious. So I always have rice. I always have Trader Joe's Mandarin chicken in the freezer along with frozen broccoli. That meal can be made with basically zero brain cells and my family mostly eats it. My kids definitely complain about the broccoli because I guess kids just do that. But they'll eat one or two pieces and then they'll like devour the chicken and the rice. in different proportions depending on the kid. One kid loves rice and chicken's fine.

One is obsessed with the chicken and thinks rice is kind of gross. Now, I can always make that meal because I intentionally keep my kitchen stocked for it. You do the same thing. Pick a handful of your brainless crop leasers that can be made with non-fresh ingredients and always keep ingredients for those meals. And y'all, that's it. That is the one simple step that changes meal planning forever. Make a list.

of brainless crowd pleasers. Keep it in view and make those meals without guilt. No guilt. It is not allowed. You might know that I'm working on a book right now. And it takes a lot of time and also is like it's depleting my brain in ways I did not expect. So guess what? My family, we're eating so many brainless craop freezers right now. We have what ends up being about like a three or four week rotation of the same dinners, just repeated. And that's great. Now I do have a list of like maybe 25. brainless craft leasers, but I've been building that list for years. Don't feel weirded out by that number. But honestly, I think you'll be surprised and you'll have more on your list than you think you do. And then get excited because you just like change meal planning for yourself. Use those meals,

make them and enjoy them. That is what they're there for. And then they can leave space for you to try new things. And you're not stressed every single night. Okay, I mentioned at the start of this episode that you can join our community of lazy genius meal planers. And I want to make sure to mention that again before we go. So brainless crop leasers are only one of the five pillars of lazy genius meal planning. So if you're interested in learning the other four and getting some like sheets to print out for things like your brainless crop leasers, as well as like a lot of other stuff, I think there's something like at least 10 sheets for you to print out. And if you want to join that private Facebook group, I mentioned, that is made up only of folks who want to cook dinner

this way. Oh, it's so great. The meal plan is for you. details can be found by clicking the link in the show notes, like I said, or you can go straight to store.com the lazy genius collective.com slash the meal plan. And we close that community to new folks on March 7th. That's a Thursday. So please be sure to check it out before then. And if you have any questions for me about this episode, I will be live on Instagram this Thursday around 1215 Eastern, assuming I am not in bed with the flu to answer your questions. And they're every Thursday. and on Instagram story is like almost daily. So please follow me there at The Lazy Genius.

Come say hi. Okay, now go make your list of Brainscrop Leasers. Or you can just order the meal plan and print out the list that's already set up for you and fill it out. I'm so excited. I'm so excited to get more of you loving your kitchens. Like, it's like my favorite thing ever. So thank you for listening today. I'm Kendra.

And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. See you next week. Have you ever felt like you are 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 podcast. podcasts.