The Lazy Genius Podcast - #99 - The Lazy Genius Feeds a Crowd

Episode Date: March 11, 2019

It’s finally happening, y’all. I’m telling you how to feed a crowd this week! Or at least, I’m telling you how I feed a crowd and sharing things that are must-dos for me to keep my cool when I open our front door to welcome guests. I’m also sharing four ideas for crowdpleasers that we use at our community group when we host on Sundays. Stuff Mentioned Five ways to enjoy making dinner if you want people in your home for a meal, but you’re not loving the idea of cooking it all. Pro tip: add salad dressing to the bottom of your serving bowl if you’re serving salad at dinner. You can listen to the Lazy Genius Makes Salad here. When you’re building your to do list for a crowd, don’t forget to add “make a marinade.” Change Your Life Chicken is a great actual crowdpleaser because you can make as much or as little as you need to feed your people. Plus, it’s Whole30 and Paleo compliant. Learn how to make it here. If you want to grill chicken, here’s how I tackle grilling things. Get breakfast for dinner ideas and inspiration here. The Pioneer Woman’s Thanksgiving breakfast casserole is a good one. If you want to give the Greek feast a try, my favorite lazy hummus is Trader’s Joe but Smitten Kitchen’s recipe is a good one if you want to make it from scratch. I use tzatziki from Smitten Kitchen as well (just add more lemon, dill, salt, and garlic). This pork shoulder recipe is my ride or die. It makes great tacos or nachos. 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 everyone. 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 99. The Lazy Genius feeds a crowd. On Instagram, I am at the Lazy Genius if you want to follow me. I share my meal plan every Monday on what is creatively known as Meal Plan Monday. So depending on what time of day you're listening to this episode, you could pop over and see my meal plan in my Instagram stories right now. I even have to be a meal plan. I even have to be a meal plan. I even have to be a meal plan. I'm listening to this episode. I'm going to do. I even a little meal plan template you can screenshot and share with me in your own community to kind of help make those dinner decisions now and not lose your mind over them later. But on many of my meal plans, Sunday involves feeding a crowd. I'm in a community group at my church that meets every Sunday night and the folks in that group take turns hosting everyone and feeding them. Every time I post that, I'm feeding a crowd in my meal plan. A dozen of you ask me how to do that. A lot of us, We love the idea of having a house full of people who are well fed and enjoying themselves, but the actual execution of it is really daunting.

So let's talk about that today. Before I do that, I do want to share something pretty incredible with you. This last week, we crossed two million downloads for this podcast. Two million. You guys, like, I can't even comprehend that number. and it's because of you. You might listen every Monday. A lot of you have like legit binge the entire show and listen to all of them, which is amazing.

You share the show all over Instagram, which I see, and then probably in places and in conversations that I don't see. I am just so incredibly grateful for how you guys have supported me and the show to the point where we've crossed a major milestone, like two million downloads. And next week is the 100th episode. It feels very exciting right now. So if you are new to the show or old to the show and have never left a review on iTunes, or they're calling it Apple Podcasts now, so we'll try to do what they ask.

Would you consider leaving a review today? You can even do it while you're listening, actually, if you want. Even if you don't listen to your podcast in your Apple podcast app, which I don't. I use Overcast, but you have to leave reviews in your Apple app. Apple just keeps making you do everything. We do everything they tell us to do, right? So if you do have an iPhone, what you do is you click that purple podcast app that automatically gets loaded on your phone, search the lazy genius podcast, click the show, and then scroll down

just a hair past the preview episodes to where it says ratings and reviews. And you can just tap five stars and call it today. Or you can scroll like one more thing and click the purple link that says write a review and actually write a few words about why you like the show. If you listen to other podcasts, you have heard how important this is, but I will confirm that it is important. It's important if I want this show to be seen and listen to by more people, which I do. One thing that feels really right to say right now is that I don't want this podcast to get another two million downloads or have a ton of subscribers just because it's fun.

I want as many people to listen to this show because I believe that living like a lazy genius makes the world better. So many of you share your stories with me about how you're more calm, you're enjoying being in the kitchen again, you have a better handle on how to plan your days and manage your time. And those are things that make us better people as we move into the world. We have space, more space to be who we are in a room. I want to keep living in that world. So the more lazy geniuses we have, the better. So if you can spare about 10 seconds, I just do. I just do. I just did it and searching and like giving the star review, it literally takes 10 seconds. I would so appreciate a quick rating from you on this 2 million download celebration day.

So fun. Okay. Let's talk about feeding a crowd. Let's start with how you're feeling about it. We all, I mean, well, most of us, I would think, really love the idea of having people over, especially a big crowd. There's something so like celebratory. Celebratory.

There we go. We always have to have a word that we stumble. over, right? And it's like community-ish, you know, it just feels like all the people. I'm so good at words today. It's just a really fun thing to be part of when you're like in a big crowd in someone's house. But when you're the host and you're feeding everyone and you're figuring out how things are going to go, the stress can quickly build. So here's my advice to you. Start very small, which sounds weird for feeding a crowd episode, but I will explain. If you see, groups of people gathering at someone's home or if you go to a large gathering yourself and by

large I mean you have like eight to 20 extra people in your house okay and you think like you can never ever do that but you want to so badly start small maybe you have a particular kind of crowd event that's coming up and possibly like maybe looming in the distance a bit like a birthday party at church small group, the soccer team dinner, Thanksgiving. All of those are very distinctive types of feeding a crowd. You love the idea of everyone coming, but you're like scared silly of the number. So start small now. Have a couple of friends over or another family.

Maybe two families, if you're pretty solid having just one family over. Basically think about the number of people that you're super comfortable, or at least like mildly comfortable, having over for a meal, and then up it by a couple of people. Now, I'm not saying that if you've never had anyone over ever, that you should not invite 30 people over for dinner the first time you cook. But I will say that it could be more stressful than you'd like. It likely will be incredibly more stressful than you'd like. So start small with where you are.

If you have a specific event coming, build up to it. It's like that couch to 5K program for dinner. So, P.S. If you want to have people over, but you don't feel comfortable. confident cooking, get food that someone else made, order pizza, get catering from like a fast, casual place, get some barbecue, have everyone bring an appetizer. You provide drinks and plates and like all the things. You don't have to do everything unless you just love it beyond belief, including cooking the actual food. Now let's actually talk about the actual food because that's

obviously, you know, that's obviously super important. Now here is one crowd feeding trick that that I want you to keep for all eternity. I want you to build up to four meals, two for warm weather, two for cold and like rainy weather. And then when you have people over, you're not trying to decide a meal from scratch. It's exactly like a mini list of brainless crowd pleasers, except that like these things might not be quite as brainless, just because there's a bit more to juggle when it comes to feeding like double digit people. And you are pleasing a literal crowd. But the idea is the same. I want you to aim for four complete meals. You can even include dessert. I'm going to give some of my favorites at the end of the episode. And we'll have some links in the show notes for, you know, so you can hold tight for that. But the point of this, you want to choose this one time. You don't want to have to start from scratch every time someone's coming over. Choose your one, two, three or four options. And those are your only crowd choices ever. Get comfortable there, completely comfortable.

and then you can branch out after that if you want. And remember that if you are like me and you feed the same crowd on a regular basis, like I do almost monthly for my church community group, they are fine getting a rotation of food. People don't care. They just want to be seen and cared for and go away with a decent meal. Rarely do people like only remember the food if they do at all, but they totally remember the experience.

Just love people. And you can do that by ordering Domit. knows. Or making the same meal every single time. Okay, so don't feel bad about that. All right. Now, if choosing a limited number of recipes, if it feels like kind of oppressive and you actually like dreaming up menu ideas, which I kind of do. So I totally get that. Have a short list of crowd feeding rules. If you don't want to commit to like crowd recipes, have a list of rules, things that you always kind of want to shoot for or not shoot for based on your crowd and kind of what you're after as the host. For example, you can decide that you don't want the cooking to take more than a couple of hours.

Or you might love the excuse to spend all day on the food. So that can be like one of your gauges. Like I just want to make something where I get to spend all day in the kitchen. You might love that. You might choose that the meal will probably always be super casual or that'll probably always be like a little bit special. You get to choose what makes sense for your brain, right? But find things that you can decide now so you don't have to decide later, whether it's recipes or rules or the music you play or any of it. Now, I want you to remember that there are two main goals when you have people over for a meal,

whether it's one person or 20 people. The first is to make them feel at home and seen. You want them to feel like you want them there. The second is to feel like yourself in the process. Now, I feel like myself when I'm wearing an apron and I'm putting people to work, slicing bread, I'm pulling stuff out of the oven while people sit on my counter and talk to me. It's like seriously one of my happiest places ever. But that part might be the worst part for you. So make sure you plan how you feed a crowd with these two goals in mind. Make your people feel wanted and you also need to feel like yourself. Whatever you need to do to accomplish those goals, you do it. That does not mean that if cooking everything stresses you out, you shouldn't cook everything because then you're going to be a

stressed out host and distracted by being a person, which might make your guests feel like you don't want them there. And nobody wants that, especially you. Okay, so feeding a crowd is the perfect opportunity to ask the magic question. What can I do now to make dinner easier? later or even what can I do now to make life easier later. Definitely do as much prep before your people arrive as you can. I shoot for like my hands to be off the food 30 to 45 minutes before people get there. Now things can still be cooking, right? I just don't have to pay attention to them really. Other things that you can do now to make it easier later, you can pull out napkins and cups, pull out the trash can like out of the cabinet so that people can see it and you don't have to ask where it is.

you can run and unload your dishwasher. So it's empty when people get there. So clean up's easier for you or for anyone who wants to help out. Have a sink of soapy water. Have, this is a key. Have two or three like planned immediate answers to the question, how can I help when people get there? Because a lot of people ask that.

And you want to be able to give them an answer. So there might be even things that you're doing as you're like getting the meal together and you're like, oh no, someone else can totally do this. I'm going to wait and save it for when someone asks, how can I help? someone always does. All of those things, they make life and dinner easier later. Also, here is a pro tip. Always plan for the cooking to take like a good 45 minutes longer than you think. Just because feeding a crowd, it requires so much more volume than you're used to. It always surprises me a little because like the recipes you make for your family of four, they don't feel like they should take

double the time for feeding 12, but they often do. Assumption, that your meal isn't something that's like, it's going to be gross if it sits for 10 minutes, which is a meal, you probably shouldn't be choosing anyway. You can have your food done like a teeny bit early just to give yourself kind of that safety and that margin for recipes that might take longer than you expect they will. Okay. Let's talk a bit more about the timing, particularly a timeline. Now, this is where I get super excited. You think I'm crazy, but this is why most of us are scared to feed a big crowd. It just seems like there's so much to do. and we can't figure out how to make all the moving parts work.

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candles which always makes things like super cozy playing music emptying the trash everything if you like everything that comes to mind write it down okay now leave space on like the other side of the paper for your timeline or you just get a new piece of paper to make your timeline start with the food particularly any foods that need to be done by a certain time. So if you are making lasagna, okay, and you want it to come out of the oven at 5.30, and it takes an hour to bake. Write down, like, kind of lower on the column,

you know, like towards like go time when it's actually another time, you want to write down, take the lasagna out at 5.30, okay? Which means you also need to write, put in lasagna, 430, which means you need to write pre-heat oven to 375, 415, right? You're kind of backing up your reverse engineering this, okay? Now, if the lasagna is store-bought, move on, move on to the next food that might be like attached to the time a little bit more. Now, if you're making the lasagna, you have other tasks to consider now, right? When do you assemble it? When do you make the sauce and cook the meat

and grate the cheese or whatever else needs to happen? Okay, now hear this. The times, this is important. You're not trying to like timeline every single task on your thing and attach it to a time on the clock. The times themselves on your timeline are more important as you get closer to guests arriving on the actual day of the meal and are more attached to things that require a specific amount of time like a lasagna. You don't need to say like pull the trash out at 452, light the candles of 454. Like that's not what I'm saying. But put markers, time markers on your timeline, a especially on the day that you're feeding the crowd. So it's kind of like you know where you are in the day,

especially for things that require specific amounts of time. Okay. Other stuff can be just kind of clumped together and be labeled like before lunch or during the kid's nap or Thursday or like whatever it is. So the detailed times are the most helpful on the actual day for things that require a specific amount of time. And it's helpful just so you don't forget something major or you get behind. and then you feel like frustrated and you don't want to ever cook for a crowd again.

Okay? So you keep going with your timeline. You just kind of like you clump things together. Look at your list. Sort of figure out where everything is generally going to go. You plug tasks into spaces where you've got big chunks of time. So like for example, the lasagna's in the oven for an hour, right? You put it in at 4.30.

It's coming out at 5.30. So you have an entire hour where you don't have to worry about the lasagna and you can do other stuff. So are you serving a salad? Maybe that's when you put the salad together. By the way, here's a pro tip on making salad in advance. So you can cut up all your vegetables and all the things. You pour the dressing in the bottom of the salad bowl first, and then you put the other stuff on top, ending with lettuce.

It's best to put things like tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, like sort of fresh foods that actually are going to get really tasty. It's almost like they're marinating in the salad dressing. And then you put all the lettuce on top and like the crunchy things. and then you like toss it together like right before you eat. So that's another pro tip. Don't forget. I'm a masterful salad maker, not really.

But I do have an episode about making salad that will be in the show notes along with a lot of other things. I made a salad called the Tim Rigan salad. So I believe in the power of hot dude salad. Okay. So are you seeing how this timeline kind of comes together and how it helps you? and another reason it's also important is like why you want to have every single task on the list here's what's going to happen if you don't you're going to forget all the plates and then you're going to forget to clean the bathroom and your trash is full and then suddenly your doorbell rings

and you're freaking out a tiny bit remember you want your friends and your guests to feel welcome like you want them there and i know that you do but sometimes it's hard to communicate that when you're stressed out and you're apologetic for being behind or frazzled or any number of things. Now, hear me, of course, you can be stressed and frazzled when people come over. You are not going to lose friends. It is important for us to be real and open our doors in lots of personal states. But I know that your desire is to see the people who come through your door and make them feel at home and not be distracted by all that you have left undone.

So keep that in mind as you put together your entire timeline. Also, one huge, like, final PS on this. Please do not do all of this yourself. If you have a partner or kids, give them tasks on that list. In fact, it is, like, so helpful when we have our church community group over for me to ask cause to do, like, will you do all these things before five o'clock? You know, like, I have the list and I'm like, okay, so here's what you do. Here's what the boys do.

all of these need to be done by this specific time. We're all a team, and it is helpful for all of us to know how we can actually do that well. So ask for help, not because you like desperately need help, but because if you have a family at home, your family is a team and you're all having people over, not just you. So please don't do all this yourself. And if you do live alone, ask friends to come help you or even the people who are coming over, you could ask like one of them to come, one or two of them to come to kind of help you do things. Now I'm not saying like if you want to do all of that by yourself, if it's just like the most life-giving thing ever and you keep those two goals in mind, you're not stressed out when people come and, you know, you have an attitude where you like are

really wanting those people to be there by all means, do everything you want, but don't feel like you have to. Okay, one last thought. I have like a little personal routine I do. And as I say these words. It sounds really silly, but I'm going to say it anyway, before our church community group comes over. And before any group comes over, really, but that's the one that comes over the most right now. I make sure that all the food is ready to be, like, put out to eat with enough time to do this thing. Like, I work this in. It's just a few minutes. So I walk through the house. I make sure, like, all the craziness is put away. Because obviously, we probably tidied a little bit, but kids play with toys and, you know, things, laundry and socks and everything. And,

everything are still like around. So I will kind of just walk around and make sure like everything's kind of like quickly tidied. I make sure the pillows are like situated on the couch in such a way that people can actually sit down. I put on a playlist. I like candles that are like high enough to be out of reach of tiny hands because we have like a million kids in our community group. I turn on all the lights because it often gets dark like midway through our time together. And so I make sure that like all the lamps are on even if they're not needed. right away just so we're not like, oh, we're suddenly sitting in darkness. I turn on all the lamps. I open the bathroom door and I turn on the light. Sometimes I light a candle in there if it's high

enough in the bathroom. The house and I are basically like both ready to be available to the people that I care about so much. You might enjoy having like a little hospitality on ramp too. So just think about that. If that's something that sort of like gets your mindset in a place that you enjoy, think about how you might do that for yourself. Finally, I want you to celebrate that you did this. If you've never fed a crowd and you've always wanted to or at least like you want to feel like a decent human when it's over, it is worth celebrating doing it. Like, high five yourself, man, mark the moment even in your head of like how you feel during and after the process. It will help you see the next time the way that you need to also i beg of you i beg of you take people's offers to

help you clean up if there are any offers and definitely get your family involved in cleaning up but whoever's involved whatever you do don't you dare leave it until the next day you will hate everything with the fire of a thousand sons when you wake up to a sink of like soaking dishes you know that are sitting in that nasty lukewarm water with like a weird brown film on it? No, don't do it to yourself. Don't do it yourself. Be nice to your future self. So clean up that night, please. Right after. Okay. All right, now I want to run through my four favorite crowd feeding meals. First up, I love doing breakfast for dinner, like so much. Breakfast, it makes everybody so happy. And you have so many options. many of them like very make-ahead right so I will have like muffins or scones or something baked

that I can make ahead of time bacon that is cooked in the oven which you do on a sheet pan covered in foil you put it in a 380 degree oven until the bacon is cooked to your liking which I have just found that to be like the perfect temperature and process it's like so easy and then you drain it on paper towels okay so also maybe like a keesh or a frittata like something egg fruit, easy fruit, like oranges or apples, just cut up into big wedges. You can do a big breakfast casserole. Depending on the side of the, not the side, the size of the crowd, you could even make something like pancakes or waffles and make them kind of to order and have like all the toppings or whatever and like just hang out with your people. That's so fun.

Another favorite meal, you guys, change your life chicken. I'm serious. It is so easy. It can be scaled in huge ways. You just make more pans of chicken. It's also like Whole 30 and paleo and gluten-free and like all the things. So it's great for a crowd that might have some dietary restrictions. You serve a green salad with it, maybe some bread for people who do eat gluten, and then like a pan of brownies. Done. Magic.

A third favorite is a baked potato bar. You can bake a ton of potatoes and either have people bring toppings or you just have some out. And most of those can be made ahead of time or just assembled. you know, from stuff that's like already done. So like sour cream, cheddar cheese, chopped broccoli, bacon, shredded rotissory chicken, salsa, avocado, little cubes of ham, tons of soft butter, pull it out in the morning, my friends. Fresh herbs.

There's so many options and it's really, really easy to do, especially if people bring toppings. And then a fourth favorite, this is a little more work and maybe a hair more expensive if you like buy a bunch of stuff rather than making everything. But that is like a Greek feast, like a big old Greek feast. I don't know what else to call it.

That's what it is. I will marinate chicken and like just like boneless, skinless chicken, sometimes breast, sometimes thighs, sometimes both. In lemon juice and olive oil, like a bunch of herbs,

mostly dried oregano, maybe some garlic powder, fresh garlic if I want to. And I have an episode on marinade by the way, if you want to check that one out. And then I grill that chicken either on like skewers, like I cut the chicken into pieces and put it on skewers or I just like cook the pieces as they are and then slice up the chicken after it cooks. So you have like really delicious, oh, so good chicken. And then like next to it have like hummus and satsiki and nonbread and a big green salad

and chopped cucumber and tabooly. Maybe sometimes I've made like a luncheon. salad that's kind of like warm room temperature-ish with capers and roasted red peppers and big chunks of feta and fresh parsley and it's a meal where people can build their plates kind of in so many different ways and it's just delicious and like a little bit surprising it's really fresh and again it fits like a lot of dietary restrictions for people there are options it's just it's like one of my favorite things to make especially in the warmer months because I can grill the chicken and I would say even though I said I would give you four an honorary mention I think obviously for a lot of us as tacos that can go so many directions like you can cook a whole bunch of ground beef on a skillet or even in the crock pot like sometimes like make it like chili style and do tacos you could cook a big pork shoulder I will link to the recipe that I love for it's Dave Chang's pork shoulder and it's so easy it's like a rub literally of sugar salt and black pepper and you like just put it in the oven It's, and it's magical.

So I will put that in the show notes, along with like a bunch of other things. But then for tacos, you know, you just have like a slew of toppings and sauces and chips and lettuce and if people want to make a salad instead. It's just so great. Meals where you have like a lot of beautiful components that people can customize, that's my favorite way to feed a crowd, especially since most of those things can be done way in advance or brought and contributed by the people coming. Okay, I think that's probably it.

I'm like running out of breath talking about feeding a crowd. But it's like, it's like my favorite. Like having people in my house, the more the merrier, throwing parties just for no reason at all. It's just my, it's my absolute favorite to have an excuse to feed a bunch of people. So thank you for dealing with my enthusiasm over something like this. I hope maybe it makes you feel a little bit enthusiastic yourself about doing this in your own home. So we will stop for today. Be sure you check out the show notes, you guys.

There's a lot of good stuff there. It will be at the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash crowd. And you can get a ton of links and things I mentioned. And thank you again for celebrating our 2 million download marker together. It's just so fun. And the next week is our 100th episode. I'm just honored that you're sharing the space with me. I'm just so glad that you're here.

That is it for today. I am Kendra. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Bye. 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.