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Visit loproducts.com and use code TRYLO20 for 20% off your first purchase. That's E L L O products.com code TRYLO20 for 20 percent off your first LO purchase. 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. 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 planting your hot dogs. You don't know about my three fifths rule. You're gonna 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 by my voice that we're going to have a whole episode dedicated to them today, after we more easily feed our people, we're gonna 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 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, but 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 the 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 Genie's Kitchen is it. Wrap it up in a pretty tea towel with like a set of wooden spoons or alongside some of your family favorite recipes as a gift and it's gonna go over so well. If you are on a budget, it's usually less than $15 on Amazon for the hardback, but 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. Indiebound.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. 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. And there's a little extra note from me to help encourage you through the weekend. So if you'd like to get that recap. Head to thelazygeniuscollective.com listens this episode is sponsored by Merit Beauty. One of my favorite Lazy genius principles is start small. If something feels complicated, I'm probably not going to stick with it. And that includes makeup. That's why I have really loved using Merit. They're a minimalist beauty brand that makes elevated makeup and skin care designed to help you look put together in minutes. The minimalist has become a staple for me. It's not quite a foundation, not quite a concealer, but it replaces both. In my bag, I swipe it on where I need a little coverage, blend it in, and that's it is done. Their Clean Lash mascara is another favorite. It makes my lashes look longer and more awake, but not like over the top for carpal and on days when I don't feel like wearing makeup at all. Their Great Skin Serum is such a good option that gives a fresh hydrated look. Right now, Merit Beauty is offering our listeners their signature makeup bag with your first order@meritbeauty.com that's me r I t beauty.com to get your free signature makeup bag with your first order meritbeauty.com this episode is sponsored by Square. I pay attention to how places run. I can't help it. And there's a little bakery downtown called Northern Roots where everything just works. The line moves quickly. The receipt hits my email before I've even stepped away from the counter. And the person helping me isn't stressed about the register. They're just present. That kind of smooth experience doesn't happen by accident. It's Square. Square brings payments, inventory, and sales tracking into one system, so business owners aren't juggling a bunch of separate tools. It's the kind of support that helps you focus on what actually matters. Square helps you run faster, sell smarter, and stay in control even when things get busy. And why wait? Right now you can get up to $200 off square hardware at square.com go lazygenius that's sq u a r e.com g o/lazygenius run your business smarter with Square. Get started today. Okay, let's do it. Let's get into how to 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, 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 your 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're 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 tikka 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 up jalapeno. 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 gonna 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, like, I know exactly what it is. It's brainless, almost meditative, and a win for the family. Cause 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 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, that's a everybody likes that kind of. And I'm getting better at that. Let's put that on the brainless crowd pleaser 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 after 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 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 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 it feeling like a herculean 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 gonna 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. Like 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 make sense for that week's schedule or for your 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. 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, you know, 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 your 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 wanna create. Create a selection, a queue of meals you're gonna 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 gonna share some favorites of mine at the end of the episode in 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 wanna try from cookbooks. This might be a little weird. I prefer cooking from my own notes than from a cookbook. Again, 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. 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 one 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 gonna be a banger. 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 caveats. Like, rarely does a new recipe hit it out of the 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 do 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 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 gonna 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 gonna be busy, right? Which gets an easy meal. But 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna do is I'm gonna 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, 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 kid's, like, really into Top Chef, and they say some sort of fancy, like, gnocchi situation. You can be like, hey, great idea that we'll have to save 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. 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 altogether. 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 doubled 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 tikka masala 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 tikka masala is brainless, I did not have the time for much less the brain. And then I spotted a bag of ticker 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 save 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 as 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 Naptime Kitchen. This is her phrase, Go one more day. Many of you already know 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 stifle a little creativity, even a little resilience in making something unusual for 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. 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 gonna 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, ugh, we're probably just gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna be able to know what you have time for. So you decide right now to plan your hot dogs. You say, we're gonna 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. Cause 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 dagum 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. And 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 and 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, in a previous episode I think. But when I did the lazy Genius kitchen episode with Erin Moon, I have a video series on YouTube. It's six episodes where I'll go into people's kitchens and lazy genius their kitchen, a problem in their kitchen. And I did an episode with Erin 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. Cause she's got three kids, she works full time, all the things she's 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 Erin 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 squirrely. But guess what? Didn't matter to Erin. Homemade food. It didn't actually matter. It frankly couldn't make 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 gonna 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 do their things on top of your own job. It is not the rule for every family that looks like 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 can 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 12amazing all star meal planning dinner making tools are. Use your brainless crowd pleasers. Choose consistency over variety. Use a meal matrix. Use a dinner cue. 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. Thanks Kate for that one. Play in 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. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're starting something new or running an established business, Squarespace gives you everything you need to claim your domain, build a beautiful website site, grow your brand, and sell your products all in one place. We sell physical products through our Squarespace site, and I'm so grateful for how simple it is to manage. 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But the thing I use from Quint every day isn't a sweater. It's their leather mag safe wallet. I originally bought it for travel, thinking it would just make airports easier. And then I got home and I I use it every single day. I never took it off my phone. It's slim, it holds exactly what I need, and it even folds into a little seam stand, which I use constantly. It's thoughtful, it's well made, just like everything at Quint right now. Go to quint.com genius for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to wear it and love it. And you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling. For clothes that don't last, go to Q u I n c.com Genius for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Genius okay, for today's a little extra something, I'm gonna 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 too. I can easily place recipes in different folders. You know, like winter dinner Summer dinner, general dinner, whatever. 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 these 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 Bri McCoy. Yes. Bri 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 your shelf. It's solid. Another favorite is Cookish by Milk street and Christopher Kimball. So these are simply put together recipes, very easy to follow. And my, 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, is this from that one cookbook? Sometimes I will lie and 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 lying to them. It doesn't happen very often, but otherwise they're gonna be like, oh, suddenly they don't like it the same anymore. And it's like, guys, 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 gonna like the recipe. Cause 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 Slagle. Ali'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 staples and nourishing on a soul 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. 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 Brie McCoy, Cookish by Milk Street, I Dream of Dinner by Ali Slagle and Sweet Enough by Allison Roman when it's time for dessert. And that's today's a little extra sweet 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.