#102: The Secret to Rich, Flavorful Cooking - Fat!

We’re continuing our "book club breakdown" of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat, and this week is all about Fat! Fat does much more than add richness - it carries flavor, creates texture, and is essential for balanced, delicious meals.

Ever wondered why you don't like the taste of olive oil? Or why your food gets soggy instead of crispy? We’ll break it all down and share practical tips for using fat effectively in your cooking.

Plus, we’re wrapping up with more answers to your Dinner Dilemmas! We're tackling your real-life meal planning questions to make home cooking easier.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] I'm Riley and I'm Roni. And this is the plan to eat podcast, where we have conversations about meal planning, food, and wellness. To help you answer the question what's for dinner. 

USBAudio1.0: Hello and welcome to the Plan to Eat Podcast. We are back talking about salt, fat, acid, heat. We're doing our, what did I call it last time? Book club breakdown? Yeah, book club breakdown. And today we are on the fat section. Well, my first note here is that, beware of being hungry while reading this chapter.

Because if you thought the first chapter wasn't delicious, then the second one is even more so. Because, just all the recipes she talks about, all the yummy ingredients, I just feel like I was reading it hungry, and I just kept thinking, You need to keep reading, you're not gonna go get a snack. But I just want the things she talks about.

Everything she talks about she describes in such a beautiful manner that you're [00:01:00] just hungry and you want it. And this chapter is a lot more about textures. I feel like there's a lot, or at least there's more discussion in this section about textures of food, which for whatever reason is like very, like a mouth watering to like think about specific textures of food, so.

Yeah, how to make crispy, you know, crispy fried chicken, or to make, how to make mayonnaise or aiolis, or All the things. Well, I have a little summary. Yes. I'd love it. Okay. I love your summaries. Fat is the second element of good cooking and is essential for achieving the full spectrum of flavors and textures that has three different roles.

One main ingredient. Two, a cooking medium and three as a seasoning similar to salt. Fat carries flavor, which is why we add aromatics directly to fat. Think of garlic to oil, or adding vanilla to butter. Different fats go best with different cuisines and getting the combination right. We'll enhance your cooking.

I love it. This is the section where she has [00:02:00] the map. These are the appropriate cooking oils for the geographic region that you're cooking for, which I thought was a really helpful breakdown, especially, I don't know, just sometimes I wonder like, is olive oil appropriate for this dish I'm making?

And in some cases I was confirmed, yes, this is appropriate. And in some, I was like, Oh, I need to mix that up a little bit. So. Yeah. I thought it was interesting because, you know, in North America, our, Quote unquote options for using different oils for our cuisines is pretty broad. Yeah, like I think it's like it can be olive oil It could be butter.

It could be lard. It could be seed oils Sesame oil. Yeah, so it was it's like very broad Whereas there are other cultures where it's very specifically one type of fat They typically use which is like it's very specifically olive oil or very specifically, Beef tallow or something like that Yeah, and this doesn't just, it's, um, dairy products, those are sources of fat, cheese, butter, well we already talked about butter, cream, things like that, yummy.

Yeah, avocados, [00:03:00] eggs. Eggs, that's a good, that's another really good one. Yeah. One of the things that I felt, found the most helpful in this book is, I feel like oils are really A hot topic. Oil, what you cook your food in, the temperature you cook your food in, and what oil can withstand that heat, like, it can feel a little complicated, and also I just feel like oil is a hot topic in culture right now.

Um, but one of the things I found really helpful is when she breaks down, when olive oil becomes rancid and how to find the appropriate olive oil. Let's just talk about that one thing. She actually suggested that Costco's olive oil is a really awesome option. It like wins taste tests. But the way she broke it down is that you want to look at the production date of the olive oil, and it's typically in November.

That's awesome. Right. I didn't know that. So good to know. And it goes rancid between 12 to 14 months after pressing. So just knowing that even being able [00:04:00] to look in your own pantry and say, is this good or is this bad? And when you're at the grocery store, just even like casually finding the correct bottle that has the longest date before it goes rancid, all those kinds of things.

I feel like that was. Super helpful information. I'm going to use that in my shopping trips. Yeah, this one, the first time that I read, so I mentioned last time that I read this book before. I haven't, I didn't quite finish it the first time. So later in the book will be my first time reading it. But the first time that I read this chapter on fat, this was probably the most impactful thing for me.

Is that she said, Most Americans are accustomed to eating rancid olive oil. Sad to read that. And, um, another thing is that a lot of times the olive oil that we buy at the grocery store is a mixture of olive oil and potentially other oils. So even if the olive oil itself isn't rancid, potentially the other oils that they mixed it with could be rancid.

So I started buying, well, number one, I started looking for a production date and I actually heard this separately, I believe, but a lot of the [00:05:00] olive oil that gets imported into the United States from say like Italy or Spain is already so close to being rancid because of the time that it just takes to get here that it's often not worthwhile to buy an imported olive oil anyways, and so I started looking for production dates.

Obviously that were like within the last year, um, and then I've been buying olive oil that's California grown. Yeah, that was the other thing I was going to add. Yeah, yeah, because it's much closer, and obviously getting to Colorado much sooner. So that was the thing, that was a big change that I made after reading this the first time.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, she said look for 100 percent California olives. Olive oil or 100 percent Italian olive oil. Um, have you noticed a difference? Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah, I enjoy, I didn't really grow up eating olive oil. My mom was a butter person and, and I, she didn't like the flavor of olive oil and that's maybe because she'd only ever had rancid olive oil.

Maybe so, yeah. And so I really enjoy olive [00:06:00] oil now and I eat it a lot more in its raw form. And I used to. Awesome. That's really interesting to know. I, I didn't, I never put a ton of thought into this in particular, but there are times when I'm like, wow, this olive oil is really good.

Or I think this is olive oil too, has a weird taste and I don't think I ever put it together that it was rancid, but I definitely kind of, I kind of go back and forth on olive oil. I'm not a hundred percent sold on it. And so I was really, this was encouraging information because now I can know. What to actually look for.

Yeah. One thing that I liked that she said, particularly about olive oils, that she said, if somebody gifts you an expensive bottle of olive oil, use it. Don't treat it like wine where you should save it for a special occasion. If somebody gives you nice, expensive olive oil. I'm going to use it because it's only good for a certain amount of time.

And now that you know that. Yeah. Cause I think it is easy to be like, Oh, this was expensive. I'll save it for a special occasion. Yeah. I'm going to make a special meal or something. No. No way. Use it all the time. Yes. [00:07:00] So moving on to a different type of fat, butter is another one. And one thing that I thought was interesting, which I guess I kind of knew this, but I'll be honest.

I don't really follow this rule, which is that she should just, she suggests you use unsalted butter for cooking and I pretty much only buy salted butter because I use the same butter for cooking as I use for just like buttering bread and I don't really like unsalted butter if I'm buttering bread.

Yeah, I'm in the exact same boat and I did read that and that was something that I thought, you know, it might, really, really matter if you're a chef at a restaurant and like the quantities of butter and things like that that you're using for the recipes that you're making, especially like even baking.

And just being able to very much control the amount of salt that you add to your recipe. Um, but I also am in the same position. I buy pretty much one kind of butter and it's salted. And occasionally I buy unsalted for a particular recipe, but most of the time I'm using butter, but I would say I cook, [00:08:00] I cook.

savory food. I want to add something because last episode about salt, I said that I was going to be convinced that science was, you know, baking with science. And I think that because I'm not a baker, I tend to like to have a little bit more freedom because I like to have a little bit more freedom over the recipes that I cook for meals.

And so, so when I say that I like, it's a hard for me to think this baking is a science it's because I just like to cook. savory food and not desserts. And so there's just so much freedom and creativity in my opinion in that, that it's hard for me to transfer those skills over to baking because it's not, there isn't that freedom.

So like I said, this book is convincing me that it is a science and it's good. Um, but all that to say is I actually. Back to what I was saying. I primarily cook with oils. I don't cook with butter very often. So I think that's probably where it doesn't matter as much to me because I'm reaching for oil when I'm cooking more often than I'm reaching for butter.

Yeah, I would say it's honestly not consistent what I use. Sometimes it's just what's more [00:09:00] handy, right? Like what's closer to the stove? What am I gonna do? Sometimes I'll do a little mixy mixy and do like You know, a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil. That's actually something that I learned from, my husband's uncle.

Like he worked at a restaurant for a really, as a chef at a restaurant for a really long time. And when he sautés onions and peppers, that's what he does is he does half olive oil and half butter. And so I kind of was like. Well, if that's what he does, then I'm gonna try that too. Yeah, I guess I actually do use butter when I sauté onions and other things, 

yeah, if I'm making scrambled eggs, I always use butter because the flavor of butter with scrambled eggs is just, like, heavenly to me, so. That's awesome. Every oil has a different heating temperature, has a different smoke point. So, she does go into this and shares, like, You know, when you should put things into a pan when the pan's already hot and when you should put things into the pan that when it's cold, uh, and what temperature things can, what temperature things can be cooked at, like whatever temperature they can be cooked at, [00:10:00] really matters with different oils and, um, this is something that I did know, so I tend to use an oil that has a higher, uh, smoke temp smoke point.

But it's really helpful the way she breaks it down. I thought because it's like, here's what you're cooking. You're going to use this oil. Here's what you're cooking. This is how hot you're going to get that. So you can actually cook it and your chicken's not greasy at the end of the cooking time. Uh, and I thought all that information I thought was really helpful.

Yeah, this was. The chapter, when I originally read it, where I learned to preheat your pan without anything in it. We talked about this earlier in the year, to preheat your pan before you add anything to it, and then adding your fat and letting it, like, get warm, but, you know, not to the point of it smoking or anything, because I had previously, somebody in my life had told me that if you turn a pan on on the stove without anything in it, you're going to burn your pan, which was maybe like an old.

nonstick Teflon issue or something. I don't know, but I, I use stainless steel and cast iron pans, so it's not an issue. And [00:11:00] she also says something that's really interesting. So if you preheat your pan and you add your fat to the pan and you don't give your fat enough time to warm up, the thing that you're looking for is when you put stuff inside the pan, You want to hear that like sizzle in the oil if you're going for like that crispy texture.

But if the fat isn't warm enough the food will absorb the fat and then you kind of get left with something that's like a little more like soggy rather than having like a firmer crispy texture. Um, like I made meatballs the other night and This was like, I had just read this, and so that was a really good time for me to like, I heated my pan, I put the butter in, and then waited for it to heat up before I put the meatballs in.

Okay, so I put the meatballs in and they were sizzling, but I realized because I had read this like, Oh, if it wouldn't have been sizzling, my meatball would have just like sucked up some of that fat, and then you would get kind of like a gloopy meatball. Yeah. Well, and then I think it all absorbs into your food and there's nothing left in the pan.

[00:12:00] Yeah. If you're using it as a non stick agent. Yeah. Or like, not even, crispness aside, it's if it's just helped you not have your food stick to the pan, then it's all going to absorb into your food and then your food's going to stick anyway because it's all inside of the food that you're cooking.

Yeah, because haven't we, haven't we all done that before where you, you're like, I put so much butter into this pan. Why did it absorb into all the food? Well, probably it wasn't hot enough to begin with to actually like coat your food rather than absorb into your food. Yeah. I recently did this with mushrooms and they were fairly soggy.

Mushrooms can be so challenging to get crispy. Yeah, I, yeah, they, they tasted pretty good, but they were pretty soggy at the end of the cooking time, so, sadly. So, she talks about different emulsions. Um, that's another section. And an emulsion, think about mayonnaise, vinaigrette, uh, like a salad dressing. She, you know, ice cream is an emulsion.

Um, if it's creamy and rich, it's an emulsion. That's what she says. I love things that are creamy and rich. I like decadent. Sounds good. Have you ever [00:13:00] made your own mayonnaise? I have tried before, it's, I have never been successful. I used to clean this woman's house in college, and she made her own mayonnaise, and I thought she was nuts.

Yeah. Um, this was a long time ago, and she would make it weekly. She would make it every week, and she'd make it in a food processor, and she made it look so easy. Yeah. And basically they just were like, the flavor of this is so much better than a store bought, any kind of mayonnaise store bought. Uh, so we just are, like, they're addicted to it, basically is how she would say it.

And so that was like my first, I mean, probably the first time I ever realized you could even make your own mayonnaise. Yeah. I mean, that sounds sad, but you can, it's so easy. It's just, it really is. I make a lot of aiolis at home and they just come together really beautifully. I use an I use an immersion blender.

And it, it really does work super well. And an aioli is a mayonnaise just with flavor. Yeah. Flavorings added. So, I mean, mayonnaise just Um, and it's, it's the base of any of Ailey's right? Yeah, I have tried to, I think, well, so I've tried to make regular mayonnaise before, and I've also tried to [00:14:00] make fermented mayonnaise before, and for whatever, I feel like one of the, I think I read the recipe wrong and added way too much lemon juice or something, and then it was hard to come back from, because it was just like too sour.

Yeah, she talks a lot about the balance to make the emulsion where it's balanced and thick and not falling apart. Basically coming back apart. It's a really tricky balance to strike.

What makes it fermented mayonnaise?

I don't remember. It was, uh, Monica Corrado that we had on the podcast a couple different times. It was one of her recipes. for making fermented condiments. And so I don't know if there's anything different about the recipe itself compared to a regular mayonnaise, but like, you know, you let it sit out on the counter for either, it was either just overnight or it's for like two days.

It's not very long that you need to let it sit out for it to ferment, but then it, you know, gets its own like cultures in it so that it's like better for your gut. Awesome. I have, yeah, so look that up.

So the second half of this chapter is a lot about baked [00:15:00] goods.

Tart doughs, shortbread, um, pie dough, tart dough, and I loved this section, but as someone who's gluten free, it also made me really sad because this is the section that I would love to be able to implement, but I can't. But I just really enjoyed hearing about how each of these different types of, like how you add fat to a pastry makes it, Have the texture that you want it to have.

So if you want, you know, the croissant like little flaky layers, you're going to want to like layer your pastry with your butter and layer and layer and layer. You're going to mix them together in a certain way. You're going to add it at a certain time, at a different temperature. I got a lot out of her talking about like melting butter for cookies versus using softened, softened butter for cookies.

You're going to get a completely different texture of cookie. And I I live at a high altitude, so I struggle with my cookies anyway. And so I really, I am one who is very impatient. And I felt like when I read that, I thought, yeah, that's me. I'm a microwave, the butter girl. Cause I just want to get it done.

And [00:16:00] she has this whole story in here about being a kid and not being able to wait for the, for the butter to soften for the cookie dough. And I thought, Oh, she's talking to me because that is totally me. I'd never want to wait. I'm always just like, I'm going to do this right now, not in three hours. But now I'm very encouraged, like let the butter get to.

That soft, spreadable stage and not melt it because you're totally changing the molecular structure of the butter when you do that. Yeah. And then it doesn't work as well to get that beautiful cookie. Makes me think of the things that America's Test Kitchen often posts on their social media, where they'll give you like 12 different cookies and they were all baked with something different.

And usually it's like the one in the center is like the ideal. Yeah. You know, but then there's like one where it's like the butter was too warm and the butter was too cold or it had more flour compared to butter ratio or more butter. Yeah, whatever. Opposite of that. Or like maybe you accidentally added baking powder instead of baking soda.

And like, this is what a cookie would look like then. This is kind of what this chapter made me think [00:17:00] of. Granted, that was more things, than just the fat. But that's kind of what this made me think of was that like it is. It's really technical to get your, get yourself to that perfect cookie, uh, because some of these other factors that like most recipes don't, most recipe baking recipes, it's just implied that like your eggs should be at room temperature and your butter should be at room temperature.

We learned that from our blogger, Anna, when we interviewed her on the podcast and, and so like there's all these little like nuances and tweaks. And that's what a lot of this information here felt like to me it's actually, it's not super hard. You just have to do it the correct way. Yes. And like I said, I'm a little bit of a free spirit in the kitchen and I think I just want to do it to do it the, to get it done and to like get, make progress and like see something to come to fruition.

And so reading the, here's the technical correct way to use fat. Here's the correct way to use butter in these recipes to get the desired end goal. I was very encouraged to like stick to those. Nuanced rules. [00:18:00] Yeah. We've talked a bit about butter already, but I want to add, um, She has this lovely thing.

I'm just going to read it to you. One of my favorite poets, Seamus Haney, once described butter as coagulated sunlight, which might be the most elegant and economical way to describe its special alchemy. To begin with, it's the only animal fat made without killing an animal. Cows, goats, and sheep eat grass, a product of sunlight and photosynthesis to deliver us milk.

We skim the richest cream off the top and churn it into it till it transforms into butter. The process is so straightforward that kids can make butter by shaking a glass jar filled with chilled cream. Just if you weren't convinced to read the book, here we are. This is what a beautiful paragraph and the just even referencing it being coagulated sunlight.

It's made out of sunlight. It's this beautiful fat that we get, uh, from an animal and we didn't have to sacrifice the animal for that. And I just think it's very cool. Yeah. Yeah, she has such a great way of words. Such a beautiful ways, yeah, of writing. Well, she sort of finishes off the chapter, she talks more about, she has some similar, similarities [00:19:00] between the salt chapter where she talks about potential ways that you would layer fat, similar to how you would layer salt.

And then she talks about balancing fat. In the way that, like, maybe you, I don't want to say, I'm going to say you over fatted something. but say you have a little bit too much fat, like you have like some greasy food or something, you know, and she said really the way to balance it is very similar to salt.

If you over salted food, you want to try and dilute. The food that you have. So like increase the total volume of the food. You might try adding some acid. You might water it down a little bit, or you could even add some like starchy or dense ingredients. So I think a common example is like you have a greasy soup.

You could have potatoes to it. And the potatoes help kind of soak up some of that greasiness. So it's not just like a puddle of grease. She also mentions you can put things. If you have the time for it, of course, um, you could put things in the refrigerator and wait for the layer of fat to kind of congeal at [00:20:00] the top so you could skim it off.

Yeah, and on the flip side of that, if things are, if they don't have that richness, if something is too dry, you can always correct it by adding Some fat. Yeah. You know, like it's like adding sour cream to a baked potato. That idea. It's like, it's pretty dry by itself. You add that and it's a beautiful, creamy, rich, has a richness about it.

If you are a baker, this section is. Um, and really beautifully helpful in regards to how to use fat in pastry. So if you're interested in reading this section, I would highly recommend it because it just really talks about the way your butter needs to be in all these different types of pastries and really perfect that skill.

Um, I feel like it was, I got a lot out of that. Yeah, I would say that that's. I would say overall, this chapter is a little more focused on the baking than it is on the cooking as far as the practical tips that she gives the, the general overview of fat and the way that it contributes to flavor and texture is really informative and helpful.

There's almost a part of it that feels slightly overwhelming to [00:21:00] me because there are, it's unlike salt. Salt, to me, just was very interesting, almost felt a little more straightforward. Whereas the idea of fat and like choosing the correct fat and thinking about the type of cuisine that it is, there's an element of it that felt a little like, this is a lot.

And this is a lot to remember, you know, like I feel to me, this feels more like a chapter that I will reference more frequently because I will need, I won't be able to retain all of this information. Yeah. And I think, and I've talked about this on the, on the podcast before, but I'm not really a baker. I just said it a few minutes ago.

And so I think that for me, I feel like fat and cooking makes a lot of sense, like with the skills that I currently have, but when I expand my skills or when I begin to cook. Um, just with a different, flavor profile from a different country or something like that, this is such a helpful tool. Yeah. And I, I, I mean, I just, I'll reference it again, but the world map of where to eat, where to, what fat for what part of the world, [00:22:00] um, because that can make, completely change the game in what you're making.

Cause you know, I feel like I've always, I've eaten. You know, pick an Asian cuisine out and it's amazing. You go home and you try to make it. And I just feel like I can never get that quite right. And so I feel like this is a good starting point. It's a base layer, like get this part right. And everything you build on top of this fat is going to be.

Much better. Much more correct. Right. All right, so I think that wraps it up for the section on fat. In two weeks we're going to be going over acid, so if you're reading along with us, now's the time to break out the book and read that section. We're going to transition into some dinner dilemmas.

JB writes in to say they need help with picky kid eaters that don't eat tomatoes. And this person has little time to cook.

Well, first of all, I'm a broken record over here, but the picky eating, I am just going to always send you to Katie Kimball. I'm going to send you to Katie Kimball's Ted talks, [00:23:00] which you can find on YouTube. I'm going to send you to our podcast with Katie Kimball. Um, she is a gem, she is a resource and she is a lifesaver to families who have kids who are picky eaters.

That's a great place to start. I am not an expert in this as a parent. I have implemented a lot of the things I've learned from Katie. And it's just, it's almost too much information to even share right here in this dinner dilemma, but I'm going to say that she is a, she'll be an amazing asset for you as you navigate the picky eating, um, and we'll open up your world to a lot more food options, which is going to be huge.

right, because I think that as we discussed, a couple episodes in our 100th episode when we talked about Katie, again, is that it might not be about the food, it might be about some sensory issues, there could be a lot of, like, additional things that it's not really common knowledge, I would say, a lot of the reasons that kids are picky eaters.

Yeah, one of the ones that comes to mind is just that it's like 18 interactions, you have to have 18 interactions [00:24:00] with the food before you're even comfortable to potentially taste it. And she would, uh, she would classify an interaction as like looking at it on the plate and, having it on your own plate or maybe chopping it.

And so. Sometimes it could just be about the reps that you have with a food. And so, you know, if your kid hates, I don't know, hates tomatoes, just this continuing to put them in, unless there's an allergy, right. Or some kind of dietary issue with tomatoes, just kind of continuing to put it in their atmosphere and not removing it and saying, this is a food off limits, but just continuing to kind of put it in their atmosphere.

That actually might be a really helpful thing, even if they never eat it. I wouldn't expect them to eat it for quite a long time, but just kind of getting that familiarity with like, this is a food. That I'm familiar with getting those reps in with the food. I mean, in Katie's expertise opinion, that's a really important step with foods that we choose not to consume.

Once again, we don't know if there's no tomatoes is that there's a tomato allergy or if tomatoes just isn't a preferred food. I would say that a good portion of the recipes that I make don't [00:25:00] include tomatoes. You know, if, if you're somebody who the recipes that you. are your normal go tos are things like spaghetti or pizza or chili.

All of those things tend to be pretty tomato heavy, but there are lots of other great options out there. I really think that this is a scenario where you could do a super quick Google search of your favorite recipe, no tomatoes. Or even just recipes, no tomatoes. Um, if it's a nightshade issue overall, there are also lots of resources for no nightshade, uh, recipes.

And I think like AIP, uh, recipes in general are no nightshade. So you could also look into like AIP cookbooks and stuff. AIP stands for autoimmune protocol. Yeah. And then I think the saying you have little time to cook. This is similar to one of the dilemmas that we talked about last time. We gave lots of resources last time.

So if you didn't listen to last episode, go check that one out. I think one of the things that we didn't mention [00:26:00] because because our other listener. Part of their issue was they were constantly on the go and a lot of their, um, time that they could have spent cooking was spent with children's activities, kids activities, but just having only a little time to cook.

One of the things that I didn't mention was like the idea of dump dinners. Which is terrible sounding. I do not like the phrase of that. But it's, they're basically crockpot meals. And you can, you just dump everything in your crockpot. A lot of times they're only like five to seven ingredients. They're very few on ingredients.

And you just set it for the day and then dinner is literally ready. It's not one of those crockpot meals where you then need to like, make a little something extra to go along with it. You could make some rice or something maybe if you really wanted to. But you could also buy rice. Pre cooked of any of those things, um, but I feel like the crock pot dump dinners super helpful and you can also freeze those So that then you just have it frozen and then it's pull it out of the freezer put it into your crock pot Bingo bongo.

Yeah [00:27:00] Um, another thing that would be really helpful for the no time to cook is one pot meals one pan Yeah, one pot one pan. So We have, in the plan to eat recipe book, like in the blog on, in your account, um, you can find all of those recipes. I'll have Roni link to it or link to a note in the show notes so that we can find that really easily.

But there's probably 30 recipes in there that were one pot, one pan. Some of them took longer than others, but, 15 minute dinners. I'm not exactly the amount of sure the amount of time you're working with, but there are many 15 minute dinner recipes that I throw together at my house, um, that are like just quick to put together, whether it's some kind of salad with a bunch of just pre chopped veggies, maybe, something you throw in the air fryer to like popcorn shrimp or, you know, something like that.

And you just put together, um, like a rice bowl or something like that. These don't take a very long time. Um, you could even have like microwavable rice, like you've got these pieces of the puzzle that come together to make a really delicious dinner, but, they don't take you a lot of time to cook.

You've, you've done a little bit of, um, you know, if you've outsourced a little bit of the cooking for pre chopped [00:28:00] veggies or, or pre cooked rice or something like that, it's going to be helpful in making those meals come together. I'm sitting here thinking that actually no tomatoes, I would encourage you that no tomato recipes is actually.

Fairly achievable. Yeah. I don't want to say easy. I don't want to say simple. I would say it's achievable. Um, everything that Roni just mentioned, pizza, you can make that with, an olive oil base instead of with, With a tomato sauce, you could make it with an olive oil base. You can make it with a, like an Alfredo base, like a white sauce base.

You can make it with a ranch pesto. You can make it with ranch dressing as a base. Um, you make the rest of your pizza the same. You just don't start with tomatoes. Yeah. She said chili. You can make a, you can make a no tomato chili. You can make a green chili. A lot of Mexican food, like you don't even have to have salsa.

You could have, um, enchilada sauce made out of tomatillos. I'm not sure, again, we don't know if it's a nightshade issue, so it's hard for us to speak to, this being a choice or, you know, a need. But I think there's actually a lot of recipes out there that you can say, well, I love spaghetti, but I [00:29:00] can't have that.

Okay, let's make, let's make alfredo instead. Or let's make, um, a really beautiful, Like, like an olive oil based sauce with basil and, some kind of, you know, maybe a grilled chicken. You don't have to, you can use pepper and cheese in that sauce. You don't have to be using tomatoes. So I would say that I would try to move the no tomato thing to a lower stress item.

And, I just, I do think it's pretty achievable to eat a lot of recipes without tomatoes. Totally. I agree. this is from Tanya. When we fall off the planning wagon and we end up on the merry go round what's for dinner, we can do this for hours.

And then we ended up spending money on takeout or eating crap food. Preach this haven't we all been there. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We've been there. Yes, so I think that I mean clearly the Solution to the problem is to make me a planning more of a habit Maybe easier said than done because you said you're sometimes on the planning wagon and then you fall off the planning [00:30:00] wagon Potentially there, I'm thinking that there's maybe like a trigger here of something that maybe happens that's causing you to fall off the planning wagon.

Like, is it a really stressful time? Is it vacation? Like we talked about last time. You know, is there something where this, you feel like this is a repetitive thing and you can maybe pinpoint what the thing is that makes you fall off the planning wagon and I'm only saying this to maybe help you recognize, like, Ooh, we're kind of getting into the danger zone and I need to like reel it in a little bit here to like make sure that I stick with my meal planning because whenever this stressful thing happens, I tend to get off my meal planning and then everything else falls apart.

So I think maybe like the first thing that I want to ask is just like, what's, what's happening whenever you're falling off the meal planning wagon? And what can you do to like mitigate that a little bit? Yeah, it's great. One of the things that I thought of when I read this is it's very difficult to decide, to know that you have to decide what you're going to have for dinner every day for the rest of your life.

Absolutely. We can't think [00:31:00] about it like that though. Right. We, like, that is a danger. That that's it. That is stepping off the cliff. Right. Yeah. That is instead of like, I get to decide what I'm going to have for dinner. Instead of like, I have to decide. One of the ways that I mitigate this and I, that I, that I need to use more often is menus is saving menus.

With meals that my family loves that I can just reuse. So then when I get into that danger zone of like I don't want to cook and I don't know what to make and nobody Will tell me what they want to eat because who's who everybody's been there. I just drag and drop the recipe the meal plan onto my menu and it's already done for me If you haven't saved menu just scroll scroll back a couple of weeks in your meal plan And see what did we eat?

Listening to too many voices sometimes can overwhelm you. I'm sitting here thinking like potentially you have older kids and everyone's like, no, that doesn't sound good. No, that doesn't sound good. No, that doesn't sound good. But if it's up to you, I would say maybe don't ask, you know, like maybe say, okay, that's fine.

I got it. Um, that for me on those [00:32:00] nights, when nobody wants to, when I don't want to cook and when nobody knows what to make and we're kind of at the end of our meal plan and I haven't gone shopping. That's usually when I go to my default, um, pantry meal at my house. It is so often white chicken chili that my family probably doesn't even like it anymore, but it comes together really quickly in my crock pot.

It's something I can throw in to the crock pot in the morning or on a pot. In a pot on the stove at the end of the day. Um, but if I know I've got a busy day ahead and I also don't know what's for dinner, it's gonna be my default. And then I don't really ask anybody. I just do it. Maybe I'll make some quesadillas to go with it so that everybody's kinda happy because my kids really like quesadillas.

But, I just don't ask. I just do. The next thing and it is okay. I've got this food in my pantry. I'm going to put this in my crockpot and then I'm going to meal plan later. So we're not off track again. Yeah. I think right there at the end, you're bringing up a good point is like, get to the point where the immediate problem is solved, which is like, figure out what's for dinner tonight.

And then do your future self a favor and go and make your next meal [00:33:00] plan so that you don't get caught in this cycle of everybody being like, we don't know what to eat. We don't know what's for dinner. And, you know, it becomes an argument or just becomes like, uh, we don't even want to talk about it anymore.

Yeah. Just eat a peanut butter and jelly. Yeah, exactly. Or go out. I think, um, I would say if your family likes to go out to eat, I would say schedule that in. So like, make your meal plan, especially if the meal planning gets exhausting, make your meal plan. And the last night of, so I meal plan on Sundays every week, I meal plan on Sundays, but you sometimes I don't have time to go to the grocery store on Monday.

So Monday nights are sometimes our eating out night, Sunday nights or Monday nights are usually our eating out night. So I'm thinking, okay, I could just got to get to that eating out night where I get a break. I get to enjoy something out. And I'm going to meal plan that day and I'm going to be prepared for the next day's meals.

Um, so I would say try to use the eating out not as a punishment for not meal planning. Look at it as a reward at the end of a long week of meal planning. And then try to almost [00:34:00] reframe it. Like, no, this is a choice. We budgeted for it. My time is budgeted for it because I haven't meal planned yet, or I'm going to do that today.

And then. Go on and enjoy it. And then don't feel like you're having to like sacrifice money and time on eating out because you didn't make a meal plan. Kind of flip the script on that. I also think given that idea, because I do a similar thing, like I create a meal plan and usually we have a, you know, a night of the week or something that we have planned to eat.

And I'm always like. Sometimes I am stretching my meal plan just so that we can get to Friday night or something, right? And so rather than going back to the grocery store and buying more things, or rather than going out to eat an extra night during the week, I just start to throw things together. We, we bust out all of the pantry meals.

I'm digging in the back of the cupboards to figure out what we have that we can make. So like that's another option that like you're, part of your problem here is that you say you end up, we end, they end up spending. More money and you get takeout or you're eating what you consider to be crap food.[00:35:00] 

And I actually think that you can do a lot at your house to mitigate that. I mean, a beans and rice type of a night you can do, you know, something like a breakfast for dinner kind of a thing. Like there are so many options that I bet if you just started to think about it, maybe a little bit more creatively when you're at your house and you're like, Oh my gosh, I don't have a meal plan.

And I'm just so stressed out about it. Like. Just start pulling stuff out of the fridge, pulling stuff out of the cupboard and make something new. That's a great, that's great feedback too. I want to add that Roni has a very limited pantry space. Oh yeah. So I just want to say that if you are somebody who's sitting here listening and saying, well I keep nothing at home, Roni is also one who does not keep anything at home.

Very minimal extras. Um, I live quite away from town so we do have a bit more. pantry staples and storage available and I do that because we get a lot of bad weather and we get all these things and so We live a long way from the grocery store and from restaurants. So it's really difficult for us to be like Oh, we're just gonna do takeout because takeout is an hour away And so I would [00:36:00] say just I want to I want to say that Roni's giving this advice from a place of having very minimal storage.

And, I think it's a great idea. We'll, we'll call that leftover night or like, or everyone just gets to make their own thing that night. And yeah, I don't normally do the like short order cook thing where everybody gets something different, but there are nights where that's totally fine. All right. I think we've got time to answer one more here.

Right. John from Florida says, I have specific macros that I need to hit each day based on my scheduled workouts. Trying to find quick, tasty and meal preppable meals can be very difficult. 

Well, John from Florida, you have asked two people who hopefully can help you because we both tracked macros. We both have experience with this. Yeah. For anybody who doesn't know what that means, it means that he is eating a specific breakdown of the macronutrients, carbs, fat, and protein. He has a goal for every day that he's trying to hit and so each meal, you have to be particular about what you eat at each meal because, You're trying to divide that day [00:37:00] number into three meals or or three meals and some snacks.

You don't want to go over and you don't want to go under in most cases because a lot of people who track macros are trying to specifically reach enough protein every day. They're specifically some people are trying to bulk. It's not just isn't just a weight loss tool. Some people are trying to bulk, so they're trying to eat more to build more muscle.

Um, so it's a bit of an overview of what macro tracking is. Yeah, and let's be honest, this style of eating can get very monotonous. and very boring. At least, maybe not so much anymore. I feel like there's a lot more tools and resources nowadays, but like when I was macro tracking, it's like you're eating chicken and broccoli and rice or you're eating tilapia and asparagus and rice.

Well, and, and the reason for that for anyone listening is because. Weighing and measuring and tracking your food can be very tedious. So it's a lot easier to eat the same thing over and over again. Because it does take a bit of that burden off. Right. So what I want to add real quick, if you did not [00:38:00] know, plan to eat has nutritional data, which makes every recipe.

You can calculate the nutritional data based on the serving size. It'll give you a nutrient nutrient breakdown based on the certain, a particular serving of a recipe. So if you add in lasagna and you add in every single ingredient, you say it's for serving six, you calculate the nutritional data and plan to eat, it'll give you a breakdown of what one serving of that recipe, what the breakdown, the carb fat protein breakdown is.

And as someone who tracks macros. actively right now, it's super helpful for me. I usually backtrack from dinner if I can, if I can, because that's the meal where I'm eating with my family or I'm eating out. Usually I'm making a bulk meal like that I'm serving in portion sizes. And so then it just makes it a little bit easier for me because it's already, I can just track it and see all the ingredients I put into it.

I can just divide, you know, I can just say, okay, this is how much my serving will be. And I, so I work backwards from dinner and then the other two meals of my day can be a bit more boring or a bit [00:39:00] more monotonous. And then I just get to have that, um, freedom at dinnertime because I've already tracked it and the rest of the meals I work, um, I just kind of work around whatever I'm making and then it feels a lot less restrictive.

Yeah. So I think as far as trying to find some of these quick and tasty and meal preppable meals, I mean, honestly, I think the go to is like going to instagram or tiktok. There are tons of people who are influencers out there who are making crock pot recipes with specific macros and they're putting seven chicken breasts into a crock pot with, you know, a few other ingredients and they're telling you the exact breakdowns of it.

I think as far as trying to, trying to find recipes, there are so many more resources out there now than there used to be. And I think specifically on social media, there are tons and tons of people who, this is the, this is the one thing that they do on the internet, is they show you videos of them making their, like, quick meal prep, whether they're crockpot recipes or they're sheet pan recipes, and then they're showing you how they [00:40:00] divvy it up into different portions, so that they can eat it, you know, a couple different days.

I personally think there's a ton of recipes, a ton of recipes out there. Yeah, this is something, this content is, is hopping on the internet right now. Yeah. Um, so just, we can throw out some ideas. Like Roni said, like she, she ate a lot of meals with rice, that it's something where you can prep a protein and prep the rice and then.

Add different sauces every single day. Add different veggies every single day. You could roast veggies. You could have fresh veggies. Um, you could make it a cold rice salad with some veggies and some chicken. Or you could have a hot rice bowl with shrimp and sauteed mushrooms and things like that. Um, you can kind of have some of those main things.

Pre prepped. Yeah. I've recently been really liking to do baked potatoes and then putting the baked potatoes in my fridge and then reusing them whether that is for a breakfast bowl with a baked potato as the base or whether I like a Had a buffalo chicken baked potato recently. That was really good I've [00:41:00] had I had a taco baked potato, like that sounds bizarre, but like I'm using this one thing as a base.

Sounds so good. I'm not eating rice. I'm adding all the yummy toppings to it. I recently made a chicken salad out of a rotisserie chicken and I used Greek yogurt instead of mayonnaise as the base. And I, it was a buffalo chicken salad, so I had buffalo sauce in it. It really masked the flavor of the Greek yogurt.

I do like Greek yogurt, but it did not have any of that tanginess that Greek yogurt can have. So if you're concerned about that. It made the, it made the chicken salad, like, double the protein it would have had otherwise. And I wasn't using, so my fat was lower, but I used rotisserie chicken, so it was kind of a, it was a balanced, um, chicken salad.

That's something I've been eating all week this week. Any other ideas you can think of? I mean, you mentioned rotisserie chicken, which I think is always a good option if you're trying to go for something that's quick. You can also, I think every single grocery store I've ever been in has a section where they have like a pre chopped veggies, you know, they're like wrapped up.

So if part of the, part of [00:42:00] the time crunch for you is that you don't have time to prep things like a rotisserie chicken and the pre chopped veggies that you can put in the oven and roast as you're you know, taking apart your rotisserie chicken to eat it. That is a huge time saver. We always talk about.

Frozen vegetables and being able to utilize those because they most of the time they're already pre chopped and prepped and just like ready for you to cook them. Pre, you could pre portion smoothie ingredients or protein shake ingredients. Yeah. So, you can get all these little bags out and you can measure out your half a cup of fruit or whatever, you know, whatever your measurements are.

And then while that might, it just might be a different thing to do one week. It kind of keeps things interesting, a little less monotonous. If you had maybe a different kind of fruit in each one for this next coming week. And then you had, you added your protein powder to the little bag. You added ice cube.

You could even add the ice cubes into it. You could add your spinach, whatever you put into your protein shake. Or your smoothie, and then put those in the freezer. And then they're just, you pull them out, they're prepped, quick to come together. Keep it a little interesting. That's a great [00:43:00] idea. I'm thinking about this word tasty as well, because Riley mentioned sauces, which I think sauces are an amazing idea to make sure that your food is flavorful.

I think sometimes, particularly when you're doing meal prep, which maybe you are, maybe you aren't, but if you're doing meal prep, I feel like sometimes the idea of seasoning your food is sometimes it gets lost in the mix and you make chicken that feels kind of bleh, kind of bland, because it wasn't seasoned very well, um, you know, or like whatever meat it is.

that you, that you might be eating. We talked about another idea related to this. I'm on, I'm kind of on the chicken idea right now. If you're making your own chicken breasts, Riley mentioned this specifically in, a few episodes ago about getting a meat thermometer and making sure you have a meat thermometer, so you don't overcook your chicken, because that is the fastest way to not like chicken anymore.

Yeah, because it'll just be dry and you will be drinking a glass of a sip of water in between every bite of chicken. So, you know, part of it might also be learning a few like [00:44:00] cooking techniques to make sure that your food is tasty when you cook it. Uh, one last thing I'll add if you're headed out to Instagram to find some good recipes, If you like cottage cheese, there's a lot of sauces right now that are cottage cheese based.

And I've tried some of them recently and I've actually been pretty impressed. Like you just, you blend the cottage cheese up until it's smooth. So it's not chunky. When you add different seasonings to it, you can make ranch this way. You can make, I did a dill pickle dip recently this way. Um, and it adds to the protein and it cuts some of those other things out that you might not be wanting to consume.

And gives you something kind of interesting and maybe a little different to do on your different, uh, Different meal preps. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, cottage cheese having a, having a moment right now. It is having a moment. We can have a whole conversation about cottage cheese. I think so. Okay, awesome.

Well, that is it for this episode. We will be back in two weeks to break down the acid section of salt, fat, acid, and heat. And as always, thank you so much for listening to the Plan to Eat [00:45:00] Podcast.