The Dinner Bowl Formula

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Today's episode 475, the dinner bowl formula. Listen, do I love food and a bowl. It's like a love letter to myself when I make a meal in a bowl. And dinner bowls are wildly helpful in the summer. I know it might sound kind of simple and it is really. But having a dinner bowl formula that you can personalize for your own set of summer dinners is going to be such a huge help when you are like too hot and tired to think about dinner. Much less cooking. After that, we will have a little extra something where I share a couple of quick things that are saving my life in the kitchen right now.

We will celebrate the lazy genius of the week with a great way that the playbooks have made her own time in the kitchen easier. And then we'll close up with a mini pep talk for when it's just so dang hot outside. It feels like the whole bottom half of the United States is dealing with 80 plus temps before noon every day. It's just so dang hot. And when it is, a lot of things can become harder or more discouraging. A mini pep talk seems in order for those of you who feel the way. Now before we get into all that, this Wednesday, July 1st is the next time our two beloved monthly newsletters will go out.

The booklist and the latest lazy letter. Both of these happen just once a month because we like to keep emails to a minimum, whatever possible. And because there is a month's worth of goodness in there, according to you guys, both emails are really enjoyable to read. I don't, I hesitate to use the word "medi" but they're very "medi".

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And you can get the book list at the lazy geniuscollective.com/booklist. Alright, before we get into the dinner bowl formula, so we can make summer meals even easier. We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors, which make the show free for you to listen to. So many shows have to be behind a paywall now. And I'm really grateful that we don't that we can be sponsors supported, so that we don't have to be listeners supported.

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[music] [music] [music] All right, let's get into the dinner bowl formula. So I do not think I can adequately explain how much I love a meal in a bowl.

Our cabinets have way more bowls than plates if that is any indication. Like different sizes, so many bowls.

“So here's why I think dinner bowls are worth spending an episode on, especially in the summer.”

First, ready, a meal in a bowl is portable. Like you can pack up a bowl meal in a to-go container. You can stack them in a cooler, and you can have to the park or the pool.

You know, portable meal is always a good idea with random summer activities and a meal in a bowl.

You can totally take with you. Second, a meal in a bowl, it can be made ahead. All the components can be made early. You can use all kinds of store-bought things to keep the prep reduced. There's such an ease in having just a few things ready to assemble.

Plus, you do not have to walk into the house at 5 p.m. And make dinner from absolutely nothing when everyone is hungry. Like dinner bowls are like a meal prepers dream. Third, a meal in a bowl, it can be personalized. If you have a handful of options for your bowl, but not everybody wants everything.

Like no harm done, you know? Component meals are the best because they're completely customizable without requiring you to make multiple separate meals for multiple people, or even dealing with complaining. Both of which are like a delight when you have a family. So they can be personalized.

So they're portable, they can be made ahead, they can be personalized. They also use leftovers super well. If you have like a couple of pieces of leftover barbecue chicken from dinner last night, it's not enough for like another meal of barbecue chicken. But you could make a couple of barbecue chicken bowls.

With like lettuce or quinoa or black beans or all three, as your base, you get some shredded cheese, maybe some green onion or cilantro. Like you have a great lunch for a couple of folks right there. So once you get comfortable with the formula of like how to put a bowl together, you can do it from whatever you have lying around more on that later.

Okay, dinner bowls are also seasonally appropriate and very satisfying. Like a dinner bowl can feel hearty and filling and delicious. Without being weird, like soup or something that you would eat more in the winter. You know, like it listen, take beef stew to the pool. It's a weird vibe, you know?

It's also probably not as pleasant to eat by the pool.

And you know, it's a it's a different thing. So meals in a bowl deserve their own episode because they are so good for summer. That's why we're doing them now. They are portable, versatile. They can be made ahead.

They use leftovers. They're personalized and they're really satisfying. Like even in a season where it's too hot to function. So maybe thinking about them that way. It will help you prioritize them a bit more in your own meal planning.

Because you're like, oh, actually, yeah. I hadn't thought about it this way, but these things are totally worth it. All right, let's talk about the formula. So this is pretty basic, but sometimes we need to break down of the basics.

“I think dinner bowls can feel complicated because there are always like so many people.”

So many possibilities. There's so many elements that you could choose and it feels like all you're going to be doing is like prepping stuff all the time. That's not true. We do this constantly. And there's very little prep. It's like the same as like a regular meal if not easier.

But because of all the options, it can feel like, well, I got to make 17 different kinds of pickle onions or whatever. You do not, you do not. So let's talk about the basics. So that the options feel less overwhelming, okay? All right, you have four main components to a dinner bowl.

All right, this is the four, this is the four piece formula here. Ready? Base, protein, produce, and sauce. Base, protein, produce, sauce. Say it like a chant, okay? Base, protein, produce, sauce. Those are the categories.

All right, we're going to talk about flavor after we talk about categories. So just hang tight here.

All right, so first the base.

Typical bases are things like rice, quinoa, beans, and greens.

“Think about going to a restaurant like Chipotle or Kava where you're making a bowl, right?”

They start with a base, you know? They fill the bottom of the bowl with rice or quinoa or a couple of handles of a roogula or whatever. That is what you will do at home too. Your base could also be something like roasted potatoes or cauliflower, something that's like mild in flavor, but has some heft to it.

That is the whole point with all base ingredients. They are not overly flavorful. They're just like doing their thing, jogging along, adding like body, and really they're to balance out the stronger flavors simply by existing, okay? So keep your base simple, especially as you get started.

Okay, next is the protein. This is fairly obvious, but it's good to think about. So you've got animal proteins, of course, you go to proteins for bowls, our rotisserie chicken, sauteed ground meat of any kind, you know, beef, pork chicken, turkey, whatever, and then cubes of meat, like steak or salmon, even shrimp, if you've got some in the freezer, that I want you to think about animal protein that can be broken down into bite-sized pieces,

or naturally already is. Shrimp is a great example of this, right? Shrimp by nature are already like kind of bite-sized. So remember, bite-sized is the whole point of a bowl. You're not coming at this thing with a knife and fork, right?

It's like ready to roll, mostly as it is. Since that's the case, I want you to keep your animal protein bite-sized.

“That's why ground meats are automatically so great,”

because the bite-sized part is already done, and then, of course, eggs, beans, tofu, those are great protein options, and already also, like, bite-sized, it's great. Okay, so base protein, produce, next is produce. This is where your options widen, but that's fun. It doesn't have to be overwhelming, okay?

Literally anything from the earth, like the grows from the earth, or a tree, which is technically from the earth, that's either raw, cooked, or pickled. Any of those things goes here, okay? You're looking primarily at vegetables, occasionally fruits, and herbs.

And here's the thing, you really, really want something in this category.

Otherwise, you're just like eating meat and rice. Now, that is delicious, and half of my children live that life. But if you want to really elevate things for your own enjoyment, having something from this third category, if not multiple things, will be absolutely delicious.

Here's my best recommendation, okay? It's two of the three, cooked raw, or pickled. Like pickled onions, and roasted corn. Fresh cucumber, and roasted tomatoes. Saute peppers, and fresh cilantro.

Pickled cabbage, and fresh avocado. Like two out of three of cooked, pickled, or raw. It's going to be a winner. It's going to be a winner.

And it gives you lots of texture, and contrast, which we'll talk about in a second.

Okay, so that's produce. Next, and finally, is sauce. Base protein produce sauce.

If you ever get like a culpable without some kind of dressing,

like it would be fine, but not amazing.

Like a sauce brings everything together. And it's such an easy way to add flavor without cooking. You can use salad dressing. You can use bottled sauces. You can whip up like a quick just last night.

I had Greek yogurt, and I did like a squeeze lemon, and one clove of garlic. Just grated in it, and then a little bit of cilantro, and a little bit of green onion. Just to give it some freshness, salt, until it makes you go. Ooh, that's good. It was so good.

And there wasn't really a recipe, which it's okay to require a recipe. Go find brima coi. She's the queen of sauces, or look up like great sauce. Like a great sauce for lots of different dinners. You know, there's like very versatile sauces, or you can just buy bottles.

But don't skip the sauce. Okay, so those are the main components. Base protein produce sauce. Oh, sauce could also be salsa. Like anything, you know what I'm saying?

I don't want to say anything wet, but it's anything wet.

“Okay. Now, how do you decide to put all of this together?”

Because there are a million options. And with all of those options, it can be super hard to know. But to choose and output it all together.

So here's your most important word.

Are you ready? Contrast. Contrast. Contrast. The more contrast you add to your bowl, the more enjoyable it will be to eat.

The more you think about contrast, the easier it'll be to even put bowls together. That is true of cooking and eating. Not just bowls. You want contrast in multiple areas. And the more you practice, the better you'll get.

The more you start to notice the more easily you'll spot it. Okay. So let's break this down. Here are the four areas that you definitely want to add contrast.

“And then there's one bonus area that's nice to have, but not essential.”

Okay. Thinking this way is going to make you a better cook. You are about to get a little cooking lesson on how to be a better cook. Here we go.

So the first area of contrast is in flavor.

Now you want flavor, right? You want your bowl, you want your food to taste like something, to taste good. We have all had plenty of bland food. And it's not the most fun thing. And it's tolerable.

We will survive, but it's not the most fun thing. So you definitely want flavor, but you also want a contrast. That's actually what makes flavor sing. Is there a contrast? There are things that are like working together back and forth.

Salty and sweet, sweet and spicy. Herbaceous and umami, which is that like sort of earthy, like mushroomy flavor. It's nice to have a contrast of flavors so that what you're eating is not one note. It's not just like, well, here we go again. Same bite again, right?

For example, let's imagine a chipotle bowl, okay? You get brown rice, chicken and cheese. Now all three of those things are not super loud in their flavor. So there's not a lot of contrast. Mild rice, mild cheese.

Maybe the chicken's like a little spicy, but it's all kind of the same. Now if you add a spicy salsa, that adds more flavor contrast.

“Because you already have like not a lot of flavor in there with the rice and the cheese, okay?”

Now if you also add like the sweet corn salsa, that adds yet another flavor contrast. You've now got spicy from the salsa and sweet from the corn to go with the other mild elements. And now it's like more pleasant and enjoyable and flavorful to eat. I actually want you to think about contrasting flavors like punches. Like you want something with punchy flavor, but you also want something else in your bowl that's going to punch back.

If you only have one punch, the eating experience has no relief. So if you make a rice and beans bowl, that's pretty bland, right? With like honey glazed chicken. All right, you've got some mild flavor with the rice and beans and a sweeter flavor from the chicken. All right, what flavor would punch back?

Well, something with a kick, probably with a little spice. Or something that's punchy with salt or vinegar or brightness to cut through the sweetness of the honey. Or let's say you're making like a salmon bowl and you had rice and salmon. Salmon is so fatty and rich and rice is delicious.

Rice, listen, you guys, white rice, like sticky Japanese rice and salmon is maybe one of the greatest flavor combos ever. And you could just eat those two things, but it's also really fantastic to punch with like a drizzle of maybe soy sauce and other punch of like a spicy chili crisp and then another punch of a squeeze of like lemon or rice wine vinegar.

They're just like, here we go, punch back, punch back.

Eating food this way is just so incredibly delightful. All right, so I want you to think about having enough sweetness, saltiness, spiciness, even bitterness to create a contrast of flavors in your bowl. Even if you just have two contrasting flavor punches, like sweet and salty, sweet and spicy, spicy and whatever. That was like spicy and sweet, same thing what I just said.

That's it. Like you don't have to start to bake here. Two punches is fine. Like even when you're even when you're making a dinner bowl, guys, you still start small. We don't start small with just like time management stuff.

We start small with dinner bowls too. So that's the first place we're going to create contrasts in flavor.

“The second place to create contrast, and this is, I think, easier to conceptualize.”

This is the easiest one.

And it's also maybe one of the most important and it is texture texture.

This is just so huge. All right, I want you to think again about the chipotle bowl with rice and chicken and cheese. Take a bite. Now those all chew kind of the same, right? There's nothing like overly creamy or crunchy.

So if you were to add textural contrast, if you added avocado, like a creamy avocado or the guacamole, you're going to pay extra for guacamole, that is a really great textural contrast. But it's also only punching one way, right? So you also might want to punch back with something a little crunchy, like a corn salsa, or even crumbles some tortilla chips in there.

It's why ice cream in a bowl is so good that ice cream in a cone is like wildly different, because you get a textural contrast with that creamy ice cream and crunchy cone. The same is true of a sandwich with toasted versus un toasted bread. Like you might really want the textural difference, toasted bread gives your non crunchy sandwich, especially with a creamy feeling like tuna salad.

Like if you put tuna salad on toasted white bread versus tuna salad on toasted bread, that's a different experience. It's a different eating experience, right? Or the other way, if you're having something like a BLT that is like so crunchy with lettuce and crispy bacon and tomato, you might not actually want toasted bread because so much of the sandwich is already crunchy.

“And you want something that's going to be a contrast there, okay?”

Textural contrast is why you like having a crispy piece of bacon with your smooth scrambled eggs. It's why you might choose crunchy peanut butter for your PB&J. It's why a bowl with white rice and teriyaki ground beef would love some diced cucumber, because there's textural contrast. So when you are assembling a bowl, I want you to think about that.

Think about things that are smooth, crunchy, crispy, chewy, creamy, picked too. Even if it's too punch one way and punch back, look for textural contrast. Okay, so we have created contrast with flavor and with texture,

the third place to create contrast is with temperature.

In a bowl, this is definitely true and in the summer also. It's really great to have things in a bowl that are hot and others that are cold. So think about those cucumbers again, with the warm rice and ground beef, cucumbers are adding both a textural contrast and a temperature contrast.

“They're cold and crispy, which is a lovely contrast to the hot rice and ground beef, right?”

Dressings and sauces are great ways to add something cold to a hot bowl. The same is true for pickled and fresh vegetables. They're easy ways to add temperature contrast, because they're already cold. Or they're like definitely not hot, right? If you need an argument for this, if you need like, I don't know if this matters.

I want you to think about a warm piece of pie or a warm brownie with ice cream. Or like those chocolate chip cookies with ice cream on top. Like desserts know how to do temperature contrast. But that should also exist in savory meals and especially dinner bowls too. And you can think about this not just with what is cold and warm.

There are also ingredients that are naturally cooling. So it's not so much like it doesn't have to be limited to what's in my fridge that's like currently cold. You could think about ingredients that naturally cool even when they're not like, you know, straight from the fridge. Things like cucumbers, for sure, abacados, yogurt, even sauteed zucchini, which I know is kind of a weird thing. Like it's warm as far as temperature goes, if you like saute some zucchini.

But zucchini is more of a cooling food. If you think about it, like I know that's kind of nuanced, but it's true. And it's also really fun what's you start playing around with ingredients and flavors. It's sort of like a game, you know, it's like how can I add a cooling element without adding something cold.

Okay, like with other things, if you do not have temperature contrast, you can still eat like it's going to be fine. It might even still be tasty, but this is how you can elevate like ordinary dinners and even dinner bowls by thinking, huh.

“Is there a way to add something cold to this warm bowl of food, like a scoop of sour cream on top of an achable, delicious, a delight to eat, right?”

Okay, so that's a third place. The fourth place to think about contrast is weight. What do I mean by weight?

It's not how much an ingredient actually weighs, like on a scale. Certain foods and flavors have weight, heaviness, depth to them. Almost like they are taking up flavor space, like their substantive, while other foods are like lighter or lack some substance, like they're still delicious, but they're not weighty. Again, this is really nuanced, but super valuable and fun to think about, because this one is a little bit harder to conceptualize.

“I'm just going to give you some ideas to help you see the difference. Okay, so let's look at just the category of vegetables.”

Well, not even just produce. We're going to go straight to vegetables, okay? Light weight vegetables are things like cucumbers, a lot of lettuce is celery, fennel.

If you think about it, all of them are actually best raw, right? They're so lightweight that if you cook them, like lightweight and flavor, that if you cook them, they will lose some of their substance, right? Okay. Next level, there are things that can be eaten raw, but they can also like hold up to a little bit of cooking, but they're still relatively light. Things like bell peppers, green beans, asparagus, leeks, onions, peas, zucchini, green beans, have more substance than celery, but both are still fairly light and flavor.

And they don't take up a lot of eating space. They're not as substantive, okay? All right, let's go to the middle of the pack here.

But about things like cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, mushrooms, spinach, all of those foods are wildly different textures and flavors, but they all have like a medium substance, medium weight.

We're getting heavier, right? They take up space, but they're not the heaviest, they're not the heaviest, but they are heavy. Then the heaviest weightiest group. These are the ones that have the most substance that if you put them on your plate, you're like, hello, you are here, Brussels sprouts. Oh, grah, eggplant, butternut squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, kale, y'all kale has so much weight to it. Again, it's not like how much it weighs on a scale. You make salads with kale, but it has so much flavor substance. If you eat a kale salad versus a spinach salad versus a bib lettuce salad, those are all incredibly different salad experiences.

That is because the kale is weighty, spinach is medium, and bib lettuce is super white, okay? Now, this one is the most nuanced of the group. So if this feels like too much, if you're still trying to get your head around flavor, skip it in a minute. But even if you don't actively choose to have contrasting weights, I want you to start maybe noticing like what's heavy and what's light and why a meal works really well.

“But you don't have to create this contrast on your own. You can just like start noticing it, for example, like let's say you have a barley bowl with roasted chicken and sauteed kale, okay?”

And you eat it and you're like, oh, she weighty, it's the weighty bowl. Like barley has weight compared to rice, right? Chicken has weight, especially when it's roasted, and gets more umami and rich flavor as it, as it, as it, as it roasts like that flavor builds up, and then kale as we already said is like super lady. Now, this bowl would be delicious to eat, but if you were to think about a contrasting weight, it would really help. Like adding something, even just like lemon juice to brighten up all of that weight to lighten it, or you could do chopped celery leaves, almost like an herb, or like a really herbaceous sauce.

All of those things would add lightness to something that is heavy. It's why eating a plate of spaghetti and meatballs is great, that man is at nice to also have a salad to go back to occasionally, not a kale salad, good gracious. So you can move from heavy to light, the same is true in a dinner bowl, with multiple components. You have variety, just a bite away, and you can get some relief from any weightiness.

I love brown food, like it's great, it's great, but if you have a taco bowl with just like brown and yellow, it's a little boring.

But then listen, you hit, get ahead or read from some salsa, some green from cilantro or green onion, and then that white from a sour cream. You get this like a variety of colors and even visual textures that make the mole mole more inviting. I am convinced, listen, don't call me on this, that I'm convinced this is why in England they serve mushy peas with fish and chips, because fish and chips are brown and crispy. You only have brown, that's all you have. So they're like, you know what, we need some color contrast, we need some textural contrast, we also need some weighty contrast, because peas are lighter and anything fried is going to be heavy.

“Let's just mush up some peas in this little bowl here. And I'm not saying that's what happened, but listen, you don't eat those peas all the time, but they do offer like a really nice pop a green on the plate, even if you leave them there.”

Anyway, that's my theory on fish and chips. Okay, so again, these are our components. Base, protein, produce, sauce. You can make these four things sing and dance together by thinking about contrast. In the areas of flavor, texture, temperature, weight, and even color. Now, if you have to choose one, I would choose flavor, get used to noticing and creating contrasting flavors. After that, I would move on to texture. In fact, you could just feel free to live in the areas of flavor and texture contrast forever without doing the other ones. They're like massively helpful. Temperature, weight, and color. They are kind of like the things that you add after get used to the basics of the first two, like, like kind of like learning an instrument, like you learn scales and basic skills before you start riffing on songs. Okay, that's texture and flavor like when your scales get comfortable with flavor and texture first. The other three will eventually follow.

If this, I like everything I've said right now is I could completely new concept for you. I please don't start with all five areas of contrast. That's just crazy. Just think about flavor and maybe texture for now and for as long as it takes to get the hang of it, which might be forever and that is okay. It's okay.

“Alright, here's what I'm going to encourage you to do, especially as you are sort of learning this dinner formula and you're noticing how how food interacts with itself. Okay, I want you to have a go to dinner bowl.”

I want you to choose one option and then just stay there. Choose your own baseline to fall back on and learn from. You can play around with the pieces of it. You can adjust which of the four elements has flavor, which has texture, which adds weight, which is hot or cold, but I want you to stick with one main idea and practice. Practice riffing and noticing all of the chances to create different kinds of contrast with one basic idea of a bowl. So use it as like a learning experience and then also choose something that you really really like to eat, you know, stick with flavors that you're like, man, I could eat this almost every day right stick with that while you learn and enjoy it before you worry about coming up with 15 different dinner bowl options.

That is starting way too big and not the point here, just because you can make count like listen, the options for dinner bowls are endless. You don't need endless, you need one start with one.

“So we have that with an Asian inspired rice bowl. That is our like our family go to. I've been riffing on it for years. We certainly have other kinds of bowls, but this is this is our home run like every time. So here's how it works, okay?”

Our base is always white rice because everyone loves white rice and I married a Japanese man. It's just how it goes. We buy high-quality rice at the international market.

We have a Japanese rice cooker so I can't send you my rice cooker. It literally has no English words on it, but that is what we have every time. It's so good. So our base does not ever change, even though it could. It could change. But it doesn't. Like we could do brown rice if we wanted more weight or we could do some kind of noodle if I wanted like a different texture. But I generally don't white rice is our family's most eaten food.

So we don't mess with what's working, right? So that's our base like always white rice. Okay. Now the protein because that's next, right? Base protein proto sauce.

The protein changes a lot. Now it is usually ground pork or beef because those are quick and easy. But I will also do like chicken thighs that I will cut up into small pieces before I like I'll cut them up.

And sometimes we'll do roasted sweet chicken like tossed with the same marinade. Now the marinade is really kind of the key, but it's also nothing special. It's just like a balanced kind of East Asian marinade that can work with whatever we're doing. So there's usually soy for like saltiness and that umami richness. We use marin for sweetness, but you could do sugar or honey or like done. We use rice wine vinegar for a bit of an acidic punch because that does Mary really well. Rice wine vinegar Mary so well with Asian ingredients, but you could use any kind of vinegar. I would not use balsamic, but I mean live your own life.

“But you could use lemon or like it doesn't matter. You could use any sort of acid we tend to use rice wine vinegar and then suracha for some sort of spice soy marin rice wine vinegar suracha.”

That's like the baseline with different ratios based on what I'm after because sometimes you want something spicier, sometimes you want something sweeter, sometimes you want something richer and more salty.

Okay, I might add ginger or garlic, if I want like a more developed brighter flavor. If I want to add those aromatics to it, I might add sesame oil.

If I want an even bigger punch of flavor because you will always taste sesame oil. That's one of the biggest punches. Like when sesame oil punches, you better punch back with like a whole bunch of herbs may on bring it.

“Sesame oil has a huge punch and sometimes you want a huge punch, right? So the ratios are all different depending on like what I eyeball what it's going with.”

Sometimes I do just soy and marin, just salty and sweet, done. Now it's not as tasty or exciting as the marinade with more punches, but it also does work.

Okay, so that's our protein. Like I will marinate the meat in some of that sauce. I will reserve the rest for the end and then I will saute it and a skillet on high heat until it's cooked. Now the only difference here is I do not marinate ground beef or meat ground meat of any kind. I will just like start to saute it season it was on pepper. Sometimes I didn't pepper depending on what I'm making and then I will add that marinade to it with maybe even a little bit of cornstarch stirred in like making a a slurry so that it thickens a bit into that meat and kind of coats it all really well.

But that's kind of the basics plus because everything is like already bite size or ground up, you know, the cooking these things takes hardly any time so it's bite size and perfect for a bowl.

Okay, so that's our go to protein, white rice, sometime some type of Asian marinated ish meat for our protein and then the next category is produce. I will sometimes do mushrooms with the pork. I will do bell peppers with chicken. I'll do carrots with the beef. I'll do broccoli or spinach with salmon. Now any of those vegetables would go with any of those proteins. It doesn't really matter. I do tend to like the balance between like fatty almost like bright pork and these like weighty mushrooms. I kind of enjoy that combo. I really like the sweetness of carrots with the rich fattyness of beef. I like the brightness of peppers with boring chicken.

I like the really light weight almost crunchy nature of broccoli with that fatty heaviness of salmon. That is such a great contrast and flavor in weight and in texture and in color, right. Now beef and broccoli is great. We've done it. You've got it gotten it in like takeout containers, right? Pork and bell pepper. That's great. And we've done it. Like all of those things are great and we've done them. I just think it's good when you pay attention to how the produce that you choose is you choose interacts with whatever protein you choose, especially depending on how flavorful that protein is.

So you're just noticing even if you eat it and you're like, huh, this was like I thought that this vegetable and this this produce and this protein would go well together, but like they're a little boring.

“Are they boring? I like think about it. What's punching and then not punching back? What's all too heavy or all too light? What's all the same texture, right?”

There's think about where you're missing contrast. It's usually not that food is cooked poorly. It's that there's just not enough contrast. Okay, let's finish up some of the the produce options for our go to bowl. So I will make like the vegetable and the the protein like the cooked produce with the protein and the white rice and the kids eat whatever. We also add things usually me, but the options are there. I love dice cucumber, pickled ginger, cilantro, green onion, and avocado all day please. I could eat that on like soy, ground beef, every day of my whole life like every day, every day.

I've got one texture. Right, pretty much just one texture. So we're going to add contrast with fresh cucumbers.

But I still have just one punchy flavor in the ground beef. Nothing else is really punching. So I'm going to punch back with either a spicy sauce or pickled ginger. I have avocado which is creamy. I will probably not choose a creamy sauce like yum yum sauce. I've already got creaminess. I'll probably punch that creaminess back with something that's a bit more acidic and thinner. I do a lot of punching in my dinner bowls which is white rice is like my perfect base because white rice does not punch white rice is Switzerland. It is so neutral, so delightful. It doesn't need to be the best. It's just there to let everybody else do it out for contrasting flavor texture temperature and wait.

And then a quick word about color. Like I said earlier, color is not essential. My kids, they doctor their bowls with far fewer components than I ever do, like sometimes they do just rice and meat.

But when I come to the table with my base of white rice, the color contrast of like the dark brown marinated ground beef, the light green cucumbers, the medium green cilantro, the bright pink pickled ginger and a red drizzle of suracha. My kids are always like wow, that's really pretty. And it is, it is a contrast of color and visuals. That does make food delightful to eat. Think about how plating is a whole category and food competition shows. And while, you know, you don't need to worry about Chris and Kish deciding how pretty your food is. Like on days when you notice a chance to add a little bit of color contrast, I want you to take it even if it's one time.

“Like try it one time and just see how fun it is. Like notice if it feels more fun to eat. I think pretty food is more fun to eat.”

So it probably will feel nice and it'll be a good little boost on a Tuesday, okay?

So I want you to think about what your go to is. Like what's a cuisine or flavor profile that you really enjoy. Maybe it's Mexican, you know, start with a taco bowl for a while, so your base could be white rice or black beans or both. Your protein could be Chipotle honey chicken, which is weighty. And could use some lightness from like herbs, corn, shredded lettuce or your protein could be like taco season ground beef that is also weighty, but it has a little spice as a little kick to it.

“So maybe some like raw diced tomatoes would add a contrasting flavor, texture, temperature and weight to the beef. That's what the diced tomatoes would do.”

You want crunch, add tortilla chips or corn, you want creaminess, add avocado or sour cream or you can make a crema with both along with like a squeeze of lime and a healthy pinch of salt. Like make food, you already make and love to eat and just start to notice where you have contrast and where you do not. Think about where you can add it somewhere that it doesn't exist and see what happens. If you get good at doing that with food, you're already like 90% comfortable with. You are going to find it so much easier to pay attention with something new. You do not start with something new. You start with something you already like and make.

“Can you believe I have so much to say about dinner bowls?”

Okay, so before I like the full recap here, I want to go back to the reasons why dinner bowls great in the summer. It's portable, versatile. You can make elements ahead of time. It's just so great in the summer, but one great reason that I mentioned is that dinner bowls use leftovers. If you have leftover roasted broccoli from like a sheet pan situation the night before, you can start to think about how to punch up and punch back. Chop that broccoli into bite-sized pieces and call it your produce. Okay, now it's probably not super flavorful. So where do you want to punch up flavor? Well, you could look at your leftover still, and you're like you have a rotisserie chicken lying around.

Okay, that's not very punchy is it, right? That's fine. Do you have a bottle of teriyaki sauce? Toss the chicken in that. You've got a little more flavor now, okay? Now, do you want to add more richness and textual contrast with soba noodles or buckwheat noodles as your base? That like almost a bitter buckwheat flavor, it could be a super nice flavor contrast to the sweet, but medium weight of the chicken and the broccoli. Or you could go with a very mild base, like white rice, and you could punch up the flavor with chili crisp as your sauce.

Like, I love starting with leftovers, or produce it's on its last legs, or a protein that's like fail safe for my family, like chicken dies, or steak, or grumpy. But if you start with one thing and you ask, okay, what flavor is this going to carry if any flavor?

“And then ask how you're going to keep punching up and punching back, finding contrasting textures and flavors and temperatures and weights, or just start with texture and flavor.”

Your options actually narrow significantly, and it's almost like a fun little scavenger hunt rather than trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Like start with one thing, start with what you know, and then just start to notice. And every time you do, every time you notice, contrasting flavor, contrasting texture, contrasting temperature, contrasting weight, you will become a better cook. The more you notice, the better cook you're going to become. Okay, set a recap.

A bowl is great in the summer because it's portable. It's versatile. You can make elements ahead of time.

Dinner bowls use leftovers. They can be personalized, and they're so satisfying even in the summer months when you really don't want to eat chili.

“The main thing to remember are fairly simple. You want base protein, produce sauce, base protein, produce sauce. These four elements interact with each other using flavor, texture, temperature, and weight.”

So think about where you can add contrast in all of those areas to make a delicious bowl. Remember with the veg with that produce, think two out of three with the cooked raw and pickled, right? And if you happen to think about color, you will enjoy looking at your food before you eat it too. Start with one thing, what you already know, what you already enjoy, notice and play, take your time, make it over and over again, you will be cooking dinner forever. You don't have to figure it out right now, right? You don't have to know everything right now, just enjoy the process of learning, and before long, you will depend on bowls and you'll really, really love doing it.

And that is the dinner bowl formula. All right, it's time for a little extra thing, and today I have two things that are saving my life in the kitchen, especially in the kitchen when everyone is here in eating and cooking a lot, because it is a summer time. So the first one is dawn power wash, this is not an ad, although if they became a sponsor, I would be thrilled. Dawn power wash is of the best stuff. It's like the magic question of washing dishes, like if you have a dirty pan, which my kids frequently create, like you don't have to soak the pan and live that whole disgusting, like lukewarm water life, where you dip your hand, you just spray the surface of the pan and watch it do its magic.

“It's like so fantastic. It starts the washing for you. Also, if you just have like one or two things that you need to wash, you don't have to run a whole sink of water, just spray the stuff and then wash it with a sponge. It's like so great.”

And because Dawn is great for like grease fighting of any kind, I have used Dawn power wash, a stain the treatur. It is fantastic at that as well. It is just really made the summer kitchen so much better, because it makes my kids like taking care of their own dishes so much easier. So that's the first thing. The second thing that saving my life in the kitchen right now is something that we have had forever and you can have it to. It's just a dry erase board, where we keep a running shopping list. That's all.

I was in some cheap like 12 by 12 whiteboard that I got years ago. I like it doesn't matter that I divided into six sections, just with like a marker, just divide it into six. And ours are Walmart, Costco, Trader Jazz, Super G, which is our international grocery store. Target slash Harris Teter for the handful of things that you can only get at one of those stores, and other. Like right now, the other column has a dress shoes for Sam. It does not have food, but it's still shopping. So we are creatures of habit. We love what we love. So getting like just any sourdough bread, for example, is not a thing. We don't just like write sourdough in any column. We get sourdough from Trader Jazz, because their sliced sourdough is the most delicious store.

It's just delicious sourdough that you can find. So that's going to always go in the Trader Jazz section on the board.

Getting any oat milk is not a thing. I only eat drink, oat leaves, full fat, oat milk. And I can only find that at Target or Harris Teter. It's nowhere else. There are certain Asian ingredients that we can only get at Super G. The huge back of brown sugar at Costco is unmatched in both price and quality. You get the idea.

And this way, this board, we just always know what we need.

“That's why it's great all the time, but right now in the summer, it's vital because all five of us are here every day, and food is running out at a pretty high clip.”

Since all of the kids mostly know to put something on the board if it's out, we just don't run out of things. Or sometimes they'll say like, "Hey mom, we're out of fruit, fruit, but I feel like a summer staple around here." And I'll say, "Okay, cool, go right in on the board." And they do. And our lists are always ready to go.

Like we rarely do not have the food that we need, and we rarely buy things that we already have because we pretty much just shop from that whiteboard.

And in the summer, I'm a Guinness. It is seriously so great.

“So, Don Power Wash and my grocery store, why board? Those are the couple things saving my life in the kitchen, the summer, and today's a little extra something.”

Alright, this week's lazy genius of the week is Olivia from Salt Lake City, Olivia writes. I've been using the lazy genius playbooks for about a year now, and just received my new season's bundle.

With the school you're coming to an end, and summer just around the corner, I've been thinking about how to change up our meals to better reflect the season of weird schedules.

Hot weather and vacations. As I went to put my old playbooks away, I started flipping through last year's summer playbook, and realized I already had a meal matrix. I had recorded each week's meal plan on my weekly pages, which also had information about vacations, busy times, and pool days. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I was able to pull from my info from last summer, and now I have a plan ready to go for meals that I know we like to eat, and that fit our season. Thank you, past knee.

“So, this is wildly fantastic, and honestly, exactly what the playbooks are meant to do.”

Like listen, we've all lived all these seasons, so many times. Everything feels new and challenging, and like will we ever make it? But like you already did. Like you've already been through a busy summer. You've already been through a whack-a-doodle may. You've been through a fall where you couldn't find a free Saturday until the following January. Like you have done this before, and you are also very smart. Chances are excellent that the past version of you have solved some of these problems already, and the playbooks are where you solved them, and then can look back to find the solutions again.

I just love this so much. So Olivia, thank you for sharing, and congratulations on being the laziness of the week. If you are like what's a playbook, you can check out the playbooks at the lazinesscollective.com/playbooks. You can grab one for the summer, which runs June through August. Even though you're like pretty much done with June, it's still in work. Like the beginning third of your playbook will just stay empty, like no harm to a valve. You could give it a try, or you could go ahead and get the fall playbook, so you'll have it when September rolls around.

I just love these things so much. I love that everyone uses different pages more than other people. Like I use the weekly list triage pages all the time, and Emily P. Freeman, my beloved. She does not use them hardly ever. She uses other parts of the playbook. Or I will use certain pages more in certain seasons, or even certain months, depending on what's going on. Regardless, I'm capturing the season, what's working, what's not, what problems I'm solving, all in one place as that season is. It's like a real life representation of how I made my season easier.

And I can, and have, like Olivia, totally looked back to see what I did this time last year. It is just robust. So if you want to check them out, the lazyjewscollective.com/playbooks. And now for a mini pep talk for when it's just sedang hot. Y'all isn't so high here. It's been so hot. We had one day of reprie where the high, like only hit 80, but for the most part here in North Carolina, it's been 80 by 70m. Most highs are well into the 90s. We're about to hit three straight days of 97s. No thank you.

So, like our family would do a local music festival to see some of our friends perform recently. And I like legit war and neck fan on broad and mister bottle of ice water. And bought Italian ice. Like, I'm so fragile. We were all sweating so much. And it's like that almost every day. Now, I know a lot of you, like you kind of like that weather. But if you're like me and you maybe exist in it, but you don't exist in it very well. This pep talk is for you. When you are hot, when it's so hot outside, when your AC is broken or you don't have it at all. And it's just like hotter than in summers past. It is so easy to get cranky.

It's so easy for kids to get cranky. It makes regular things like going to the grocery store feel like such a nightmare because it's just so dang hot. Like you can wear a person out. And then not everyone is wired that way of course, but for those of you who are I am that way too. I think it's good to remember one thing.

It can very quickly if we don't think about it. But if you bring a little bit of intentionality into your very hot day, keep in mind that you can stay steady.

You can stay steady on the inside even when you're blazing hot on the outside. You getting flustered and easily annoyed and kind of whiny like I did. It does not have to be an automatic response to heat. And I would say the same as true of your kids. If they are whiny and frustrated and grumpy and you know it's because they're just like so hot and there's no relief like be compassionate to that.

“You know you understand you feel that too. You know that is not always fun to be super hot. I think that perspective it allows you to be patient with cranky hot kids.”

You can do practical things like keep a mister in your van to spray in your kid when they just like need relief. It'll maybe make them laugh too.

You can put ice water and water bottles and sippy cups before you leave so that like water breaks are more of a relief. But really, this simplest and maybe most effective thing is to like almost step outside of what your body wants to instinctively do, which is emotionally react to a physical challenge to that physical discomfort. I think this is something that we can learn at all kinds of scenarios, not just hot weather, like it's good practice to learn how to stay emotionally neutral and more challenging circumstances.

“That's why the lazy genius brand of compassionate time management is not about being great. It's about being integrated and whole no matter how your plan goes.”

It's like staying above the fray of the circumstances and choosing internal calm over calm in your schedule. Honestly practicing that in hot weather, it like helps you do both things. I hate being hot. It can make me so cranky if I did not already communicate that properly.

But if I stop for a second and I think listen, I'm just hot. This is neutral. I don't have to let this discomfort make me unkind. It really helps.

Like a lot. It helps me be compassionate to my kids who frankly are much better at this than I am anyway.

“So when you or someone that you're with suddenly-minded, so don't dismiss it or tell them to buck up, like say or think, "I know it is. It is so hot."”

Let's look for a way to cool down just a little. And isn't it nice that being hot doesn't have to make us cranky if we don't let it? Sometimes we let it, that maybe this time we can figure out how to still have fun. So like in the heat, I am a fragile flower known as such to many my friends. So if you are like me, I want you to give yourself a little pep talk. I do it all the time in the summer and it actually helps. Your physical discomfort does not have to change your emotional stability. And that is a mini pep talk for when it is just so a bang hot outside.

If this episode was helpful to you or if you've been looking for a way to support the show, please share this episode with someone you know, or you can leave a condreview on Apple Podcasts. Every single mention and share, it makes a difference if thank you so much. This podcast is part of the Odyssey family and the office lady's network. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, an executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey, special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. If you'd like a podcast recap every other week, be sure to sign up for the latest lazy listens email. It goes out every other Friday, and you can get that at the lazyginesscollective.com/lissons.

Thanks y'all for listening and until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra, I'll see you next week. [Music]