#110: Grocery Shopping Secrets: What You Didn't Know About Dairy and Eggs

In this episode, we continue our book club breakdown of Grocery Shopping Secrets by Carol Ann Kates, focusing on the chapters about dairy and eggs. From how to properly freeze milk and cream to understanding egg labels at the grocery store, this chapter is full of useful, often surprising, information.

We discuss why some butters have more flavor and how gelato compares to ice cream. We also cover how dairy fat content affects taste and texture, and share practical tips for storing both dairy and eggs to preserve freshness and quality.

If you want to understand the food in your fridge better, this episode is for you!

Mentions:

Souper Cubes Freezer Trays
Unexpected Cheddar from Trader Joe’s
Grocery Shopping Secrets by Carol Ann Kates

Roni's California Burrito Recipe

Riley's Chicken Pizza Crust Recipe 

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Grocery Secrets #3

[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. 

Roni: Hello and welcome to the Plan to Eat podcast. Today we are continuing our book, book club Breakdown. I dunno why I struggle to say the word book. Not starting off good. Okay. Book club, breakdown of grocery shopping secrets. Uh, today we're talking about selecting fresh dairy, cheese, and eggs.

Riley: I'm really excited about this chapter, but all I can think about is this home video of me as a kid, where my grandpa is like, what are you doing? And my response is, I'm reading a book, a book, and just you struggling through saying The word book made me think about Riley being tiny and having this really country accent saying, I'm reading a book,

Roni: Doing the [00:01:00] book, A book club, club Breakdown.

Riley: You can't even say it. You can't even say that

Roni: can't even say it with an accent. Ugh. All right, well, let's hope I can say other words today.

Riley: you got this.

Roni: All right, so let's start. We'll just hop on in here. Start with, how to select and store dairy products. What kind of interesting tidbits did you learn from this chapter? Riley.

Riley: Well, one of the things that I found really interesting is, um, that milk cream and half and half can be frozen,

Roni: Oh

Riley: but they are gonna be not the same as they were before. I have frozen then before, but then I kind of went past the, like, time for when I should have used it, and so I just threw it away. So I never actually thawed it out to see what it would be like.

But she, she suggests that if you freeze them, you should use them for baking or cooking, but not like in your coffee

Roni: Mm-hmm.

Riley: in a bowl of cereal. Um, so I thought that was really interesting [00:02:00] because I have never frozen dairy like that. Like I said, I tried but then never actually used it. Just, I think it'd be my preference to not use frozen dairy, but it is possible.

Roni: Right. So related to that, one of the things, one of the recommendations that she has for freezing those dairy products is to use ice cube trays. Um, so then you're, then you're like freezing 'em in small portions and she says, she says you could freeze 'em in ice cube trays, and then once they're frozen, pop 'em out and then you can put 'em all into a freezer bag, and then store them like that, and then you could portion them out.

I think at each ice cube tray is usually like one ounce. Is that right?

Riley: I'm actually not sure, but I think you can get a variety of them. So you could buy them with a specific ounce or a specific amount for each one, and then that would be really helpful as you go to use 'em. And I would imagine that. Like you could use a reg, like a plastic ice tray or a silicone one.

Silicone might be easier to like freeze 'em, pop 'em out, and then put 'em in a bag altogether. So then, you know Exactly. You could label it, Hey, this is, [00:03:00] each one of these blocks is 1.5 ounces of milk.

Roni: Yeah, there's a brand called Super Cubes and the soup, the super is not spelled, it's like s, it's like soup, S-O-U-P-E-R cubes and their silicone freezer trays. And they do a bunch of different sizes. So they do like a one cup size or a two cup size. So that could be really helpful for freezing dairy products if that's something that you wanna do, because then you would know, oh, I have half a cup in this one block.

Riley: Yeah, and that'd be really helpful for using it in recipes, which is probably how you're gonna use that anyway.

Roni: Right, exactly. Yeah. I think that the stuff about, milk and cream. It's pretty interesting actually. The, the different fat percentages was something that I just was unaware of. So I'll just give everybody a little breakdown here. Whole milk has, uh, on average three point a half percent milk fat.

And these, this is in the United States, so I'm not sure if this is different in other parts of the world. 2% milk is [00:04:00] what it says. 2% milk fat. Uh, 1% milk what it is. And then non-fat milk contains less than a one half percent of milk fat, cream. There's a bunch of different kinds of cream, which I feel, I mean, I see different types of cream at the grocery store, but I didn't know that there was different reasons to choose different ones, right?

So light cream, which is also known as table cream, normally contains 20% fat light. Whipping cream contains 30 to 36%. Then heavy cream, uh, also called whipping cream, is 36 to 40%,

Riley: I one time tried to whip light cream, and it did not, it was not as successful. It did whip, but then it kinda like fell apart. You know how if you leave it, it'll um, kinda like go liquid. And it went liquid really fast, and I was so confused about why it happened, but I believe it was because I used light cream instead of heavy cream.

And so it just could, it just, the fat content was just low [00:05:00] enough that it just didn't work, the right way. There could have been other factors at play, but I, you know, I feel like it, you're gonna choose this based on what you're using it for, right? Like a lot of people put heavy cream in their coffee.

But if that's, if that's a little much for you, then you could choose a lighter cream or a half and half.

Roni: Yeah, so, and then half and half is a difference, only contains 12% of milk fat. And then there's non-fat half and half, which was, doesn't contain fat at all. And instead uses corn syrup and thickeners to make it not just milk. Which I, there was one time I, we usually buy the, I think it's the Landolakes brand of half and half.

And the, I think the only difference on the packaging, obviously one says fat free, but I just wasn't paying attention at the grocery store. I think the fat-free one is like a reddish color in the box and the, and the regular one is like a purpleish color on the box or something. I dunno. They're very similar looking.

And yeah, one time I bought the non-free half and half and we had used like half of the container until [00:06:00] I finally realized like, oh, this is the non-fat one. Like I'm kind of grossed out by it for some reason. Because it's just like sugar, you know? They basically just add sugar to it. And I was like, that's kind of the opposite of what we've come for.

Riley: I, I think it also just does not taste as good.

Roni: Yeah, I

Riley: Um, I, I primarily use half and half for coffee, occasionally for cooking. But I, I find it just doesn't taste as good in my coffee. But I'm a creature of habit, so I get the same things all the time.

Roni: Yeah. one thing that I thought was interesting, I'm gonna move on to butter. You okay if we move on to butter? Yeah.

Riley: I, I am, but I definitely wanna come back to Clotted Cream.

Roni: Oh, well then come back to Clouded Cream.

Riley: Well, I interviewed my nephew who is married to my niece, and he's from England. And I asked him, because I've never consumed clotted cream, and the name unfortunately does not make it sound very appealing to me. And so I just called him and I was like, Hey, talk to me about Clotted Cream.

And he, he was like, why? And I filled him in. I told him it was for our podcast. And because I needed [00:07:00] an inside scoop, you know, he's from England, like, I need to know the inside scoop. Like, what is this? When do you eat it? Do you like it? Or is this just like, you know, got some lore, you know, like, oh, we all eat this, but they don't.

And he said he loves it and he prefers it to whipped cream. Like he thinks that it's much better than whipped cream on because they, he said he loves it. He would eat it with raspberry jam, with a scone. And he does, he thinks it's way better. And so I said, talk to me about it. Like what's the texture like?

Is it sweetened? And he said, it's not sweet. It would be like if you made whipped cream with no sweetener to it. So it's, it's, you know, like fluffy dairy, but it's really thick, like mascarponi cheese.

Roni: Ah, I, I feel like I've, I feel like, like I've actually had it before. I think the last time that we were in England, we went and had like a afternoon tea somewhere and yeah,

Riley: And that's when you would be served it.

Roni: Yeah, I think we had scones, I think we had almost that exact same thing, like a s scone with a jam, and then there was clotted cream as well.

Riley: He said it's great. It's like the [00:08:00] best.

Roni: I thought it was interesting that the way that they make it is by baking the heavy cream, like that's

Riley: like to hear.

Roni: Like you said, that's almost like a cheese, like that's kind of how you make cheese is you heat up the milk. Right?

Riley: Would you like to have me run you through a recipe?

Roni: Yeah. Let's do it.

Riley: Okay. Like I did a deep dive on clotted cream. It was the thing I was the most unfamiliar with. So I thought, okay, this is where I'm gonna go. And also I had, you know, I had an inside man here, you know? Okay, so you'll take two pints, or sorry, sorry, two cups of heavy cream.

Um, ideally with 36 to 40% fat, um, you'll preheat your oven to 180 and you'll pour the cream into a shallow oven, safe dish. It should be like one to two inches of cream at the bottom, put in the oven uncovered for 12 hours. Overnight also is an option. And then after that 12 hours, you'll see a thick yellow layer on top, and that's the cream.

So once it's cooled, you can cover it, refrigerated eight hours. That eight hours helps it to finish setting, and then you'll scoop off the top [00:09:00] layer and that's the clotted cream. Uh, there is liquid left over. And it's like whey like, so can use that for cooking

Roni: Yeah. So wait, how, how, what? What's the temperature on the oven?

Riley: 180?

Roni: 180. Okay. Yeah. So you're almost like making yogurt, except yogurt you use, you would need some sort of culture in it, right? And you would use regular milk, but it's, I mean, without, except for the culture, you're pretty much making yogurt.

Riley: Yeah, so this is kind of, again, I think the name makes it feel like it's not appetizing

Roni: absolutely. It

Riley: in the, like, is the nicest possible way I can say that. But what happens is like the, like the fat, like bubbles up to the top and those are the clots, the clots of cream. So that's where it gets its name from. So like in that process it's gonna kind of bubble up.

So it's gonna have a bit of a whipped cream like vibe if food can have a vibe. I know that's kind of a dumb way of describing it, but it, it'll bubble [00:10:00] up. It'll kind of be these like blobby, like cream. I, I dunno.

Roni: Yeah, the word clotted. The word clotted is like too close to curdled for me, you know, as far as like the describer word for it, but maybe it sounds better if we say it in a British accent.

Riley: Yeah. You wanna try that for us?

Roni: Clotted cream.

Riley: You're done. You're

Roni: Okay. Done. I'm cut off. I'm cut off for the day. That was really, I, I sound okay. Nevermind. I'm not gonna say what that sounded like.

Riley: Anyway, I just thought it was really interesting and I actually might try to make it, I might, yeah, I might, I might give it a try.

Roni: Give it a try. Sounds

Riley: I mean, I'm a big fan of like a scone with some whipped cream, like a hot scone. Um, and so like there, I mean, I don't know, like he's gonna say it's way better that, that it's way better.

So, I mean, I might try it.

Roni: I love whipped cream. I could just like, especially homemade whipped cream, I just like eat it by itself, you know? Or like right now with all the fresh berries and stuff, I'm just like, oh, I have a bunch of blueberries. I think I need to eat it with some whipped cream.[00:11:00]

Riley: Yes. You, you definitely do. I, I really like a coffee. Like if I'm gonna go get a special coffee, I do like a latte just with whipped cream on it. Um, I, I used to work at a coffee shop and there was a lady who came in every single day and that is what she ordered. And I never was like, I never got it. I never thought, oh, this is great.

But I did it one time because I don't like to add a bunch of sweetener to my coffee. Like I do like coffee, but I thought, oh, I'm gonna get a treat today. Let's see what it's like with the whipped cream. And there's a Fort Collins bakery, ginger and baker, and they make the homemade whipped cream. And so like, if you get a latte there and get whipped cream on it, it's like so good.

'cause it's homemade. It's not just like from the can. Um, which definitely is a, definitely a different consistency.

Roni: Well, I think this is why the new, like cold foam is a trend, is because people, people like to have a little bit of like creamy texture on top of their drinks, but the cold foam is like, I think Starbucks was probably the one who pioneered it. I could be [00:12:00] wrong with that, but I've seen it now at so many other places and, but it's in cold drinks, so it's, but it's like adding a little bit of that creamy texture to a cold drink

Riley: Mm-hmm. 

Roni: anyways.

Riley: co all my, like, you know, coffee people out there thinking, oh, that's insane. And like, I, I mean, I do like my coffee to be real good and real plain and, you know, with a pretty little heart on top, but, but it's really

Roni: I don't know, man. Just like some, like a shot of espresso with some whipped cream on top. Sounds delicious.

Riley: Yeah. I mean, maybe we should do that.

Roni: I Maybe we need to do that. Maybe we need to try it with clotted cream.

Riley: Uh, yeah. Okay. So I did, I, I didn't do a ton of research on how else it's used, but I did come across it like, I think you could put it in your t

Roni: Oh, sure. Yeah, I bet. Yeah,

Riley: I just like ski, skimmed that as I was kind of going down my rabbit hole.

Roni: yeah, I would guess that, that, that would be how you would use it. Is that, because I know that in England, they'd like to have [00:13:00] cream on their tea, right? They have milk, big milky tea or whatever they call it, and so I would guess you would just have one pot of cream on the table that you could use interchangeably between your scone or your crumpet and your tea.

Riley: Let's, let's, let's find out. Oh, it's not typically added.

Roni: Oh, okay. Well, my assumptions were wrong.

Riley: Yeah, it served alongside SCEs with jam and tea, but there would also be cream for your tea.

Roni: Okay. Or just milk, because do they just put milk in their tea? We probably have British listeners right now who are like, oh my gosh.

Riley: Google says yes in England, the vast majority of people drink tea with milk, not cream.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: Okay, so cream tea is considered a specific type, type of tea service that includes scones with clotted cream and jam. But that is separate from like an everyday cup of tea.

Roni: Oh, okay.

Riley: so next week when we're working together we'll go to Ginger and baker and we'll grab that.

Uh, probably won't have the clotted cream made by then, but maybe.

Roni: Maybe that would [00:14:00] be really funny. We just like bring in a little Tupperware of our own cream. Okay, let's move on to butter.

Riley: Yeah. Okay. I love butter.

Roni: Okay, so I don't have a ton to say about butter. I just thought that it was interesting that we all know there's salted butter and unsalted butter and.

The interesting part about unsalted butter is that salt acts as a preservative. So technically unsalted butter is more perishable than salted butter, which I thought was interesting. That's just not, I know that salt's a preservative, but I never would've put those puzzle pieces together.

Riley: Sure. I highlighted that exact thing because I thought it was fascinating. I, I pretty much only ever buy salted butter.

Roni: Uh, yeah. I, I don't Why, why waste my time? That's, I mean, I know that there's lots of reasons to buy unsalted butter, people who are really into baking and being very precise about it. You definitely want unsalted butter, but I only buy salted butter 'cause I think it tastes better. So there

Riley: You and I though, okay. Hold on.[00:15:00]

Roni: we're salty girls.

Riley: well, salty. Yes. Um, there's that, I'm, I'm specifically thinking now about another one of my family members who's gonna laugh because Yeah. Salty girl, for sure. Okay. But what I was gonna say, is it you and I love the great British Baking Show, like the Bake Off. Okay.

But we're not really bakers. Do you consider yourself a baker?

Roni: No, not really. I feel like I go through, I usually have like one month every quarter, maybe I'm gonna say it happens like three or four times a year that I like, get the itch to do some baking. It doesn't last for very long though. It might be like a week and I've made like a batch of cookies and a cake or something.

You know? It, it just, it's not, it's not what I feel called to do most of the time in the kitchen, you know,

Riley: That's hilarious. Yeah. I am just not, I'm not a baker. I'm not drawn to baking and so I think that if we did, [00:16:00] you and I would use unsalted butter way more often, but when I bake, because I don't bake very often, I use salted butter because, okay. Again, now we've got bakers listening to us and they're like, girls, stop it.

Roni: Oh, for

Riley: Stop. Just stop.

Roni: But there's

Riley: When you give me, oh, sorry.

Roni: what you bake when I give you what?

Riley: I was gonna say, I bake. When you give me all those strawberries from your yard, because we cannot consume them fast enough and they be, it becomes strawberry scones every time. My husband could eat half the pan of those the moment they come out of the oven.

Roni: Okay. Well, I have two things to say related to that. The first one is that, that's part of the reason that I don't bake at home, is because I love a fresh baked treat, and I can't hold myself back, you know? And so it's like, then I, I don't even let myself get to enjoy it for multiple days, because if I have scones, I've eaten four of 'em in the first two hours that they're outta the oven or like cookies, or the same way.

I just have such a hard time having any sort of [00:17:00] self-control. But my second What? Okay.

Riley: you do love a good tree for breakfast.

Roni: Oh man. A treat for breakfast is the best. Yeah. And that's always one I want is I'm like, well, I definitely wanna have a strawberry scone with my coffee. Duh. Okay. The other comment that I have to make is related to the strawberries actually.

So we're just starting to get a bunch of strawberries in our strawberry patch. Okay. Actually, I need to back up. So after we talked on the last podcast about how to like preserve your fresh fruit and freezing things, and we talked about not freezing your fruit in like a bag altogether. So it's a one pound block.

Well, I pulled out our strawberries from last year, like we still had like two bags of strawberries from last year. And I was like, okay, we need to start eating these in some smoothies because it's getting ready to be strawberry season again. And I was a dumb dumb last year and they're, they were literally just frozen and these humongous chunks and I was like smashing them on the counter. I was like, I need to [00:18:00] like find an ice pick or something and try to break these apart. It was a hot mess and I was like, I literally just talked about this on the podcast with Riley like 30 minutes ago, and here I am pounding them on the counter. It was embarrassing. So I have, I, I just picked a bunch of strawberries yesterday and I washed them and I put them on a sheet pan, and now today I'm gonna, you know, put them into a bag so that they're not a block.

So

Riley: Awesome.

Roni: I'm doing the right thing this time.

Riley: Good job. I'm really proud of you. Would you also attempt to do one batch with that like syrup freezing method?

Roni: that's a great idea. I'll, I will try the, yeah. The syrup method.

Riley: I mean, you just have so many that I feel like one, one batch to freeze that way would be really interesting to get feedback on.

Roni: Yeah. Well, uh, so. I wonder if this would be a good way to serve 'em. So when I worked at, Bre, I worked at a breakfast restaurant for a really long time, and we would have, every week we would've a different pancake special. And like one of my favorite ones would happen in the [00:19:00] early summer and it would be, there was like no good way to call it, like it, they were strawberry pancakes, but they were, what's called macerated strawberries.

So they're sliced strawberries and then they're in like a simple syrup. And so I wonder if I could, after I would thaw them, if I could use them in that sort of a way as like a topping on like a pancake or a waffle or if they would just be too gummy at that point. Oh, maybe I'll test it out. I'll let you know.

Riley: Well, my, my immediate thought would be to, to heat them that you got a hot pancake, hot strawberry sauce, and, and if you did, you could still chop 'em and then, but then heat 'em, and then it might give it a little bit more of like a strawberry compote kind of situation. But then it'd be warm to go on top of the pancakes.

Roni: Yeah. That's probably the best way to do it. Yeah.

Riley: Okay, I'm coming over. Okay.

Roni: Okay. Okay. You bring your clotted cream. I'll make the strawberry pancakes. We got this. Okay. All right, let's move on. 

Riley: and we thought this was gonna be short.

Roni: and we thought this was gonna be a short episode. Okay. Okay. So one thing that I found [00:20:00] interesting, so the, the next couple ones we move through yogurt and ghee and kefi and ice cream. And when we get to gelato, what I thought was so interesting, okay, so ice cream is made with cream gelato is actually made with milk.

And it contains less fat. So ice cream typically contains 14 to 25% milk fat gelato contains only four to 9% milk fat, which I thought was so interesting because I always thought that gelato was the, had more fat content compared to ice cream because it's so creamy and dense. But I did a little research on it and, well she does, I think she does say in here that there's, there's just less air in gelato.

And so I looked up how you do that and it's just churned at a slower speed for longer, which is what thickens it up and gives it that density, compared to ice cream, which I guess is just, it's churned faster, so there's a little more air in there. But that's how you get the, [00:21:00] the difference between the milk and the cream is the milk has to be churned for slower and a lot longer.

I just thought that was fascinating. 'cause I always thought gelato was the like, ooh, that's like the heavy hitter of the ice cream world.

Riley: Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm curious, I'm thinking about how, like how I make homemade ice cream, because I often will whip. Together the ingredients for my ice cream and that adds air and then you churn it and that adds air. So I'm wondering how they put together the base. I think, you know, like gelato machines are probably also designed to add less air, slower, all, all those things we just talked about.

But I'm curious what they do with their base ingredients, to mix them. I wonder if they like let it sit and all the air kind of comes out of it,

or like tap tapping it even to let the air come outta the top. I don't know.

Roni: I, when I, when I did my general research on it, I didn't look up a specific gelato recipe, but they do still make a custard 

Riley: Oh yeah. 

Roni: so not every, not every ice cream is made with a custard before it's turned into [00:22:00] ice cream, but gelato is 

Riley: Hmm. 

I'm gonna look up a recipe. I love homemade ice cream.

Roni: It's seriously the best.

Riley: note, staple of my childhood. Hot summer days, cold, homemade ice cream

Roni: Yeah. So good.

Riley: Okay. Three cups of milk, preferably whole milk. Uh, five egg yolks and three fourths of a cup of granulated sugar. In a sauce pan, you're gonna heat it till it bubbles, pour it into a stand mixer, 

Roni: So there's no churning, no real churning like you would

Riley: Well, that's, that's all the prep you do before you put it into the ice cream maker.

Roni: Oh, okay. Okay.

Riley: It says even letting it chill overnight.

Roni: Oh, okay. Well, yeah. So that would release more air, I think so. Very interesting.

Riley: Everyone I know who's been to Italy in the last two years has come back and said that the highlight of their trip was eating gelato every single day, 

Roni: Oh, 

Riley: multiple times a day.

Roni: Oh, absolutely. There was this, when I went to Italy, there was this place in Florence. I think we went there like three times in one day. It was so [00:23:00] good.

Riley: I have no judgment because every time we go to Hawaii. On the last day, my husband is like, let's have shave ice multiple times today. I have to get it in as many times as I can because we won't come back for years.

so then we eat a lot of shave ice. It really does it. We get it, it gets us ready to, to go back a 

Roni: yeah. 

Riley: we we're really stocked up.

Next up, she talks about selecting dairy. One of the things that I found really interesting in this section, and again, I mean I'm talking about my childhood a lot today, but, if you choose a milk creamer, half and half, that comes in an opaque container, it's better than if you buy one.

That's clear. Because if it's exposed to light milk cream and half and half, lose vitamin A and riboflavin, which I thought was really interesting when I was a kid, we went and toured like a milk factory, like a milk plant. Like the milk went there and then it became a lot of things. It became just milk it milk,

Roni: Milk.

Riley: it [00:24:00] became milk and like ice cream sandwiches and any milk product you can think of this dairy or this, um, plant, like manufactured, all these things.

And so this was something that they talked about quite a bit. Their milk containers were like a light yellow, like. And it was a big part of the tour that I remember that like, they made a big deal. Like the reason why they are like, not like a, even like a white opaque milk container. They were a yellow and like a, like, it was not opaque.

It was more like you couldn't see through it. And the reason why they chosen that was because it preserved the milk, so it lasted longer. So it was like a big deal for them that they made it that way.

Roni: it's, this is actually really interesting because if you get milk delivered to your house from a local dairy, they always come in glass containers. And so they're not actually following this guideline. And I understand that there's a benefit to the glass containers that they're reusable. it's just interesting that, that the, that the dairy is not trying to do [00:25:00] something to make it so that it doesn't lose out on these antioxidants.

Riley: And I also find that it goes, bad more quickly

Roni: Mm. 

Riley: and I'm not sure if that is just a processing thing. Because it is fresher, because we got it from three miles away. Instead of it going, you know, all those being sent to a plant where it gets kinda like this, like where it gets packaged into another place, like the milk all gets, you know, commuted somewhere, commuted, you know, the milk gets taken to a bigger place where then it gets like, you know, mass, what is the word that I'm trying to come up?

Mass process, mass distributed to places. But yeah, that, it is interesting 'cause I, I had that thought too that, oh, when I go to the local dairy, it's always glass bottles clear, clear glass bottles.

So that was interesting. And you might not know that, but if you, I, I thought it was interesting and worth mentioning.

I, I like one of those things. You know, you go on those tours and I remember two things about that tour. One that we, they talked a lot about the packaging and two, we got a free ice cream sandwich when we left. Like, that's all I.

Roni: That would definitely be the part I would 

Riley: Next up, selecting butter based on [00:26:00] its fat content. I thought this was interesting. If you want really delicious butter, the higher the fat content, the better the flavor will be. Um, European butters have an 82% butter fat. That's a lot.

Roni: Yeah,

Riley: It's typically what I buy. I usually buy European butter. Uh, I think the flavor is great, but it probably also has to do with that fat content.

Roni: totally. I agree.

Riley: Lastly, you big date checker at your house. Who in your relationship is the date checker?

Roni: Honestly, neither

Riley: Neither.

Roni: very, neither of us are very good at checking dates. I'm probably the date Checker Moore, but my husband, I. I think is just like a taste checker, you know? Like he would like take a sip of milk and then be like, oh, that's bad. So, but, but also, yeah, neither one of us are much, much on the date checking side of things, honestly. So he's the only one who drinks half and half in his coffee. And so sometimes it will take us a little longer to go through half and half. And so once it [00:27:00] starts getting low, that'll be the point where I start, you know, like sniff testing it.

And I, but I don't even really look at the dates. 'cause I, I just kind of do it more by the, the, the sense of it, you know.

Riley: Yeah. Yeah, that would be, uh, my spouse is the date checker. Oh man. Just so serious about those dates. He also will sniff, he does not taste, he sniffs and if it sn, if it smells bad, he's out. But he'll open a brand new container of milk and sniff it.

And I'm like, dude, I just, I just bought that. And he's like, doesn't matter, I've gotta check it. And if he accidentally consumes milk, that is bad. Uh, it is even like slightly bad. Like I, I'm not talking like it's real bad. And we all knew it. Like, I'm talking like, it's like on its way off.

Kind of like one day passed, he's out, he's out.

It's, it's, it's bad.

Roni: Well see. The hard part with me for the sniff check in the container is that sometimes, particularly if something's been opened and you've poured stuff out of it multiple times, there's like a layer of, [00:28:00] of liquid, you know, like kind of around the top that I feel like that can get kind of gross smelling.

But the actual stuff in the container is fine. So sometimes sniff checking is hard because the, the actual product might be good. It's just like the goobers around the top of the,

Riley: Yeah, so pouring it into a glass would probably help.

Roni: Yeah. All right. Should we move on to cheese?

Riley: Let's move on to cheese, love, cheese.

Roni: Okay. So cheese has four main ingredients. This is just the high level overview for everybody. Milk from either cows, goats or sheep salt cultures and enzymes.

And there are six basic types of cheese. There are fresh cheeses, which are things like chev, feta, mozzarella, burrata. Then there's soft ripened cheese like bri, bri, bri, bri, camon, bur, uh, soft ripened goat cheese. And. Washed rind cheese. I had to make sure I said that one correctly. Um, and then there's semi-soft and semi-hard cheeses, which is like American cheese, o [00:29:00] asiago, cheddar, guta, and then hard cheeses, manchego, Parmesan, blue cheeses such as Gorgon, Zola, stilton, rocker, and those are types of cheeses that we have.

Riley: So I was curious and uneducated in the difference between chevra and goat cheese because.

Roni: Okay.

Riley: I thought they were both goat cheese and they are, the difference is that goat refers goat cheese refers to any cheese made with goat milk, but chevra is fresh soft goat cheese associated with a French style.

Roni: Mm-hmm.

Riley: So I, I mean, I just thought it was interesting because I love I goat cheese omelet, you know, where, you know, we're from.

I just thought it was interesting because I thought why are we referring to two different things when we say those words? Because in this list, fresh cheese chevra was listed, but in soft ripened cheese is where goat cheese is listed. And so I was just curious like what is the actual difference here?

It's not much, it's just fresh soft goat cheese.

Roni: Interesting. Yeah.

Riley: Yeah.[00:30:00]

Roni: Is that how you say it? Chevra? I've always said

it as 

Riley: I, well I did Google it and it said, and it said the correct, the correct pronunciation was chevra. I.

Roni: Oh, okay. I, when I worked at the restaurant, our chef, our chef at the restaurant called it Chev

Riley: Maybe that was an like a, I'm gonna play it for you.

Chevra.

Roni: I did hear that. Yeah.

Riley: Chevra?

Roni: Chra,

Riley: I do, I double checked myself because I didn't wanna, we're both on google.com, so,

Roni: Well mine is a YouTube channel. Mine one's a YouTube channel of a, of a French guy saying it ch

Riley: Well, my friend accent

Roni: Yeah. Very sorry. Any French listeners?

Riley: Here we go again. We're offending everyone today. Bakers the English, the French?

Okay. Roni, what I would like to know from you is what are your favorite types of cheeses?

Roni: Honestly, I [00:31:00] really like extra sharp cheddar cheese. Uh, extra sharp. I like it to have a little bit of a tang. I really like, I really like, um, mascarpone cottage cheese, creme fresh. Yeah, I guess she doesn't have creme fresh in here, but I guess it's kinda like queso, fresco, whatever. I would say some.

Those are some of my favorite. Do like a whi, a whipped mascarpone cheese. Oh gosh. So good. That was something that they used to do on pancakes at the restaurant too, was like a whipped mascarpone as a topping. I could eat that, like whipped cream. That's so good. do you

Riley: yeah. No, I was just curious because, I just like cheese, but I every year for Christmas, we do a charcuterie board for, for our meal that day. And so we do try to get. You know, we try to branch out and try to find exciting cheeses, interesting cheeses, but we do always kind of go back to our favorites.

Smoked gouda is a favorite [00:32:00] and there's a Dill Havarti, so it's

Roni: Oh yeah.

Riley: soft, creamy cheese with dill in it. And, you know, I love pickles, I love dill flavor, I love dill. Anything, uh, and this, this dill havarti cheese is so good.

Roni: I've had that before. It is really good. Yeah. You're making me think that I like a lot more cheeses than I realized. Actually. Just saying those things

Riley: I also like Parmesan, but I definitely have like my old favorites.

Roni: Actually, I have a really funny cheese story to tell you.

Riley: Okay, let's hear it.

Roni: So when we went to Europe in, uh, I think it was the time we went in 2023, no, it was the first time we went in 2018. We went to Paris. We flew into Paris. We spent like three days in Paris. We stayed in this Airbnb that was no joke, like an eight by 10 room. It was like a, it was like a closet that they turned into an Airbnb. It was like a loft where the bed was, and then down below was [00:33:00] where there was like a little bathroom and then a kitchenette. And so I think it was like the first night we were there, we were like, okay, we're in Paris. We wanna like experience the like baguette and cheese charcuterie board situation for our dinner.

So we went down to the local market and we bought like five different types of cheeses. We were like, we're gonna try, we, I mean, we don't even know what these names are or what they say. We're just gonna like buy these cheese. Well, one of 'em was a Limburger cheese, which if you've never had before, is in the stinky cheese category, like extremely stinky cheese.

So we were at this Airbnb for three days. We did that on the first

Riley: oh, no.

Roni: The day that we were getting ready to leave, we were like, oh my gosh, what died in here In the time that we've been living here? Like, we were like, what is going on? We were like opening the window and being like, oh my gosh, it smells like garbage in here.

It smells so bad. Like, we need to take the trash out. Or like, maybe they didn't clean out the refrigerator very [00:34:00] well, you know, when before the, between the last people and us, oh my gosh, it just wreaks in here. And it was the Limburger cheese we had just, you know, like we didn't have like Ziploc bags to put it in.

We had just like rewrapped it in the packaging that it came in and it stank so bad and made the entire apartment smell literally like garbage, like rotting garbage.

Riley: I can only imagine what those people thought when they went in there

to clean it out. 

Roni: They were probably like, oh, they really like cheese.

Riley: Yeah, they left their cheese here.

Roni: no, we did throw the cheese away. That was how we found out that it was the cheese is like, we put the, we put all the stuff in the trash to like clean it up before we left, and then we were like, oh, it was definitely that cheese.

Riley: Oh man.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: Uh, if there's a cheese, I do not prefer. It is definitely the, the stinky varieties. Yeah. I avoid this.

Roni: Well be careful about the burger.

Riley: have you ever had un have you ever had Trader Joe's unexpected cheddar?

Roni: No.

Riley: I think you would like it. It [00:35:00] is, uh, I pulled up their description. It's an aged cheddar. Um, but it is like tangy.

Kind of crumbly. Kind of

Roni: Mm mm-hmm.

Riley: Um, it's good. 

Roni: It sounds super, it sounds right up my

Riley: it is. Tastes like cheddar with hints of Parmesan. That's what it says on the container. Yeah,

Roni: nice.

Riley: it's good. 

Roni: I wanted to say that something that relates back to the last book that we read,

Riley: Mm-hmm.

Roni: uh, which was in Salt fat, acid Heat, towards the end, she talked about how sometimes serving food at room temperature is actually the way to have the best flavor. And you actually referenced your father's charcuterie board skills and how he will leave the cheese out forever before you guys eat it.

Riley: Yes,

Roni: And it says here, under serving cheese, that serving cheese at room temperature helps loosen its fat and give it a better texture and flavor. She says, don't let it sit out for four hours, but you know, maybe let us sit out for like 30 minutes before you serve it.

Riley: yes. I, I thought the same thing and I highlighted it and was gonna mention it and say the [00:36:00] same thing because it's just getting like really reconfirmed that like we were wrong and he is right and the flavor is better. Yeah. You wanna move on to eggs?

Roni: Let's move on to eggs. Actually, I have a lot to say about eggs.

Riley: Oh, let's go.

Roni: All right. So one thing that I thought was interesting, so she talks about the expiration date on eggs, which is that there's a USDA pack date on eggs and the date is a three digit code, which represents the consecutive day of the year.

So January 1st is 0 0 1, and December 31st would be 365. So, like, you know, you only really know what day your eggs were packaged on, if you know what number day of the year it's.

Riley: No, because February 1st Oh, oh, you're exactly right. I misread this. Yeah. January 31st is 0 3 1. February 1st is 0 3 2. Wow. Yeah. I [00:37:00] misread this. Yeah.

Roni: so my la the planner that I had last year for 2024 had a little thing on every day telling you like what day it was outta 365. And my planner this year doesn't have that. But I was like, dang, last year I would've been way more prepared for this information. 

Riley: Totally

lost. That is really interesting. I think I probably just like misread that part. Like I saw 0 3 1. I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was thinking that that zero would become the month number. And just like read it too quickly. Yeah.

Roni: That was exactly what I, I got, I actually read this a couple different times 'cause I got really confused when I read that February 1st is 0 3 2 'cause it's 32nd day of the year. And I had to be like, wait, what?

Riley: Yeah. Yeah. She did explain it well once I read it correctly.

Roni: did.

Yes. Yeah. 

Riley: Did I found that the most interesting thing about eggs to me was the sizing.

Roni: Yeah. The sizing is interesting.

Riley: Okay, so I read this in this book and then confirmed it. Hormones are never given [00:38:00] to laying hens.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: So I al I always thought that like the size of an egg was like potentially a negative thing, like if you got jumbo eggs, like I, so I was associating like jumbo eggs with like, like a hidden that had been given some kind of hormone to like make it grow larger eggs.

Roni: Like this is a GMO egg.

Riley: yeah. Yeah. And so it's actually you, you choose them based on your selected usage. So there's a, there's a there sizing chart on how to determine like, so jumbo eggs are 30 ounces, extra large eggs are 27 ounces, large eggs are 24. Media eggs are 21 ounces small, 18 and Peewee 15.

Roni: And that's the ounces per container, not ounce per egg. That'd be a really heavy egg.

Riley: Yeah. Right. 

Roni: So,

Riley: minimum net weight per dozen. Yes,

Roni: So I thought the part that I thought was interesting is that the sizing is determined by the weight and not by the actual size of the egg. Because you sometimes, you know, [00:39:00] you buy a carton of large eggs and I'm like, no way. There's some dinky ones in here, like these aren't large eggs, but it's based, it's because they're like a dense egg rather than just a big shelled egg.

Riley: Right. I just thought it was really interesting because I think I tended to shy away from any kind of packaging that said jumbo or extra large, because I just thought that that was probably negative. But yeah, hormones are never given to laying hens

Roni: So one thing that's interesting about eggs is that she says there's no regulatory guidance from the USDA or the FDA on the terms pasture raised, farm fresh, naturally raised animal friendly or happy hens. So those are like we talked about, I think at the very first breakdown of this book, those are just kind of like marketing terms rather than terms that actually have a certain qualification.

And honestly, when it comes to the handling of chickens in particular, it's probably foul overall, right? Is that the right word? Foul

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: for birds. Yeah. The, the terminology is vague, [00:40:00] right? Like the qualifications to give something free range or cage free, it's all, it's all kind of vague. She says that the, if you're looking for something that really qualifies eggs as being, like the tens were treated really well, is the term animal welfare approved, which is a voluntary certification.

So that means that the farmer decided that they wanted to be inspected for the animal welfare approval, and, they're confident, essentially. They're confident in the fact that they treat their animals really well. 

Riley: I also found this interesting because it is such, this is a very popular marketing term right now and for the last several years, right? Like, you go somewhere and they're like, they're cage free, they're cage free eggs. But that actually almost means nothing.

Roni: Yeah,

Riley: Um, yeah. And so, yeah, but so pasture raised or animal wear, animal welfare approved or certified humane means that they were raised in a pasture [00:41:00] where, they had 35 to 108 square feet of pasture to roam.

And so it's like a required, like that's the required amount. But the other ones, it, the living conditions vary wildly and there's no requirements. So cage free and free range kind of, they're just, they're literally only marketing terms.

Roni: So when it comes to storing your eggs at home, she says, store your eggs in the coldest part of your refrigerator, not in the door. Which I found really interesting because so many refrigerators have a spot in the door for an egg, like there's like an egg slot. So I thought that this was interesting that she's like, you don't actually wanna store them in the door 'cause you want them to be in the coldest part of the refrigerator. And when you open up your egg carton, you'll notice that the eggs are round side up and pointed side down. They do this because eggs have an air bubble on the rounded end, and so this helps keep the yolk centered in the egg and thus helps the egg stay fresher for longer. So if you pull an egg out of the carton, replace it again with the pointed [00:42:00] side down to try and keep that air bubble up at the top.

Who the heck knew that information

Riley: It is fascinating. I loved that too. That's all highlighted in my book as well. I'm glad you brought it up.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: Which, this actually kind of brings me to boiled eggs. I knew that we would talk about this and I'm excited about it. The fresher the egg, the harder to peel.

Roni: Yep.

Riley: When you boiled it, when you boiled it, don't peel an uncoiled egg. When first laid the egg has no air cells, like, just like Roni's talking about. There's no air in it. This air cell forms, it's found at the larger end of the egg between the shell and the membrane develops and increases in size the longer the egg is stored. Therefore, fresh eggs are harder to peel because that air cell is smaller, so the older egg has a larger air cell making it an ideal candidate to peel.

And if you need to determine this because you don't know the age of your eggs, you can do a float test. If it sinks, it's fresh. If it stands on its side and wobbles, it's just right for [00:43:00] hard boiling. But if it's floating on the water, it's past its prime, it's past its prime.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: If you follow us on Instagram, I, uh, used a new method for boiling eggs that I've been using pretty consistently.

You can find it, maybe we'll share it in stories after this episode goes live. But I will poke an a hole into that air cell, and I don't know if that is what helps. I don't know, but it does consistently make my eggs a lot easier to peel.

Roni: I wonder if it, like, I wonder if it expands that air cell a little bit to like get fresh air in there.

Riley: maybe. And then it would help if it, if it's a fresher egg, then it would help.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: I feel like hard boiled eggs and like peeling hard boiled eggs is such a. Even the strategies I use occasionally still don't work. Like the one that I'm using right now works the most consistently, but I find that it's super frustrating.

Roni: Oh my gosh. When you make a whole, you know, half dozen or a dozen hard-boiled eggs [00:44:00] and you get that one, that's like every little, you're like digging your fingernail into it practically to get the, the, the shell off. I just wanna throw the egg across the room.

Riley: yeah, yeah. I love it when it's pretty like

Roni: Because like when it's challenging, it just like flares something up inside of me.

That's like a bad, bad thing. A bad thing comes to life.

Riley: I just want every egg I peel to look like a perfect little like Easter egg.

Roni: Yeah. I, okay. My husband could care less what a hard boiled egg looks like, but every time that I make ramen and I make hard boil eggs to go in the ramen, it always happens. That like one turns out perfect and the other one turns out has all these dents in it and stuff.

Riley: Right.

Roni: I always take the dented one 'cause I'm like I'll suffer and have the not pretty egg, which is silly 'cause like he doesn't care at all, but

Riley: I, I agree. I like, if I make a, like a dish of boil, a tray of boiled eggs or something, I, I try to eat the gr like, not like I call 'em ugly. I want the, uh, I'll eat the ugly eggs [00:45:00] 'cause they don't taste any different. But they're ugly. Yeah.

Roni: Oh man. Okay. So you can freeze eggs if you didn't know.

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: So you can free freeze eggs with the yoke and the white together. You can also freeze the yolk and the whites separately. So if you were cooking them or using them in baking and they needed to be separated, you would wanna separate them initially.

It's interesting 'cause she says in here that you should not, freeze. Your eggs are still in the shell. You should crack them and then you should put them in some sort of container to freeze them. But I have definitely frozen eggs in the shell before. This is what it's, what we used to do for our backpacking trips is we would fill a Nalgene, which for anybody who doesn't live in Colorado, that's a water bottle.

We would fill our Nalgene, we would put like, I don't know, five or six eggs. I'm pretty sure you can fit a half a dozen eggs in an Nalgene. And then we would fill it up with, almost fill it up to the top with water and then freeze the whole thing together. And then like by the second morning of backpacking, it [00:46:00] would be thawed and, but your eggs would still be good.

So I've, so I've definitely frozen whole eggs before. I mean, she says in the, the information that I got off the internet says that the reason why you don't freeze whole eggs is because they crack. So potentially it's mostly just for like the messiness that that could cause in your freezer. I'm not really sure.

She doesn't give any other reasons why you shouldn't freeze a whole egg. And I didn't find any other reasons online either as far as like. Is there a salmonella concern or anything like that? I don't wanna go against Carolann, but I've frozen eggs in their shell before.

Riley: My immediate response to that is, or like my immediate reaction to like, would I freeze an egg in its shell? And it, it would be no, because it would be like freezing something in glass where the item's expanding. And unless you leave enough space, like unless that air is, that air pocket is big enough, then it's gonna crack the shell because, there wasn't enough space for it to expand.

Roni: right, right.

Riley: But I am, this [00:47:00] kind of, I have made, I often make a breakfast casserole where I make every bit of it, but the eggs are raw. Uh, and it goes right into the freezer that way. And I have kind of like, felt like I'm happy and fine to feed my family that I feel hesitant to feed other people because I don't know how they'll respond to frozen eggs.

You know, like, you freeze eggs? Is that weird? And I'm like, no, I'm now I am like full, full force confirmed, like, you can actually totally do this. And it's not, it's worked very well for us. Um, you just let it thaw and then put it in the oven and the whole thing bakes and it's just like a great meal prep option.

Roni: Yeah,

Riley: But I love your Nalgene trick. That's, that makes sense.

Roni: I mean, I'm not gonna say that it's the greatest idea ever, but it was something that my husband had been doing for a long time. And so yeah, it's not something that I've done in years, but we've definitely done it before and it worked just fine and on. I mean, it's nice to be able to then, you know, have some like fresh food when you're out on the trail.

So just an idea. And it [00:48:00] doesn't really weigh that much more, you know, like everybody, everybody has been like, okay, but now you have ice. And I'm like, yeah, but ice is just water. I'd be carrying a water bottle of water anyways. So it's just the eggs that, and then you off, you know, you offload that weight the second day.

It's not that big of a deal, but.

Riley: Yeah, yeah,

Roni: Alright. Should we answer just one or two dinner dilemmas before we wrap this up? Okay, cool. All right. Let's start with Pat's dinner dilemma. They say my schedule changes and I cannot follow through on my meal plan. I have purchased food to use and end up throwing it away. I think this is a pretty common dilemma.

Riley: Yeah, I would agree.

I hate when this happens to me. Oh, I hate it I think I, you know, I, I feel like, I feel like a, I feel like I say a lot of the same things for people's dilemmas, but this is why I don't always plan every night of the week, because then when something changes, we can kind of, we can pivot with one of my pantry staple meals that is [00:49:00] literally all things in the pantry or freezer.

So none of those things could go bad because they're just stored until I'm ready to use them. It allows for a random accidental, ooh, our schedule's crazy. Let's just grab takeout tonight. Or someone invites us to dinner. And, so I don't plan every night for this exact reason because it allows you to move things around.

And then also, it helps with food waste because like, you know, if, if my fresh, yummy vegetable and steak salad, oh, we're not having that tonight, all those fresh veggies are not gonna go to waste because we can just pivot and have it the next night. I've even done it where I have just made something, I planned for dinner for lunch, like on a Saturday or a Sunday.

Because I didn't want those things to go bad. And so I just moved it to like, okay, you know what? We're gonna have kind of a fancy lunch today. I'm gonna actually cook lunch today. Um, and that works pretty well. Also if you tend to do this a lot, like if every single week you are throwing things away, because your schedule got crazy, then maybe start, [00:50:00] buying frozen vegetables more often or buying hardier vegetables more often.

Like I'm thinking cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, things like that. But I'm, uh, I'm just thinking do that because then those things are something that'll last a little longer, or it's from the freezer. So maybe planning your meals around some staples that can stay in storage like I do. And it might not be your favorite way of cooking, but it is gonna reduce that.

Ultimately your food budget will go down because you're not having to buy things all the time 'cause you threw them in the trash can and eliminates food waste.

Roni: I think. I think that my first recommendation is something that I think was mentioned by, when we asked, you know, two years ago, whenever we asked our customers for their meal planning tips and how they meal plan, and I specifically remember somebody mentioning that the way that they meal plan is they plan their recipes with their most delicate vegetables, fruits, and vegetables at the beginning of the week.

So that way if things change as the week progresses, they're not [00:51:00] throwing out those things that are more likely to go bad as time goes on and they're sitting in your refrigerator. So that could be a strategy if like your Monday and Tuesday are always very stable, or, you know, whatever day of the week you start your meal plan on.

And then the rest of the week is when things tend to get crazy. Those would be the nights of the week that I would plan like a salad or, you know, something where you're gonna have, like I said, like the delicate, the more delicate vegetables, which I just think that's a nice way to describe a vegetable.

And then the other thing is that go listen to our last episode. We talk all about how to freeze all of your fruit, almost all of your fruits and vegetables. You can freeze freaking cucumbers. Grocery

Riley: Hi. This book?

Roni: Yeah, grocery shopping Secrets, has really affirmed our, our ideas around freezing food.

So I think the alternative to this as well is that instead of throwing your food away, look at ways that you can freeze it and reuse it either in the same recipe or in a different [00:52:00] recipe. But I think that, that I am starting to understand that so much more food can be frozen than I ever realized.

Riley: Yep. I'll just add one more thing to piggyback on that is, is to, if you have time to meal prep those vegetables ahead of time. So like whatever it is you're cooking, if you can cook it on the weekend, prep it so that it's ready. It sometimes helps eliminate the, like, oh, our schedule goes crazy and I don't have time to cook because it's already cooked.

You know, you don't, you can just go heat it. But then also like those things would be cooked, and ready to be eaten. So that might help too. Um, if you have a meal prep day, uh, can kind of eliminate the crazy of the week. But also, those things are cooked and ready to eaten whenever, even if it's not at dinner, because a lot of things can be eaten for breakfast and lunch that we, you know, don't normally think that they can be.

Roni: Yeah. 

Riley: Alright, I'll read. Nick from New Zealand says, my husband and I share the meal planning job, but my husband is not as familiar with what foods are in season across the year, so he'll often pick meals he likes, but where the ingredients cost a fortune because they're out of [00:53:00] season, how can we identify what meals are seasonal so we don't overspend on ingredients at the supermarket?

Such a good question.

Roni: Such a good question. I love this. Well, Nick, I'm guessing that you guys use Plan to Eat since you messaged into the Plan to Eat podcast. I would recommend using some type of categorization method in your plan to eat account to categorize your recipes as appropriate for different seasons. So whether you just have overall courses and the courses are spring, winter, summer, fall, or if it's just tags that you have on your recipes.

The tag. I, I like the idea of tags because then you get to keep them in, you know, in like a main course or a breakfast or whatever. And then you get added tags related to the season. And then you can also add tags related to other things, right? So you can have something that is winter, seasonal, that's also fast, or summer seasonal that is on the barbecue or something like that.

And so then that just gives you more identifiers of what the [00:54:00] recipe is, so you don't have to like search through the entire recipe. And then if you guys are sharing an account, that's really easy for both of you to be able to just look and see, you know, oh, these recipes. We're al, we're always g we're in summertime right now, and in New Zealand, you're in wintertime right now.

But we're, we're gonna search for all of our winter recipes only during these few months. You could also, especially on the website, you could bulk edit those recipes. So you could search for your winter recipes. You could bulk edit them and add them into your queue to make it even easier. Uh, and then just be like, okay, we put all these recipes in the queue.

We only plan from the queue right now, so that way we are on the same page.

Riley: I have nothing else to add. I just wanna say that that is one of the beautiful things about such a customizable meal planning tool like Plant to Eat. Because Nick from New Zealand, your seasons are different than ours. So there's, you don't have to go and change anything that is preset. Uh, we allow you to set it yourself.

[00:55:00] And so going in and adding things that are seasonal and tags and everything we just talked about, this is such a customizable tool for you because you're in a totally different climate than we are. So, uh, I just love that.

Roni: All right. One last thing to talk about before we go is, what is a recipe you've had recently that you loved Riley.

Riley: I just, for the very first time I made a pizza out, I made a pizza crust out of ground chicken. I've never done that before. I don't think I have, I don't have a memory of making this. It was really good. It was a little salty even for me.

Roni: Okay.

Riley: just, I, I think that once the pizza was actually made, the additional ingredients kind of pushed the salt content.

But I was really impressed with how it turned out.

Roni: So did you bake it on like parchment paper?

Riley: Yes.

Roni: Okay, so I made a pizza crust one time. I think it was like both ground beef and maybe ground pork. I know that it was not chicken, it was like fattier meats, and it did. It was terrible. It was [00:56:00] not good because it just, like, even though I cooked it on parchment paper, it just like pooled in the grease.

It was not my favorite thing. So I, the ground chicken is probably the way to go.

Riley: Yeah. This did not have a high amount of fat, at least from the actual crust, made it from chicken.

Roni: yeah,

Riley: I, uh, also have been stumbling upon. I saw a pizza crust Oh, shocker. Made out of cottage cheese.

Roni: yeah, I

Riley: Uh, and so that one I might try that one next. I'll let you know.

Roni: Yeah, I would like to hear about it.

Riley: What's a recipe you've had recently that you enjoyed?

Roni: So earlier this week we ate California burritos, which is a burrito with like steak, and then you're supposed to put french fries in it, but we just had like cubed potato, frozen cubed potatoes, and then guacamole and pico and sour cream. And they're just, it was so simple and good.

I put the, potatoes in the air fryer while I was cooking the steak and bought like pre-made pico at the grocery store. Actually had like, I bought like the best [00:57:00] avocados I've had in a really long time. They were so flavorful. I ate. I just like, just was like eating the I'D made, like I did, I made guacamole without, um, tomatoes in it because there was a bunch of tomatoes in the pico, so it was just avocados, lime, cilantro and salt.

And I was like, I could just eat this whole bowl. It was so good. But the burritos turned out amazing. We don't really have a great place as far as I know, around here for a good California burrito. So I was like, I'm gonna try to make one myself.

Riley: Sounds really good.

Roni: We'll be back in two weeks to break down the next sections of grocery Shopping Secrets. And if you would like to support the Plan to Eat podcast, please share this episode or another episode that you loved with a friend or family member.

It's the best way to get the word out about the show. So thanks again for listening, and we'll talk to you soon. [00:58:00]