#112: The Smart Shopper’s Guide to Chicken, Turkey, Pork, and Beef

In this episode, Roni and Riley dig into the meat chapters of Grocery Shopping Secrets by Carol Ann Kates, from choosing the best cuts to making your dollars stretch further at the store. We talk about how meat is labeled, how to select the best cuts, and why the freezer is your best friend when it comes to reducing waste.

You don’t have to buy the most expensive cut to cook a great meal. With a little knowledge and smart planning, you can make a delicious meal, reduce waste, and save money at the store!

Jump ahead to 54:35 to skip the meat discussion and hear answers to your dinner dilemmas!

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Transcript

Grocery Secrets #4
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[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. Welcome back to the Plan to Eat Podcast. We are continuing our BL book Club Breakdown. Why do I stru? I struggled with that a couple weeks ago. We're continuing our book club breakdown of Grocery Shopping Secrets. We hope you enjoyed the interview that we gotta have with Carol Ann. She's such a sweet lady and I loved hearing her stories and just getting to get all of her knowledge.

She's so sweet.

Riley: Getting to talk to her. Um, you can just like read the book and like hear her speak after getting to know her a little bit. Also, if you're reading this book with us, and if you're not, I'm gonna tell you about it anyway. There's little pictures of a lady pushing a grocery cart all through the book. And [00:01:00] it's got, it's usually like little important things to note in the little thought bubble above her head.

A little speech bubble. And it is exactly her. This little caricature of her and it is awesome.

Roni: Yeah. Whoever did their caricature drawing did a really good job.

Riley: Yeah, it's really cute. I do read the book and I just feel more endeared to her.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: So today we're talking about, we're talking about meats, we're starting the meats chapter. There's I think, five of them total. Right. And we're doing, we're doing the first four. But before we go into that, Riley I have to thank you

Riley: Oh.

Roni: because, so Riley and I went to the grocery store a few weeks ago to record, uh, social media content and stuff, and in my house.

Okay. This is like, I'm telling this story in a really weird roundabout wave, but in my household, we're like a ranch household. Okay. I should preface [00:02:00] that my husband is a blue cheese person, but we mostly keep ranch on hand. Yeah, Riley just made a, a gross face. Okay. So we went to the grocery store together for some content recording and I bought blue cheese for my husband.

And Riley was like, why are you buying that?

Riley: Okay. Look, if you're a blue cheese lover, I'm sorry, I'm a blue cheese hater

Roni: I don't

Riley: it's, there's literally two camps. There's no other camp, there's just two.

Roni: So, yeah, exactly. So I would say that like, we're like a ranch household because my husband, my husband will eat ranch on pretty much anything. He does also really like blue cheese, but he's the only one who eats it. I don't like blue cheese very much so. So I bought the blue cheese and Riley was like, what the heck are you doing?

And then we got over into the dairy section and she pulled out this cream cheese, no sour cream, not cream cheese, sour cream, ranch dip. That's like made by the brand Daisy. You can also get a Kroger brand of it if you're at a Kroger store. And so I, [00:03:00] I bought that the next time I went to the grocery store and I can't stop putting it on things.

Riley: It's

Roni: It's so

Riley: this conversation was headed.

Roni: I, I don't think anybody knew where this conversation was headed 'cause I told that story really poorly. But, uh, it's really good. Okay. I am sure there are some people who are like, hidden Valleys the only ranch for me, but I'm not that person. I tend to make my own ranch at home anyways. I buy the package of the, of the seasonings.

Honestly, I don't buy the Hidden Valley packet. I buy the store brand packet 'cause I actually like the store brand packet better. And then I mix, I usually mix sour cream, Greek yogurt, mayo, and milk. So we get bougie 'cause we do all of the things. I really like the ranch that it makes and it's a little thicker.

I like a little bit thicker ranch. Anyways, this changed the game though. The sour cream ranch that already comes pre-made [00:04:00] because it's like really close in flavor. It's really close to what I normally make at home and I didn't have to do any of the work.

Riley: And it has really good ingredients. Like, I just wanna put that out there, like for being a packaged food item. It has great ingredients.

Roni: Yeah, it really does.

Riley: Yeah. There's no oils or anything. It's just sour cream and seasonings, basically.

Roni: Pretty much. Yeah, so it's really good. If you're a ranch household or a ranch person and you don't know about this already, I highly recommend it. You can find it in the refrigerated section where the sour cream lives and it is a dip, so it's a lot thicker. So when I actually was eating it on a salad, I mixed it with a little bit of milk to thin it out.

Still delicious.

Riley: They have a french onion one too, by the way.

Roni: I saw that and I wasn't sure if I wanted to buy it because French onion stuff can often linger on the palette, you know?

Riley: It's pretty good.

Roni: Okay.

Riley: I buy them both.

Roni: So anyways, that was, thank you for [00:05:00] introducing me to that product. Riley, I've actually been eating a ton of vegetables because I want to eat the ranch dip.

Riley: I actually had the thought earlier. I was like, ah, it, it's thicker, which means you can get put more on your vegetables. It doesn't like run off. Well, now that we've successfully plugged daisy sour cream, let's talk about chicken.

Roni: Yeah, these are not related at all. That would've been better for the last one where we talked about dairy products, but I didn't know about it

Riley: Yeah, you didn't. Yeah. So, so as Roni already said, we are gonna talk about meats, we're talking about chicken, Turkey, pork, and beef. So if you are not a meat eater, you can skip ahead. Um, we're gonna do some more dinner dilemmas at the end of this episode, like we always do. So, if you would like to skip, we are gonna be talking about meat packaged, how it's packaged, how to store it, clean it, how to choose it appropriately.

So just as this is your warning, if you're not into it, skip this. Go to the end.

Roni: Okay. I guess I wanna start with all of these chapters are, uh, they're [00:06:00] more similar to the selecting dairy and cheese. Chapters. So the very, the first few chapters in this book that were related to fruits and vegetables, it like enumerated individual fruits and vegetables and gave you information about each individual one.

Whereas this is more like general guidelines. And each chapter kind of follows the same formatting of like, here's how you should select it. Here's the appearance you're looking for. Check your sell by dates. Um, if you're selecting something that's frozen, here's something to think about. If you freeze it, here's how you freeze it.

If you're thawing it, here's how you thaw it. So she kind of follows a similar formatting for each of these chapters.

Riley: While we are kind of like talking about some overview things, one of the things that, I don't know if we, I know we've mentioned it before, but one, I don't know if we've really talked about it in regards to the book, but she does say, particularly when it comes to meat, do all of your dry good shopping first and then [00:07:00] refrigerated items last.

Um, I know this is kind of common knowledge, but I feel like it was worth saying, 'cause you want all of your meat products, regardless of which one we're talking about. Um, you want them to be cold when you check out and you want 'em to be cold when you get home so that you can put 'em immediately back in their refrigerator so that there's no issues.

Roni: Yeah. I actually don't grocery shop that way.

Riley: You don't

Roni: No.

Riley: Well, it depends on what, I mean, every grocery store in the world is laid out so different and I mean, okay, not really. Like, you have kind of some like commonalities, but where you enter the store and what you shop for first is gonna be different store to store. Because a lot of stores you enter and you go right into the produce section, which a lot of that stuff is cold.

And then you go into like the dairy products or the meat counter, so, but you go into the other side of the store, what is it, the deli or sometimes the like pharmacy.

Roni: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Every store is different. And I'm in general more of a perimeter shopper, which is often where the cold cases and stuff [00:08:00] are anyways. But yeah, like the way that I have my grocery list laid out is just like I, I go around our store in, how would you, it's probably clockwise. And so I usually start at the dairy products.

It's just the habit that I'm in, you know, so maybe I need to adjust my, adjust the way that I shop. But that's gonna be hard. I've been doing it this way for like 10 years.

Riley: Well, really, I was about to say, real talk habits are hard to break, right? Like, I often go into that same Ronnie and I shop at the same grocery store. And so the majority of the time, right? So, uh, we, I enter the side that is less busy, which is the side that goes right into the pharmacy.

I'd rather just go in where there's, it's quiet, like, I like to shop when nobody else is there, who doesn't. Right? And so I, I understand why you shop the way you shop. I would say that the majority of my grocery list is cold.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: and so like I, because I am a perimeter shopper [00:09:00] also, like the majority of the things that I buy are gonna be from the exterior, like the outside perimeter of the store, right?

All the cold stuff. Um, and then the fewer items that I need, like from the dry good section or from the baking aisle or from the seasoning section, like it's just like a smaller portion of my list every week. So I suppose I could swap it, but I, because it's so few things that I buy from the middle, I feel like I just kind of, I'm the same way.

I do often get meat last though. I just go back over there.

Roni: I think I would end up backtracking too much if I went through all of the middle aisles to grab pasta, canned beans, you know, whatever the things are that are in the middle aisles. And then if I had, then I would have to backtrack to go back to where like the milk and stuff is. So I just think it would make my grocery shopping take longer.

I will say that when I put stuff that's cold into my shopping cart, I bunch 'em all together. Or if I get something, like if I get like frozen chicken tenders or something, I put them on top of something else that's [00:10:00] cold. I use them as insulation.

Riley: Totally. Yes. And then like we talked to Carol Ann last week, like she's very particular about the way that she bags things. And so I'll put all of my things together. I think some of all, some of this also depends on how far you live from your grocery store. I live about 45 minutes to, from the grocery store, and so I frequently take a cooler unless it's the dead of winter.

And if I don't, then usually it's totally fine in my car 'cause it's 10 degrees. I often take a cooler and if I forget, that's exactly what I do. I pack all, I pack as much cold stuff into one bag as I possibly can and drive home as fast as I can so it doesn't go bad. But I think some of it depends also on where you, like, if you are a slow shopper, then maybe prioritize the cold stuff last and if it takes you a long time to get home, you know, put all those things last.

So.

Roni: Yeah, just things to think about. It wasn't really something that I had realized I was doing until I read it in this book.

Riley: yeah, I understand.

Roni: Let's talk about chicken.

Riley: [00:11:00] Everything in me just wanted a cl like a chicken right then, and I just held back, but, but I have kids, so this is what we do.

Roni: I was, I say, I was gonna say, I think you should do it. I was the one who did a impersonation of a British person a few weeks ago and embarrassed myself so.

Riley: Alright, so when you select chicken. Here's some general tips. It should have a yellow tint. Uh, the meat should be pink and have like a fleshy hue to it. As it ages it's going to fade to a dull gray color. That is not the chicken that you wanna purchase at the grocery store. Please do not, avoid that at all costs.

It should also be plump, so when you press it, it should be resilient and kinda like bouncy. Um, returning to its normal shape and it should smell clean. So like, you might not be able to smell it in the grocery store. Most likely you can't. But once you get home, if you open it and it has like clean smell, you know you have a very fresh chicken.

Roni: Yeah. One thing in here that was interesting that she mentioned is when you're buying a whole chicken, [00:12:00] uh, which I often buy whole chickens at the grocery store, but she said, don't ever buy a whole chicken that has already been stuffed.

Riley: Yes. I thought that was interesting too. I don't think I've ever done that, but now I know not to.

Roni: I don't know if I've ever seen it like that at the grocery store either.

But just word to the wise, if you ever see one that's pre- stuffed, don't buy that. She says that any like stuffed foul should just be stuffed right before it goes into the oven.

Riley: And it's really hard to know at a store like how long something has been there. And so like you would have no idea how long since it was stuffed that you were purchasing it.

Roni: Yeah, exactly. So one thing that I thought was interesting is she talks about the, the different chilling processes for chicken. So like once the chicken has been de feathered, there are two different methods for chilling that chicken before it then gets frozen. And one of them is a cold water bath, which she says this is kind of the industry [00:13:00] standard.

So you basically immerse the chicken in cold water. But the problem with that is that then the chicken ends up absorbing some of that liquid. And so she says the better option if you can find it is air chilled. And air chilling is like a circulation. You think about like when you're in, if you've ever been in like a walk-in freezer, you know, like you just feel that like circulating cold air.

That was kind of what I thought about when I read this. And that is better for chicken because then it's not absorbing that extra moisture. So particularly if you are getting chicken for like deep frying and you want that like really crispy, yummy skin on it, having an air chilled chicken is the way to go.

Riley: This is one of those sections that reminded me quite a bit of salt fat, acid, heat, um, because it's just the idea that this slight change in your cooking process or in this case, your purchasing process, [00:14:00] um, you can improve the quality of your food substantially. And I, I, it's like I wasn't expecting this book to be similar to salt, fat, acid, heat, you know, like they have, you know, that one was more about the cooking process and how to be an amazing cook.

This is more about shopping, right? And how to be a great shopper, saving money, picking the right items. But just these little tweaks that make you ultimately the end goal of being a better home cook is what I'm shocked to find is the similarity between these two things. But just this little tip, like if you want it to be less, you don't want it to like, have a ton of liquid coming out of it.

When you cook it, like if you're gonna deep fry it, you want it to not have all that extra liquid, otherwise it will be soggy. Um, and so just that little tiny tweak, you may not even have any idea why it didn't get crispy, but like that could have been the problem, right? And now if you know that you can shop properly for the thing you're cooking.

Roni: Right reading this made me think about those restaurants that you go to where you're like, oh my gosh, they just have the best chicken and you [00:15:00] don't know what it is. You don't know what's different about their recipe. And I'm like, maybe they use air chilled chicken and that's what makes it that much better.

And nobody, nobody could figure that out as far as the quote unquote secret recipe was a concerned.

Riley: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. One thing that I found really interesting about this section, Roni, is the different types of chickens that you can buy in the store. So, roaster, broiler, fryer, Cornish hen, like I was today, years old, Roni, when I learned that a Cornish hen is not a game bird. It's a small broiler chicken that's less than five weeks old and weighs one to two pounds.

Roni: It was today years old when I learned that too. Yeah, I

Riley: Like, I feel so silly.

Roni: I thought it was, I was like, not that I've ever done this, but I would've been the person who Googled like, what's a Cornish hen look like, you know?

Riley: yes. Does it look like a quail?

Roni: Yeah, exactly.

Riley: Yes. So a roaster, you've seen these, everyone has seen these in the grocery store. If you've shopped for chicken. It all has to [00:16:00] do with how much they weigh and how old they are. That's what's gonna say. Like, that's what's gonna label these different chickens.

Roni: There's an element to this, the roaster, broiler fryer that feels like this is, like knowledge that my grandma would know. Right? Like she would know the difference between a broiler and a fryer chicken. And she would send you to

Riley: corn chin.

Roni: Yeah. And she would send you to the grocery store and be like, only get a broiler. Do not come home with a roaster chicken, you know?

Riley: Yes. Yep. It's so funny that you say that. 'cause I can see from my desk, a letter that my grandmother wrote me. It's like in this like clear stack thing. And I was thinking about her earlier just thinking like, these are things she would know. But like I can like see her handwriting on this, like on the envelope of the letter that she wrote me.

And I'm like, yeah, you're, you're totally right. Like, she would know the exact, all these things. All these things. And now you can know it too, because Carol Ann wrote us a book. So now we know, now we can all know the things that we didn't learn from people in our family. And it's information that it's hard to even [00:17:00] pass down because it's almost like, well, of course you know that.

How do you not know that a Cornish hin is a tiny chicken? But I didn't, so.

Roni: And if you don't ever cook Cornish hens, like I've never

Riley: Mm-hmm. Me either.

Roni: so I've never looked into, I've never looked into a recipe for it. I'm sure somebody has written a blog post that would've told me this, but since I've never cooked on, I have no idea.

Riley: Yeah,

Roni: All right, so she goes into, with these different meats, she goes into the different labelings that you might see in the grocery store.

So things like. Free-range, cage-free, all of that kind of stuff. And one thing that I thought was really interesting is that she says in the United States, federal law prohibits the use of hormones and steroids in chicken. So if you see a packaging that says like, no hormones and steroids, they're just marketing to you.

'cause they're not allowed to do that anyways. Yeah,

Riley: we talked about this with eggs. The, the eggs were not allowed to be given, like, or chickens that were laying eggs were not allowed to be given anything. It is really helpful information to know that chicken that [00:18:00] we buy to consume the chicken part of it, the meat part of it simultaneously is not allowed to be given that.

So just for everyone, I feel like this is just a fascinating thing because it's a bit of like, like news, shocking news. You know, like, oh my goodness, these chickens were given steroids and that's why they're massive. It's like, well, nope. It probably has to do with their age, um,

Roni: or the breed of chicken maybe, you know.

Riley: Yeah. Because in the United States you cannot buy a chicken that was given hormones, it's not allowed to be in our grocery stores.

Roni: I like this kind of knowledge because I do think there is kind of some fear mongering around these things sometimes, and it's nice to be like, no, I actually know that the answer is different.

Riley: fear mongering is exactly the term that I could not come up with when I was speaking just a moment ago. Thank you.

Roni: So another label that she mentions here is cage free. And she says, this is particularly confusing because majority in the United States, the majority of the chickens are raised in large open structures called houses, and they're free to [00:19:00] roam in general. And so the exception is birds laying hens that lay eggs.

Those potentially could be in cages, but in general, the chicken that we eat is not housed in cages anyways. Very, uh, she makes it sound like this is like just not a common practice, and I could see how it would just not be a. Economical for a farmer, for a rancher to do that, they would have to feed each one individually rather than being able to feed them all at the same time, like way more cost effective to have them be in like a chicken house.

Riley: Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Roni: Well, I was gonna also say free range is also an interesting label because, so the USDA for, for it to have a free range label, the USDA says the chick, the chickens need to, have access to outdoors for at least part of the day. However, when the chickens have a chicken house, the farmers or ranchers usually leave the food inside the house.

And she says that the chickens generally prefer to be close to their food and [00:20:00] water. So even though they have access to the outdoors, they might not even spend any time out there. Right. So that's an inter, it's an interesting label because I think they're. Oftentimes marking these products up because it has a free range label on it, but you have no guarantee that your chicken actually spend any time outside,

Riley: Yeah,

Roni: so you might be paying for nothing. Controversial topic here.

Riley: yeah. This is just one of those things where it's like, the more you know. And you're not just going with marketing, right? Like that is you go to a, you go to a restaurant and it's like cage free omelet, free range omelet. It's like, well you can know that that is just marketing.

Roni: The thing in here that she mentions through, actually all of the meat chapters that we've read so far is really the only way to know is to get your source, your meat locally, and then you can actually talk to the farmer and you can know how often are your chickens outside, how often are [00:21:00] they not outside.

So if it's something that's really important to you, sourcing your meat from somebody locally or from the farmer's market where you're gonna, where you can actually get quality information, that's really the only way to know.

Riley: Yeah, absolutely. So if you're okay with moving on to freezing chicken, I found some really interesting things in the freezing section.

Roni: Yes.

Riley: So when you are choosing, okay, so frozen chicken, is gonna most likely be cheaper. So if you are looking to save money at the grocery store, you might be purchasing frozen chicken.

You're gonna always wanna choose packages that are below the freezer lines. If you buy it in the case, like there's a line at which be everything below it's frozen, it's usually like two to four inches from the very top. You're gonna wanna choose it below that because it was never gonna have been exposed to lower or to higher temperatures so that it gets less frozen and therefore has more risk of having either getting gross or going bad salmonella.

Something along those lines. And then as soon as you get home you're gonna wanna refreeze it. 

Roni: I would [00:22:00] think in the, like a standing up freezer case, that would probably also mean you should just choose a bag or something from the back,

Riley: Sure. Because if like a door got left open. Accidentally. We did learn, like if you listen to our episode with Carol Ann, like there are, there are announcements made in the grocery store where they are supposed to go check temperatures of everything. And I'm sure it is someone's job to go and make sure all the freezer doors are closed, but just on the off chance that something happened or got missed, because people are normal humans and things happen, like just pulling from the very back or from deeper in the case is gonna be a better, better choice.

Roni: And haven't we all been in the grocery store where you've watched somebody open the freezer door and then stand in front of it for like a minute before they grab something out of there? Usually you're like standing behind them waiting to get in the exact same freezer case. But so like that sort of a thing too, like it's getting exposed to the warmer temperatures even for that amount of time.

So, you know,

Riley: Well, and if you think. And like, while that [00:23:00] specific example doesn't sound so bad, multiply that by a hundred people at that same door in one grocery store all day and you could potentially have an issue.

Yeah. So defrosting chicken, there are three safe ways to do it in the refrigerator, in cold water or in the microwave.

Never set it out on the kitchen counter to thaw.

Roni: I'm guilty of this, doing this.

Riley: Thanks for admitting that first. I do often put it in cold water in my sink, but sometimes I start it on the counter.

Roni: I'll be honest, I didn't know that the, I didn't know about the cold water method. I usually put, put it on the counter. I, well, I usually put it in the sink, but I don't put it in any water. And I do that because our refrigerator, it takes so long for things to thaw in the refrigerator. And so, yeah, I usually just put it out on the counter, so I'm, I'm doing the wrong thing.

I didn't know that it was like cool water that you would put it in. So.

One thing that I wanna mention here, she says, whole chickens or chicken pieces with bones take one to two days or [00:24:00] longer if you're thawing them in the refrigerator. And I just thought that this was a great place to mention prep notes in plan to eat.

So if you're using plan to eat in, do you have a lot of frozen items that you use for your recipes? You can add prep notes to your recipes and you can put them for one to two days ahead of time to remind you to get that stuff outta the freezer. So that way you aren't starting your recipe with a frozen whole chicken.

'cause you don't wanna do that. You don't wanna get to five o'clock and be like, oh, this three pound chicken is completely frozen and it's gonna take approximately eight hours for it to thaw.

Riley: Uh, and that is the worst. It's the worst. It's the worst. Ugh, okay. Like there's just not a lot of things more annoying about cooking dinner than when you realize you have not thawed something out or the thing you've been thawing is not thawed.

Roni: Right. And I think for some things it's not quite as big of a deal, like a package of ground beef NBD It'll, it'll thaw really fast. [00:25:00] You can even put it in the microwave like she says, to in order to thaw it. But a whole chicken is not gonna thaw by that. It's still gonna be frozen by the time you should be eating dinner.

Riley: Yeah. So that's super helpful. Great plug for prep notes. It's also just really helpful, like common knowledge, like this is gonna take 24 hours,

Roni: Yeah. So, related to freezing, she mentions a couple in each of one of these chapters, like the thing that you can use to freeze your chicken. Freezer meat. She says you could use a Ziploc bags you could use, she keeps calling it freezer foil. And so I was like, do people freeze things in tin foil?

And they do. Okay. She's a, I think she's referring to aluminum foil when she means freezer foil. 'cause I Google searched freezer foil and got zero results.

Riley: Oh,

interesting. 

Roni: I don't think that's a specific thing necessarily. So, so this article that I'm reading says that, It says that some experts say that actually [00:26:00] freezing your food, storing frozen food in tinfoil is preferred because it reduces the amount of moisture and condensation that can build up on your food, which makes sense, right? If you put something in a Ziploc bag and it's still a little warm, it's gonna naturally create some condensation, but the tinfoil adds like a little more breathing room.

So tinfoil is a freezer safe material and will prevent condensation from getting to your food that causes freezer burn. So food grade tinfoil is an excellent choice unless your food is, unless your food is highly acidic. So like tomatoes, you wouldn't put your tomatoes in tinfoil. That would be really messy anyways.

But it's generally okay for meat or poultry. And if you are planning to keep it in the freezer for more than a month, it would be best to put it in foil and then also put it in a Ziploc bag.

Riley: I'm a double, I'm a double bag freezer person. Like if I wrap it in something, I'm gonna put it in something else just to try to prevent [00:27:00] it going bad fast.

Roni: yeah, I just use a lot of like Tupperware in the freezer instead of wrapping things, I guess I use Ziploc bags, like for berries and stuff. I use Ziploc bags, but I don't double it.

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: I will use my, vacuum sealer a lot for that kind of stuff.

Riley: Yeah, that's 

Roni: So finally for safe cooking of chicken, one thing that I wanted to mention, I think this is generally common knowledge if you've ever cooked a Turkey before, but I just feel like we should mention it here, is that when you place your meat thermometer in your chicken, you should put it in the chicken thigh rather than in the breast.

Riley: That's super helpful information.

Roni: I think so too. And that's because the, they cook it technically, they cook at different temperatures because of the fat content, so.

Riley: And it should be cooked to whole Chicken should be cooked to 180 degrees, pieces like thighs and wings, 1 65 and breasts one 70. Which if you have ever grilled and you use a meat thermometer to [00:28:00] like see when your food is done on the grill, like honestly, a lot of thermometers have this written on them, especially like meat thermometers.

Have them written on them for easy like reference. But it's just helpful to have in mind. I think it's helpful.

Roni: I think so too.

Riley: I mean, you wanna cook meat to the right temperature.

Roni: you do, I mean, we've talked about this before because you talked about how buying a meat thermometer has really been a game changer for your cooking because you're not overcooking it. Now. A lot of people, a lot of people are like, I don't really like to eat chicken. It's dry and gross and well, it's probably being cooked to like 190, which is way too much.

Riley: Yeah, my mother-in-law was at my house a couple of months ago and she said something about my chicken being just like so tender. And I said it, it's the meat thermometer. Like I don't do anything to make it special. Really. I just use a meat thermometer and that helps because then, you know, I'm usually, if I'm cooking, if I'm grilling chicken breasts, like at one 60, I'm like preparing the plate to like get 'em off, you know what I'm saying?

Like, [00:29:00] you know, we're not going anything past one 60, like 1 67. I'm like, oh no, we gotta get these things off here. So, um, I am pretty quick. Like, I know that once we get to like 1 60, 1 62, like we're, we're coming off pretty quick. And that really, it really does help preserve the, like, juicy, flavorful of it so it's not so hard,

Roni: Yeah.

Well. You know, she doesn't mention this, but I think that it was mentioned in salt, fat acid heat. That meat in particular does continue to cook slowly after it's taken off of the heat source. So you do kind of wanna take something off maybe two or three degrees before. So if you're aiming for 1 65, take it off around 1 60, 1 61, and then it'll actually get to 1 65 by the time you're ready to eat it.

Riley: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's helpful.

Roni: All right, let's move on to turkeys. A lot of the information about turkeys I feel like is similar to chickens. 

Riley: similar. Mm-hmm. 

Roni: I'm just gonna, I think we just touch on some highlights. One of the things that is different here, is obviously that most of the time [00:30:00] when we're getting turkeys is in the fall in the United States, it's around Thanksgiving, and she recommends if you don't get a fresh Turkey to get a flash frozen Turkey, because the flash freezing ensures that the Turkey will have the same level of fresh, same level of freshness as the day was frozen, which is the exact same reason why frozen vegetables are a great option is because they're flash frozen she actually says that flash frozen turkeys can keep up for up to one year, which I didn't know.

I was really surprised by that. She also mentions in here, she actually mentioned this with both chickens and turkeys, that when you're selecting them from the grocery store, make sure they have all their body parts. And I, I don't think I've ever bought, uh, like a whole chicken. I don't think I've, I've never personally bought a whole Turkey, but I've never bought a chicken that was like missing a body part

Riley: You've never bought a whole Turkey.

Roni: No. No, I've never bought one from, oh, no, no, no. That's not i's false. We [00:31:00] have, um, we have, I think I've bought a single one 'cause we, after Thanksgiving a couple years ago, my husband really wanted to smoke a Turkey and my mom was like, I don't like smoked Turkey. So we didn't have it on Thanksgiving, but since they're on super sale after Thanksgiving, we bought one and we smoked it ourselves.

So I have bought a single Turkey, I think.

Riley: I really, um, this is like a debate. A lot of people don't like Turkey. They prefer a ham on Thanksgiving. I feel like in the circles that I run in the, like the centerpiece of Thanksgiving, it's kind of like widely varies. It varies between people. Growing up it was always Turkey. Very rarely did we have ham.

And it was usually because like one uncle didn't like Turkey, so there was ham. Like I, you know what I'm saying? Like just like, my preference at Thanksgiving between Turkey and ham is Turkey.

Roni: Yeah, I, we pretty much always have Turkey. My dad didn't like Turkey, so like for a few years we did prime rib instead on Thanksgiving. But mostly [00:32:00] we do Turkey and I do really like the smoked Turkey

Riley: Yeah. Smoked Turkey is delicious.

Roni: good. And the bone broth that it makes after the fact is, oh my gosh, I could drink gallons of it.

I make.

Riley: Uh, okay. So funny story. The year that my family got c um, my husband smoked a Turkey and he couldn't taste or smell anything,

Roni: Oh no.

Riley: and it was the best Turkey I've ever had. I had not lost my taste and smell.

And it was so good. Like, to this day, like we make this joke, like he's never made a better Turkey than that year. And he couldn't taste it at all.

Roni: no.

Riley: it was so good. I feel bad even talking about it right now, just because even it's been like five years since then, you know? And I just, it's, it's like a touchy subject.

Roni: Oh man. My mouth's like watering, thinking about smoked Turkey right now.

Riley: The last few years we've done prime rib, [00:33:00] because we just really like prime rib. But I kind of wanna do a Turkey now.

Roni: See, this is the thing is I, I mean, the middle of summer, it's, I mean, a, a smoked Turkey would be great for the middle of summer 'cause it's outside. But I Can you even buy a Turkey right now? I wouldn't even, right. Like you just don't see 'em in the grocery store until it starts to get close to Thanksgiving, I feel like.

Riley: Yeah. I actually was just thinking like, would it be weird to smoke a Turkey right now in July? But I would like, before you started your sin, like before you started your, what you were saying, I was thinking that. But you're right. Actually, I just don't look for them

because I eat, I cook a Turkey and eat a Turkey once a year.

I eat Turkey lunch meat, but otherwise I just don't cook Turkey very often. Ground Turkey, sometimes.

Roni: Yeah. But yeah, I don't, like I said, I wouldn't even know where to look in the grocery store for a whole Turkey, probably next to the Cornish hens.

Riley: Probably,

Roni: Okay, so if you're buying a [00:34:00] Turkey for something like Thanksgiving or another gathering, in case you didn't know, I feel like this is always the thing where people's like, do we buy a big enough Turkey? When you're calculating how much to buy plan to purchase between one and one and a half pounds per person.

So depending on the amount of leftovers you wanna have as well. So if you're feeding 12 people, purchase a 12 to 16 pound bird, which is actually smaller than I was thinking for 12 people.

Riley: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's super helpful. And so on this topic. Allow 30 minutes per pound for thawing your 

Roni: Mm-hmm. 

Riley: um, in cold water. Like so a 16 pound bird will take eight hours to defrost like this math, maths every year. And, if you didn't know this already, this super is help. It was just like one of the most helpful things around Thanksgiving time if you were the person cooking.

Make sure you get that out of the freezer in as many days and hours as you need. So it's fully thought.

Roni: Yeah, so she talks in here, she kind of gives like a, preparing your Turkey. [00:35:00] She tells you like, thaw it and then, you know, make sure you remove the giblets and all these things. But one thing is that she's like, so her thing is she's like, you know, right before you're gonna stuff it, salt the cavity, which is great, you should probably solve this cavity.

However, I was like, okay, but also salt fat, acid heat told us to brine our Turkey for two full days before it gets cooked. So if we're going by that standard, you might need to thaw your Turkey five days before Thanksgiving happens. If you want it to be thawed and then you wanna brine it in cold water for two days so that it's nice and salty and delicious, it's gonna take a little bit of time.

Riley: Yep.

So don't be meal planning your Thanksgiving on Monday,

Roni: That's right. because Thursday's coming. Thursday is all, it's already too late. Or get a smaller Turkey. Maybe get Cornish shens instead.

Riley: Prime rib or corny? It's fine.

Roni: Should we move on?

Riley: Yeah, let's go to pork.

Roni: So one of the things that she talks about in here [00:36:00] initially related to pork is that pork is one of the meats that's graded. So like, it has like A-U-S-D-A grade of I think she, it's acceptable. 1, 2, 3, or four or utility. And she says that all fresh, all of the fresh pork in a supermarket has to be in the acceptable grading.

But I just thought that was interesting because there's not much of a grading on any of the other, well, beef has a grading as well, but it's a little bit different. We can talk about that. So I just thought that that was interesting. 'cause they're, the chicken and turkeys, I don't feel like the, the quality standard is monitored quite as much as it is with pork and beef.

Yeah.

Riley: And I'm not exactly sure why. Other than I feel like pork is one of those meats that you have to be super careful with. Like, you want to cook it perfectly, there's no wiggle room. You want to [00:37:00] select really high quality pork. I, I feel like pork is one of those things that I feel like I choose with way more chewiness and I eat probably the least.

Um, so I feel like I, I don't know exactly why pork is graded and nothing else is, but I'm guessing it's just because of like, it's risk factors of like, if, if it goes bad, it's bad.

Roni: Yeah. Yeah,

Riley: Not that you wanna eat any bad meat at all, but

Roni: Trinos is one of the things you can get from pork. I just like that word. I don't even know what it

Riley: Thank you for sharing that with us.

Roni: Okay.

Riley: Um, one of the things I found really interesting about pork in this section is that pork is often injected with water broth, salt and extra flavorings. I have frequently seen like marinated pork in the store, like, you know, packaged pork loin like in a marinade.

Um, but I didn't realize that often they were injected with other things. I typically do not buy meats that have been injected or marinated. I usually prefer to do that at my own. But if it's been injected with too much liquid, it could be difficult to sear. So this same [00:38:00] exact idea of like buying the right product for your end goal of cooking it,

the meat might seem mushy or spongy if it's been injected with something and you're not gonna get that pretty sear on it and you might then accidentally overcook it. Which again, pork is one where you can overcook it and it's really gross. And so if it's overcooked, like if, because you were working to get that sear, you're never gonna get, it ultimately comes down to the quality of the product that you purchased,

Roni: Right, and when I was reading this, so she mentions that, you can look at the nutritional label and see if the sodium is higher than a hundred milligrams. That means that the pork has been ingested. So also, if you're somebody who needs, what did I say?

Riley: ingested.

Roni: Oh, injected. So if you're somebody who needs to be on a low sodium diet, this would also be something to consider when you're selecting pork because you might think, oh, well, of course I can't have sausage because it's already been salted, but I should be able to have pork chops.

Well, make sure you check the label still to make sure it's not high in sodium.

Riley: [00:39:00] Yeah, absolutely. I.

But I thought this might be a good opportunity for us to talk about marinating

anything, any of the meats that we have talked about. Chicken, pork, Turkey, beef. So she talks a lot about in this, every section of these meats and poultry that we're talking about have a marinating section and she often talks about marinating it and then boiling the marinade if you're gonna use it as a basting, like a component, like if you're basting it and you're boasting it on the grill or something.

And I was just curious, like when I marinade marinate food, I usually will create my marinade, save some of it out, if I'm going to use it for some other portion, like if I'm gonna use it as a sauce or if I'm going to, based my food with it. I'll just save some out before I add my meat to it. But she's saying that you can actually use it by boiling it if it's been in contact with the raw meat.

But I've never done that before. I usually just save a portion now and [00:40:00] discard all of the remaining marinade after I've started cooking or like after I've pulled my meat out of it. I just, I'm just curious, what do you do?

Roni: That's exactly what I do too, , that's like, one of the things that my mom taught me cooking was like, don't ever use the marinate marinade for anything else because it potentially has bacteria, e coli or whatever, salmonella in it. So this is interesting. If you number one, forgot to save a portion out and you're like, well, shoot, I needed to be able to base this, you could boil it, which would then make it safe enough to put on the, put on the meat.

Or if you're just trying to be thrifty, I guess, you know, this could be a way to, you know, you don't have to make an a bigger batch of the, of the marinade and you could just reuse the stuff that was already touching the meat.

Riley: Yeah, I, I just, I just found that to be such an interesting part of this section that I wanted to certainly bring it up. So

Roni: So related to that, 'cause I did actually wanna bring up the, the marinating. So going back to chicken, [00:41:00] chicken can be married for up marinate, not married chicken. Married chicken can be marinated for up to two days. Okay. So I feel like we had this conversation, we were talking about sulf fat, acid heat around something related to, I think I was marinating some meat and I, maybe it was beef.

And I was like, but how long do we actually marinate it for? So this is, these are the answers. Okay. Chicken can be marinated for up to two days, not any longer. Let me find Turkey. I.

Riley: Pork while we're here. While you're looking for Turkey, pork can be marinated in the refrigerator, um, for three to five days, which is pretty substantial. It actually makes me curious about those pre-marinated porks in the grocery store, because I'm wondering how long they've been in those packages, if three to five days is the right length, how long have they been packaged 

Roni: Well, and Carol Ann told us that she prefers not to buy pre-marinated meats in the grocery store. 'cause usually it means they were closer to their sell by date. And so they're kind of like trying to cover up the fact that it's not as good. Like, it's

Riley: Mm-hmm.

Roni: [00:42:00] shelf life is

Riley: Yeah. Leery of that. Yeah, 

Roni: Yeah,

Uh, so there's not actually, she doesn't actually have marinating for Turkey on here, which makes sense because most people are using whole turkeys and marinating a whole Turkey would probably be a lot.

Riley: sure. Yeah. I'll go ahead and mention beef. Beef is normally marinated for six to 24 hours, but it can be marinated up to two days in the refrigerator.

Roni: Yeah, so I think, so she mentions here, she says after that time the beef may begin to break down. And I think that's the thing we were talking about with salt fat acid heat was she said, be careful of the acid because it can actually start to like cook the meat, essentially. Like it breaks down the coils of the proteins.

Mm-hmm. So six to six to 24 hours. That's your beef. Do you wanna just move on to beef?

Riley: Yeah, let's do that.

Roni: Okay. So one of the cool things that I liked that she did in this chapter is she went through the different cuts of steaks and roasts because she says, you know, a lot of times a recipe will call for a flat iron steak. And then you go [00:43:00] to the grocery store and you're like, none of these say flat iron.

What am I supposed to buy? Or if you get, if you get meat from a butcher, a lot of times they call it something different. Like we, when we have gotten a, a whole or a half cow before, they often label their cuts differently than what you would find in the grocery store.

Riley: Yes. So I'm, I think it's worth just like running through this list pretty quick, just so that you can have a general idea of what we're talking about. Boneless strip stakes are also called Kansas City, Manhattan and New York Strip flat iron. Also called, called shoulder top blade. Top blade filet, top blade steak.

There's a ball tip top sirloin filet mignon, also called tenderloin filet and tenderloin steak. I've got a funny story about that momentarily. Porterhouse Tiva Flank is also called London Broil. Skirt is also called Inside Skirt. Outside skirt. And. Ara, which sounds like such a beautiful name. Ribeye is also called Del Monaco.

Spencer and [00:44:00] Scotch uh, shoulder is top round steak, also called Butterball round, also called rump cube steaks. Um, Denver also called Bottom Chunk. Bottom Chuck. And under Blade Flap is also called bet. There's a tomahawk steak and a tri-tip, and if you're pinching pennies, more affordable steaks are gonna be the flat iron strip sirloin, blank skirt and tri-tip.

Do you wanna run through the roasts list?

Roni: So a Chuck Roast could also be called Chuck Eye. Blade Pot, or Chuck Roll clawed, which I've never heard before. Could also be called Arm Chuck. Arm Pot Chuck Primal or pot roast, I think Pro pot roast is what I've seen that labeled

Riley: I dunno. It just made me laugh. It's probably good you're reading this list and not me.

Roni: Okay. And then we have brisket. Rib could also be called standing rib or prime rib strip loin, also called top [00:45:00] loin tenderloin Top, sir. Loin also called top butt. Top round. Also called inside round or London broil bottom round. Also called rolled rump or eye of round try tip roast. Also called a triangle sirloin tip, also called knuckle.

And when you're pinching pennies, the bottom round top sirloin clawed and top sirloin roasts are the most affordable. So reme, remember that everybody. Okay? Or just by the book?

Riley: Just by the book. So my husband asked me, we were gonna have steak for dinner, and he just, uh, he just said, Hey, you need to go grab those outta the freezer. So that. We could thaw them out. And I don't know if I've talked about this much on the podcast, but we raised our own beef. Uh, we raised our own cows for beef.

I think I have a little bit. And so we have quite a bit and a quite a variety of beef in our freezer. Like we call it the beef fridge because, or the beef freezer because it is [00:46:00] where we put all of it. And so I went out there just minding my own bi, just, you know, just doing my own thing, going to grab the, uh, ribeyes that he wanted to have for dinner.

And I grabbed tenderloin st 

Roni: That's pretty.

Riley: which I couldn't find what he was looking for. So I just thought, okay, well these look pretty good. It was like a smaller portion of steak and I thought this is what we need for today. And I, so if you remember from the list, filet mignon is also called tenderloin filet or tenderloin steak.

I did not know this, so I thought these steaks out. I grill them their. Delightful. So tender, so delicious, just perfect. And my husband's like, what were these, because these are great. And I was like, oh, tenderloin steak. And he said, you picked a random Tuesday night to have filet mignon. And I did not know.

I felt so silly that I said, yes, yes I did. You're welcome. Um, but it was [00:47:00] because I just was uninformed and I just grabbed something to thaw out. You know, I wasn't, I, I did not know. And I apparently chose the most expensive, most high quality, most delicious part. And that's what we have for dinner on a random Tuesday.

Not an occasion, no anniversary, nothing.

Roni: Well, now you can have the prime rib for something special.

Riley: Yes, absolutely.

Roni: So as we talked about, beef is graded. So the USDA has prime choice, select standard and commercial. And so prime beef is like the best of the best. She says that the, usually grocery stores only will have, two or 3% of a prime beef in the grocery store.

Two or 3% of all of the beef they have will be prime graded. And she said choice is usually a little less expensive, but still has good flavor. So she says that mostly what she buys his choice beef, one thing that I thought was interesting is she talks about specific, some, so she says that [00:48:00] she prefers choice because she says if she buys anything less, she doesn't find it to be very flavorful.

She says sometimes she'll spend extra money on the prime cuts, but one thing that she says is that she doesn't ever purchase prime for a rib roast, nor does she buy tenderloins or filet mignons, like what you're talking about as prime, because she finds that they're a little mushy, which is super interesting, right?

Because that cow was raised to have really tender meat. And so there's almost this like tipping point where you get these cuts that are naturally really tender and then you raise the beef to be a really tender beef, and some of those cuts actually get to be a little less desirable because you're like.

It's almost not appetizing and I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but like we, you know, we eat all sorts of game meat and like my favorite game meat is antelope. However, I don't really like [00:49:00] antelope backstrap. I, I say that with a caveat because I do really like it. Sometimes it can be ex excellent, but a backstrap is the most similar thing to a tend 

tenderloin. And sometimes having antelope backstrap, I'm like, it's kind of a little too soft. You know, if that antelope was like, really, I don't know what the thing is, that would make an antelope more tender than a, than another one. But there, there are some times that we've had it where I'm like, I didn't actually really like that antelope tenderloin that backstrap very much because it was really, really almost too soft.

It's almost like you're like, I don't want my meat to be like baby food. That was really gross.

Riley: I am curious if this is more of a preference. Like if this, I think this is a preference point

Roni: Yeah,

Riley: more than it is. Like, like a, like every, you know, so much of this book is facts, right? Like, this is what your meat should look like. This is what a sold by day is, this is how it's graded, [00:50:00] this is what free range means, period.

Um, but I am wondering here if the, like her describing filets or tenderloins as too mushy, is actually a preference for how she likes her meat cooked, or a preference for how she likes her meat, her beef in particular. Because even what you're talking about, I mean, I've had antelope backstrap before, and.

Incredible. Just like so good. But I tend to like my steaks on the rare side.

And, and so I'm just curious if like this, like mus, um, I'm just curious if this comes down to a, like a preference of the, how the meat is cooked and how the meat feels like.

Roni: That's a really good point. That's a good point.

Riley: because I feel like this is one where, this is a section where I feel like people get really protective of the way that they like to eat it and pretty guarded about how other people like to eat it as in like negative, [00:51:00] like, I'm sitting here thinking about some people that I know and how they like their steak and I'm like, what's the point of even eating a steak?

You've cooked it to oblivion

Roni: Right?

Riley: or other people I know who barely cook it at all, you know?

Um. 

Roni: a steak tartar.

Riley: Well, I mean, I like steak, tar, tar, but like, I'm thinking like a rib eye where it's like barely seared.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: Have you ever had steak? Tar. Tar?

Roni: Yeah. It's not my favorite.

Riley: Okay. There's a restaurant in Fort Collins that used to have steak, tar, tar on the menu.

My husband and I got it, um, as an appetizer and it was so delightful. We were shocked at how much we liked it. But we haven't had it anywhere since then. And they've taken it off the menu, sadly, but I'm just wondering if this, because I feel like people are pretty protective of the way that they like their meat, particularly their beef cooked.

Roni: yeah. Well, so you saying this also makes me wonder if I don't have a very sophisticated palette because I think like a lot of people like, like pate's and stuff, and pate is not for me, but like, it's that idea [00:52:00] of like a soft meat, right? Like it's like a soft meat spread, and that's just not for meat. But so like, I wonder if there's like somebody who's like very, I don't know, they like, they like they have really expensive tastes when it comes to meat and the meat that they buy and.

And so like for them, they're probably like, I would only ever buy a Tenderloin in Prime because I like it to melt in my mouth, you 

Riley: Yes. Well, so when she says mushy, I am wondering if the way she's de, if what she's describing is tender and like melt in your mouth. Like that's what I'm thinking. 'cause I'm thinking I don't think I've ever had a mushy steak. But I would never have described a very, like, in my opinion, perfectly cooked tenderloin, which is more like medium rare, rare.

Um, and like, I'm thinking like melt in your mouth, like soft, like, like just delightful. Like to like eat. It's like you don't have to work hard to eat

it. [00:53:00] But I'm wondering if she would describe that as mushy.

Roni: I, I'm interested, you know, we're gonna get to seafood next time and I'm interested to see what she says about that because I've had some seafood, like some fresh salmon on sushi that was like literally so buttery and melting your mouth. It was, it's like the best food memory that I have, I feel like, and I'm wondering, I'm wondering what her commentary would is, is about that kinda stuff.

Or if she has any about it. If she maybe doesn't like fish that way either.

Riley: Yeah,

Roni: We'll see.

Riley: I don't know that, that was the only thing I've ever read in this book where I'm wondering if that was a preference, over just like straight facts,

Roni: She does, when she talks about temperature, like putting your, cooking your meat to a certain temperature, she does only mention medium rare as like the, that's the lowest temper temperature that she goes to. And I always order my steaks rare or cook them rare. So maybe she likes it a little, maybe she, maybe because she

has been around a grocery store and is, you [00:54:00] know, accustomed to thinking about foods in terms of like risk management of getting ill from food. Like maybe she just automatically likes her cook, her meat cooked a little more than I do.

Riley: Yeah. I have found that if you like a medium rare steak and you want to eat that at a restaurant, you order it rare because it is very difficult to get a medium rare steak at a restaurant.

Roni: I agree. Or even a medium burger. I always order my burgers medium and they come out. Well done

Riley: Yeah. And it's really disappointing to pay for something like that Should we move to some dinner dilemmas, Roni?

Roni: Let's move on to some dinner dilemmas.

All right. First up, we are talking to Heather. I do great with planning for a couple of weeks and then I'll have a really busy weekend and suddenly there's no plan and probably no groceries and it's all takeout for the rest of the week. Haven't we all been there? I think this is a, I think this is a common problem actually, is like some people are really good at creating a [00:55:00] plan and then really struggle with sticking to it.

Like, they just, they're like, they have good, good intentions. It's the like, best laid, best laid plans of mice and men kind of situation. So my first thought related to this is, particularly since it happens, since you feel like it happens so often, and maybe it's an entire week that it happens, I would keep some extra like pantry staple meals on hand so that maybe the whole week doesn't have to be takeout and you can at least get maybe three homemade meals in during that week.

Maybe you get lucky and one of those homemade meals, make some extra leftovers. Uh, we always talk about the freezer having a couple freezer meals, doing the ri style of freezer meals where when you are actually cooking, you make a double batch and then the second half of it goes into the freezer. I, I would say kinda like set yourself up for success with that, where it's like if you haven't made it to the grocery store, you still have some food at home that you can make recipes from.

Riley: She also says here that like the [00:56:00] plan, like there's no plan because they had a busy weekend. This is also a great time to use menus. Or if you've had a great plan for weeks, look three weeks ago, pull that exact plan and duplicate it for this week. It's three weeks to me is a long time between meal plans and I personally don't have any issue repeating one.

Especially if like that work is done for me. Um, and so I I, I have the same problem that this person is saying. Like, I plan usually Sunday nights I meal plan, I create a grocery list. I either go shopping on Monday or I grocery pickup on Monday, Tuesday if I'm already gonna go to town, like I've already mentioned in this episode, I live quite away from the grocery store, so I kind of coordinate my trips into town.

And so like, if I am too busy on Sunday, I will find the same struggle. Except the only difference is that I live too far from takeout. But but that like keeping things in your freezer so that there's only one or two days of like, what are we gonna eat? Yeah. We got tuna. You know, like, because I run into the same problem if [00:57:00] I have a busy day when I normally meal plan, and then I get out of the rhythm.

And so I would just say like, looking back at a previous week, just pull it, duplicate it, pull it down, drag and drop it to um, the week that you have ahead. And then that work is done for you. And then you don't have to go do the takeout thing. Like there is nothing wrong with takeout, but it just builds on itself.

So cost, it's so costly, especially if you do it so many nights in a row. And so I would just say try to reuse what you've already done.

Roni: Yeah, and I think to build off of that idea, Riley, is that if you've already made the meal plan and you're re-purposing a previous meal plan and you have the option for grocery delivery, right? It like, it sounds like part of the struggle is like we had a crazy busy weekend. I, number one, didn't meal plan number.

Who didn't grocery shop? So repurpose an older meal plan and then have the groceries delivered to your house 

Riley: Mm-hmm. 

Roni: baa, bing, baa. Boom,

Riley: Yeah. And then it's almost no different than takeout. You just have to cook it when it gets there,

Roni: right?[00:58:00] 

Riley: which I guess is different than takeout.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: All right. So we have another one from Spencer. Knowing what I have in my freezer and my pantry.

Roni: Well, if you are a Plan to eat customer, Spencer, which I'm guessing you are since you wrote into the Plan to Eat podcast, we would recommend using your Staples list. As an inventory for both your freezer and your pantry. You can put in all of the things that you normally keep at home into your Staples list, and then double check that list.

When you go to make your meal plan and you go to make your shopping list, you can reference that list when you're thinking about, okay, what kind of meat do we have? What kind of meat should I use in my recipes this week? Or frozen vegetables, or whatever the things are. You know, do we have pasta? That kind of stuff.

The heart, you know, it's not a foolproof, foolproof system because unless you're incredibly diligent about making sure to update your app every time you use something, there's gonna be a little bit of [00:59:00] inconsistency. So part of it is that you can definitely track it, plan to eat. The other part of it is.

You might need to do a little bit of double checking if you're uncertain. Uh, usually what I do when I create my meal plan is I cross off all, cross off all the things that I know a hundred percent we already have at home. And then I do just like a quick whip around the kitchen to be like, okay, we do still have milk, we do still have pasta, we do have rice, so I don't need to buy those things at the grocery store.

Or I do need to keep those things or add those 

Riley: Mm-hmm. 

Roni: The other thought that I have is, we, we gave this tip a few weeks ago to somebody who was struggling to coordinate with their family members is that you could keep a list on your fridge or your freezer, on like a whiteboard or something.

Uh, if that's a little bit easier of a management system, you know, it doesn't have to be digital. So you could do more of a handwritten system where you cross things off and write, you know, ground beef and you have five [01:00:00] tick marks next to it or something. So that's a possibility.

Riley: Yeah, I don't have anything to add. Other than that, we will never not recommend that you shop at your house before you go to the store. I, I feel like we will never, not because it's gonna save you so much time and money in the long run. That whether your list is, whether you've made a little handwritten list for pantry and freezer.

Or if you keep it inside of plan to eat, nothing is gonna beat, like double checking to see if you have it. Because if you have to go back to the store for something, 'cause you thought you had it and you didn't, that's time and money wasted. And if you buy a duplicate, that's money wasted. And so we're gonna always recommend that you look and double check and kinda like put your eyes on the things you actually need.

Just so that's the only thing I would add to that.

Roni: Totally.

Michelle's dinner dilemma is that she needs quick vegan v quick vegan meals for Wednesdays and Fridays, which she says Wednesday and Friday Fast Days, which I'm guessing she's means fasting days.

Riley: Oh, I thought she meant like quick, [01:01:00] quick meals.

Roni: Oh, okay.

Riley: My immediate thought, is just the, just meal prepping roast tons of roasted veggies. We talked to, I don't know, who was it that we talked to on the podcast? Who suggested

Roni: That was Joy. She was

Riley: Yes. Joy Manning.

Roni: One of the first people we interviewed. Yeah.

Riley: Yes. I, I referenced that podcast so often in these dinner dilemmas.

But I loved her suggestion. She, she pan roasts tons of veggies. She creates one to two sauces and she creates wraps or salads out of those roasted veggies. So she can keep it interesting by making multiple sauces, or she can keep it interesting by doing, a salad with one, a pita with another, an omelet with another, depending on if you eat eggs or not.

If you're vegan, you don't eat eggs most likely. But, maybe you eat an alternative, you can mix it with something else. And then you're kind of, you've got this like staple Main of like tons of roasted vegetables, or like steamer steam things you could steam really easily. Uh, and then you're mixing it up [01:02:00] with a different sauce, but like it's, it's there and ready for you.

Meal prep, I feel like this is the way to do this.

Roni: Yeah, I totally agree. Okay. One thing to mention related to that is, uh, we have done some advertising before on a YouTube channel that's called Let's Eat Plants, and she is a vegan and she, the majority of the majority of her YouTube videos are vegan meal prep.

So it's basically how she preps all of her vegetables. She does like a, you know, like a Costco hall and then she shows you how she preps her vegetables for the week and how she puts them in different containers and which containers she uses that keeps them the freshest, like all of the best information.

So go check out Let's eat plants and get a little bit of advice from her in that too.

Riley: That's awesome Michelle. I hope that you skipped the beginning part of this episode, but that you did not skip dinner dilemmas.

Alright, next up we have Shelly and she says, remembering to thaw me 

Roni: we talked about this a little bit earlier. If you use plan to eat Shelly, [01:03:00] you can definitely create prep notes that remind you on the planner to bring stuff out of the freezer. You can also use defrost notes. So if it's, if you're using, like, if you're using the freezer as kind of an inventory system and you've put individual items in there, when you drag 'em out of your freezer onto the planner, they're gonna come with a defrost note.

The most amazing thing just happened is that you can now move those defrost notes around. It used to be that they only appeared on the day before the frozen item. Now you can move it to as many days before as you want. So if you're trying to thaw some, you're trying to thaw your whole chicken and it's gonna take you two days to thaw your chicken.

You can move that defrost note two days out. And I think the biggest thing for this that I would recommend is just doing a meal plan review, either at the beginning of the week or if you're really diligent about it, you could do it every day. Just kind of try to remind yourself in the morning like, what are we actually having for dinner tonight?

And do I need to do anything right [01:04:00] now to get ready for it? I think that that's a really important habit to develop in order to, you know, stick with, once again to stick with the things that are on your meal plan.

Riley: Yeah, there's multiple ways that we have seen people do this to help kind of put it in front of them every day. If you don't mind having things, uh, magnetized to your fridge, you can print your list. You could create a note on your phone that says, Hey, check your meal plan. Alternatively, you can have a digital, A lot of people have like digital calendars in their home.

You can sync your meal plan to your calendar. Those, those prep notes, those defrost notes, those will sync also. So you could do something along those lines, but kind of like a. I don't know. Everyone does their life so different, you know? And I, I tend to look at my week as a whole on Sunday, can I figure out what life's gonna look like?

What is my meal plan gonna look like? And then I go day to day. And usually I look at my calendar every morning and I'm saying, okay, what am I gonna get done today? Well, how am I gonna structure my day today? Do I have childcare today? Am I [01:05:00] cooking something during nap time? Because it's gonna be a, you know, like a dinner.

That takes a long time. And usually in the morning is when I'll review, okay, do I need to get something outta the freezer? And usually if I'm looking at that at seven in the morning, there's still plenty of time thaw something out or make a quick change of like, oh, I didn't chicken. But typically what I cook is, is, is plenty of time to defrost something.

So just kinda like building in, like there's just a couple of ideas for how to build in, like meal checking, your meal plan. But I love to cook and I like to get to the dinnertime portion of my day and like cook whatever I've planned and like whatever. That's like a creative thing for me. So, it's not outside of my like, daily thought process to think through that.

So I know not everyone's the same as me, but there's some ideas,

Roni: Sure. I like it. Okay. Lisa says, how to do things slowly when your family isn't on board. How do you build success in small steps and how do you keep going when you feel alone and discouraged? I believe in it so much, but [01:06:00] it's been a hard journey and I love your app and your podcast. It makes a world of difference.

Riley: oh my gosh, I just wanna hug you.

Roni: I know. Thank you, Lisa, and I'm, I really hate that you're, that you feel like meal planning is something that is discouraging and you're going at it alone.

Riley: Yeah. And there's, you know, we have no idea the backstory for what you're dealing with. We don't know if it is picky kids, picky, spouse, picky. In-laws, whoever lives with you, you know, we don't know. And there could be a lot of other things at play. Some of the first things that come to mind are those like little tips I just gave the last person who wrote in just the idea of like, how do you build in your own rhythms?

Like the one I ju those ones I just said, no one else does that. Like even Sunday nights, nobody at my house would eat on if I did not ask everyone or just do it myself. Like, what do y'all wanna eat this week? Or What are we cooking? What am I cooking this week? And so like those are things that I do for myself.

Even the daily, looking at my own calendar, I just do for me, because I love a [01:07:00] structure, I love a plan. I like to know. How the beats of my day are gonna look. And so I would just say doing some of those things could be really helpful. And, maybe your family just like super loves takeout, and if they do, um, but you are fighting a battle of like, we're not gonna, we can't spend money there right now.

There are tons of recipe sites that have like takeout, um, dupes. So whether it's Olive Garden soups or teriyaki chicken from Panda Express, like, I don't know what your family likes, but there are so many DUP recipes out there that you could follow. And also I would just say start small, like don't plan seven days worth of dinners and lunches and breakfasts.

It's overkill and it's a lot, and it's probably unsustainable. I don't know very many people who meal plan seven nights of the week and successfully follow that plan. Because life is life and it happens and it changes and stuff comes up. Right? So just starting small plan four nights or 3, 3, 3, if [01:08:00] that's, it's not what you got, and you plan three dinners and nothing else, and just buy some eggs for breakfast and people can figure out their own lunches, right?

Those are just some ideas. What do you have, Roni?

Roni: My thought goes to a lot less of the meal planning side of things and more the idea of like, call a family meeting and tell your family like, this is something that's really important to me and here's why I believe in it, and I'm feeling alone and discouraged in this. And it's not about like making a guilt trip, uh, for your family, right.

It's just, it's just expressing your feelings to people because I think when we take the time to actually express how something makes us feel. It connects easier than just being like, nobody cares about this thing, you know, and being frustrated by it and, and figure out a way that satisfies you and also satisfies your family, right?

Like if the idea that ri throughout is that your family really likes takeout, okay, well try to make a compromise with them and say, okay, I would like [01:09:00] to cook two nights a week. I would like to have us all sit down at the dinner table two nights a week and I'm, we're gonna cook dinner together, or I'm gonna cook dinner, or however it has to happen.

And because that's important to me

and, you know, like, figure out the way that I'm gonna say, like, not everybody's always gonna be happy, and in my opinion, if you have children, they might have less of a say in the matter than you and your spouse. Right.

So like if your kids are like, oh no, whatever, mom, I don't like that. Like be like, okay, well, but like this is what we're doing actually.

Riley: And every family structure is so different. So even empowering your children and saying, Hey, I understand that you don't like this, so I want you to cook dinner. Like I want, like, why don't you cook what you wanna cook? Or you try to find the recipe and like, and not in like an accusatory or punishment kind of way, but in a, bringing them in to what you're doing.

And also this is what we literally are gonna cook and eat for the rest of our lives. Teaching them how to [01:10:00] do it, teaching them how to meal plan, and like kinda like giving them a job. I feel like a lot of kids like just need a job. And so kind of like empowering them to like, okay, you have Monday nights.

You got this. Like,

I'll support you however I can and I'll buy the groceries, but we're doing it.

Roni: I think that's a great idea. I mean, as we know from Katie Kimball, when children help out in the kitchen, they're much more likely to consume the food that they helped out with. So

Riley: Yeah. And I just thought of this while you were talking too, just like, you know, this person, what a, Lisa says that she believes in it so much. Like, I don't know what you believe in, like, but I know that, like, I know the stats on family meals are powerful, um, rates of depression among teenagers dropping because of family dinner.

Like that's huge. Right? And so just if that is what you're fighting for in your family, like don't stop, keep going. Family dinners are revolutionary.

Roni: [01:11:00] yeah. All right. I think that wraps us up for today. In two weeks, we're gonna be finishing our book club breakdown of Grocery Shopping Secrets and we'll also be coming back for more dinner dilemmas then too. If you have any recommendations for what our next book club book should be, let us know.

You could head over to Instagram and send us a message. You could email us at podcast@planteat.com. You know, just get in touch with us. We would love to hear your thoughts and opinions, and if you have a book related to cooking or food that really changed your perspective, we would love to know about it.

We like our perspectives to be changed.

And again, thanks for listening. We will talk to again in two weeks.