Episode four sixteen, Simplified meal planning, low ingredient meal plans. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and liver a your life.
Here your hosts.
Jen and Jill. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are talking simple meal planning. We are in summer. Well technically summer starts in a few days, but if you live in Florida, we are in summer and we're thinking simple summer meal planning. Just very low maintenance, low effort, too easy not to do it meal planning.
Because we're so tired.
So tired and RESTful. I think we should rebrand to rest full intentional rest, intentional lace going down. Yeah, so we are capitalizing that. Let's not work against the season. Let's embrace the season. Let's not work against our brains, embrace the energy level that comes with the season.
But also do the things that are going to help you to still be eating at home, eating more nutritiously, eating in ways that don't hurt your money. And we asked you all in the friend letter. We give a poll in every friend letter, and this time, we asked, what's your best trick for simplifying meal plans with options to rotate the same meals each week, Make one big meal, eat lots of leftovers, get other family members to pitch in. Others might have just said what plan or other do
you do something else? But most of you did say that your best trick is to just make one big meal and eat lots of leftovers.
So there you go. That's our episode.
No, I mean, so we're not like as much into that as most of you are, So I think we're going to focus on the ingredients and maybe making one big, low ingredient meal that you can have leftovers, but you don't have to. So we're gonna come at it from all angles in this episode. Whether you're a leftover eater, whether you're not, there is gonna be something for you in this episode.
But first, this one's brought to you by the offspring of the trichoplex and water flea, the first being the simplest living creature on earth, with no mouth, no stomach, no muscles, no blood, and no veins. They also have no front or back, whereas the water flea is the most complex, with about twenty five percent more genes than
us here humans. Their offspring, however, is the radical middle of the simplest and most complicated beings on Earth, sponsoring this episode to remind you about their cousin, The Friend Letter, also being the radical middle of helpful personal finance tips with humor and actionable steps sprinkled in. Cause you don't need tricloplaxes or water fleas in your life. You need the Friend Letter fugal friendspodcast dot com.
I read the first line of that and I stopped reading because I didn't I didn't want to know.
You didn't want to know. Most people don't want to know.
I read no mouth, no stomach, no muscles, no blood, and then I was like, well, if some gluetid's not working for you, whatever the trichoplax that's going on, maybe it will.
Uh.
The trichoplax and the water flea obviously cannot actually have offspring, just based on what I have described to you about the two of them, but it still is interesting to think about what their offspring would be.
They'd be.
Both and simple with the right amount of complexity, and I think that's what the Friend Letter does so true.
I didn't want to know any of that. But what I do want to know is how to simplify my meal planning. That is what I'm always looking for. After what feels like a decade of meal planning, I'm still always looking for ways to simplify it. So this is one of our most popular topics. You love it too.
A couple episodes to queue up for after this episode three ninety five Creative Ways to Reduce food wasts with Carly Bodrag of Plant You her newest cookbook New York Times bestselling cookbook, Scrappy Cooking is I think a manual that everybody should have in their kitchen tells you how to reuse commonly thrown away kitchen scraps into fantas plastic recipes. Episode three seventy First Annual Dinner Awards are best dinner recipes to meal plan. I still love that episode.
We call it first Annual. But are we passed? Oh?
I guess we're not. Yeah, we're past.
One year on it.
Will we do another one?
Oh?
No, we could?
Yeah, okay, time is a construct. And then episode three point fifty four Meal Planning for people who hate to cook.
So this is like the.
Simplifying cooking is the top topic we love talking about because we are not don't we don't love cooking. So we are going to look at an article with thirteen practical ways to simplify your meals. We're gonna look at just some good foundational pieces when you are planning your meals, and then we're going to go into a few low ingredient resources.
So I will say we probably won't go through all thirteen. The article does have thirteen listed. We're just kind of picking out our favorites. We'll go through most of them. I really we looked at a couple of different articles to inform this episode, and this one was my favorite. I do feel like it was the combination of the best tips and some kind of reframes. Are thinking about things a little bit differently than maybe I have before. So I'm excited about this one. It comes from raising simple,
Like we said, thirteen practical ways to simplify meals. We will have it linked in the show notes. But they describe both coming from different cultures. The writer is Italian married to a person from Korea, and they together have a couple of children, and so really kind of diverse types of food that they're eating in their homes, but then also some creative ways of getting your kids to enjoy the food too, and how to engage in some of that creativity and just make it simple too.
Yeah, so that brings us to our first one to check your expectations. First simplifying tip. If you are going for simple, easy, and low ingredient, you have to start with a realistic approach to your meals to reflect that. So and this is you. You have to honor your season in this and so a lot of the times we will want to cook the most healthy meal plan or the tastiest all these superlatives to our meal plan, but we have to really look at our season and
honor that when we are creating a meal plan. And so summer just seems like a really good time to talk about really simple meal plans, she says. If you're raising a small tribe like myself, complicated meals with hard to find ingredients may not be a good fit. I think the hardest thing for me in meal plans is finding recipes with ingredients I already have, because there's always some like some random ingredient that I can't find at Walmart.
I'm not going to run around to specialty grocery stores right now in my life, it's just not what I value. If it is something you value, then of course that's something enjoyable to you do it. But I had to check my expectations. So think about what kind of meals meet your family needs in this season of life. And maybe the season is short, maybe it's a couple months like summer, or maybe it's longer, like having young children.
So just decide what season of life you're in. Check your expectations about what type of meal plan you can really have. Sometimes the healthiest meal plans are not the meal plans your children will eat, you know, So check your expectations.
Make it realistic on it, you won't do it. The next one on here is to cook in one pot. This is just going to simplify dishes, not to mention just the process of cooking. If you're able to find recipes that can all be made in one type of container, then it's just simplified. So they talk about using an instant pot or a crock pot. I know a lot of you love the instant pot.
It scares me.
I'm to be honest, I'm an instant pot girl.
I am not. It terrifies me. I do have one. I let other people use it mostly.
But what I've also learned about some of these is it's especially great if you like soup. I'm also not someone who loves soup. However, I think I still do use this kind of cook in one container hack with casse roles aka bakes like the one that you got from Jenny. It's good for the buffalo chicken and rice that's made in one skillet.
Girl, I'll make that in the instant pot. Okay, that's a one pot instant pot for me. I'm going to bring up that.
And it can be made in a skillet as well.
So I do this. It just isn't necessarily in a pot or a crockpot. So if you're like me and you're like, yeah, I'm not into that, sometimes it just ends up tasting like mush to me. There's a lot of things you can make in just one thing and it's really good, and it can still have your your veggies and your starches and your protein all wrapped up into one thing.
My newest one pot obsession, and this is gonna sound don't judge me, spaghetti. So I know, could you make it easier? Yes? Could you make it less dishes. Yes, and by doing it in the instant pot. So full disclosure, I actually have a ninja foodie, but I still call the instant pot because that's when I say pressure cooker. It gives off different vibes.
You're putting so raw pasta and yeah.
And so listen, this is it's I've done it so many times and it is fantastic every time. So we're browning a pound of ground beef in the instant pot on saute, and once that's browned, we put in the sauce, a little bit of the sauce, and then we break our pasta in half. I know you were You're polish. Get out of here.
I'm what.
I still know what thought over it?
Get over it? You break it in half and you say it hail Mary. I don't know. And then you put that in there kind of lined up, and then cover it with your water the rest of your sauce, and you don't mix it. The secret is to not mix it. Just make sure all of the pasta is covered with water and sauce, and then you I think eight minutes in high pressure and then it all comes out just creamy and dreamy. You've got that pasta water that makes everything a little creamier, and it is just
a fantastic pasta bolonaise one pot. The only thing you have to think about is when you're browning the meat. I love it. I don't know why you need to make it easier because is already easy. But for me, it just like I'm glad that you found something better for you. Thank you.
Yeah, I will boil my pasta. That's just something that's fine for me to do anyways. Uh.
That brings us to our next point. Find your favorite sauce. So rather than cooking multiple dishes to please the selective eaters, choose a sauce that can be added individually to meals.
I I love that one.
I love this idea because my kids want everything plain. Well, the one year old needs it plain or the sauce will be everywhere, but Kai just like needs everything plain. And then Travis and I have differing preferences on our styles. Basically everything I like to eat, Travis dislikes to eat, and vice versa. We have opposite food tastes. So this has been like something where you can make something that's kind of neutral, not bland, but kind of neutral and
just hush it up with sauce to your preference. So she's saying her she and her husband loves saracha Coach Jang and we have like different types of hot sauces. I have fallen in love with the PF Chain's sweet Chili sauce. It is delicious, got some heat, It's low in sugar, but still a little sweet. Love that sauce on almost anything. Buffalo sauce, low fat ranch.
Yeah, I mean this one stood out to me as one of those I love that perspective of being able to make even if you do want to kind of have one batch of one thing, but make it taste different throughout the week, or be able to cater to your child's needs, but then also be able to elevate
it for your own taste buds. So you know, I'm thinking, if rice or veggies or even pasta is kind of the bulk of the food that you're having, you could make a big old mess of it at the beginning of the week and then do pesto one night and a sierracha the other night, and a kind of more creamier type of sauce the next night. Like that could be a way that is low cost to be able to make the bulk of the food taste different every night.
So I love that one, all right.
The next one that I'm going to highlight is jumping down the list a little bit to number seven, which is talking about batch cooking. And again this is one of those like take what you want, leave what you don't. Some things are going to work for you, some things don't. But batch cooking can be really helpful in simplifying the way that week to week.
Can look for you.
This is where you're preparing a larger quantity of food ahead of time that of course you intend to use, and then get cooking entire meals or meal components like side dishes and batches can save you time and effort during the week. They talk about how they like to batch cook roasted vegetables and then they'll use them for the next four or five days. They may be served as a standalone or added to a keishe or on top of a bed of rice. The possibilities are endless.
I think when we hear the term batch cook we think making a bunch of different recipes and shoving them all into the freezer. And for some people that can work that's a whole other way of going about meal planning and having meals ready for the days that you're short on time. But I also like how she's describing
that it could just be one ingredient. I know you've talked Jen about cooking a ton of chicken breasts all at once in your instant pot and then shredding it and free or leaving some of it in the fridge to be able to throw that into that Sunday. Yeah, on top of a salad. I love her example of
the roasted vegetables. So rather than just I'm gonna cook this one thing for tonight, put in that extra three to five minutes to chop up all the veggies that you have on hand and roast them, and then you're you're halfway there for the rest of the meals that week.
Yes, yeah, I actually I bought a s a family sized caesar salad kit from Walmart and added some of that shredded chicken on top. That was a five minute meal. I love a chicken caesar salad.
Yeah, yeah too.
So the next one is to plan for four to five cooked meals. So to me, I interpret that and I this is a short description, So I don't know what she interprets it as, but for me, it's don't plan cooked meals every night. Some nights you want to intentionally plan for a freezer meal, and you can, and that can be flexible. You can say, I'm just gonna, you know, on Thursday night, I'm gonna see what peaks my fancy that's in the freezer and defrost it for Friday.
So you want to be intentional about incorporating freezer meals, whether you pre prepared them or you bought them from the grocery store. We love these bulk shaking cord on blues from Sam's Club, and those you don't defrost, those you just take out from the freezer. You also want to be intentional about like sandwich or salad nights, bag salad or you know, just making a sandwich or cereal as Kelloggs would like you to start incorporating into your
meal plan. So be intentionable, intentional about putting those things in your meal plan when the week when your schedule requires it. Don't just like schedule out all these meals and then end up eating cereal for dinner. Plan it in and I would say three to four cooked meals that's where I live three to four cooked meals a week. I try to live around four, so the other three are either freezer, sandwich, cereal.
Or the leftovers or left Yeah, make one of those three or four meals a bit a larger meal and then be able to do leftovers. The next one I'm going to highlight on here is number eight, which is try a challenge. You know us, we love those. If you need to gamify this thing to get yourself on board with it, do that. They reference how Courtney Carver at Be More with Less. We actually interviewed her a week very long time ago, a very long time ago, but she's got a lot of resources just around pairing
down minimalism, and she does a Capsule Kitchen Challenge. I believe she started out with the Capsule Wardrobe Challenge and they just three challenged, so she's sticking with her threes. And the Capsule Kitchen Challenge is a three month, thirty three ingredient challenge. So that's where you experiment to see if limiting your food choices can offer you maybe eat some health, lifestyle, financial benefits and be able to learn from and maybe alter some habits in the way that
you're cooking. So this is for three months, try to only eat off of thirty three ingredients. So that's going to limit what you're putting in your grocery cart. It's going to help you really refine your recipes that you're making and hopefully help to eliminate some decision fatigue. I'm sure there's other types of challenges out there. That's just
the one that this article gave as an example. But again, I think we love challenges for the opportunity to open the door to what it is that we want to see shift or change in our lifestyles, what we're doing with our food, and help us to kind of think creatively outside the box. That can be that spark that we need to do something different. So if that's you try a challenge.
Yeah, I mean so in the book we actually included you found a study where limits or boundaries actually helped in creativity. That teams given reasonable restrictions were more creative, they had more innovative solutions for problems. And that's what a challenge is. It's not meant to be restrictive. It's meant to give reasonable restrictions, which I guess you could argue is restrictive, but reasonable limitations or constraints. Constraints, yes,
reasonable constraints to foster creativity. So that's why a challenge is fun and healthy.
All right.
So the next one I am going to talk about is to choose always foods. So this is a list of a few things for your kids of snacks they can always have. Our goal, she says, our goal is to only have the healthy food in our house that I want to say yes to all the time. Having food options that you want to say yes to can simplify snack and meal time, so I would say yes. I think this one focuses more on the health aspect
for me. I think having always foods and communicating that to your kids it helps with decision fatigue because it's always like, Mom, can I have a snack?
Mom?
What can I have for snack? Yeah? Yeah, So we made We just got new cabinets and we have our microwave on the bottom and so a base microwave cabinet has a cabinet underneath the microwave and that is where we put all of kay snacks. So whatever is in that cabinet, he can have what he wants when he wants, and he can get it himself, and so that has limited questions, limit decision fatigue, interruptions on what I'm doing,
all of that. So that's what I think. Always foods are important, but in terms of meal planning, this can help. It's not every week I'm deciding something different. It's I would say, once a month, you're talking to your kids and be like, hey, what snacks do you want me to get from the next month, and then you've got it. You buy it every week if you need to, or you buy it in bulk at Costco or Sam's and
the decision is done. So we're not just when we're talking about simplified meal planning, we're not just talking about dinner. We've got to think about breakfast, lunch, and snacks too. So create these always foods for snacks, and then also think about, when you're doing these ingredient challenges or thinking about simplified ingredients in general, think about making breakfast symbolk.
I think breakfast is our my favorite thing to batch because I'll make a batch of egg cups or a batch of overnight oats on Sunday very quickly while I'm making dinner, and there's breakfast for the week.
Yeah, this one lines up with a tip I believe we've talked about before on the podcast, but it involves even keeping a menu, so to speak of five to ten meals.
Well, ten might be a little much.
Five to seven meals that you know your family likes, that you can make with some shelf staples that are always possibilities for you. So for me, one of those things is a Korean beef and rice recipe. So I will often keep ground beef and rice and I just have all of the ingredients that I need. It's very simple to be able to make that recipe. I always have on hand frozen veggies and rice to be able
to make fried rice. So I kind of know, if we're really running low, we haven't had time to get to the grocery store, don't really know what I'm going to make. An always meal or always foods can be can include the things I'm always going to have on hand and the recipes that I know everybody in the house likes, even if I've got company over. So the next one on the list for me is choose recipes
with ten ingredients or less. And this flows into our next bit about sharing some low ingredient resources that we can use kind of that second portion of this episode, because we think that that's one of the ways that we can make meal planning simple is if our recipes, the amount of time that the food takes to make is also simple. This can also feel a little bit like a food challenge in some ways to only source
for a period of time. Let's say a couple of weeks or maybe even a month that I'm only going to make recipes that are ten ingredients or less, and see what that does for your timing, your wallet, your barrier to entry to meal planning and cooking in the kitchen. They reference how flavorful meals do not need twenty ingredients. Ten ingredients is still a real decent amount. I'd say I often will make meals that only have like five ingredients and they're still real great. So decide your number
and give yourself that challenge. This could also really help to simplify.
So yeah, heading into our low ingredient resources again, like less ingredients means you're spending less money on ingredients. So this could be a really great challenge. So my article that I want to share with you, we're not going to go through these, but you can see them in our show notes is twenty eight five ingredient dinner recipes that are oh so simple, And I would say you could even this is from Tasty, but you can even google five ingredient recipes and get a bunch of different lists.
I would say, search it on Instagram and then be in. I always see the pictures like what's this going to look like on my plate?
Yeah? Yeah, I love searching for five ingredient recipes. Challenge yourself one week to make only recipes that have five ingredients or less.
What looks the best on here to you?
I really love a where was it? I just saw it? I love a beef and bean burrito.
Yeah I forgot about those.
Right, Yeah, so that's really great. There's even a pasta salad which got penne, arugola, pesto like pre made pesto, pre roasted red peppers, and some barata like all stuff you can get at Walmart, so it doesn't have to be bad. Crockpot Italian beef that looks like I would just get some stakums and some Italian rolls and pre cut like the frozen onion pepper mix like that is something that we really love. So yeah, when you see these,
you will also get creative with other things. So sometimes this is just to spark your.
Creative I know it jogs your memory on things.
Sometimes I do get in a rut of just working off that menu that I know I have on hand and we like, and I forget all these other options of what you can do with food. The one I want to highlight comes from the Minimalist Baker, and there's a lot of resources on this site, but one of the things that is really cool about it is the
way that you can filter and recipes. So you can filter by season or a special diet or type of cuisine or simple factor, so whether you want ten ingredients or less, or fifteen minutes or less, or thirty minutes or less, or instant pot or one bowl. So that I thought was a really cool way to be able to hack the simplification of cooking. Some of you might think, I don't really care how many ingredients there are.
How long is it going to take that?
Yeah, So being able to filter your recipes based on what you think is most valuable and important with your meal plan is awesome. The fact that this is a tool and resource on their website is amazing.
A Minimalist Baker is just a fantastic resource for any vegan or vegetarian. So if you're trying to eat less meat, hit up the Minimalist Baker website. It's not baked goods, it's just all vegan.
Yeah.
And of course, if all of this is still sounding so overwhelming, there's still cook Smart.
There's still cook Smarts, and I'm.
Going to sing their praises because again, if this is what's keeping you from eating more at home or cooking, it's just in general, there are resources like cook Smarts who can do the meal planning for you. So that cuts out a pretty significant part of this process. If it's the sitting down, the coming up with stuff, the Google searching, the filtering, the recipes, if that's the barrier to entry, hire it out, have cook smarts do it for you. And that doesn't have to be for forever.
Try them for a month, see how that goes, See if that starts to spark some creativity for you to be able to do it on your own. But I think it's worth paying in a company to be able to do this, or even an individual to be able to do this for you. If that's what's going to help you start eating at home more if that's what's
going to help you save on groceries. And I love about Cooksmarts is they will also help you reuse ingredients throughout the week, like they're thoughtful about it versus a lot of times when I am doing meal plans, sometimes it can just be a conglomeration of recipes that look good, but it's not necessarily taking into consideration. But how much leftover food am I going to end up having because I didn't use up all those ingredients? So yeah, Frugal friendspodcast dot com slash ccs.
And they do sales about five times a year. I think they'll do a back to school sale and we will tell you whenever they are doing sales. It's like if you it's fifteen dollars a month if you buy it an annual subscription, I think it's about eight ish dollars a month. But then they have those sales a few times a year. Their next one, I think is back to school and if you are on the front letter Frugal friendspodcast dot com, we will tell you when the next cook smart sale is they do. You'll get
four meals a week. And you can choose between the regular or paleo or vegetarian options. So if you're outside of those dietary restrictions or preferences, then maybe cook Smarts is not the best for you. But if you are in those, we love that cook Smarts not only meal plans for you, but they also help you learn some techniques, so there is a little bit of cooking education. And
then also reused ingredients. So they'll use one ingredient and they'll try to include it in meal plans occasionally until you would theoretically be done with that ingredient. So yes, we love love cook Smarts.
Do you know what else we love that we absolutely reuse in every episode.
And it's never done, it never runs out.
The Bill of the week.
That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams.
Maybe you've paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore.
That bills, Buffalo Bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week.
Hi, Dannan Bill.
My name is Carissa. I'm from California.
I will Saying Tales podcast for literally so long, like over a year now. It feels like a long time for me, but you' all literally taking me through like living with my ex, trying to budget for us to move out to now us breaking up, in me living on my own and having a new job and getting
a row High Array all thanks to you guys. And the main point of this bill, though, is that my birthday just passed on this past Tuesday, and that tuesday, you guys released an adhd Nerriday Virgins Money Managing video and I was like, oh my god, like I have Adhd and it felt like a little gift to me, So thank you guys. And in preparation for my birthday, I was actually able to budget enough for me to save up for a new tattoo that I've been wanting.
So that is my bill of the week. I got a tattoo thanks to y'all, and I'm just thriving because I've been listening to you guys for so long, So thanks so much.
Lets tend to see what you guys post next.
Bye.
Carissa, I congratulations, that's amazing. Oh my gosh. The episode she's talking about is episode three ninety Managing Money with Adhd Or neurodivergence and so well, happy birthday back in March. We do get to every bill, even takes a while, but yay, that's so exciting.
Ugh, I'm so glad you felt seen by that, and I'm so glad you've been listening to us for a long time and finally called in your bill where we love to hear from longtime listeners and hear about the things that are resonating with you. It sounds like you've accomplished a lot over these past few years, and the ability to gift yourself with something you love and value like a new tattoo is so exciting.
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Thanks for sharing that with us. We're celebrating with you. If you all listening, want to submit your bill. If it's because you've been listening to us for a while and you just haven't done it yet, please do so. Or if you're a new listener or your name is Bill Forrual friendspodcast dot com slash bill, leave us.
Your bill, and now it's time for the lightning around. Shoot.
All right, let's get into the nuts and bolts tastiest, cheapest, healthiest, healthiest, lowest ingredient recipes that you can make with five minutes and zero. This is a lot of.
Restrict Goldy put a lot of restrictions on us, and this is what we're gonna live.
The creative in I feel hindered.
We want tasty, inexpensive, healthy, low ingredient made in five minutes or last was zero prior work, not requiring previous prep work.
You don't do it, you know what?
I just thought, Uh oh, this is gonna be. This is gonna be a very niche reference. But I digested a huge gust of the wind. That's my favorite. A huge gust of wind is probably my best. No, Okay, So chicken pot stickers, the frozen ones from Walmart or Sam's Club, they're both good. Turkey sandwiches. We do a lot of turkey sandwiches. We big turkey sandwiches.
Tell me what you put on it?
Bread?
What are we working with?
We're working with any bread. I like Dave's killer bread. I think that's what it's called. Mike, I don't know what his name is. So and then the rest of my family prefers white chemical bread. I don't know what I know something is bad about.
It and enriched enriched, Yeah, I don't know.
There's something about it. I don't know. So they will do that bread and then just turkey and whatever cheese we have and not always chippies because I'm still like growing in myself work wow wow yeah, so yeah that is that meatball subs instance spots instant pot spaghetti kale salad with some shredded chicken. But I will just get the Mediterranean kale salad from Zam's Club, throw the shredded shreaded chicken on top. Bam.
Uh So like that one does require the previous prep work of the shredded chicken.
But I'll let you have it. I'll let it slide.
I'm sorry, I don't know.
Although Kennon instant pot cook chicken in five minutes.
Probably yeah, okay, well then I'll stick with my first A huge gust of wind y.
Yeah, these are a lot of constraints.
I'm gonna go with a fridge raid, also called charcootery board. My charcooteries are unhinged. It's really whatever whatever is they that was.
On your last charcooter.
It usually includes.
I've I've usually got a block of cheddar. There's You're gonna be hard pressed to go in my fridge and not find cheddar cheese, a sliced apple. I've always got olives on hand, bread with whatever jams and mustards we got going on. Sometimes that's it. Occasionally I've got a little bit of a little extra something something in the freezer.
But again that that would be what's.
The something something like?
You can't just say I'm about to say, but I'm gonna say that that would have required some extra prep. But eggplant fries, which that's a nice air fryer thing. You just slice up your eggplant coda in egg and breadcrumbs and air fry those bad boys, and that's a yummy on the side. I also I love a fried rice that is very quick. I just use the frozen veggies. It does require having rice already because it takes longer than five minutes to cook rice. Egg tacos, so those
are fast. That does not require any other Now, eregs are so good. Kids eat eggs. Eggs go in anything. I'd hard boil eggs on the weekend and my kids just love them. Yeah, so that yeah, egg tacos will just be like some scrambled eggs, salsa, sour cream. I also love me a sad with avocado, and this does not meet the health standards. But hot dogs, hot dogs. Hot dogs are so fast. You just heat one of those bad boys up and done. That's like you can
have it made and eaten in five minutes. And that's something that Goldie did not ask for in this lightning round. But you gave it.
You gave it's giving above and beyond, it's giving gust of wind. So thank you so much for tuning in. We hope that this kind of sparked your interest in looking for those low ingredient meal plans and kind of gave you some places to look to. Obviously, we can't give you. You know, it's not time for our second annual Dinner Awards, so we're not going to give you a two week meal plan on this episode. We could,
but we won't. But we wanted to spark your creativity in looking for those food challenges, those five ingredients and yeah, ways to simplify your meal plans over the summer. And so if this did inspire you, then we would love to hear about it in a rating and review on Apple, kind of like this one from Liz in Asia that says great for people in non traditional lives five stars. It says we live in Asia and can't relate to most financial podcasts. We have no desire or ability to
own a home, for example. This podcast is so practical and helps you elevate your own values and goals and then take practical and attainable steps. Thank you so much.
That's amazing. I love hearing that. It's fun to know we've got people all around the world listening in and that some of what we talk about is translatable across
different cult communities. And that's one of the things I mean when we've been writing the book that we've talked about, is we want some of these evergreen principles that can be applied because sometimes the exact plan and the exact blueprint of do this, do that, save that amount isn't what works for everybody, but rather these concepts of values based spending that can follow us throughout a lifetime and kind of wherever we choose to live and whatever our
personal goals are. So so glad to hear that. Lisen Asia, Thanks for sharing. If you are also enjoying this show and you haven't told us yet that you're enjoying this show by leaving a rating and review, please do that when when we reach because it's not an if, it's a when we reach one thousand reviews, because we're not there yet.
We're going to the recording. Yeah, well, then we'll set a new goal for ourselves.
Jen wants to do a poll in the friend letter of what we should treat ourselves with when we reach one thousand reviews.
We'd love your ideas too. I don't know what our little treat should be, but we've been working on it for over six years, so maybe it should be a little bigger than a little tree.
We've got so many things to celebrate though.
So yes, if you are our thousandth review maybe we'll let you tell us what we should have the friend letter the options we should be a.
Screenshot if you are the one thousand reviewer. But don't wait, don't wait, so you will be the one thousand.
Please don't wait. I shouldn't have said that, not dang, all right, see you next time. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni.
Jill.
What what are you cooking? This summer?
Like?
What is what are you craving? What are you eating?
What's in what you'r era?
What era are you in? M food?
Wise, we are in a little bit of an avocado era, which is fun for me because I used to be allergic to avocado in that they made me vomit. Like if I had too many. I loved them, I remember.
But if it was too much, it was nausea.
It's been since I've known you, but I love avocado so much that I'm like, I'm going to see if I can reintroduce avocado to my diet and like builds up immunity.
And I don't know it worked, and or the nausea was in my head. I don't know.
They are very fatty, Yeah, it's whatever they're high in that I have read there are people who have this like reaction to the nutrient that it is super dense in So even still I'll only eat like half an avocado, but oh it's so great, So doing like a nice salt combo on the avocado. Making guacamole. I am definitely into the spreads and sauces, So making my own salsa verde chimmy cherry pesto guacamole.
These are really fun for me.
And like one of those things like we talked about earlier, finding a sauce or I'd even take it further, like the spread.
The mixture.
Has been helpful for me to get some of that fresh flavor and make every meal taste a.
Little bit different.
That's awesome.
Yeah, I wonder you about you. What's your era?
I have recently been in that like potsticker era where I've just been like making those like several times a week because they're so easy. I am in my easy era, honestly, like less thought the better era, which is why I think I love a one pot spaghetti because I can't even manage regular spaghetti. I can't. I hear you talking about making salsa verde and Jimmy cherry and I might I get anxious.
So yeah, speaking of the salsa verde, though, it's actually really pretty easy.
You roast all that, that's what they say, and then you say the oven. But here's the thing, when you're already roasting other things, like I will, what's that one step you can take now that makes your life easier in the future. Like if I'm if the oven's on, then I think, what else can I throw in this oven that's gonna make my life easier through the rest of the week. So a lot of.
Times My oven's on just once a week and we're just we're just rotating it. We're just shoving stuff in, uh and with a timer. I'm not there in the kitchen all day. It just is all right. I chopped up all this stuff and we're just gonna fit as much as we can in there. So really, salsa verde is roasted tomatillos and then you throw that in a blender with like a.
Bunch of other stuff. That's it. Yeah, it's blend roast and blend roast and blend done.
Yeah. Still I can't wrap my head around it.
That's fine.
I have too much laundry and I can't.
Uh.
I bet there's a rat for it. I bet there is. But yes, you don't.
Can't even wrap my head around spaghetti.
That can be a big thing to have to make your own sauces and salad dressings and that kind of a thing. For me, it's what's inspiring me and making other things easier, the fact that I've got this fresh sauce, fresh dip. Then it makes the other things, Oh, those can be simple, not complicated, because I've got this nice sauce.
That maybe you don't go big on the meat or the big thing. Maybe you're a sauce centered.
Yep, which I say. I'm not into soup, but here we are with the sauces. Get in a spoon.
Maybe you're sauce centered.