Speaker 1: Welcome to Hat to Money. I'm Joel and I am
Speaker 1: Mad and today we're talking cheap meal prep for struggling
Speaker 1: chefs with Frankie Celenza.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is nothing more elemental than our need to
Speaker 2: eat food. Right, So, no matter how much money you've
Speaker 2: got in the bank, no matter how much debt you have,
Speaker 2: we're all united by the fact that we get hungry.
Speaker 2: And while some folks might like to splurge when it
Speaker 2: comes to their meals, the rest of us are looking
Speaker 2: for ways to cut those costs so that we can
Speaker 2: reach some other financial goals. And that is why we
Speaker 2: were pumped to be joined by Daytime Emmy Award winning
Speaker 2: culinary host Frankie Celenza. Frankie's show Struggled Meals. It is
Speaker 2: all about getting the most bang for your buck in
Speaker 2: the kitchen, both for your wallet and when it comes
Speaker 2: to the amount of time that you're spending cooking that's
Speaker 2: important as well. So we're excited to talk about that today. Frankie,
Speaker 2: thank you for joining us today on the podcast.
Speaker 3: So happy to be here you guys.
Speaker 1: Frankie, We're glad to have you man, and I feel
Speaker 1: like you even make cooking accessible to someone like me.
Speaker 1: Who is terrible at the stuff. So I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: But our first question to everyone who comes on the show,
Speaker 1: we want to know what your craft be. Your equivalent
Speaker 1: is Matt and I. We splurge outrageously on good beer
Speaker 1: while we're saving for the future. What is what is
Speaker 1: that in your life?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's mountain bike parts. Yeah. Actually, just before yeah,
Speaker 3: I got a package with a new set of long
Speaker 3: fingered gloves. Very important. My current pair is wearing through
Speaker 3: on the index finger from heavy breaking and intense rock riding.
Speaker 3: So it's time for another pair, you know, gotta gotta
Speaker 3: protect the contact points.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly important that in your feet. So how did
Speaker 2: you get into biking? Was it just a love for
Speaker 2: you said? You said mountain biking specifically, and it sounds
Speaker 2: like you are actually on trails. Was it a love
Speaker 2: of being an outdoors like on the mountain or did
Speaker 2: you start like most of us, riding around your cul
Speaker 2: de sac? How did you get into biking?
Speaker 3: This is so bizarre, but when I was thirteen years old,
Speaker 3: my very best friend got into road biking because it
Speaker 3: was the Lance Armstrong era, and so I hopped to
Speaker 3: my dad's bike and started riding with him, and before
Speaker 3: you know it, I mean we were competing in the
Speaker 3: national championships as road bike riders and I've probably done
Speaker 3: nine hundred laps of Central Park and stage races and
Speaker 3: that was my sport as a teenager, Like I actually
Speaker 3: thought about maybe going pro. I was a very good sprinter.
Speaker 3: This is before the days of texting, even T nine,
Speaker 3: nobody was even T nine texting. Now when I get
Speaker 3: on the road, the cars seem to be going faster, bigger,
Speaker 3: and with less focus. So I love being in the woods.
Speaker 3: I love being with nature, and it's a natural antidepressant.
Speaker 3: It makes me feel really good.
Speaker 2: I love it. It's good for you from so many
Speaker 2: different angles. I mean from a transportation standpoint, from a
Speaker 2: just staying healthy standpoint, and obviously, like you're saying, from
Speaker 2: a mental clarity standpoint as well.
Speaker 1: And I know it costs money, but from the value
Speaker 1: you get from biking regularly, it's like it's so worth
Speaker 1: the money you stick into it, for sure, So.
Speaker 4: It really is. We have firm your splurge.
Speaker 3: Oh sweet, Yeah, well, I will say this my first
Speaker 3: mountain bike, I literally just changed it six months ago
Speaker 3: and I had been riding that since two thousand and one,
Speaker 3: So I got my money's worth out of that. Man,
Speaker 3: the technology has changed quite a bit. The stuff I
Speaker 3: can get up and down now is like I couldn't
Speaker 3: believe it. I thought lightness was all that matters. It
Speaker 3: is not the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I mean my splurge. We totally do.
Speaker 4: Man. We sign off.
Speaker 1: So well, let's talk about your area of expertise, which
Speaker 1: is which is cooking, which is helping us helping everyone
Speaker 1: out there cook and make awesome meals for less. I'm
Speaker 1: curious too, what was the inspiration for struggle Meals We
Speaker 1: love your philosophy? Was this born out of necessity? Were
Speaker 1: you like some broke college student sort of thing and
Speaker 1: you're like, I got to figure out how to do
Speaker 1: this on my own? Or yeah, what kind of necessitated
Speaker 1: or brought about this creative endeavor.
Speaker 3: It's sort of twofold because when I look back when
Speaker 3: I started making these videos in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 3: I actually have a reel that I made where I'm
Speaker 3: holding up packets and I'm like, I'm like, get the
Speaker 3: packets from the dining hall, use them right here. You
Speaker 3: know it's going to be perfect. But what I did
Speaker 3: in school was I undercut the meal plan by a
Speaker 3: dollar and I had people come over to my place
Speaker 3: for what was definitely a better meal than what was
Speaker 3: being served in the cafeteria. Coming full circle, I mean literally,
Speaker 3: we were just filming random recipes that taste made. Someone
Speaker 3: from the office came onto the set and said, hashtag
Speaker 3: struggle meals is trending. We think we should make a
Speaker 3: show around that. And it just started like that, wow,
Speaker 3: and I was like, Okay, let's revisit this. I figured
Speaker 3: it would be people in school or just out of school,
Speaker 3: or people with their first job, and it is a
Speaker 3: much wider swap of people than that. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 3: after like housing and transportation, I feel like food is
Speaker 3: number three or four biggest expense for sure.
Speaker 2: That really is yeah, months to month. Yeah, you discovered
Speaker 2: that there's a lot of folks who are cooked like
Speaker 2: they're just out of college, even old.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they anything beyond that, beyond like some of the wealthiest.
Speaker 3: People in the world. I mean, I can't believe they
Speaker 3: just grab whitebread and slap some stuff on it, and
Speaker 3: you know, we can do better than that. So the
Speaker 3: struggle is broad, it can be multifaceted. It doesn't have
Speaker 3: to just be financial. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess a common misconception in the world of food
Speaker 1: at least is that you can't eat healthy on a budget,
Speaker 1: that you can't do it cheaply, that the cheap foods
Speaker 1: are the worst foods for you. But when I watch
Speaker 1: your content, that's not the experience I get, And it's
Speaker 1: not the experience I have at the grocery store.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like, sure, some of the nicest whole foods you can
Speaker 1: spend a whole lot of money on, But I feel
Speaker 1: like you you don't have to eat like crap if
Speaker 1: you want to save money.
Speaker 4: Do you agree?
Speaker 3: I one hundred percent agree. That is my job to
Speaker 3: agree with that. And it is misleading when you look
Speaker 3: at the title the show struggle meals, because it sounds
Speaker 3: like I'm going to be, you know, cutting up a
Speaker 3: hot dog and you know, cooking it on a George
Speaker 3: forumangrill and slapping it on white bread, And that's not
Speaker 3: what we do. And you're right, the unhealthy foods are
Speaker 3: the cheapest ones. But do you know the biggest cost
Speaker 3: in food for Americans, the.
Speaker 4: Biggest cost in meat.
Speaker 3: If you look at your bill at the end of
Speaker 3: the year, where did the largest amount of your money
Speaker 3: that you spent on food go. Where did it go?
Speaker 2: I'm guessing prepackaged foods like cereal, chips, Swiss misrolls, all
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: It's actually that money went directly into the garbage because
Speaker 3: thirty percent of the graceries go directly into the garbage waste.
Speaker 3: So so now imagine that we decide that we're going
Speaker 3: to put effort into cooking, and we're going to plan
Speaker 3: a little bit, and we're going to just maybe just
Speaker 3: work on five dishes, and we know we're going to
Speaker 3: fail at the beginning, but we get to an efficiency
Speaker 3: point where we have no waste. Now our budget kind
Speaker 3: of got bigger because we're not throwing out so much money.
Speaker 3: Now you can buy real food.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, So when you are buying real food, I'm
Speaker 2: thinking about the trend that we've seen in particular over
Speaker 2: the past few years with higher inflation, like that's also
Speaker 2: hit the grocery stores as well in a pretty serious way. Right,
Speaker 2: And so, have you changed your approach or have you
Speaker 2: changed your advice when it comes to spending less on food?
Speaker 2: I guess basically, at the end of the day, I
Speaker 2: want to know if you're still buying eggs because we
Speaker 2: saw the eggs bike. It's starting to level off now,
Speaker 2: But yeah, what are your thoughts on inflation and how
Speaker 2: that's impacting how folks shop and prepare their food.
Speaker 3: I think I've purchased a dozen eggs this year, so
Speaker 3: I was pretty low on it. I was like, it's
Speaker 3: not really worth it. And I'm not a huge breakfast
Speaker 3: guy anyway, so I don't mind just having overnight's oats
Speaker 3: or you know, sprinkling a little bit of This is
Speaker 3: going to sound so bougie, but it's a great breakfast.
Speaker 3: A little bit of chia with some oat milk and
Speaker 3: tiny bit of maple syrup or honey and like a cow,
Speaker 3: leave that overnight. I love it. But here's like, here's
Speaker 3: the main thing. We live in such a convenient time,
Speaker 3: arguably the most convenient time of all time. And if
Speaker 3: you walk into the supermarket, and this goes for all
Speaker 3: things in life, Okay, you can go so deep down
Speaker 3: every single path of everything we do. I'm sure you
Speaker 3: could spend a thousand hours learning about toilet flappers. I'm
Speaker 3: sure you could so like, and maybe that would save
Speaker 3: you water money, I don't know. But you walk into
Speaker 3: the supermarket and they have pretty much everything all the time.
Speaker 3: If you're in a food desert, that's a different story.
Speaker 3: But the problem is people buy things that are out
Speaker 3: of season and they're expensive. And so if you're not
Speaker 3: really paying attention to the fact that the prices are
Speaker 3: fluctuating over the course of the year based on supply
Speaker 3: and demand and whether it's in season and the climate
Speaker 3: that you're actually purchasing it in, then you could you know,
Speaker 3: you could look at asparagus in December and say, sparagus
Speaker 3: is too expensive. I'm never buying asparagus because it's too
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, it's coming from Argentina. It's not asparagus
Speaker 3: season now, yeah, and you're paying for shipping. There's a
Speaker 3: lack of supply, so the price goes up. And right now,
Speaker 3: I just bought a bunch of asparagus an hour ago.
Speaker 3: They're super skinny because they're just they're just coming out
Speaker 3: of the ground, you know, and they came from nearby,
Speaker 3: and the price was not high. It was two ninety
Speaker 3: nine for a pound and a half. Because they're in season.
Speaker 3: So there's gonna be a flood. They're gonna flood the
Speaker 3: market with asparagus right now, price is gonna drop, so
Speaker 3: you know, go on the internet, see what things are
Speaker 3: in season where you live, and try to eat seasonally.
Speaker 3: That helps a lot with the money too.
Speaker 1: So revolving our meals kind of around what's currently cheap,
Speaker 1: not just not being agnostic when you're making your grocery
Speaker 1: list and kind of knowing what's going on seasonally. That's
Speaker 1: really important to saving money. Right, So, I guess we're
Speaker 1: talking about winter vegetables in winter and like berries in
Speaker 1: April and may, that kind of thing. When those are
Speaker 1: kind of like because you can get strawberry sometimes like
Speaker 1: a buck fifty a pound right about now, but in
Speaker 1: a few months they're going to be way more expensive.
Speaker 3: Yep. And unless they start like hydroponically growing it nearby,
Speaker 3: and then the seasons don't matter as much and the
Speaker 3: surprise is constant and they've figured it out. But all
Speaker 3: these tips take probably five hundred days of you having
Speaker 3: your eyes peeled, you know, and just monitoring all these prices.
Speaker 1: Are you buying in bulk when that stuff happens and
Speaker 1: freezing some of it or something like for instance, no berries, no, no,
Speaker 1: none of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: If I'm gonna have berries, I'll just buy frozen berries.
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna buy freshens and freeze them. They pick
Speaker 3: them at the season. They have blast freezers, which are
Speaker 3: really great because they are so cold that when you
Speaker 3: put the berry into the blast freezer, it freezes so quickly.
Speaker 3: As you know, water, when it becomes as solid as
Speaker 3: one of the few elements that expands. So if you
Speaker 3: freeze something slowly, the water inside the berries expand and
Speaker 3: it breaks apart all the I guess meat, if you
Speaker 3: could call it that. When you defrost it, it always it's
Speaker 3: just the texture's gone. It doesn't have the snap. So
Speaker 3: that's if you do it in a home freezer. Is
Speaker 3: it a little bit better when you buy it from
Speaker 3: an industrial process? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah, I guess I've never thought about the Yeah,
Speaker 2: the difference between the frozen veggies you buy at the
Speaker 2: store versus what you can freeze yourself.
Speaker 1: Well, they're probably doing that process when berries are at
Speaker 1: peak season, right, They're using a lot of resect.
Speaker 3: They're picking them when there's a ton of supply. They're
Speaker 3: putting it in their industrial strength blast freezer so that
Speaker 3: it doesn't you know, crystallize and expand and break apart
Speaker 3: all the fibers inside and then they're selling them to you.
Speaker 3: So yeah, if something's out of season, like peas, the
Speaker 3: frozen aisle is definitely the way to go. Like, I'd
Speaker 3: pick frozen fees over over canned peas any day.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: The biggest thing that stands out to me, Frankie, just
Speaker 2: watching your show is that you are incredibly creative when
Speaker 2: it comes to how it is that you approach your food,
Speaker 2: and it makes me think that most of us aren't
Speaker 2: thinking outside of the box. I think most folks just
Speaker 2: may not be getting creative enough, and that we're maybe
Speaker 2: two either specifically meal focused or were too gadget focused
Speaker 2: when it comes to how folks cook today. What are
Speaker 2: your thoughts there? Do you do you agree with that
Speaker 2: that statement?
Speaker 4: I guess I totally.
Speaker 2: What's your recommendation?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I actually think we're in a nice era
Speaker 3: right now with the social media because you can visually
Speaker 3: watch a recipe in thirty seconds. Some of them are
Speaker 3: getting a little bit too elaborate because they're clearly chasing
Speaker 3: views and I'm not learning anything and there's too many
Speaker 3: ingredients and I can't mimic it. But I just did
Speaker 3: one yesterday. It has like three ingredients. I don't know
Speaker 3: how I'm going to make it longer than thirty seconds.
Speaker 3: There's so little happening on in it. It's a great
Speaker 3: it's a great meal, but if you've never been in
Speaker 3: the kitchen, it's like anything else in life, like it.
Speaker 3: The first thing you make is probably not going to
Speaker 3: be great. You do need to learn. I would I
Speaker 3: would do the kiss rule, keep it simple, silly, and
Speaker 3: the gadget you don't need. The gadgets you don't need.
Speaker 3: You really don't need much to get started. As the truth,
Speaker 3: you just like buy and season plan on using everything.
Speaker 3: Suck it up. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: When Matt talks about getting creative, like you used an
Speaker 1: eye to make a panini, are those like you don't
Speaker 1: need a panini press?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: No, we think we need all these things to make
Speaker 1: a decent meal, but really we just need a little ingenuity, right, We.
Speaker 3: Need a little ingenuity. And obviously, if you're making a
Speaker 3: lot of sandwiches, using in an iron is a silly thing.
Speaker 3: But when we do stuff if like that on the show,
Speaker 3: you know we're I think I'm talking to two audiences.
Speaker 3: One is the people that haven't ever been in the kitchen,
Speaker 3: and I want them to see that, like you can
Speaker 3: use items from around the home and cook. And the
Speaker 3: other group are people that cook all the time. So
Speaker 3: the people that cook all the time, if they're going
Speaker 3: to make that recipe, they'll use their panini press, or
Speaker 3: they'll heat up two cast iron pans, one smaller than
Speaker 3: the other, put the sandwich in the bigger one, put
Speaker 3: the smaller one on top, which is now hot because
Speaker 3: you had it on the stove and you just made
Speaker 3: a panini press. I mean, cast iron is a giant
Speaker 3: heat battery and it'll hold that heat and it'll crisp
Speaker 3: it up real good. Absolutely, But more than anything, I
Speaker 3: want people to feel like they can take liberty. You know,
Speaker 3: when I think back to my mom and my aunt
Speaker 3: when I was a kid or whatever, every time they
Speaker 3: would cook out of a cookbook, they would always be like, oh,
Speaker 3: I changed this, I changed that, I changed that. Like
Speaker 3: you didn't even make the recipe the right way once,
Speaker 3: they're already changing it. And that's the right attitude to
Speaker 3: have if you've cooked enough enough meals in your life,
Speaker 3: because a recipe is simply a destination and as you know,
Speaker 3: I'm sure you've used GPS. There's a lot of ways
Speaker 3: to get there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I like that, Yeah, there can It's gonna
Speaker 2: have the inspiration perhaps something to set.
Speaker 4: Your sites on.
Speaker 3: But how do we want to inspire people to improvise? Absolutely?
Speaker 4: Yeah, a little. I love it.
Speaker 2: Well, Frankie. We're going to get to several other topics,
Speaker 2: including how it is that you can affordably incorporate meat
Speaker 2: into your your meals as well as meal prep. That's
Speaker 2: another a hot tactic that folks can include. We'll get
Speaker 2: to those plus more right after this.
Speaker 3: Our we're back.
Speaker 1: We're still talking with Frankie Celenzo about making meals for
Speaker 1: less money and making good meals right, not having to
Speaker 1: suck it up and eat like crap, and and the
Speaker 1: fact that it's it's not necessarily as expensive as as
Speaker 1: you think.
Speaker 2: You don't have to be over there slicing up your bolooney.
Speaker 1: Is BLOONI man, I don't. I don't know if I've
Speaker 1: ever had boloni, to be honest, but you do like
Speaker 1: hot dogs.
Speaker 2: We've talked about this on the show before.
Speaker 4: Let's go hot dog.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that doesn't make ye, Frankie.
Speaker 3: That is that's why we call it Boloonia. If you
Speaker 3: look at the way Bolooni is spelt, it's spelt Bologna,
Speaker 3: the town which is where Mortodella comes from in Italy.
Speaker 1: And so it is Moretadella, like an improved version.
Speaker 3: Mortadella is the original one, and just like parmi gihan odgiano,
Speaker 3: it has like Italian protections of the European Union, so
Speaker 3: we weren't allowed to call it that if we manufactured
Speaker 3: it over here, which is why we have parmesan and
Speaker 3: boloney when it's American. Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 2: It's like we need to go straight to the source
Speaker 2: and get the real story.
Speaker 3: It's very good and I don't mind. Listen. One of
Speaker 3: my favorite things is a Oscar Mayer boloney sandwich with
Speaker 3: mayo and white bread and a little bit of dress.
Speaker 3: It's delicious.
Speaker 1: So every once in a hot dog by the way,
Speaker 1: oh okay, all right, And even Frankie slums it every
Speaker 1: once in a while, right, even though he's making good stuff.
Speaker 4: Most of the times are great.
Speaker 3: It's not slumming. It's a fun little treat. Well.
Speaker 1: I take my little man and we go to Costco
Speaker 1: occasionally and we do we do the hot dog thing
Speaker 1: together and it's a nice little like father son date.
Speaker 1: So we have a good time. But my my, my
Speaker 1: girls are not into the hot dog nearly nearly as
Speaker 1: much as as the guys are. I get Okay, So
Speaker 1: while we're talking about meat, let's let's keep talking about meat.
Speaker 1: These are we're talking about the barkain basement cuts here
Speaker 1: in terms of hot dogs and in blooney, But meat
Speaker 1: is you talk about this, and it's just kind of
Speaker 1: common understanding this point that meat just costs more than
Speaker 1: a lot of the other things. If you're eating ribbi,
Speaker 1: you're gonna bust your budget pretty quickly. So like, how
Speaker 1: how should we be thinking about trimming our meat consumption
Speaker 1: and being able to maybe still eat meat sometimes but
Speaker 1: without like breaking the bank.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you gotta just eat less meat, is the truth
Speaker 3: of it. And you know, if you look at history,
Speaker 3: meat was always like the food of the nobility and
Speaker 3: all the off cuts off the off cuts, sorry, like
Speaker 3: the the ofal and the things that were really fatty
Speaker 3: and tough what went down to the working class people.
Speaker 3: Those are the cuts that have more flavor, which is
Speaker 3: ironic now, but the whole world is so efficient at
Speaker 3: making food that now, all classes of people seem to
Speaker 3: be eating meat a lot more than the human body.
Speaker 3: It's able to process. And I'm not going to get
Speaker 3: into like diet and all that stuff, but I mean,
Speaker 3: I think we're all eating way too much of it.
Speaker 3: I will tell you this. I have some guanchali frozen
Speaker 3: in my freezer. It's fancy Italian bacon. It comes from
Speaker 3: the cheek. I bought it two months ago. I keep
Speaker 3: it frozen. I literally I just sliced a couple thin slices,
Speaker 3: probably one ounce of it, put it in a pan
Speaker 3: over medium heat. It shriveled up, rendered out fat, and
Speaker 3: then I saw teate a bunch of spring onions, which
Speaker 3: are in season right now in that fat. And I
Speaker 3: just put spaghetti in there, and like that was delicious.
Speaker 3: And I'm eating meat, but I'm using it as a
Speaker 3: flavoring and as the fat for the dish rather than
Speaker 3: using olive oil. And then the center point is perfectly
Speaker 3: aldente spaghetti, which I think is textually pleasing.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's my My wife calls using meat as
Speaker 2: a garnish just like you said, like the ability to
Speaker 2: kind of pull some of that flavor of.
Speaker 3: So like you know, instead of getting four chicken breasts
Speaker 3: that have been deboned and de skinned. That's always going
Speaker 3: to cost more money because it's just on a fundamental level,
Speaker 3: like there was a lot of process there that you're
Speaker 3: paying for someone else to do. So if you eat chicken,
Speaker 3: I think it's pretty fundamental that you buy a whole
Speaker 3: chicken and learn to break it down. It's really not
Speaker 3: that hard. And by the way, you get a carcass
Speaker 3: at the end, which means you can make your own stock,
Speaker 3: which is superior to everything else.
Speaker 2: Heck, yeah, okay, So wrothwise, two questions. Do you boil
Speaker 2: your carcass? Do you boil your bones in an instapot?
Speaker 3: I don't I have one. I've not used it.
Speaker 2: I just but you don't use it. So that goes
Speaker 2: back to the gotcha. It goes back to how unnecessary
Speaker 2: certain tools are. All right, So I was curious about that.
Speaker 2: But then secondly, so for folks who are say who
Speaker 2: are maybe they're working out more, they're looking to get
Speaker 2: more protein in their diet. I noticed in a couple
Speaker 2: of year recipes that you incorporate some peanut butter like
Speaker 2: into sauces or to kind of thicken things up and
Speaker 2: it seems like that's an awesome way to include like
Speaker 2: ten twenty grams of additional protein in something. What are
Speaker 2: some of the other way or first of all, I
Speaker 2: guess how often do you do that? Because I thought
Speaker 2: that was interesting from a maybe from a flavor standpoint.
Speaker 2: But then what are some other sources of affordable protein
Speaker 2: other than meat?
Speaker 3: I love? And we can get back to meat, because
Speaker 3: I didn't want to just brush it off. I know
Speaker 3: people like to eat it. It is the most fun
Speaker 3: thing to cook. It's obviously a wonderful centerpiece, even an
Speaker 3: affordable meal, So we can get back to that. But
Speaker 3: I love peanut butter. I mean I put it, put
Speaker 3: a scoop of peanut butter with oatmeal. I put a
Speaker 3: scooped peanut butter with with cereal. I like a banana
Speaker 3: peanut butter smoothie. I'll do it all the time. But
Speaker 3: I cooked four I did three tennis tournaments with the
Speaker 3: world number one tennis player who's a famous vegan, and
Speaker 3: we did a lot of beans for protein and nuts.
Speaker 3: But nuts. There's some crazy stuff that he was having
Speaker 3: me do, for example, like cashewes. Let's just say a
Speaker 3: cashew has ten calories Okay, if you and I eat
Speaker 3: the cashew, we're gonna spend five six calories just trying
Speaker 3: to break it down because it's so hard to digest.
Speaker 3: But what I was doing was soaking the cashews in
Speaker 3: water overnight and then putting them in a super low
Speaker 3: oven just to dehydrate that water out but not create
Speaker 3: a miard reaction. And now you look at the cashew,
Speaker 3: it's got no color on it. It looks the same
Speaker 3: as the other cashoe, but when you bite into it,
Speaker 3: it's much softer. So I've started the digestion process outside
Speaker 3: the body, and now it only takes let's say two
Speaker 3: calories to consume the ten, so you get a net
Speaker 3: gain of eight versus if you just eat it raw.
Speaker 3: Maybe you know fifty percent of the energy that you're
Speaker 3: getting is being used to digest the thing.
Speaker 4: Feel like a mama bird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh, exactly right. The mom bird choose it and
Speaker 3: then regurgitates it into it. It's baby chick's mouth, that's correct.
Speaker 3: Lentils are a great source of protein, and as far
Speaker 3: as like energy goes, which is super interesting. Fat, the
Speaker 3: good fats are really really great. Every gram of fat
Speaker 3: has twice as many calories as that of protein or carbohydrate,
Speaker 3: so you can eat half as much of it by
Speaker 3: weight and still be able to store energy. Because it
Speaker 3: isn't just about repairing muscle, it's also preparing for the
Speaker 3: next time you're gonna. I mean, we all use our
Speaker 3: muscles every day, and we use the energy that we
Speaker 3: eat to move right. I think coconut milk is a great,
Speaker 3: great thing to use occasionally. I love olive oil. What
Speaker 3: else can we talk about? Cannellini means are wonderful?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: Well, okay, let's say somebody says, you know what, I
Speaker 1: appreciate Frankie, all your advice on other ways to include
Speaker 1: tein of my diet. Maybe I'll do the cashew trick,
Speaker 1: but I also want I also want meat as kind
Speaker 1: of the main thing I like. Yeh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: three or four dinners a week, And so I guess
Speaker 1: is it all about It's all about the cuts, right,
Speaker 1: is it? The cuts that make the difference, and how
Speaker 1: you talked about the cheaper cuts oftentimes can be the
Speaker 1: most flavorful. But I guess some people are just so
Speaker 1: used to buying boneless, skinless chicken, breast or whatever that
Speaker 1: they forget to get the chicken thighs that are like
Speaker 1: a third of the price but way tastier.
Speaker 3: Well, listen, this is a money podcast. So every as
Speaker 3: you know, everybody's trying to make a buck. And the
Speaker 3: way it happens in food is through convenience. Right at
Speaker 3: the highest level, you can go out to eat, they'll
Speaker 3: take care of the dishes for you, they'll cook all
Speaker 3: the food for you. Great, that's the most expensive. Then
Speaker 3: you get the fast casual. They do less things for you.
Speaker 3: It's a little bit less money. Then you want to
Speaker 3: you know, you got prepared foods at the supermarket. That's
Speaker 3: even less expensive because you've got to reheat it or
Speaker 3: do some processes to get it ready to be consumed.
Speaker 3: And then you go one level below that and we're
Speaker 3: to the boneless, skinless chicken breast and the pre formed
Speaker 3: hamburger patties and the chicken wings that they have already
Speaker 3: marinating in various things for you. I mean, it's cheaper
Speaker 3: compared to the restaurant and the fast casual, but you're
Speaker 3: still paying for convenience. So you can go a level
Speaker 3: lower than that. And really what you want to do
Speaker 3: is like if you just think of the animal as
Speaker 3: a whole. That's the cheapest way to get it, because
Speaker 3: no one has cut anything off of it yet. So
Speaker 3: we did an episode many seasons ago where we took
Speaker 3: a giant pork loin and we got like twenty meals
Speaker 3: out of it, and you had the leaner end and
Speaker 3: the fattier end of it, and we were cutting the
Speaker 3: chops at different thicknesses depending on how much protein had
Speaker 3: had or protein and fat had had. And I was
Speaker 3: giving you four different ways to cook all those things.
Speaker 3: And you know that's really the way to do it.
Speaker 3: I'm going on a little bit of tangent here, but.
Speaker 2: No, that's you're funny to.
Speaker 3: Put more effort. It's not magic, there's no way. It's
Speaker 3: not through buying a tool. It's not through buying a one,
Speaker 3: you know, an onion cutter thing where it's got that
Speaker 3: grid and you put the onion and slams it through.
Speaker 3: It's not through a crock pod or any of those things,
Speaker 3: or an air fryer. It's through you physically doing more
Speaker 3: labor because that because then you're not giving money to
Speaker 3: someone else who has been doing it for you before,
Speaker 3: which brings us back to convenience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So I mean, essentially what you're talking about,
Speaker 2: and you mentioned that that porkloin, I'll watch that video.
Speaker 2: You you got multiple meals out of it, and what
Speaker 2: you're essentially doing there is you're prepping meals for the
Speaker 2: week ahead. Why, I mean, what are some of the
Speaker 2: other advantages that come with thinking ahead and the ability
Speaker 2: to basically prep your meals in advance If.
Speaker 3: You can, If you can prep in advance and you
Speaker 3: can stick to that schedule even if you don't feel
Speaker 3: like eating that thing, then you will reduce the waste.
Speaker 3: And that's the thirty percent of the money you're spending
Speaker 3: on food not going down the toilet. So that's really
Speaker 3: really fantastic. But listen, it happens to me too. You know,
Speaker 3: I'll cook a bunch of things and then I either
Speaker 3: get sidetracked because life happens. I totally understand it, and
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, there's nothing to eat, and
Speaker 3: when the blood sugar starts falling. That that's when you
Speaker 3: either make, you know, a fast food decision or you're
Speaker 3: just like, oh, let's just go out to dinner, and
Speaker 3: then you know it's one hundred dollars and it's so
Speaker 3: when you're meal prepping, you're you're planning, and when you're planning,
Speaker 3: you're also financially planning. I would say, you got to
Speaker 3: stick to the schedule, and you've got to be obedient,
Speaker 3: not obedient.
Speaker 2: Discipline, obedient to your so your previous self, to your
Speaker 2: own roles. Y.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, no, I think that's so true. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think when you have a budget, you have a
Speaker 1: plan for your money, and so it makes it way
Speaker 1: more likely that you're actually going to follow through. And
Speaker 1: the same is true when you have a meal plan.
Speaker 1: Like you know, my wife and I we sit down
Speaker 1: on the weekend, and I will say she takes the
Speaker 1: main role in kind of meals, which is awesome, and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of more the clean up guy. But it's
Speaker 1: it's that plan that we make ahead of time and
Speaker 1: then which is so helpful in ensuring that we're actually
Speaker 1: going to fow through and not just randomly go out
Speaker 1: to eat. But I guess, so planning is important, but
Speaker 1: talk to us about actually making the meals ahead of time,
Speaker 1: because you're doing that too, right, So you're like creating
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff and sticking it in the freezer
Speaker 1: or fridge so that you've got meals to eat for
Speaker 1: days or potentially even like weeks or something that you
Speaker 1: can pull out a month from now. Like how important
Speaker 1: is that you know?
Speaker 3: There is no one size fits all, And so we've
Speaker 3: done that on the show. We have an episode this
Speaker 3: season for that, we had an episode last season for that,
Speaker 3: and I know we've touched on it before. But again,
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to get people to think about many,
Speaker 3: many things, and we did smart things, like, you know,
Speaker 3: it could be really easy. Let's say you prepped food
Speaker 3: for work, you know, and then you forget to bring it.
Speaker 3: That's no good. So we were like, you got to
Speaker 3: put your car keys or your metro card or whatever.
Speaker 3: You got to put that in the fridge with the
Speaker 3: food that you prepped, so when you're looking for it,
Speaker 3: you don't forget the food. That was one thing I
Speaker 3: would say, if you have the time to do it, absolutely,
Speaker 3: But there's so many ways to prep food. And you know,
Speaker 3: we think of making a whole meal on Sunday night
Speaker 3: and freezing it and that's really great, but you could
Speaker 3: also if a recipe calls for half an onion or something,
Speaker 3: you could chop up the whole onion and then put
Speaker 3: it in a little deli container. And now you've got
Speaker 3: an onion. You know, you've done some prep for a
Speaker 3: future meal, and you've cut down on a knife that
Speaker 3: needs to be cleaned, and a cutting board that needs
Speaker 3: to be wiped, and eyes that need to be blotted
Speaker 3: from crying every single time I cut an onion. But
Speaker 3: food prep comes in many forms, and back to the like,
Speaker 3: you know, you buy that big piece of meat, that
Speaker 3: giant piece of meat, and you cut thinner ones on
Speaker 3: the lean side and pound them out. You can freeze those.
Speaker 3: You could even flour them, egg them, par cook them
Speaker 3: and freeze them and then you know, reheat them if
Speaker 3: you wanted to. You could go lots of ways. But
Speaker 3: if you were going to have a meal that had
Speaker 3: some I don't know, some pork in it or something,
Speaker 3: you know, think a step ahead. You could go buy
Speaker 3: just the pork for that meal, or you could buy
Speaker 3: more of it. And now you're doing prep once for
Speaker 3: potentially three meals. It's only going to take twenty percent longer,
Speaker 3: But when you divide that by the three meals you're
Speaker 3: gonna get, it's actually a lot more efficient. So I
Speaker 3: saw my mom doing a task on Easter and she
Speaker 3: was doing one thing and then switching to the other thing,
Speaker 3: and then doing one thing and switching to the other thing,
Speaker 3: And I was like, Mom, it's a lot faster if
Speaker 3: you just do all of job one first and then
Speaker 3: switch to job two, because you know you're eliminating steps.
Speaker 3: You're picking up the knife, putting down the knife, picking
Speaker 3: up the knife. No, pick up the knife, hold the knife.
Speaker 3: Chop chop, chop, chop chop. Put down the knife for good,
Speaker 3: and now move on to the next step. I know
Speaker 3: I'm speaking very esoteric and broadly, but I think people
Speaker 3: understand what I'm getting at here. You know, be a
Speaker 3: machine when you're prepping and just do that repetitive, boring task.
Speaker 3: You'll get faster and faster at it as the repetition
Speaker 3: is in there. And then even think a meal ahead.
Speaker 2: It seems like it's a kind of a holistic approach
Speaker 2: to how it is that you're thinking about all of
Speaker 2: the meals that you're going to be consuming that week
Speaker 2: or even for the next couple weeks, rather than focusing
Speaker 2: on one bite at a time, or when you can
Speaker 2: at a time.
Speaker 3: You can prep for the next meal, even if you
Speaker 3: don't know what it is yet, especially if you've got
Speaker 3: ten dishes that you know cold under your belt. You know,
Speaker 3: you could say I don't know what I'm going to
Speaker 3: use this for yet, but then you got to hold
Speaker 3: yourself to actually using it, because then we get back
Speaker 3: into the food waste thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I guess for folks out there who say,
Speaker 2: maybe there's some folks listening and they're like, man, I've
Speaker 2: barely got two dishes that I know how to go
Speaker 2: to without looking up a recipe. Why do you look
Speaker 2: at me when you said that, Matt just happened to
Speaker 2: sit across from me. What are maybe some easy meals
Speaker 2: that someone could prep four lunches. Say they go to
Speaker 2: work and they're trying to avoid busting their budget by
Speaker 2: going out to lunch. What are some meals that are
Speaker 2: really easy to cook ahead time where they've got something
Speaker 2: tasty that we know where there's some variety where it's
Speaker 2: not just PBJ and whitebread with the granaise and baloney.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like, are there some meals that lend themselves
Speaker 2: to that meal prep on Sundays?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think bowls are great to think about to take
Speaker 3: to work with you, and you know it's easy to say,
Speaker 3: I'm not inspired. I don't know exactly what to do.
Speaker 3: But you should be inspired every day by every meal
Speaker 3: that you eat out. If if you go to you know,
Speaker 3: a place and buy a quin Wa bowl or whatever
Speaker 3: you should like, you should be constantly thinking, how did
Speaker 3: they make this? What are these flavors? Look at that? Oh,
Speaker 3: I can do this. So I'm just looking right now,
Speaker 3: I've got a dish on episode three, season eight, spring
Speaker 3: green Quinoha. It sounds great. Quenwa's great warm or cold.
Speaker 3: So it's going to travel really well. It's going to
Speaker 3: have that interesting texture regardless, it's not going to expire
Speaker 3: like pasta does. Pasta does not travel well. And spring
Speaker 3: greens can mean anything. It could be, you know, spring
Speaker 3: green pesto. It could be sauteed greens. It could be
Speaker 3: some some yummy chryciferous spring vegetables. I would do sauce
Speaker 3: on the side, or if you don't have you know,
Speaker 3: if you don't want to have twos, you could, for example,
Speaker 3: put sauce in like the bottom of the container and
Speaker 3: then everything else on top of it and just make
Speaker 3: sure you keep gravity that way, and then when you're
Speaker 3: ready to eat it, flip it over. And now you've
Speaker 3: just like dressed.
Speaker 4: It like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you want to think about foods that can
Speaker 3: travel well, I don't think fried food travels well. I
Speaker 3: think in general, fried food is probably not so much
Speaker 3: fun to cook at home because the aroma of the oil,
Speaker 3: really it's intense, and it's life ruining if you spill
Speaker 3: that stuff anyway, or if you've got kids running around,
Speaker 3: I mean, three hundred and fifty degrees ough terrible.
Speaker 1: Talk about can foods for a second, because I when
Speaker 1: I was growing up that was we just say can
Speaker 1: green beans all the time, and I remember thinking green
Speaker 1: beans are the worst food on the face of the planet.
Speaker 1: And then I still remember a standoff I had with
Speaker 1: my parents over eating like one green bean, and I
Speaker 1: made their lives miserable over this thing. But then I
Speaker 1: remember having fresh green beans for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life, and I was like, I think I like
Speaker 1: green beans. Wait a second, Like these are completely different animals.
Speaker 1: But you kind of just talk smack about canned peas
Speaker 1: just a little bit again frozen, So I don't know.
Speaker 1: But then you also, I've seen you make like canned
Speaker 1: salmon and use that in like a pretty interesting way
Speaker 1: in your show. So how do we think about canned foods?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 3: I love canned beans because it's you know, a really
Speaker 3: fast way to beans can be a really great filler
Speaker 3: and a lot of dishes. Like we were just talking
Speaker 3: about taking quenwa to lunch, I mean putting some chickpea's
Speaker 3: in there from a can, rinsed with a little bit
Speaker 3: of paprika, olive oil and salt. That's a delicious lunch,
Speaker 3: you know, And we didn't really have to cook anything
Speaker 3: except the quinoa, which cooks quickly. But I am really
Speaker 3: getting into the science of a lot of greens. And
Speaker 3: what I've found is that when you cook some greens
Speaker 3: with acid, they turn kind of brown. If you blanch
Speaker 3: the greens, ice them, and then put acid after, they
Speaker 3: hold the beautiful green color. So the canned peas, the
Speaker 3: canned green beans, they probably have a little bit of
Speaker 3: acid in there to make them shelf stable, and they
Speaker 3: probably bring the temperature of the entire can up to
Speaker 3: pasteurize it so that it can be shelf stable. And
Speaker 3: you know, the first thing you notice is you open
Speaker 3: it up, the color is not amazing. But the frozen,
Speaker 3: the frozen greens they are Why because they're raw. It
Speaker 3: didn't have acid and heat applied, which ruined the color,
Speaker 3: not to mention the texture. Yeah, peas and green beans
Speaker 3: in a can not texturally plea. I just don't even
Speaker 3: know what the point is at that point. I gotta
Speaker 3: be honest.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, I'd rather do frozen.
Speaker 3: And I know my show is Struggle Meals, but like,
Speaker 3: there's other ways to There's not a lot of nutritional
Speaker 3: value in there or textural pleasure in anything that is
Speaker 3: a vegetable in a can. Beans are okay though, and
Speaker 3: tan fish is fantastic.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I was going to talk about how much
Speaker 2: I like cayn spinach because I watch Popeye as a kid,
Speaker 2: but talk about some of the different I guess I'm
Speaker 2: more interested in the protein, I guess. So you're talking
Speaker 2: about cayn fish. What is it that makes canned fish
Speaker 2: healthy but also tasty?
Speaker 3: I think because it's you know, a vegetable is delicate,
Speaker 3: A piece of muscle is much more resilient to get
Speaker 3: slapped around. So when you do that same process to
Speaker 3: you know, fish in a can, it's still good. I
Speaker 3: love tuna in oil in a can. I think it's great.
Speaker 1: All right, Hey, Frankie, we got a couple more questions
Speaker 1: we want to talk through with you here. Okay, we
Speaker 1: want to and specifically I'm curious to know about your
Speaker 1: drawer full of packets that you have and kind of
Speaker 1: how you infuse those into your recipes. We have just
Speaker 1: a couple more questions to get to with you. Right
Speaker 1: after this, we.
Speaker 2: Are back from the break talking with Frankie, Sealinza and Frankie.
Speaker 2: You know, Joel just mentioned your seasoning drawer, but it
Speaker 2: looks like his completely freey pro bono. Yeah, it looks
Speaker 2: like you take what's in the bottom of like fast
Speaker 2: food bags, and you take them home and you dump
Speaker 2: them out and then you organize them put them in
Speaker 2: your drawer. You got ketchup mustard, Honey, there is that?
Speaker 4: What you do?
Speaker 2: Do you just grab a couple extra you know, when
Speaker 2: you're at a restaurant? How do you have that on hand?
Speaker 2: And how often do you use the mini packets drawer?
Speaker 3: I mean on the show, obviously it's a little bit
Speaker 3: of a gag because it's so organized and there's such
Speaker 3: endless quantity in there. But you know, it does have
Speaker 3: an overarching theme which makes a lot of sense, which
Speaker 3: is like if you buy things in bulk, or if
Speaker 3: you happen to have access to a cafeteria, or if
Speaker 3: you ever get takeout and they give you those things
Speaker 3: and you don't want it on that meal, you should
Speaker 3: save it because it could be free flavor in the future.
Speaker 3: Right now, I've got a lot of duck sauce. I
Speaker 3: don't know. I had Chinese takeout and they gave me
Speaker 3: like six of them. I don't know who they're given
Speaker 3: six of them to. Is duck sauce super useful in
Speaker 3: the dishes I want to make. If I think of
Speaker 3: it as a duck sauce, then the answer is no,
Speaker 3: it's gonna be super specific. But if I think of
Speaker 3: it of what it really is, liquid sugar, all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, the possibilities for those packets open up, and
Speaker 3: I'm saving it and I'm gonna use it for something nice.
Speaker 4: I like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I like the resourcefulness of that. I think
Speaker 1: you might cross over into cheap territory if you're going
Speaker 1: to your local fast food restaurant in order to raid
Speaker 1: their stash of packets. But yeah, if you're just using
Speaker 1: the extra ones that you get and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: I think I think that's why.
Speaker 4: So I think it's just stealing.
Speaker 2: Jill goes to chick fil Ase, like, can I get
Speaker 2: fifteen chick Flase sauces exactly.
Speaker 4: They're like, are you gonna order something with that?
Speaker 1: I'm like, I wasn't thinking about it, but I know
Speaker 1: in season eight of Struggle Meals, you're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: no cook meals, and especially like we're getting closer to summer,
Speaker 1: the tempts are warming up. One of the best reasons,
Speaker 1: in my estimation, to be able to make a meal
Speaker 1: where you're not cooking and turning on the oven is
Speaker 1: just because you're making your AC unit work that much harder.
Speaker 1: You're you're just like heating up your home while the
Speaker 1: X do your ten is like ninety degrees or something
Speaker 1: like that. It seems like a waste.
Speaker 2: So working over your yeah, you're sweating, You're staying on
Speaker 2: their sweating over the open flame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody wants that. Nobody wants that.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there's somesequent dilemmas as well, Like you know,
Speaker 3: if you have air conditioning and you're doing a bunch
Speaker 3: of things that are generating a ton of heat in
Speaker 3: the kitchen, you're now spending money to counteract that with
Speaker 3: the entire condition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's either hop out side and grill, right,
Speaker 1: which I think is just wonderful. Right, So you want
Speaker 1: to talk to tell me a little bit about do
Speaker 1: you go outside and grill? What's your take on grilling,
Speaker 1: and then also talk to me a little bit about
Speaker 1: the no cook meals that people can institute during the
Speaker 1: summer months.
Speaker 3: I think grilling is great. I just moved out of
Speaker 3: the city. I've spent twenty eight of my thirty six
Speaker 3: years in New York City and various burrows, and I've
Speaker 3: just left. I don't actually have a grill yet, but
Speaker 3: I love it's simplicity. I've always enjoyed it because basically,
Speaker 3: you take in seasoned vegetables and meats, you season them
Speaker 3: very sparsely, and you cook them and it's beautiful. And
Speaker 3: it is the exact same concept of why I love
Speaker 3: Italian food. It's just simple. It's just simple. When it's
Speaker 3: too hot to cook, there's a million things you can eat,
Speaker 3: and I feel like our bodies are naturally telling us
Speaker 3: what we should intuitively be eating. One of my favorite
Speaker 3: things is a gaspacho soup in Spanish cuisine. It's basically
Speaker 3: red bell pepper is a little bit of tomato and
Speaker 3: they just like blend it up with olive oil and
Speaker 3: salt and it's fantastic. And so we have this episode
Speaker 3: too Hot to Cook. We didn't do a gaspacho, but
Speaker 3: we did a chilled cucumber avocado soup and that's great.
Speaker 3: It you start wondering what is cooking, And so if
Speaker 3: you think cooking literally means adding heat, I don't think
Speaker 3: that's a broad enough view of what it means, because
Speaker 3: sometimes it can just be putting things together in a
Speaker 3: nice ratio, you know, or turning things into something that's drinkable,
Speaker 3: or you know, when you make a salad, is that cooking?
Speaker 3: You combine an oil in an acid together with an
Speaker 3: emulsifier and put it over some in seasoned greens and
Speaker 3: maybe some herbs if you're growing them, which, by the way,
Speaker 3: I think people should be growing herbs free flavor. You
Speaker 3: pick it, it grows back, unbelievable. It's a live photosynthesis.
Speaker 1: So we should we all have our own little garden
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 3: I just found wild chives growing. I've been picking them,
Speaker 3: I've been using them all week. It's crazy. And here
Speaker 3: in the Northeast. It's just about ramp season. My wife
Speaker 3: just went on a walk. She goes the ramps are out.
Speaker 3: She was out of a lot with our neighbor and
Speaker 3: she was about to pick them, and the neighbor said,
Speaker 3: I am not letting you eat anything from the woods.
Speaker 3: So I guess, But what made like a wild spring onion? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Very nice?
Speaker 1: Isn't that what made Noma famous? Aren't they He's like
Speaker 1: literally restaurant from foraging. Yeah, find something ironic and one
Speaker 1: of the.
Speaker 3: Most native meals you can have, and they're getting stuff
Speaker 3: for free by sending a bunch of interns in the
Speaker 3: woods to pick them.
Speaker 2: Right, we've learned it is not sustainable, a sustainable model. Okay,
Speaker 2: I guess I got one last question for you, Frankie.
Speaker 2: And this might be like asking someone to pick their
Speaker 2: favorite kid, but do you have an absolute favorite? Just
Speaker 2: go to struggle meal, something that is affordable that kind
Speaker 2: of fits within the parameters of what you're trying to
Speaker 2: steer folks towards in order to save money, but that's
Speaker 2: also just top notch when it comes to flavor and
Speaker 2: incredibly delicious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's spaghetti, garlic and oil, sometimes broccoli, sometimes red pepper.
Speaker 3: You can pull the whole thing together in fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: We had a version of it yesterday for lunch. I
Speaker 3: had some broccoli rob I chopped it up real fine.
Speaker 3: I put the spaghetti in my salted water, and when
Speaker 3: it was about seventy percent done, I threw all the
Speaker 3: chopped broccoli into the water with the spaghetti, dumped the
Speaker 3: whole thing through a sieve. Didn't even have a second
Speaker 3: pan going, saved a little bit of the pasta water,
Speaker 3: put it all back into the pan with a little
Speaker 3: bit of the pasta water, and I put some chili
Speaker 3: oil on it that I made, you know. And that's
Speaker 3: a variation of sautain garlic and oil with a little
Speaker 3: bit of red pepper flakes and own spaghetti in it,
Speaker 3: which is great. You can use frozen broccoli. By the way,
Speaker 3: broccoli has more protein gram for gram than steak. We
Speaker 3: were talking about. Yes it does.
Speaker 4: I had no idea.
Speaker 3: It's nuts, so there's a ton. There's a ton of
Speaker 3: protein and crciferous vegetables. Yeah. I love spaghetti because it
Speaker 3: seems so simple. It can be salty, it can be spicy.
Speaker 3: It's textraally pleasing when you cook that pasta al dente,
Speaker 3: and the salt in the water is at two percent salinity,
Speaker 3: and you twist it around your fork and you bite
Speaker 3: through it, and you get all these moments of textraal
Speaker 3: variance as your teeth bite through the perfectly twirled spaghetti
Speaker 3: cock right through, and then you've you've got this oily
Speaker 3: vegetable that you put in there. Yeah, it's it's very good.
Speaker 4: I can know what I'm eating right now.
Speaker 1: Serious broccoli, by the way, I feel like we've just
Speaker 1: been doing this lightly roasting it in the oven. Broccoli
Speaker 1: is so much better roasted in the oven, and it
Speaker 1: brings out so many more flavors in it than it
Speaker 1: does like cooking on the stove top.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're getting the Millard reactions, so even getting
Speaker 3: some burnt, charred stuff. But you can pretty much take
Speaker 3: any vegetables and throw it in an oven at four
Speaker 3: hundred degrees for twenty minutes with oil and salt, and
Speaker 3: it's gonna be amazing. You know. If it's a harder vegetable,
Speaker 3: you're gonna cut it into smaller pieces so the distance
Speaker 3: the center is less, so you know it's not raw
Speaker 3: in the center. And if it's something really soft. You
Speaker 3: can leave it pretty big. Yeah, it broccoli in the oven.
Speaker 3: And it's so easy, right, you just throw it on
Speaker 3: a sheet tray.
Speaker 4: So easy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so easy, dude, Frankie, we so appreciate you coming
Speaker 1: on the show Man. Where can our listeners find out
Speaker 1: more about Struggle Meals and season eight coming up? And
Speaker 1: I know Season Nate's gonna be great, but you can
Speaker 1: go back and watch all the old stuff too that Mike,
Speaker 1: Matt and I have been doing over the past couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, learning a lot in the process. But where
Speaker 1: can folks find out more about you and what you're
Speaker 1: up to?
Speaker 3: Well, you can follow me at Frankie Cooks. Frankie I
Speaker 3: e Cooks, not Frankie Y. And you should definitely go
Speaker 3: to Taste made dot com because they tell you all
Speaker 3: the places where you can watch the show, and there
Speaker 3: are so many that I would say there's a seventy
Speaker 3: percent chance that if you're listening to this show, you
Speaker 3: already have access to watch the show in some form,
Speaker 3: which is remarkable. The distribution has gotten really pretty great,
Speaker 3: and we've done like four hundred recipes now we just
Speaker 3: filmed the one hundredth episode. So the show is doing great. Congrats, Yeah,
Speaker 3: thank you. It's an endlessly there's so many possibilities for
Speaker 3: affordable food and it really only needs to be crappy
Speaker 3: if you want it to be that way. You you
Speaker 3: can do a lot with very little and it goes
Speaker 3: for everything in life.
Speaker 2: As we've said, Yeah, it just takes a little bit
Speaker 2: of effort, and you are providing that inspiration. We'll be
Speaker 2: sure to link to all the different places where folks
Speaker 2: can find that content. Frankie, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: talking with us today.
Speaker 3: You're very welcome. And if you get into cooking everybody,
Speaker 3: it will bring yourself satisfaction, which is we'll bring you joy,
Speaker 3: I promise.
Speaker 2: All right, man, what's a fun conversation talking about food
Speaker 2: here with Frankie. How many times during this conversation were
Speaker 2: you just visualizing exactly what it was that he was describing.
Speaker 2: Starts making your mouth a little.
Speaker 4: Bit about spaghetti. I almost taste it right now, frank.
Speaker 2: Him describing your teeth going through each consecutive noodle, I
Speaker 2: was like it was like a zoom in, zoomed in
Speaker 2: shot of like my own mouth, and I can see
Speaker 2: my teeth like like chomping down on those noodles. I
Speaker 2: loved it, But do you have a specific big takeaway
Speaker 2: from this episode?
Speaker 1: Okay, so there's, yeah, a lot of good stuff and
Speaker 1: a lot of informative stuff if you want to make
Speaker 1: good food at home for less. I think one of
Speaker 1: the biggest things that stuck out to me, and I
Speaker 1: think you spot on, is it it takes practice, right,
Speaker 1: and it takes effort. And so I think we in
Speaker 1: kind of modern society, we expect everything to be easy.
Speaker 1: It's actually pretty easy to get what you need at
Speaker 1: the grocery store. But if you live in a world
Speaker 1: of convenience, Yeah, we live in a world convenience, and
Speaker 1: so we've gotten used to everything coming to us easily.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to like developing a skill, and
Speaker 1: that is kind of what you're doing as a an
Speaker 1: at home chef. You have to develop a skill. One
Speaker 1: for when it comes to like, let's say you're gonna
Speaker 1: buy a whole chicken and butcher it right, that's a skill.
Speaker 1: But then when it comes to like cooking it properly
Speaker 1: and making it taste the best that it can in
Speaker 1: a variety of different ways, that's another skill. And so
Speaker 1: you don't just acquire those things really willly neely. They
Speaker 1: don't come to you through osmosis, nor.
Speaker 2: Does it happen overnight like he said I think he
Speaker 2: said specifically, he mentioned five hundred days of being aware
Speaker 2: of the meals around you and what prices are. Like basically,
Speaker 2: he's taking you completely through an entire year into the
Speaker 2: next year. Again, you know where you're repeating ingredients, like
Speaker 2: you're repeating a season and you're starting to then at
Speaker 2: that point finally understand oh, this should be in the season.
Speaker 2: Oh this is how I can use this.
Speaker 4: It's a it's a process.
Speaker 1: So basically, if you start listening to Frankie and making
Speaker 1: some changes late twenty twenty four, you're gonna be good
Speaker 1: at this. Okay, but I think that's that's cool to
Speaker 1: know that you can be done. You're gonna learn a
Speaker 1: lot along the way. Then you're gonna have a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. You might ruin something like but don't let
Speaker 1: that failure kind of set you back and push you
Speaker 1: back towards kind of the takeout mentality.
Speaker 4: I like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So my big takeaway is going to be I'm
Speaker 2: going to try to figure out something like very specific
Speaker 2: for folks, which is I liked what he was talking
Speaker 2: about when it came to preparing for a meal. So
Speaker 2: that kind of sounds daunting, right, because you're thinking, well,
Speaker 2: how you know it's hard enough preparing for one meal.
Speaker 2: How am I supposed to think through like five different meals?
Speaker 2: But what he was saying was that even just chopping
Speaker 2: up the whole onion as opposed to half of the
Speaker 2: onion is considered meal prep And I think where creativity
Speaker 2: can start to blossom is when we think about breaking
Speaker 2: down a protein and then pre preparing or prepackaging, say
Speaker 2: a chicken breast or a chicken thigh, or just a
Speaker 2: cut of meat. Because if you say you only need
Speaker 2: a quarter of a cut of meat or only half
Speaker 2: of it, if you put the rest of it in
Speaker 2: the freezer and you've got that set aside, and you
Speaker 2: know that, Okay, shoot, I got to cook dinner tonight.
Speaker 2: What can I make at home? You know, maybe you
Speaker 2: can boil some positive, you got some veggies. Oh, look
Speaker 2: in the freezer. I happen to have this protein. And
Speaker 2: starting to take these different pieces and finding ways creative
Speaker 2: ways to put them together, Well, in my mind, that's
Speaker 2: the beginning of creativity is finding ways to place these
Speaker 2: pieces and have them interact in a way that is
Speaker 2: appetizing and delicious and hopefully nutritious.
Speaker 4: It might have to be like organized to right.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I have to get get some organizational skills
Speaker 1: in order to make sure that you're you're storing things properly.
Speaker 1: We didn't really talk about that with him, But that
Speaker 1: has to be part of the equation, right, so that
Speaker 1: it also doesn't easily find what you need when you
Speaker 1: need it.
Speaker 2: Sure, I don't think it needs to be so overwhelming
Speaker 2: to where someone is who might be listening things that
Speaker 2: they have to come up with an entirely new system, right,
Speaker 2: But just simply putting something in a ziploc bag and
Speaker 2: writing on it with a sharpie labeling it yep. That
Speaker 2: way you know exactly what is in there, how many
Speaker 2: ounces of protein or of meat that is, or maybe
Speaker 2: it's a bag of herbs or something like that. But
Speaker 2: as long as it's labeled, I think that just having
Speaker 2: that knowledge is a way to create sort of an
Speaker 2: index of what it is that you have in your
Speaker 2: kitchen that you know that you can tap for for meals.
Speaker 1: I like, so, yeah, a lot of good stuff in here,
Speaker 1: and yeah, Frankie I love his approach in struct meals.
Speaker 1: It's such an interesting show that that deviates from so
Speaker 1: many the other cooking shows you might be used.
Speaker 2: To watching a lot. He's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: He's changed the game taking shows, which I in a
Speaker 1: good way. So all right, Matt, let's get back to
Speaker 1: the beer that we had on this episode. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite things to pick up at the grocery store
Speaker 1: is a six pack of delicious craft beer. Is it
Speaker 1: because it's delicious or is it because it's pre prepared
Speaker 1: and all you gotta do is pop that time? But
Speaker 1: that might be part of it.
Speaker 4: It's a little bit of both.
Speaker 1: It make it so easy for you. Yeah, well, it's
Speaker 1: even nicer when the listener sends went our way. This
Speaker 1: one came from listener Katie, So thank you Katie. She
Speaker 1: said a few of her favorite wyoming beers, and this
Speaker 1: one's called fluffy Cow Hazy Ipa. What were your thoughts
Speaker 1: on this one? Yeah, it was quite tasty.
Speaker 2: I'll mention when we when I first poured this thing,
Speaker 2: I was surprised to see how dark it was. I
Speaker 2: feel like most of the hazies that that we're drinking,
Speaker 2: they tend to be lighter, like, aren't they like they
Speaker 2: in my mind they often look more like orange juice
Speaker 2: like or even lemonade. Yeah, yeah, sometimes they're they're pretty light.
Speaker 2: And so this was kind of a it was like
Speaker 2: a darker amber hazy, but it was quite tasty. Man
Speaker 2: definitely had that hot punch going on. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, it wasn't too vegetable, right, Sometimes those like
Speaker 2: it It literally feels like you're eating vegetables when you're
Speaker 2: drinking an iPad. But this one was more balanced. It
Speaker 2: was you know, hop forward, but certainly still had some
Speaker 2: of that malt backbone.
Speaker 1: I think this one, if I read the label correctly,
Speaker 1: it had hints of vanilla or something infused into it,
Speaker 1: which I thought interesting made the mouth feel a little
Speaker 1: bit softer. So is this like combo of like tropical notes,
Speaker 1: but like almost made a little more smoother in your
Speaker 1: mouth because of the presence of vanilla.
Speaker 4: So is an interesting combo? Is it Trader?
Speaker 2: What's the hop that has more like tropical vanilla?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 2: Is it Trader Vix? I think it's Vic Secret or
Speaker 2: something or Vix Secret maybe, I mean, wait, what's Trader Vix?
Speaker 2: And my thinking of Trader Vix is a lovely coxicil bar.
Speaker 2: I believe that is what I'm thinking of. It is
Speaker 2: not that it is what you said. It is a
Speaker 2: Vic secret, VIC secret. Maybe I don't know, or are
Speaker 2: you thinking about Victoria's secret?
Speaker 4: Maybe I am.
Speaker 2: Now, it's like it's some combination of all the words
Speaker 2: that we just said.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Uh, But Katie, we are incredibly thankful for you. We
Speaker 2: appreciate you donating this Groooner Brothers brewing beer to the show.
Speaker 4: No doubt.
Speaker 1: But that's gonna do it for this episode. For links
Speaker 1: to everything that Frankie is working on, including his socials,
Speaker 1: you can find those up on our website at howtomoney
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, we'll make sure to link to some
Speaker 2: of the specific episodes that he mentioned. But that's gonna
Speaker 2: be it for this one, buddy. Until next time, I'm
Speaker 1: Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.