June 28, 2024 • 52 mins
What do Michelle Obama and Novak Djokovic have in common? Well at the very least they’ve both enjoyed meals by today’s guest, Frankie Celenza. And if you think about it, whether you’ve lived in the White House, or you’re the number one tennis player in the world, or if you’re just scraping by on a meager income, there is nothing more elemental than our need to eat food. We’re all united by the fact that we get hungry! And while some folks might like to splurge when it comes to meals, the rest of us are looking for ways to cut those costs so we can reach other financial goals. Frankie is a Daytime Emmy award winning culinary host and his show, Struggle Meals, is all about getting the most bang for your buck in the kitchen, both for your wallet and time savings. He is truly a professional in the kitchen and today we talk about buying seasonally, how to be more efficient while we cook, canned vs frozen veggies, redefining what it means to ‘cook’, and of course some of his favorite meals that are affordable and easy to prepare.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Joel, what's not best Bud high a pal so high
a path seems much less committed to our relationship. Best
Bud Hello, Acquaintance pal is what you say to somebody
that you're getting ready to fight, like, hey, Bud, watch
a pal, which I get in bar fights all the time.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Matt, it's all that craft beer, you know.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Okay. We wanted to share an episode from the archives
because recently we've been discussing how more of American's budgets
are being spent towards eating out to restaurants than ever before,
which is the most expensive way to feed yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
We blame a lot of the problem with our food
budget on escalating costs due to inflation. That's part of it,
but a lot of it is our different actions, the
fact that we're going out to eat a whole lot more.
And I get it, Matt. Some people don't feel like
they are a champ in the kitchen, but there's a
lot of room for growth, myself included. So I need
to go back and re listen to Frankie Selenza's wise words,
(00:56):
because he's all about cooking good food, but doing it inexpensively.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Doing it affordably, and one of the reasons too, I'm
so pumped for folks to hear this episode, especially if
they have never heard of Frankie, is that it takes
the focus off of money, right, Like, so much of
what we discuss is about just reducing your expenses or
being able to earn more money or investing in a
wise imprudent way. But this shifts the focus completely off
of money. And it like you are developing a skill
(01:21):
outside of finance, right outside of your money that happens
to have a spillover effect that oh, you get to
save some money. Yeah, oh, you get to increase your
skills in the kitchen. And then there's these other effects too,
where like you are creating a culture in your home
perhaps around everyone, like sitting down and enjoying a meal together,
the ability to invite friends of it.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Like, there are all these.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Like knock on effects that just gets me really excited
the more I talk about it.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, I like it. I think you're right. And so,
without further ado, let's get to that episode with Frankie.
Welcome to Hat to Money. I'm Joel and I am
mat and today we're talking cheap meal prep for struggling
chefs with Frankie Celenza.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah, there is nothing more elemental than our need to
eat food. Right, So, no matter how much money you've
got in the bank, no matter how much debt you have,
we're all united by the fact that we get hungry.
And while some folks might like to splurge when it
comes to their meals, the rest of us are looking
for ways to cut those costs so that we can
reach some other financial goals. And that is why we
(02:38):
were pumped to be joined by Daytime Emmy Award winning
culinary host Frankie Celenza. Frankie's show Struggle Meals. It is
all about getting the most bang for your buck in
the kitchen, both for your wallet and when it comes
to the amount of time that you're spending cooking that's
important as well. So we're excited to talk about that today. Frankie,
thank you for joining us today on the PODCAS Cast.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
So happy to be here you guys.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Frankie. We're glad to have you man, and I feel
like you even make cooking accessible to someone like me
who is terrible at the stuff, so I appreciate that.
But our first question to everyone who comes on the show,
we want to know what your craft beer equivalent is
Matt and I. We spourged outrageously on good beer while
we're saving for the future. Is what is that in
your life?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, it's it's mountain bike parts. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Actually, just before.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, I got a package with a new set of
long fingered gloves. Very important. My current pair is wearing
through on the index finger from heavy breaking and intense
rock riding. So it's time for another pair, you know,
gotta gotta protect the contact points.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
It's incredibly important that in your feet. So how did
you get into biking? Was it just a love for
you said? You said mountain biking specifically, and it sounds
like you are actually on trails. Was it a love
of being outdoors like on the mountain or did you
start like of us, riding around your cul de sac?
How did you get into biking?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
This is so bizarre, but when I was thirteen years old,
my very best friend got into road biking because it
was the Lance Armstrong era, and so I hopped to
my dad's bike and started riding with him. And before
you know it, I mean, we were competing in the
national championships as road bike riders. And I've probably done
nine hundred laps of Central Park and stage races, and
(04:26):
that was my sport as a teenager, Like I actually
thought about maybe going pro. I was a very good sprinter.
This is before the days of texting, even T nine,
nobody was even T nine texting. Now when I get
on the road, the cars seem to be going faster, bigger,
and with less focus. So I love being in the woods.
I love being with nature, and it's a natural antidepressant.
(04:47):
It makes me feel really good.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
I love it. It's good for you from so many
different angles. I mean from a transportation standpoint, from a
just staying healthy standpoint, and obviously, like you were saying,
from a mental clarity stand point as well.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
And I know it costs money, but from the value
you get from biking regularly, it's like it's so worth
the money you stick into it, for sure, So it
really is firm your splurge.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Oh sweet, Yeah, Well, I will say this. My first
mountain bike, I literally just changed it six months ago,
and I had been riding that since two thousand and one,
so I got my money's worth out of that. Man,
the technology has changed quite a bit. The stuff I
can get up and down now is like, I couldn't
(05:30):
believe it. I thought lightness was all that matters. It
is not the case.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, that's I mean my splurge. We totally do. Man,
We sign off. So well, let's talk about your area
of expertise, which is which is cooking, which is helping
us helping everyone out there cook and make awesome meals
for less. I'm curious too, what was the inspiration for
struggle Meals We love your philosophy? Was this born out
of necessity? Were you like some broke college student sort
(05:57):
of thing and you're like, I got to figure out
how to do this on my own or what? Yeah?
What kind of necessitated or brought about this creative endeavor.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
It's sort of twofold because when I look back when
I started making these videos in two thousand and nine,
I actually have a reel that I made where I'm
holding up packets and I'm like, I'm like, get the
packets from the dining hall, use them right here. You
know it's going to be perfect. But what I did
in school was I undercut the meal plan by a
dollar and I had people come over to my place
for what was definitely a better meal than what was
(06:26):
being served. In the cafeteria coming full circle. I mean literally,
we were just filming random recipes that taste made. Someone
from the office came onto the set and said, hashtag
struggle meals is trending. We think we should make a
show around that. And it just started like that, wow,
and I was like, Okay, let's revisit this. I figured
(06:46):
it would be people in school or just out of school,
or people with their first job, and it is a
much wider swap of people than that. I mean, after
like housing and trans in rotation, I feel like food
is number three or four biggest expense for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
That really is yeah, months to month. Yeah, you discovered
that there's a lot of folks who are cooked like
they're just out of college, even year olds.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, they never learn at anything beyond that. Beyond like
some of the.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Wealthiest people in the world.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
I mean, I can't believe they just have whitebread and
slap some stuff on them. You know, we can do
better than that. So the struggle is broad, It can
be multifaceted. It doesn't have to just be financial. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
I guess a common misconception in the world of food
at least is that you can't eat healthy on a budget,
that you can't do it cheaply, that the cheap foods
are the worst foods for you. But when I watch
your content, that's not the experience I get, And it's
not the experience I have at the grocery store. Yeah, Like, sure,
some of the nicest whole foods you can spend a
(07:49):
whole lot of money on, But I feel like you
don't have to eat like crap if you want to
save money. Do you agree?
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I one hundred percent agree. That is my job to
agree with that. And this is misleading when you look
at the title the show struggle Meals, because it sounds
like I'm going to be you know, cutting up a
hot dog and you know, cooking it on a George
formangrill and slapping it on white bread. And that's not
what we do. And you're right, the unhealthy foods are
the cheapest ones. But do you know the biggest cost
in food for Americans, the.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Biggest cost of meat.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
If you look at your bill at the end of
the year, where did the largest amount of your money
that you spent on food go? Where did it go?
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I'm guessing prepackaged foods like cereal, chips, Swiss misrolls, all
that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
It's actually that money went directly into the garbage because
thirty percent of graceries go directly into the garbage waste. So,
now imagine that we decide that we're going to put
effort into cooking and we're going to plan a little bit,
and we're going to just maybe just work on five dishes,
and we know we're going to fail at the beginning,
but we get to an efficiency point where we have
(08:52):
no waste. Now our budget kind of got bigger because
we're not throwing out so much money. Now you can
buy real.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Food absolutely, So when you are buying real food, I'm
thinking about the trend that we've seen in particular over
the past few years with higher inflation, like that's also
hit the grocery stores as well in a pretty serious way, right,
And so, have you changed your approach or have you
changed your advice when it comes to spending less on food?
I guess basically at the end of the day, I
want to know if you're still buying eggs, because we
(09:20):
saw the eggspike. It's starting to level off now, But yeah,
what are your thoughts on inflation and how that's impacting
how folks shop and prepare their food.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I think I've purchased a dozen eggs this year, so
I was pretty low on it. I was like, it's
not really worth it. And I'm not a huge breakfast
guy anyway, so I don't mind just having overnight's oats
or you know, sprinkling a little bit of This is
going to sound so boogie, but it's a great breakfast.
A little bit of chia with some oat milk and
tiny bit of maple syrup or honey and like that
cow leave that overnight. I love it. But here's like,
(09:52):
here's the main thing. We live in such a convenient time,
arguably the most convenient time of all time. And if
you walk into the supermarket, and this goes for all
things in life, Okay, you can go so deep down
every single path of everything we do. I'm sure you
could spend one thousand hours learning about toilet flappers. I'm
(10:16):
sure you could so like and maybe that would save
you water money, I don't know. But you walk into
the supermarket and they have pretty much everything all the time.
If you're in a food desert, that's a different story.
But the problem is people buy things that are out
of season and they're expensive. And so if you're not
really paying attention to the fact that the prices are
(10:37):
fluctuating over the course of the year based on supply
and demand and whether it's in season and the climate
that you're actually purchasing it in, then you could, you know,
you could look at asparagus in December and say, asparagus
is too expensive. I'm never buying asparagus because it's too
It's like, yeah, it's coming from Argentina, it's not asparagus
season now, and you're paying for shipping. There's a lack
(11:00):
of supply, so the price goes up. And right now,
I just bought a bunch of asparagus an hour ago.
They're super skinny because they're just they're just coming out
of the ground, you know, and they came from nearby,
and the price was not high. It was two ninety
nine for a pound and a half. Because they're in season.
So there's gonna be a flood. They're gonna flood the
market with asparagus right now. Price is gonna drop. So
(11:22):
you know, go on the internet, see what things are
in season where you live, and try to eat seasonally.
That helps a lot with the money too.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
So revolving our meals kind of around what's currently cheap,
not just not being agnostic when you're making your grocery
list and kind of knowing what's going on seasonally. That's
really important to saving money. Right, So, I guess we're
talking about winter vegetables in winter and like berries in
April and May, that kind of thing. When those are
kind of like cause you can get strawberry sometimes like
(11:51):
a buck fifty a pound right about now, but in
a few months they're gonna be way more expensive. Yep.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
And unless they start like hydroponically growing nearby, and then
the seasons don't matter as much and the surprise constant
and they've figured it out. But all these tips take
probably five hundred days of you having your eyes peeled,
you know, and just monitoring all these prices.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Are you buying in bulk when that stuff happens and
freezing some of it or something like for instance, no berries, no, no,
none of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
If I'm gonna have berries, I'll just buy frozen berries.
I'm not gonna buy freshens and freeze them. They pick
them at the season. They have blast freezers which are
really great because they are so cold that when you
put the berry into the blast freezer, it freezes so quickly.
As you know, water, when it becomes as solid as
one of the few elements that expands. So if you
(12:45):
freeze something slowly, the water inside the berries expand and
it breaks apart all the I guess meat, if you
could call it that. When you defrost it, it always it's
just the texture's gone, it doesn't have the snap. Well
that's if you do it in a home freezer. Is
it a little bit better when you buy it from
an industrial process? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Absolutely, Yeah, I guess I've never thought about the Yeah,
the difference between the frozen veggies you buy at the
store versus what you can freeze yourself.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Well, they're probably doing that process when berries are at
peak season, right, they're picking them when.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
There's a ton of supply. They're putting it in their
industrial strength blast freezer so that it doesn't you know,
crystallize and expand and break apart all the fibers inside,
and then they're selling them to you. So yeah, if
something's out of season, like peas, the frozen aisle is
definitely the way to go. Like I'd pick frozen fees
over over canned peas any day.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
The biggest thing that stands out to me, Frankie, just
watching your show is that you are incredibly creative when
it comes to how it is that you approach your food,
and it makes me think that most of us aren't
thinking outside of the box. I think most folks just may
not be getting creative enough, and that we're maybe to
either specifically meal focused or too gadget focused when it
comes to how folks cook today. What are your thoughts there?
(13:56):
Do you do you agree with that that statement? I
guess totally. What's your recommendation?
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Yeah, it's I actually think we're in a nice era
right now with the social media because you can visually
watch a recipe in thirty seconds. Some of them are
getting a little bit too elaborate because they're clearly chasing
views and I'm not learning anything, and there's too many
ingredients and I can't mimic it. But I just did
one yesterday. It has like three ingredients. I don't know
how I'm gonna make it longer than thirty seconds. There's
(14:20):
so little happening on in it.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
It's a great it's a.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Great meal, but if you've never been in the kitchen,
it's like anything else in life, Like the first thing
you make is probably not going to be great. You
do need to learn. I would I would do the
kiss rule, keep it simple, silly and the gadget you
don't need. The gadgets you don't need. You really don't
need much to get started. As the truth, you just
like buy and season plan on using everything. Suck it up. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
When Matt talks about getting creative, like you used an
iron to make a panini, are those like you don't
need a panini press? Right, No, we think we need
all these things to make a decent meal, but really
we just need a little ingenuity, right, We.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Need a little in And obviously if you're making a
lot of sandwiches, using in an iron is a silly thing.
But when we do stuff like that on the show,
you know we're I think I'm talking to two audiences.
One is the people that haven't ever been in the kitchen,
and I want them to see that like you can
use items from around the home and cook. And the
other group are people that cook all the time. So
the people that cook all the time, if they're going
(15:20):
to make that recipe, they'll use their panini press, or
they'll heat up two cast iron pans, one smaller than
the other, put the sandwich in the bigger one, put
the smaller one on top, which is now hot because
you had it on the stove and you just made
a panini press. I mean, cast iron is a giant
heat battery, and it'll hold that heat and it'll crisp
it up real good. Absolutely, But more than anything, I
(15:42):
want people to feel like they can take liberty. You know,
when I think back to my mom and my aunt
when I was a kid or whatever, every time they
would cook out of a cookbook, they would always be like,
oh I changed this, I changed that, I changed that.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Like you didn't even.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Make the recipe the right way once, they're already changing it.
And that's the right attitude to have if you've cooked
enough enough meals in your life. Because a recipe is
simply a destination, and as you know, I'm sure you've
used GPS, there's a lot of ways to get there.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah no, I like that. Yeah, there can. It's gonna
have the inspiration perhaps something to set your sites on.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
But how do we want to inspire people to improvise absolutely.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah, a little.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
I love it well, Frankie, We're going to get to
several other topics, including how it is that you can
affordably incorporate meat into your your meals as well as
meal prep. That's another a hot tactic that folks can include.
We'll get to those plus more right after.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
This our we're back. We're still talking with Frankie Celenza
talking about making meals for less money, and making good
meals right, not having to suck it up and eat
like crap, and and the fact that it's it's not
necessarily as expensive as as you think.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
You don't have to be over there slicing up your
boloney for your sandwiches Bloni.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Man, I don't.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
I don't know if I've ever had boloni, to be honest,
but you do like hot dogs. We've talked about this
on the show before.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Let's go hot dog. Sometimes that doesn't Frankie.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
That is that's why we call it boloona. If you
look at the way Bolooni is spelt, it's spelt Bologna,
the town which is where Mortodella comes from in Italy, and.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
So it is Mortdella like an improved version.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Mortadella is the original one, and just like Parmijian Origiano,
it has like Italian protections of the European Union, so
we weren't allowed to call it that if we manufactured
it over here, which is why we have Parmesan and
boloney when it's American. Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Like we need to go straight to the source and
get the real story.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
It's got.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
It's very good and I don't mind. Listen. One of
my favorite things is a Oscar Mayer boloney sandwich with
mayo and white bread and a little bit of art.
It's delicious.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
So every once in a hot dog by the way, okay,
all right, And even Frankie slums it every once in
a while, right, even though he's making and stuff. Most
of the time.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Dogs are great. It's not slumming. It's a fun little treat.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Well, I take my little man and we go to
Costco occasionally and we do we do the hot dog
thing together and it's a nice little like father son date.
So we have a good time. But my my, my
girls are not into the hot dog nearly nearly as
much as as the guys are. I get okay, So
while we're talking about meat, let's let's keep talking about meat.
These are we're talking about the bargain basement cuts here
in terms of hot dogs and and blooney. But meat
(18:26):
is you talk about this, and it's just kind of
common understanding this point that meat just costs more than
a lot of the other things. If you're eating ribbi,
you're gonna bust your budget pretty quickly. So like, how
how should we be thinking about trimming our meat consumption
and being able to maybe still eat meat sometimes but
without like breaking the bank.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Yeah, you gotta just eat less meat, is the truth
of it. And you know, if you look at history,
meat was always like the food of the nobility, and
all the off cuts off the off cuts sorry, like
the oh and the things that were really fatty and
tough what went down to the working class people. Those
are the cuts that have more flavor, which is ironic now,
(19:08):
but the whole world is so efficient at making food
that now all classes of people seem to be eating
meat a lot more than the human body. It's able
to process. And I'm not going to get into like
diet and all that stuff, but I mean, I think
we're all eating way too.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Much of it.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
I will tell you this I have some guanchali frozen
in my freezer. It's fancy Italian bacon. It comes from
the cheek. I bought it two months ago. I keep
it frozen. I literally I just sliced a couple thin slices,
probably one ounce of it, put it in a pan
over medium heat. It shriveled up, rendered out fat, and
then I sauteate a bunch of spring onions, which are
(19:46):
in season right now, in that fat. And I just
put spaghetti in there, and like that was delicious. And
I'm eating meat, but I'm using it as a flavoring
and as the fat for the dish rather than using
olive oil. And the center point is perfectly Dane spaghetti,
which I think is textually pleasing.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Yes, yeah, that's my My wife calls using meat as
a garnish, just like you said, like the ability to
kind of pull some of that flavor, Like you.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Know, instead of getting four chicken breasts that have been
deboned and de skinned, that's always going to cost more
money because it's just on a fundamental level, like there
was a lot of process there that you're paying for
someone else to do. So if you eat chicken, I
think it's pretty fundamental that you buy a whole chicken
and learn to break it down. It's really not that hard.
(20:36):
And by the way, you get a carcass at the end,
which means you can make your own stock, which is
superior to everything else.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah. Okay, so brothwise, two questions. Do you boil your carcass?
Do you boil your bones? In an instapot?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
I don't I have one. I've not used it.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I just but you don't use it soap.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
That goes back to the gotcha, goes back to how
unnecessary certain tools are. All right, So I was curious
about that. But then secondly, so for folks who are
say who are maybe they're working out more, they're looking
to get more protein in their diet. I noticed in
a couple of year recipes that you incorporate some peanut
butter like into sauces or to kind of thicken things up.
And it seems like that's an awesome way to include
(21:16):
like ten twenty grams of additional protein in something. What
are some of the other way or first of all,
I guess how often.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Do you do that?
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Because I thought that was interesting from a maybe from
a flavor standpoint. But then what are some other sources
of affordable protein other than meat.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
I love, And we can get back to meat, because
I didn't want to just brush it off. I know
people like to eat it. It is the most fun
thing to cook. It's obviously a wonderful centerpiece even an
affordable meal, So we can get back to that. But
I love peanut butter. I mean I put a scoop
of peanut butter with oatmeal. I put a scoop peanut
butter with with cereal. I like a banana peanut butter smoothie.
(21:50):
I'll do it all the time. But I cooked for
I did three tennis tournaments with the world number one
tennis player who's a famous vegan, and we did a
lot of beans for protein and nuts. But nuts. There's
some crazy stuff that he was having me do, for example,
(22:11):
like cashewes. Let's just say a cashew has ten calories. Okay,
if you and I eat the cashoe, we're gonna spend
five six calories just trying to break it down because
it's so hard to digest. But what I was doing
was soaking the cashes in water overnight and then putting
(22:31):
them in a super low oven just to dehydrate that
water out but not create a miard reaction. And now
you look at the cashew. It's got no color on it.
It looks the same as the other cashoe, but when
you bite into it, it's much softer. So I've started
the digestion process outside the body. And now it only
takes let's say two calories to consume the ten, so
you get a net gain of eight versus if you
(22:52):
just eat it raw. Maybe you know fifty percent of
the energy that you're getting is being used to digest
the thing.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
You feel like a mama bird's thing.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Yeah, oh, exactly right. The mombird choose it and then
regurgitates it into it. It's baby chick's mouths. That's correct.
Lentils are a great source of protein and uh, as
far as like energy goes, which is super interesting. Fat,
the good fats are really really great. Every gram of
fat has twice as many calories as that of protein
or carbohydrate, so you can eat half as much of
(23:21):
it by weight and still be able to store energy.
Because it isn't just about repairing muscle, it's also preparing
for the next time you're gonna I mean, we all
use our muscles every day, and we use the energy
that we eat to move right. I think coconut milk
is a great, great thing to use occasionally. I love
olive oil. What else can we talk about? Cannellini means
are wonderful?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
All right? Well, okay, let's say somebody says, you know what,
I appreciate Frankie all your advice on other ways to
include protein in my diet. Maybe I'll do the cashew trick,
but I also want I also want meat as kind
of the main thing. I like, I know, three or
four dinners a week. And so I guess is it's
all about the cuts, right?
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
The cuts that make the difference? And how you talked
about the cheaper cuts oftentimes can be the most flavorful.
But I guess some people are just so used to
buying boneless, skinless chicken breast or whatever that they forget
to get the chicken thighs that are like a third
of the price but way tastier.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Well, listen, this is a money podcast. So every as
you know, everybody's trying to make a buck, and the
way it happens in food is through convenience. Right at
the highest level, you can go out to eat, they'll
take care of the dishes for you, they'll cook all
the food for you. Great, that's the most expensive. Then
you get the fast casual. They do less things for you.
It's a little bit less money. Then you want to
(24:37):
you know, you got prepared foods at the supermarket. That's
even less expensive because you've got to reheat it or
do some processes to get it ready to be consumed.
And then you go one level below that and we're
to the boneless, skinless chicken breast and the pre formed
hamburger patties and the chicken wings that they have already
marinating in various things for you. I mean, it's cheaper
(24:59):
compare to the restaurant and the fast casual, but you're
still paying for convenience. So you can go a level
lower than that. And really what you want to do
is like if you just think of the animal as
a whole, that's the cheapest way to get it, because
no one has cut anything off of it yet. So
we did an episode many seasons ago where we took
(25:21):
a giant pork loin and we got like twenty meals
out of it, and you had the leaner end and
the fattier end of it. And we were cutting the
chops at different thicknesses depending on how much protein it
had or protein and fat had had. And I was
giving you four different ways to cook all those things.
And you know, that's really the way to do it.
I'm going on a little bit of a tangent here.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
But no, that's that's the way. It's funny to.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Put more effort. It's not magic, there's no way. It's
not through buying a tool. It's not through buying a one,
you know, an onion cutter thing where it's got that
grid and you put the onion and slams it through.
It's not through a crock pot or any of those
things or an air fro It's through you physically doing
more labor because that because then you're not giving money
(26:05):
to someone else who has been doing it for you before,
which brings us back to convenience.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah, So, I mean essentially what you're talking about, and
you mentioned that that porkloin, I'll watch that video. You
you got multiple meals out of it, and what you're
essentially doing there is you're prepping meals for the week ahead. Why,
I mean, what are some of the other advantages that
come with thinking ahead and the ability to basically prep
your meals in advance.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
If you can prep in advance and you can stick
to that schedule even if you don't feel like eating
that thing, then you will reduce the waste. And that's
the thirty percent of the money you're spending on food
not going down the toilet. So that's really really fantastic.
But listen, it happens to me too. You know, I'll
cook a bunch of things and then I either get
sidetracked because life happens. I totally understand it, and then
(26:52):
all of a sudden, there's nothing to eat, and when
the blood sugar starts falling. That that's when you either
make you know, as food decision or you're just like, oh,
let's just go out to dinner, and then you know
it's one hundred dollars. And it's so when you're meal prepping,
you're planning, and when you're planning, you're also financially planning.
I would say, you got to stick to the schedule,
(27:13):
and you've got to be obedient, not obedient discipline.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Obedientien to your previous self, to your own roles. Yeah, absolutely, no,
I think that's so true. I mean, I think when
you have a budget, you have a plan for your money,
and so it makes it way more likely that you're
actually going to follow through. And the same is true
when you have a meal plan. Like you know, my
wife and I we sit down on the weekend, and
I will say she takes the main role in kind
of meals, which is awesome, and I'm kind of more
(27:41):
the clean up guy. But it's it's that plan that
we make ahead of time and then which is so
helpful in ensuring that we're actually going to fow through
and not just randomly go out to eat. But I
guess so planning is important, but talk to us about
actually making the meals ahead of time, because you're doing
that too, right, So you're like creating a bunch of
stuff and sticking it in the freezer or free so
that you've got meals to eat for days or potentially
(28:03):
even like weeks or something that you can pull out
a month from now. Like how important is that you know?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
There is no one size fits all? And so we've
done that on the show. We have an episode this
season for that, we had an episode last season for that,
and I know we've touched on it before. But again,
I'm just trying to get people to think about many,
many things, and we did smart things, like, you know,
it could be really easy. Let's say you prepped food
for work, you know, and then you forget to bring it.
(28:31):
That's no good. So we were like, you got to
put your car keys or your metro card or whatever.
You got to put that in the fridge with the
food that you prepped, so when you're looking for it,
you don't forget the food. That was one thing I
would say, if you have the time to do it, absolutely,
but there's so many ways to prep food. And you know,
we think of making a whole meal on Sunday night
(28:51):
and freezing it and that's really great, but you could
also if a recipe calls for half an onion or something,
you could chop up the whole onion and then put
it in a little deli container. And now you've got
an onion. You know, you've done some prep for a
future meal, and you've cut down on a knife that
needs to be cleaned, and a cutting board that needs
to be wiped, and eyes that need to be blotted
from crying every single time I cut an onion. But
(29:14):
food prep comes in many forms, and back to the like,
you know, you buy that big piece of meat, that
giant piece of meat, and you cut thinner ones on
the lean side and pound them out. You can freeze those.
You could even flour them, egg them, par cook them,
and freeze them and then you know, reheat them if
you wanted to. You could go lots of ways. But
(29:35):
if you were going to have a meal that had
some I don't know, some pork in it or something,
you know, think a step ahead. You could go buy
just the pork for that meal, or you could buy
more of it. And now you're doing prep once for
potentially three meals. It's only going to take twenty percent longer.
But when you divide that by the three meals you're
(29:56):
gonna get, it's actually a lot more efficient. So I
saw my mom doing a ta on Easter and she
was doing one thing and then switching to the other thing,
and then doing one thing and switching to the other thing,
and I was like, Mom, it's a lot faster if
you just do all of job one first and then
switch to job two, because you know you're eliminating steps.
You're picking up the knife, putting down the knife, picking
up the knife. No, pick up the knife, hold the knife.
(30:18):
Chop chop, chop, chop chop. Put down the knife for good,
and now move on to the next step. I know
I'm speaking very esoteric and broadly, but I think people
understand what I'm getting at here. You know, be a
machine when you're prepping and just do that repetitive, boring task.
You'll get faster and faster at it as the repetition
is in there, and then even think a meal ahead.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
It seems like it's a kind of a holistic approach
to how it is that you're thinking about all of
the meals that you're going to be consuming that week
or even for the next couple weeks, rather than focusing
on one bite at a time, or when you can
at a time.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
You can prep for the next meal even if you
don't know what it is yet, especially if you've got
ten dishes that you know under your belt. You know,
you could say I don't know what I'm going to
use this for yet, but then you got to hold
yourself to actually using it, because then we get back
into the food waste thing.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Okay, So I guess for folks out there who say,
maybe there's some folks listening and they're like, man, I've
barely got two dishes that I know how to go
to without looking up a recipe. Why did you look
at me when you said that? Matt just happen to
sit across from me. What are maybe some easy meals
that someone could prep for lunches? Say they go to
work and they're trying to avoid busting their budget by
(31:31):
going out to lunch. What are some meals that are
really easy to cook ahead time where they've got something
tasty that we know where there's some variety where it's
not just PBJ and whitebread with greyennaise and baloney. But yeah, like,
are there some meals that lend themselves to that meal
prep on Sundays?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Yeah? I think bowls are great to think about to
take to work with you. And you know, it's easy
to say I'm not inspired, I don't know exactly what
to do, but you be inspired every day by every
meal that you eat out. If if you go to
you know, a place and buy a quinoa bowl or whatever,
you should like, you should be constantly thinking how did
(32:10):
they make this? What are these flavors? Look at that, Oh,
I can do this. So I'm just looking right now.
I've got a dish on episode three, season eight, spring
green Quinoha. It sounds great. Quenwa's great warm or cold.
So it's going to travel really well. It's going to
have that interesting texture regardless, it's not going to expire
like pasta does. Pasta does not travel well. And spring
(32:32):
greens can mean anything. It could be, you know, spring
green pesto. It could be sauteed greens. It could be
some some yummy chryciferous spring vegetables. I would do sauce
on the side, or if you don't have you know,
if you don't want to have two containers, you could,
for example, put sauce in like the bottom of the
(32:54):
container and then everything else on top of it and
just make sure you keep gravity that way, and then
when you're ready to eat it, flip it over and
now you've just like dressed it like that. Yeah, But
you want to think about foods that can travel well.
I don't think fried food travels well. I think in general,
fried food is probably not so much fun to cook
at home because the aroma of the oil really yeah,
(33:14):
it's intense and it's life ruining. If you spill that
stuff anywhay, or if you got kids running around, I
mean three hundred and fifty degrees. Oh terrible.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Talk about canned foods for a second, because when I
was growing up, that was we just say can green
beans all the time, and I remember thinking green beans
are the worst food on the face of the planet.
And then I still remember a standoff I had with
my parents over eating like one green bean, and I
made their lives miserable over this thing. But then I
remember having fresh green beans for the first time in
my life, and I was like, I think I like
(33:47):
green beans. Wait a second, Like these are completely different animals,
but you kind of just talk smack about canned peas
just a little bit againss frozen, So I don't know.
But then you also, I've seen you make like and
salmon and use that in like a pretty interesting way
in your show. So how do we think about canned foods? Man?
Speaker 3 (34:05):
I love canned beans because it's you know, a really
fast way to beans can be a really great filler
and a lot of dishes. Like we were just talking
about taking Quenwa to lunch, I mean putting some chickpeas
in there from a can rinsed with a little bit
of paprika, olive oil and salt. That's a delicious lunch,
you know. And we didn't really have to cook anything
except the quinoa, which cooks quickly. But I am really
(34:27):
getting into the science of a lot of greens. And
what I've found is that when you cook some greens
with acid, they turn kind of brown. If you blanch
the greens, ice them, and then put acid after, they
hold the beautiful green color. So the canned peas, the
canned green beans, they probably have a little bit of
(34:50):
acid in there to make them shelf stable, and they
probably bring the temperature of the entire can up to
pasteurize it so that it can be shelf stable. And
you know, the first thing you notice is you open
it up. The color is not amazing. But the frozen,
the frozen greens they are why, because they're raw. It
didn't have acid and heat applied, which ruined the color.
(35:13):
Not to mention the texture. Yeah, peas and green beans
in a can not texturally, I just don't even know
what the point is at that point. I gotta be honest.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, I know I'm rather doing frozen, and I know.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
My show is struggle meals, but like there's other ways
to There's not a lot of nutritional value in there
or textural pleasure in anything that is a vegetable in
a can. Beans are okay though, and tanned fish is fantastic.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Okay, Well, I was going to talk about how much
I like cayn spinach because I watched Popeye as a kid,
but talk about some of the different I guess I'm
more interested in the protein.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
So you're talking about cayn fish, Like, what is it
that makes can fish healthy but also tasty?
Speaker 3 (35:54):
I think because it's you know, a vegetable is delicate,
A piece of muscle is much more resilient to get
slapped around. So when you do that same process to
you know, fish in a can, it's it's still good.
I love tuna in oil in a can. I think
it's great.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
All Right, Hey, Frankie, we got a couple more questions
we want to talk through with you here. Okay, we
want to and specifically I'm curious to know about your
drawer full of packets that you have and kind of
how you infuse those into your recipes. We have just
a couple more questions to get to with you.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Right after this, we are back from the break talking
with Frankie, Sealinza and Frankie. You know, Joel just mentioned
your seasoning.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Drawer, but it looks like his completely freey pro bono.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Yeah, it looks like you take the what's in the
bottom of like fast food bags and you take them
home and you dump them out and then you organize
them put them in your drawer. You got ketch up mustard?
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Is that what you do?
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Do you just grab a couple extra you know, when
you're at a restaurant. How do you have that on hand?
And how often do you use the mini packets drawer?
Speaker 3 (37:11):
I mean on the show. Obviously it's a little bit
of a gag because it's so organized and there's such
endless quantity in there. But you know, it does have
an overarching theme which makes a lot of sense, which
is like, if you buy things in bulk, or if
you happen to have access to a cafeteria, or if
you ever get takeout and they give you those things
and you don't want it on that meal, you should
(37:32):
save it because it could be free flavor in the future.
Right now, I've got a lot of duck sauce I
don't know. I had Chinese takeout and they gave me
like six of them. I don't know who they're given
six of them to. Is duck sauce super useful in
the dishes I want to make? If I think of
it as a duck sauce, then the answer is no,
it's gonna be super specific. But if I think of
it of what it really is, liquid sugar, all of
(37:54):
a sudden, the possibilities for those packets open up, and
I'm saving it and I'm going to use it for
something nice.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
I like it. Yeah, No, I like the resourcefulness of that.
I think you might cross over into cheap territory if
you're going to your local fast food restaurant in order
to raid their stash of packets. But yeah, if you're
just using the extra ones that you get and stuff
like that, I think that. I think that's why.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
So I think it's just stealing.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Jill goes to chick Flase, like, can I get fifteen
chick Flase sauce?
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Exactly? They're like, are you gonna order something with that?
I'm like, I wasn't thinking about it, but I know.
In season eight of Struggle Meals, you're going to talk
about no cook meals, and especially like we're getting closer
to summer the temps are warming up. One of the
best reasons, in my estimation, to be able to make
a meal where you're not cooking and turning on the
oven is just because you're making your AC unit work
(38:44):
that much harder. You're you're just like heating up your
home while the exterior temp is like ninety degrees or
something like that. It seems like a waste. So working
over your.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, you're sweating, You're staying on there, sweating over the
open flame. Yeah, nobody wants that. Nobody wants that.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
So, yeah, there's some grill and dilemmas as well, Like
you know, if you have air conditioning and you're doing
a bunch of things that are generating a ton of
heat in the kitchen, you're now spending money to counteract
that with.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
The entire condition So it's either hop out side and
grill right with, which I think is just wonderful. Right,
So you want to talk to tell me a little
bit about do you go outside and grill, what's your
take on grilling, and then also talk to me a
little bit about the no cook meals that people can
institute during these summer months.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
I think grilling is great. I just moved out of
the city. I've spent twenty eight of my thirty six
years in New York City and various burrows, and I've
just left. I don't actually have a grill yet, but
I love its simplicity. I've always enjoyed it because basically,
you take in seasoned vegetables and meats, you season them
very sparsely, and you cook them and it's beautiful. And
(39:48):
it is the exact same concept of why I love
Italian food. It's just simple. It's just simple. When it's
too hot to cook, there's a million things you can eat,
and I feel like our bodies are naturally telling us
what we should intuitively be eating. One of my favorite
things is a gaspacho soup in Spanish cuisine. It's basically
(40:08):
red bell pepper is a little bit of tomato, and
they just like blend it up with olive oil and
salt and it's fantastic. And so we have this episode
too hot to Cook. We didn't do a gaspacho, but
we did a chilled cucumber avocado soup, and that's great.
You start wondering what is cooking, And so if you
think cooking literally means adding heat, I don't think that's
(40:31):
a broad enough view of what it means, because sometimes
it can just be putting things together in a nice ratio,
you know, or turning things into something that's drinkable, or
you know, when you make a salad, is that cooking?
You combine an oil and an acid together with an
emulsifier and put it over some in seasoned greens and
(40:54):
maybe some herbs if you're growing them, which, by the way,
I think people should be growing herbs free flavor. You
pick it, it grows back, unbelievable. It's a live photosynthesis.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Oh so we should we all have our own little
garden going on.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
I just found wild chives growing. I've been picking them.
I've been using them all week. It's crazy. And here
in the Northeast it's just about ramp season. My wife
just went on a walk. She goes the ramps are out.
She was out of a lot with our neighbor and
she was about to pick them, and the neighbor said,
I am not letting you eat anything from the woods. So,
but isn't that what made like a wild spring onion? Yeah?
(41:28):
Very nice.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Isn't that what made Noma famous?
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Aren't they?
Speaker 2 (41:31):
He's like literally like a restaurant from foraging.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeahs find something ironic and one of the most.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Native meals you can have, and they're getting stuff for
free by sending a bunch of interns in the woods
to pick them.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yeah, right, Frankie, we've all learned it is not sustainable.
That a sustainable model. Uh okay, I guess I got
one last question for you, Frankie. And this might be
like asking someone to pick their favorite kid, but do
you have an absolute favorite? Just go to struggle something
that is affordable that kind of fits within the parameters
(42:03):
of what you're trying to steer folks towards in order
to save money, but that's also just top notch when
it comes to flavor and incredibly delicious.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Yeah, it's spaghetti, garlic and oil, sometimes broccoli, sometimes red pepper.
You can pull the whole thing together in fifteen minutes.
We had a version of it yesterday for lunch. I
had some broccoli rob I chopped it up real fine.
I put the spaghetti in my salted water, and when
it was about seventy percent done, I threw all the
chopped broccoli into the water with the spaghetti, dumped the
(42:34):
whole thing through a sieve, didn't even have a second
pan going saved a little bit of the pasta water,
put it all back into the pan with a little
bit of the pasta water, and I put some chili
oil on it that I made, you know. And that's
a variation of sautein garlic and oil with a little
bit of red pepper flakes and throwing spaghetti in it,
which is great. You can use frozen broccoli. By the way,
broccoli has more protein gram for gram than steak. We
(42:58):
were talking about.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Putting under that for it does I had no idea.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
It's nuts, so there's a ton. There's a ton of
protein and crciferous vegetables.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
I love spaghetti because it seems so simple. It can
be salty, it can be spicy. It's textraally pleasing when
you cook that pasta al dente and the salt in
the water is at two percent salinity and you twist
it around your fork and you bite through it, and
you get all these moments of textraal variance as your
teeth bite through the perfectly twirled spaghetti cock cock cock
right through and then you've you've got this oily vegetable
(43:30):
that you put in there. Yeah, it's it's very good.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
I know what I'm eating right now, Seriously, Broccoli, by
the way, I feel like we've just been doing this
lightly roasting it in the oven. Broccoli is so much
better roasted in the oven, and it brings out so
many more flavors in it than it does like cooking
on the stove top.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
I mean, you're getting the miard reactions, so you're even
getting some burnt, charred stuff. But you can pretty much
take any vegetables and throw it in an oven at
four hundred degrees for twenty minutes with oil and salt,
and it's gonna be amazing. You know, if it's a
if it's a harder vegetable, you're going to cut it
into smaller pieces so the distance the center is less,
so you know it's not raw in the center. And
if it's something really soft, you can leave it pretty big. Yeah,
(44:10):
broccoli in the oven. And it's so easy, right, You
just throw it on a sheet tray.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
So easy. Yeah, so easy, dude, Frankie, We so appreciate
you coming on the show Man. Where can our listeners
find out more about Struggle Meals and season eight coming up,
and I know Season Nate's going to be great, but
you can go back and watch all the old stuff
too that like Matt and I have been doing over
the past couple weeks, learning a lot in the process.
But where can folks find out more about you and
what you're up to.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Well, you can follow me at Frankie Cook's Frankie I E. Cooks,
not Frankie Hy. And you should definitely go to Taste
made dot com because they tell you all the places
where you can watch the show, and there are so
many that I would say there's a seventy percent chance
that if you're listening to this show, you already have
access to watch the show in some form, which is remarkable.
(44:55):
The distribution has gotten really pretty great, and we've done
like four hundred recipes now we just filmed the one
hundredth episodes, so the show is doing great.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Congrat It's yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Thank you. It's an endlessly there's so many possibilities for
affordable food and it really only needs to be crappy
if you want it to be that way, you can do.
You can do a lot with very little and it
goes for everything in life.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
As we've said, yeah, it just takes a little bit
of effort, and you are providing that inspiration. We'll be
sure to link to all the different places where folks
can find that content. Frankie, thank you so much for
talking with us today.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
You're very welcome. And if you get into cooking everybody,
it will bring yourself satisfaction, which is we'll bring you joy,
I promise.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
All Right, man, what's a fun conversation talking about food
here with Frankie. How many times during this conversation were
you just visualizing exactly what it was that he was describing.
Starts making your mouth water a little bit about spaghetti, spaghetti,
I'll taste it right now, frank Him describing your teeth
going through each consecutive noodle. I was like, it was
like a zoom in, zoomed in shot of like my
(45:59):
own mouth that I can see my teeth like like
chomping down on those noodles.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
I loved it.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
But do you have a specific big takeaway from this episode?
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Okay, so there's yeah, a lot of good stuff and
a lot of informative stuff. If you want to make
good food at home, for less. I think one of
the biggest things that stuck out to me, and I
think you spot on, is that it takes practice, right,
and it takes effort. And so I think we in
kind of modern society, we expect everything to be easy.
It's actually pretty easy to get what you need at
(46:28):
the grocery store.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
But if we live in a world of convenience, Yeah,
we live in a.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
World convenience, and so we've gotten used to everything coming
to us easily. And when it comes to like developing
a skill, and that is kind of what you're doing
as an at home chef. You have to develop a
skill one for when it comes to like, let's say
you're gonna buy a whole chicken and butcher it right,
that's a skill. But then when it comes to like
cooking it properly and making it taste the best that
it can in a variety of different ways, that's another skill.
(46:53):
And so you don't just acquire those things willly neely.
They don't come to you through osmosis or does it
happen overnight like he said. I think he said specifically
he mentioned five hundred days of being aware.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Of the meals around you and what prices are like, basically,
he's taking you completely through an entire year into the
next year. Again, you know where you're repeating ingredients, like
you're repeating a season, and you're starting to then at
that point finally understand, oh this should be in the season.
Oh this is how I can use this. It's a
it's a process.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
So basically, if you start listening to Frankie and making
some changes late twenty twenty four, you're gonna be good
at this. Okay, but I think that's that's cool to
know that you can be done. You're gonna learn a
lot along the way. Then you're gonna have a lot
of fun. You might ruin something like but don't let
that failure kind of set you back and push you
back towards kind of the takeout mentality. I like it.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Yeah, So my big takeaway is going to be I'm
going to try to figure out something like very specific
for folks, which is I liked what he was talking
about when it came to preparing for a meal. So
that kind of sounds daunting, right because you're thinking, well,
how you know, it's hard enough preparing for one meal.
How am I supposed to think through like five different meals. Yeah,
but what he was saying is that even just chopping
up the whole onion as opposed to half of the onion,
(48:03):
is considered meal prep. And I think where creativity can
start to blossom is when we think about breaking down
a protein and then pre preparing or prepackaging, say a
chicken breast or a chicken thigh, or just a cut
of meat. Because if you say you only need a
quarter of a cut of meat or only half of it,
if you put the rest of it in the freezer
and you've got that set aside, and you know that. Okay, Shoot,
(48:24):
I got to cook dinner tonight. What can I make
at home? You know, maybe you can boil some positive
You got some veggies. Oh, look in the freezer. I
happen to have this protein. And starting to take these
different pieces and finding ways creative ways to put them together, well,
in my mind, that's the beginning of creativity is finding
ways to place these pieces and have them interact in
a way that is appetizing and delicious and hopefully nutritious.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
So it might have to be like organized too, right,
I'm sure I have to get some organizational skills in
order to make sure that you're storing things properly. We
didn't really talk about that with him, but that has
to be part of the equation, right, But it also
doesn't easily find what you need when you need it.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Sure, I don't think it needs to be so overwhelming
to where someone is who might be listening things that
they have to come up with an entirely new system.
But just simply putting something in a ziploc bag and
writing on it with a sharpie labeling it yep. That
way you know exactly what is in there, how many
ounces of protein or of meat that is, or maybe
it's a bag of herbs or something like that. But
as long as it's labeled, I think that just having
(49:21):
that knowledge is a way to create sort of an
index of what it is that you have in your
kitchen that you know that you can tap for for meals.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
So, yeah, a lot of good stuff in here. And yeah, Frankie,
I love his approach in Strong Meals. It's such an
interesting show that that deviates from so many of the
other cooking shows you might be used to watching.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
A lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
He's a lot of fun. He's changed the game taking
shows which I in a good way. So all right, man,
let's get back to the beer that we had on
this episode. One of my favorite things to pick up
at the grocery store is a six packup delicious craft beer.
Is it because it's delicious or is it because it's
pre prepared and all you got to do is pop
that time? But that might be part of it. It's
a little bit of both. They make it so easy
for you. Yeah, well, it's even nicer when the listener
sends went our way. This one came from listener Katee,
(50:00):
So thank you, Katie. She said a few of her
favorite Wyoming beers, and this one's called Fluffy Cow Hazy IPA.
What were your thoughts on this one? Yeah, it was
quite tasty.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
I'll mention when we when I first poured this thing,
I was surprised to see how dark it was. I
feel like most of the hazies that that were drinking,
they tend to be lighter like, aren't they like they
in my mind, they often look.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
More like orange juice or even lemonade.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Yeah, yeah, sometimes they're pretty light, and so this was
kind of a it was like a darker amber hazy,
but it was quite tasty. Man definitely had that hot
punch going on, but at the same time it wasn't
too vegetable right. Sometimes those like it it literally feels
like you're eating vegetables well when you're drinking an ipaid.
But this one was more balanced. It was you know,
hot forward, but certainly still had some of that malt backbone.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
I think this one, if I read the label correctly,
it had hints of vanilla or something infused into it,
which I thought interesting made the mouth feel a little
bit softer. So it is this like combo of like
tropical notes, but like almost made a little more smoother
in your mouth because of the presence of vanilla. So combo.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
Is it Trader what's the the hop that has more
electropical vanilla?
Speaker 2 (51:06):
Like?
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Is it Trader Vix? I think it's Vic Secret or
something or Vix Secret? Maybe I wait, what's Trader Vix?
And my thinking of Trader.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
Vix is a lovely coxtail bar.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
I believe that is what I'm thinking of.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
It is not that it is what you.
Speaker 1 (51:16):
Said is a Vic Secret Vic Secret? Maybe I don't know,
or are you thinking about Victoria's Secret?
Speaker 2 (51:21):
Maybe I am.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
Now it's like it's some combination of all the words
that we just said. I don't know, uh, but Katie,
we are incredibly thankful for you. We appreciate you donating
this Groooner Brothers brewing beer to the show.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
No doubt. But that's gonna do it for this episode.
For links to everything that Frankie is working on, including
his socials, you can find those up on our website
at howtomoney dot com. That's right.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Yeah, we'll make sure to link to some of the
specific episodes that he mentioned, but that's gonna be it
for this one, buddy. Until next time, Best Friends Altum,
best Friends out
Speaker 3 (52:01):
The only people
Joel, what's not best Bud high a pal so high
a path seems much less committed to our relationship. Best
Bud Hello, Acquaintance pal is what you say to somebody
that you're getting ready to fight, like, hey, Bud, watch
a pal, which I get in bar fights all the time.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Matt, it's all that craft beer, you know.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Okay. We wanted to share an episode from the archives
because recently we've been discussing how more of American's budgets
are being spent towards eating out to restaurants than ever before,
which is the most expensive way to feed yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
We blame a lot of the problem with our food
budget on escalating costs due to inflation. That's part of it,
but a lot of it is our different actions, the
fact that we're going out to eat a whole lot more.
And I get it, Matt. Some people don't feel like
they are a champ in the kitchen, but there's a
lot of room for growth, myself included. So I need
to go back and re listen to Frankie Selenza's wise words,
(00:56):
because he's all about cooking good food, but doing it inexpensively.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Doing it affordably, and one of the reasons too, I'm
so pumped for folks to hear this episode, especially if
they have never heard of Frankie, is that it takes
the focus off of money, right, Like, so much of
what we discuss is about just reducing your expenses or
being able to earn more money or investing in a
wise imprudent way. But this shifts the focus completely off
of money. And it like you are developing a skill
(01:21):
outside of finance, right outside of your money that happens
to have a spillover effect that oh, you get to
save some money. Yeah, oh, you get to increase your
skills in the kitchen. And then there's these other effects too,
where like you are creating a culture in your home
perhaps around everyone, like sitting down and enjoying a meal together,
the ability to invite friends of it.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Like, there are all these.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Like knock on effects that just gets me really excited
the more I talk about it.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, I like it. I think you're right. And so,
without further ado, let's get to that episode with Frankie.
Welcome to Hat to Money. I'm Joel and I am
mat and today we're talking cheap meal prep for struggling
chefs with Frankie Celenza.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah, there is nothing more elemental than our need to
eat food. Right, So, no matter how much money you've
got in the bank, no matter how much debt you have,
we're all united by the fact that we get hungry.
And while some folks might like to splurge when it
comes to their meals, the rest of us are looking
for ways to cut those costs so that we can
reach some other financial goals. And that is why we
(02:38):
were pumped to be joined by Daytime Emmy Award winning
culinary host Frankie Celenza. Frankie's show Struggle Meals. It is
all about getting the most bang for your buck in
the kitchen, both for your wallet and when it comes
to the amount of time that you're spending cooking that's
important as well. So we're excited to talk about that today. Frankie,
thank you for joining us today on the PODCAS Cast.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
So happy to be here you guys.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Frankie. We're glad to have you man, and I feel
like you even make cooking accessible to someone like me
who is terrible at the stuff, so I appreciate that.
But our first question to everyone who comes on the show,
we want to know what your craft beer equivalent is
Matt and I. We spourged outrageously on good beer while
we're saving for the future. Is what is that in
your life?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, it's it's mountain bike parts. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Actually, just before.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, I got a package with a new set of
long fingered gloves. Very important. My current pair is wearing
through on the index finger from heavy breaking and intense
rock riding. So it's time for another pair, you know,
gotta gotta protect the contact points.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
It's incredibly important that in your feet. So how did
you get into biking? Was it just a love for
you said? You said mountain biking specifically, and it sounds
like you are actually on trails. Was it a love
of being outdoors like on the mountain or did you
start like of us, riding around your cul de sac?
How did you get into biking?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
This is so bizarre, but when I was thirteen years old,
my very best friend got into road biking because it
was the Lance Armstrong era, and so I hopped to
my dad's bike and started riding with him. And before
you know it, I mean, we were competing in the
national championships as road bike riders. And I've probably done
nine hundred laps of Central Park and stage races, and
(04:26):
that was my sport as a teenager, Like I actually
thought about maybe going pro. I was a very good sprinter.
This is before the days of texting, even T nine,
nobody was even T nine texting. Now when I get
on the road, the cars seem to be going faster, bigger,
and with less focus. So I love being in the woods.
I love being with nature, and it's a natural antidepressant.
(04:47):
It makes me feel really good.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
I love it. It's good for you from so many
different angles. I mean from a transportation standpoint, from a
just staying healthy standpoint, and obviously, like you were saying,
from a mental clarity stand point as well.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
And I know it costs money, but from the value
you get from biking regularly, it's like it's so worth
the money you stick into it, for sure, So it
really is firm your splurge.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Oh sweet, Yeah, Well, I will say this. My first
mountain bike, I literally just changed it six months ago,
and I had been riding that since two thousand and one,
so I got my money's worth out of that. Man,
the technology has changed quite a bit. The stuff I
can get up and down now is like, I couldn't
(05:30):
believe it. I thought lightness was all that matters. It
is not the case.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, that's I mean my splurge. We totally do. Man,
We sign off. So well, let's talk about your area
of expertise, which is which is cooking, which is helping
us helping everyone out there cook and make awesome meals
for less. I'm curious too, what was the inspiration for
struggle Meals We love your philosophy? Was this born out
of necessity? Were you like some broke college student sort
(05:57):
of thing and you're like, I got to figure out
how to do this on my own or what? Yeah?
What kind of necessitated or brought about this creative endeavor.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
It's sort of twofold because when I look back when
I started making these videos in two thousand and nine,
I actually have a reel that I made where I'm
holding up packets and I'm like, I'm like, get the
packets from the dining hall, use them right here. You
know it's going to be perfect. But what I did
in school was I undercut the meal plan by a
dollar and I had people come over to my place
for what was definitely a better meal than what was
(06:26):
being served. In the cafeteria coming full circle. I mean literally,
we were just filming random recipes that taste made. Someone
from the office came onto the set and said, hashtag
struggle meals is trending. We think we should make a
show around that. And it just started like that, wow,
and I was like, Okay, let's revisit this. I figured
(06:46):
it would be people in school or just out of school,
or people with their first job, and it is a
much wider swap of people than that. I mean, after
like housing and trans in rotation, I feel like food
is number three or four biggest expense for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
That really is yeah, months to month. Yeah, you discovered
that there's a lot of folks who are cooked like
they're just out of college, even year olds.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, they never learn at anything beyond that. Beyond like
some of the.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Wealthiest people in the world.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
I mean, I can't believe they just have whitebread and
slap some stuff on them. You know, we can do
better than that. So the struggle is broad, It can
be multifaceted. It doesn't have to just be financial. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
I guess a common misconception in the world of food
at least is that you can't eat healthy on a budget,
that you can't do it cheaply, that the cheap foods
are the worst foods for you. But when I watch
your content, that's not the experience I get, And it's
not the experience I have at the grocery store. Yeah, Like, sure,
some of the nicest whole foods you can spend a
(07:49):
whole lot of money on, But I feel like you
don't have to eat like crap if you want to
save money. Do you agree?
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I one hundred percent agree. That is my job to
agree with that. And this is misleading when you look
at the title the show struggle Meals, because it sounds
like I'm going to be you know, cutting up a
hot dog and you know, cooking it on a George
formangrill and slapping it on white bread. And that's not
what we do. And you're right, the unhealthy foods are
the cheapest ones. But do you know the biggest cost
in food for Americans, the.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Biggest cost of meat.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
If you look at your bill at the end of
the year, where did the largest amount of your money
that you spent on food go? Where did it go?
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I'm guessing prepackaged foods like cereal, chips, Swiss misrolls, all
that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
It's actually that money went directly into the garbage because
thirty percent of graceries go directly into the garbage waste. So,
now imagine that we decide that we're going to put
effort into cooking and we're going to plan a little bit,
and we're going to just maybe just work on five dishes,
and we know we're going to fail at the beginning,
but we get to an efficiency point where we have
(08:52):
no waste. Now our budget kind of got bigger because
we're not throwing out so much money. Now you can
buy real.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Food absolutely, So when you are buying real food, I'm
thinking about the trend that we've seen in particular over
the past few years with higher inflation, like that's also
hit the grocery stores as well in a pretty serious way, right,
And so, have you changed your approach or have you
changed your advice when it comes to spending less on food?
I guess basically at the end of the day, I
want to know if you're still buying eggs, because we
(09:20):
saw the eggspike. It's starting to level off now, But yeah,
what are your thoughts on inflation and how that's impacting
how folks shop and prepare their food.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I think I've purchased a dozen eggs this year, so
I was pretty low on it. I was like, it's
not really worth it. And I'm not a huge breakfast
guy anyway, so I don't mind just having overnight's oats
or you know, sprinkling a little bit of This is
going to sound so boogie, but it's a great breakfast.
A little bit of chia with some oat milk and
tiny bit of maple syrup or honey and like that
cow leave that overnight. I love it. But here's like,
(09:52):
here's the main thing. We live in such a convenient time,
arguably the most convenient time of all time. And if
you walk into the supermarket, and this goes for all
things in life, Okay, you can go so deep down
every single path of everything we do. I'm sure you
could spend one thousand hours learning about toilet flappers. I'm
(10:16):
sure you could so like and maybe that would save
you water money, I don't know. But you walk into
the supermarket and they have pretty much everything all the time.
If you're in a food desert, that's a different story.
But the problem is people buy things that are out
of season and they're expensive. And so if you're not
really paying attention to the fact that the prices are
(10:37):
fluctuating over the course of the year based on supply
and demand and whether it's in season and the climate
that you're actually purchasing it in, then you could, you know,
you could look at asparagus in December and say, asparagus
is too expensive. I'm never buying asparagus because it's too
It's like, yeah, it's coming from Argentina, it's not asparagus
season now, and you're paying for shipping. There's a lack
(11:00):
of supply, so the price goes up. And right now,
I just bought a bunch of asparagus an hour ago.
They're super skinny because they're just they're just coming out
of the ground, you know, and they came from nearby,
and the price was not high. It was two ninety
nine for a pound and a half. Because they're in season.
So there's gonna be a flood. They're gonna flood the
market with asparagus right now. Price is gonna drop. So
(11:22):
you know, go on the internet, see what things are
in season where you live, and try to eat seasonally.
That helps a lot with the money too.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
So revolving our meals kind of around what's currently cheap,
not just not being agnostic when you're making your grocery
list and kind of knowing what's going on seasonally. That's
really important to saving money. Right, So, I guess we're
talking about winter vegetables in winter and like berries in
April and May, that kind of thing. When those are
kind of like cause you can get strawberry sometimes like
(11:51):
a buck fifty a pound right about now, but in
a few months they're gonna be way more expensive. Yep.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
And unless they start like hydroponically growing nearby, and then
the seasons don't matter as much and the surprise constant
and they've figured it out. But all these tips take
probably five hundred days of you having your eyes peeled,
you know, and just monitoring all these prices.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Are you buying in bulk when that stuff happens and
freezing some of it or something like for instance, no berries, no, no,
none of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
If I'm gonna have berries, I'll just buy frozen berries.
I'm not gonna buy freshens and freeze them. They pick
them at the season. They have blast freezers which are
really great because they are so cold that when you
put the berry into the blast freezer, it freezes so quickly.
As you know, water, when it becomes as solid as
one of the few elements that expands. So if you
(12:45):
freeze something slowly, the water inside the berries expand and
it breaks apart all the I guess meat, if you
could call it that. When you defrost it, it always it's
just the texture's gone, it doesn't have the snap. Well
that's if you do it in a home freezer. Is
it a little bit better when you buy it from
an industrial process? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Absolutely, Yeah, I guess I've never thought about the Yeah,
the difference between the frozen veggies you buy at the
store versus what you can freeze yourself.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Well, they're probably doing that process when berries are at
peak season, right, they're picking them when.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
There's a ton of supply. They're putting it in their
industrial strength blast freezer so that it doesn't you know,
crystallize and expand and break apart all the fibers inside,
and then they're selling them to you. So yeah, if
something's out of season, like peas, the frozen aisle is
definitely the way to go. Like I'd pick frozen fees
over over canned peas any day.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
The biggest thing that stands out to me, Frankie, just
watching your show is that you are incredibly creative when
it comes to how it is that you approach your food,
and it makes me think that most of us aren't
thinking outside of the box. I think most folks just may
not be getting creative enough, and that we're maybe to
either specifically meal focused or too gadget focused when it
comes to how folks cook today. What are your thoughts there?
(13:56):
Do you do you agree with that that statement? I
guess totally. What's your recommendation?
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Yeah, it's I actually think we're in a nice era
right now with the social media because you can visually
watch a recipe in thirty seconds. Some of them are
getting a little bit too elaborate because they're clearly chasing
views and I'm not learning anything, and there's too many
ingredients and I can't mimic it. But I just did
one yesterday. It has like three ingredients. I don't know
how I'm gonna make it longer than thirty seconds. There's
(14:20):
so little happening on in it.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
It's a great it's a.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Great meal, but if you've never been in the kitchen,
it's like anything else in life, Like the first thing
you make is probably not going to be great. You
do need to learn. I would I would do the
kiss rule, keep it simple, silly and the gadget you
don't need. The gadgets you don't need. You really don't
need much to get started. As the truth, you just
like buy and season plan on using everything. Suck it up. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
When Matt talks about getting creative, like you used an
iron to make a panini, are those like you don't
need a panini press? Right, No, we think we need
all these things to make a decent meal, but really
we just need a little ingenuity, right, We.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Need a little in And obviously if you're making a
lot of sandwiches, using in an iron is a silly thing.
But when we do stuff like that on the show,
you know we're I think I'm talking to two audiences.
One is the people that haven't ever been in the kitchen,
and I want them to see that like you can
use items from around the home and cook. And the
other group are people that cook all the time. So
the people that cook all the time, if they're going
(15:20):
to make that recipe, they'll use their panini press, or
they'll heat up two cast iron pans, one smaller than
the other, put the sandwich in the bigger one, put
the smaller one on top, which is now hot because
you had it on the stove and you just made
a panini press. I mean, cast iron is a giant
heat battery, and it'll hold that heat and it'll crisp
it up real good. Absolutely, But more than anything, I
(15:42):
want people to feel like they can take liberty. You know,
when I think back to my mom and my aunt
when I was a kid or whatever, every time they
would cook out of a cookbook, they would always be like,
oh I changed this, I changed that, I changed that.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Like you didn't even.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Make the recipe the right way once, they're already changing it.
And that's the right attitude to have if you've cooked
enough enough meals in your life. Because a recipe is
simply a destination, and as you know, I'm sure you've
used GPS, there's a lot of ways to get there.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah no, I like that. Yeah, there can. It's gonna
have the inspiration perhaps something to set your sites on.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
But how do we want to inspire people to improvise absolutely.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah, a little.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
I love it well, Frankie, We're going to get to
several other topics, including how it is that you can
affordably incorporate meat into your your meals as well as
meal prep. That's another a hot tactic that folks can include.
We'll get to those plus more right after.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
This our we're back. We're still talking with Frankie Celenza
talking about making meals for less money, and making good
meals right, not having to suck it up and eat
like crap, and and the fact that it's it's not
necessarily as expensive as as you think.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
You don't have to be over there slicing up your
boloney for your sandwiches Bloni.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Man, I don't.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
I don't know if I've ever had boloni, to be honest,
but you do like hot dogs. We've talked about this
on the show before.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Let's go hot dog. Sometimes that doesn't Frankie.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
That is that's why we call it boloona. If you
look at the way Bolooni is spelt, it's spelt Bologna,
the town which is where Mortodella comes from in Italy, and.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
So it is Mortdella like an improved version.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Mortadella is the original one, and just like Parmijian Origiano,
it has like Italian protections of the European Union, so
we weren't allowed to call it that if we manufactured
it over here, which is why we have Parmesan and
boloney when it's American. Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Like we need to go straight to the source and
get the real story.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
It's got.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
It's very good and I don't mind. Listen. One of
my favorite things is a Oscar Mayer boloney sandwich with
mayo and white bread and a little bit of art.
It's delicious.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
So every once in a hot dog by the way, okay,
all right, And even Frankie slums it every once in
a while, right, even though he's making and stuff. Most
of the time.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Dogs are great. It's not slumming. It's a fun little treat.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Well, I take my little man and we go to
Costco occasionally and we do we do the hot dog
thing together and it's a nice little like father son date.
So we have a good time. But my my, my
girls are not into the hot dog nearly nearly as
much as as the guys are. I get okay, So
while we're talking about meat, let's let's keep talking about meat.
These are we're talking about the bargain basement cuts here
in terms of hot dogs and and blooney. But meat
(18:26):
is you talk about this, and it's just kind of
common understanding this point that meat just costs more than
a lot of the other things. If you're eating ribbi,
you're gonna bust your budget pretty quickly. So like, how
how should we be thinking about trimming our meat consumption
and being able to maybe still eat meat sometimes but
without like breaking the bank.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Yeah, you gotta just eat less meat, is the truth
of it. And you know, if you look at history,
meat was always like the food of the nobility, and
all the off cuts off the off cuts sorry, like
the oh and the things that were really fatty and
tough what went down to the working class people. Those
are the cuts that have more flavor, which is ironic now,
(19:08):
but the whole world is so efficient at making food
that now all classes of people seem to be eating
meat a lot more than the human body. It's able
to process. And I'm not going to get into like
diet and all that stuff, but I mean, I think
we're all eating way too.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Much of it.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
I will tell you this I have some guanchali frozen
in my freezer. It's fancy Italian bacon. It comes from
the cheek. I bought it two months ago. I keep
it frozen. I literally I just sliced a couple thin slices,
probably one ounce of it, put it in a pan
over medium heat. It shriveled up, rendered out fat, and
then I sauteate a bunch of spring onions, which are
(19:46):
in season right now, in that fat. And I just
put spaghetti in there, and like that was delicious. And
I'm eating meat, but I'm using it as a flavoring
and as the fat for the dish rather than using
olive oil. And the center point is perfectly Dane spaghetti,
which I think is textually pleasing.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Yes, yeah, that's my My wife calls using meat as
a garnish, just like you said, like the ability to
kind of pull some of that flavor, Like you.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Know, instead of getting four chicken breasts that have been
deboned and de skinned, that's always going to cost more
money because it's just on a fundamental level, like there
was a lot of process there that you're paying for
someone else to do. So if you eat chicken, I
think it's pretty fundamental that you buy a whole chicken
and learn to break it down. It's really not that hard.
(20:36):
And by the way, you get a carcass at the end,
which means you can make your own stock, which is
superior to everything else.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah. Okay, so brothwise, two questions. Do you boil your carcass?
Do you boil your bones? In an instapot?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
I don't I have one. I've not used it.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I just but you don't use it soap.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
That goes back to the gotcha, goes back to how
unnecessary certain tools are. All right, So I was curious
about that. But then secondly, so for folks who are
say who are maybe they're working out more, they're looking
to get more protein in their diet. I noticed in
a couple of year recipes that you incorporate some peanut
butter like into sauces or to kind of thicken things up.
And it seems like that's an awesome way to include
(21:16):
like ten twenty grams of additional protein in something. What
are some of the other way or first of all,
I guess how often.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Do you do that?
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Because I thought that was interesting from a maybe from
a flavor standpoint. But then what are some other sources
of affordable protein other than meat.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
I love, And we can get back to meat, because
I didn't want to just brush it off. I know
people like to eat it. It is the most fun
thing to cook. It's obviously a wonderful centerpiece even an
affordable meal, So we can get back to that. But
I love peanut butter. I mean I put a scoop
of peanut butter with oatmeal. I put a scoop peanut
butter with with cereal. I like a banana peanut butter smoothie.
(21:50):
I'll do it all the time. But I cooked for
I did three tennis tournaments with the world number one
tennis player who's a famous vegan, and we did a
lot of beans for protein and nuts. But nuts. There's
some crazy stuff that he was having me do, for example,
(22:11):
like cashewes. Let's just say a cashew has ten calories. Okay,
if you and I eat the cashoe, we're gonna spend
five six calories just trying to break it down because
it's so hard to digest. But what I was doing
was soaking the cashes in water overnight and then putting
(22:31):
them in a super low oven just to dehydrate that
water out but not create a miard reaction. And now
you look at the cashew. It's got no color on it.
It looks the same as the other cashoe, but when
you bite into it, it's much softer. So I've started
the digestion process outside the body. And now it only
takes let's say two calories to consume the ten, so
you get a net gain of eight versus if you
(22:52):
just eat it raw. Maybe you know fifty percent of
the energy that you're getting is being used to digest
the thing.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
You feel like a mama bird's thing.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Yeah, oh, exactly right. The mombird choose it and then
regurgitates it into it. It's baby chick's mouths. That's correct.
Lentils are a great source of protein and uh, as
far as like energy goes, which is super interesting. Fat,
the good fats are really really great. Every gram of
fat has twice as many calories as that of protein
or carbohydrate, so you can eat half as much of
(23:21):
it by weight and still be able to store energy.
Because it isn't just about repairing muscle, it's also preparing
for the next time you're gonna I mean, we all
use our muscles every day, and we use the energy
that we eat to move right. I think coconut milk
is a great, great thing to use occasionally. I love
olive oil. What else can we talk about? Cannellini means
are wonderful?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
All right? Well, okay, let's say somebody says, you know what,
I appreciate Frankie all your advice on other ways to
include protein in my diet. Maybe I'll do the cashew trick,
but I also want I also want meat as kind
of the main thing. I like, I know, three or
four dinners a week. And so I guess is it's
all about the cuts, right?
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
The cuts that make the difference? And how you talked
about the cheaper cuts oftentimes can be the most flavorful.
But I guess some people are just so used to
buying boneless, skinless chicken breast or whatever that they forget
to get the chicken thighs that are like a third
of the price but way tastier.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Well, listen, this is a money podcast. So every as
you know, everybody's trying to make a buck, and the
way it happens in food is through convenience. Right at
the highest level, you can go out to eat, they'll
take care of the dishes for you, they'll cook all
the food for you. Great, that's the most expensive. Then
you get the fast casual. They do less things for you.
It's a little bit less money. Then you want to
(24:37):
you know, you got prepared foods at the supermarket. That's
even less expensive because you've got to reheat it or
do some processes to get it ready to be consumed.
And then you go one level below that and we're
to the boneless, skinless chicken breast and the pre formed
hamburger patties and the chicken wings that they have already
marinating in various things for you. I mean, it's cheaper
(24:59):
compare to the restaurant and the fast casual, but you're
still paying for convenience. So you can go a level
lower than that. And really what you want to do
is like if you just think of the animal as
a whole, that's the cheapest way to get it, because
no one has cut anything off of it yet. So
we did an episode many seasons ago where we took
(25:21):
a giant pork loin and we got like twenty meals
out of it, and you had the leaner end and
the fattier end of it. And we were cutting the
chops at different thicknesses depending on how much protein it
had or protein and fat had had. And I was
giving you four different ways to cook all those things.
And you know, that's really the way to do it.
I'm going on a little bit of a tangent here.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
But no, that's that's the way. It's funny to.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Put more effort. It's not magic, there's no way. It's
not through buying a tool. It's not through buying a one,
you know, an onion cutter thing where it's got that
grid and you put the onion and slams it through.
It's not through a crock pot or any of those
things or an air fro It's through you physically doing
more labor because that because then you're not giving money
(26:05):
to someone else who has been doing it for you before,
which brings us back to convenience.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah, So, I mean essentially what you're talking about, and
you mentioned that that porkloin, I'll watch that video. You
you got multiple meals out of it, and what you're
essentially doing there is you're prepping meals for the week ahead. Why,
I mean, what are some of the other advantages that
come with thinking ahead and the ability to basically prep
your meals in advance.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
If you can prep in advance and you can stick
to that schedule even if you don't feel like eating
that thing, then you will reduce the waste. And that's
the thirty percent of the money you're spending on food
not going down the toilet. So that's really really fantastic.
But listen, it happens to me too. You know, I'll
cook a bunch of things and then I either get
sidetracked because life happens. I totally understand it, and then
(26:52):
all of a sudden, there's nothing to eat, and when
the blood sugar starts falling. That that's when you either
make you know, as food decision or you're just like, oh,
let's just go out to dinner, and then you know
it's one hundred dollars. And it's so when you're meal prepping,
you're planning, and when you're planning, you're also financially planning.
I would say, you got to stick to the schedule,
(27:13):
and you've got to be obedient, not obedient discipline.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Obedientien to your previous self, to your own roles. Yeah, absolutely, no,
I think that's so true. I mean, I think when
you have a budget, you have a plan for your money,
and so it makes it way more likely that you're
actually going to follow through. And the same is true
when you have a meal plan. Like you know, my
wife and I we sit down on the weekend, and
I will say she takes the main role in kind
of meals, which is awesome, and I'm kind of more
(27:41):
the clean up guy. But it's it's that plan that
we make ahead of time and then which is so
helpful in ensuring that we're actually going to fow through
and not just randomly go out to eat. But I
guess so planning is important, but talk to us about
actually making the meals ahead of time, because you're doing
that too, right, So you're like creating a bunch of
stuff and sticking it in the freezer or free so
that you've got meals to eat for days or potentially
(28:03):
even like weeks or something that you can pull out
a month from now. Like how important is that you know?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
There is no one size fits all? And so we've
done that on the show. We have an episode this
season for that, we had an episode last season for that,
and I know we've touched on it before. But again,
I'm just trying to get people to think about many,
many things, and we did smart things, like, you know,
it could be really easy. Let's say you prepped food
for work, you know, and then you forget to bring it.
(28:31):
That's no good. So we were like, you got to
put your car keys or your metro card or whatever.
You got to put that in the fridge with the
food that you prepped, so when you're looking for it,
you don't forget the food. That was one thing I
would say, if you have the time to do it, absolutely,
but there's so many ways to prep food. And you know,
we think of making a whole meal on Sunday night
(28:51):
and freezing it and that's really great, but you could
also if a recipe calls for half an onion or something,
you could chop up the whole onion and then put
it in a little deli container. And now you've got
an onion. You know, you've done some prep for a
future meal, and you've cut down on a knife that
needs to be cleaned, and a cutting board that needs
to be wiped, and eyes that need to be blotted
from crying every single time I cut an onion. But
(29:14):
food prep comes in many forms, and back to the like,
you know, you buy that big piece of meat, that
giant piece of meat, and you cut thinner ones on
the lean side and pound them out. You can freeze those.
You could even flour them, egg them, par cook them,
and freeze them and then you know, reheat them if
you wanted to. You could go lots of ways. But
(29:35):
if you were going to have a meal that had
some I don't know, some pork in it or something,
you know, think a step ahead. You could go buy
just the pork for that meal, or you could buy
more of it. And now you're doing prep once for
potentially three meals. It's only going to take twenty percent longer.
But when you divide that by the three meals you're
(29:56):
gonna get, it's actually a lot more efficient. So I
saw my mom doing a ta on Easter and she
was doing one thing and then switching to the other thing,
and then doing one thing and switching to the other thing,
and I was like, Mom, it's a lot faster if
you just do all of job one first and then
switch to job two, because you know you're eliminating steps.
You're picking up the knife, putting down the knife, picking
up the knife. No, pick up the knife, hold the knife.
(30:18):
Chop chop, chop, chop chop. Put down the knife for good,
and now move on to the next step. I know
I'm speaking very esoteric and broadly, but I think people
understand what I'm getting at here. You know, be a
machine when you're prepping and just do that repetitive, boring task.
You'll get faster and faster at it as the repetition
is in there, and then even think a meal ahead.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
It seems like it's a kind of a holistic approach
to how it is that you're thinking about all of
the meals that you're going to be consuming that week
or even for the next couple weeks, rather than focusing
on one bite at a time, or when you can
at a time.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
You can prep for the next meal even if you
don't know what it is yet, especially if you've got
ten dishes that you know under your belt. You know,
you could say I don't know what I'm going to
use this for yet, but then you got to hold
yourself to actually using it, because then we get back
into the food waste thing.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Okay, So I guess for folks out there who say,
maybe there's some folks listening and they're like, man, I've
barely got two dishes that I know how to go
to without looking up a recipe. Why did you look
at me when you said that? Matt just happen to
sit across from me. What are maybe some easy meals
that someone could prep for lunches? Say they go to
work and they're trying to avoid busting their budget by
(31:31):
going out to lunch. What are some meals that are
really easy to cook ahead time where they've got something
tasty that we know where there's some variety where it's
not just PBJ and whitebread with greyennaise and baloney. But yeah, like,
are there some meals that lend themselves to that meal
prep on Sundays?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Yeah? I think bowls are great to think about to
take to work with you. And you know, it's easy
to say I'm not inspired, I don't know exactly what
to do, but you be inspired every day by every
meal that you eat out. If if you go to
you know, a place and buy a quinoa bowl or whatever,
you should like, you should be constantly thinking how did
(32:10):
they make this? What are these flavors? Look at that, Oh,
I can do this. So I'm just looking right now.
I've got a dish on episode three, season eight, spring
green Quinoha. It sounds great. Quenwa's great warm or cold.
So it's going to travel really well. It's going to
have that interesting texture regardless, it's not going to expire
like pasta does. Pasta does not travel well. And spring
(32:32):
greens can mean anything. It could be, you know, spring
green pesto. It could be sauteed greens. It could be
some some yummy chryciferous spring vegetables. I would do sauce
on the side, or if you don't have you know,
if you don't want to have two containers, you could,
for example, put sauce in like the bottom of the
(32:54):
container and then everything else on top of it and
just make sure you keep gravity that way, and then
when you're ready to eat it, flip it over and
now you've just like dressed it like that. Yeah, But
you want to think about foods that can travel well.
I don't think fried food travels well. I think in general,
fried food is probably not so much fun to cook
at home because the aroma of the oil really yeah,
(33:14):
it's intense and it's life ruining. If you spill that
stuff anywhay, or if you got kids running around, I
mean three hundred and fifty degrees. Oh terrible.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Talk about canned foods for a second, because when I
was growing up, that was we just say can green
beans all the time, and I remember thinking green beans
are the worst food on the face of the planet.
And then I still remember a standoff I had with
my parents over eating like one green bean, and I
made their lives miserable over this thing. But then I
remember having fresh green beans for the first time in
my life, and I was like, I think I like
(33:47):
green beans. Wait a second, Like these are completely different animals,
but you kind of just talk smack about canned peas
just a little bit againss frozen, So I don't know.
But then you also, I've seen you make like and
salmon and use that in like a pretty interesting way
in your show. So how do we think about canned foods? Man?
Speaker 3 (34:05):
I love canned beans because it's you know, a really
fast way to beans can be a really great filler
and a lot of dishes. Like we were just talking
about taking Quenwa to lunch, I mean putting some chickpeas
in there from a can rinsed with a little bit
of paprika, olive oil and salt. That's a delicious lunch,
you know. And we didn't really have to cook anything
except the quinoa, which cooks quickly. But I am really
(34:27):
getting into the science of a lot of greens. And
what I've found is that when you cook some greens
with acid, they turn kind of brown. If you blanch
the greens, ice them, and then put acid after, they
hold the beautiful green color. So the canned peas, the
canned green beans, they probably have a little bit of
(34:50):
acid in there to make them shelf stable, and they
probably bring the temperature of the entire can up to
pasteurize it so that it can be shelf stable. And
you know, the first thing you notice is you open
it up. The color is not amazing. But the frozen,
the frozen greens they are why, because they're raw. It
didn't have acid and heat applied, which ruined the color.
(35:13):
Not to mention the texture. Yeah, peas and green beans
in a can not texturally, I just don't even know
what the point is at that point. I gotta be honest.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, I know I'm rather doing frozen, and I know.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
My show is struggle meals, but like there's other ways
to There's not a lot of nutritional value in there
or textural pleasure in anything that is a vegetable in
a can. Beans are okay though, and tanned fish is fantastic.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Okay, Well, I was going to talk about how much
I like cayn spinach because I watched Popeye as a kid,
but talk about some of the different I guess I'm
more interested in the protein.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
So you're talking about cayn fish, Like, what is it
that makes can fish healthy but also tasty?
Speaker 3 (35:54):
I think because it's you know, a vegetable is delicate,
A piece of muscle is much more resilient to get
slapped around. So when you do that same process to
you know, fish in a can, it's it's still good.
I love tuna in oil in a can. I think
it's great.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
All Right, Hey, Frankie, we got a couple more questions
we want to talk through with you here. Okay, we
want to and specifically I'm curious to know about your
drawer full of packets that you have and kind of
how you infuse those into your recipes. We have just
a couple more questions to get to with you.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Right after this, we are back from the break talking
with Frankie, Sealinza and Frankie. You know, Joel just mentioned
your seasoning.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Drawer, but it looks like his completely freey pro bono.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Yeah, it looks like you take the what's in the
bottom of like fast food bags and you take them
home and you dump them out and then you organize
them put them in your drawer. You got ketch up mustard?
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Is that what you do?
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Do you just grab a couple extra you know, when
you're at a restaurant. How do you have that on hand?
And how often do you use the mini packets drawer?
Speaker 3 (37:11):
I mean on the show. Obviously it's a little bit
of a gag because it's so organized and there's such
endless quantity in there. But you know, it does have
an overarching theme which makes a lot of sense, which
is like, if you buy things in bulk, or if
you happen to have access to a cafeteria, or if
you ever get takeout and they give you those things
and you don't want it on that meal, you should
(37:32):
save it because it could be free flavor in the future.
Right now, I've got a lot of duck sauce I
don't know. I had Chinese takeout and they gave me
like six of them. I don't know who they're given
six of them to. Is duck sauce super useful in
the dishes I want to make? If I think of
it as a duck sauce, then the answer is no,
it's gonna be super specific. But if I think of
it of what it really is, liquid sugar, all of
(37:54):
a sudden, the possibilities for those packets open up, and
I'm saving it and I'm going to use it for
something nice.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
I like it. Yeah, No, I like the resourcefulness of that.
I think you might cross over into cheap territory if
you're going to your local fast food restaurant in order
to raid their stash of packets. But yeah, if you're
just using the extra ones that you get and stuff
like that, I think that. I think that's why.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
So I think it's just stealing.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Jill goes to chick Flase, like, can I get fifteen
chick Flase sauce?
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Exactly? They're like, are you gonna order something with that?
I'm like, I wasn't thinking about it, but I know.
In season eight of Struggle Meals, you're going to talk
about no cook meals, and especially like we're getting closer
to summer the temps are warming up. One of the
best reasons, in my estimation, to be able to make
a meal where you're not cooking and turning on the
oven is just because you're making your AC unit work
(38:44):
that much harder. You're you're just like heating up your
home while the exterior temp is like ninety degrees or
something like that. It seems like a waste. So working
over your.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, you're sweating, You're staying on there, sweating over the
open flame. Yeah, nobody wants that. Nobody wants that.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
So, yeah, there's some grill and dilemmas as well, Like
you know, if you have air conditioning and you're doing
a bunch of things that are generating a ton of
heat in the kitchen, you're now spending money to counteract
that with.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
The entire condition So it's either hop out side and
grill right with, which I think is just wonderful. Right,
So you want to talk to tell me a little
bit about do you go outside and grill, what's your
take on grilling, and then also talk to me a
little bit about the no cook meals that people can
institute during these summer months.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
I think grilling is great. I just moved out of
the city. I've spent twenty eight of my thirty six
years in New York City and various burrows, and I've
just left. I don't actually have a grill yet, but
I love its simplicity. I've always enjoyed it because basically,
you take in seasoned vegetables and meats, you season them
very sparsely, and you cook them and it's beautiful. And
(39:48):
it is the exact same concept of why I love
Italian food. It's just simple. It's just simple. When it's
too hot to cook, there's a million things you can eat,
and I feel like our bodies are naturally telling us
what we should intuitively be eating. One of my favorite
things is a gaspacho soup in Spanish cuisine. It's basically
(40:08):
red bell pepper is a little bit of tomato, and
they just like blend it up with olive oil and
salt and it's fantastic. And so we have this episode
too hot to Cook. We didn't do a gaspacho, but
we did a chilled cucumber avocado soup, and that's great.
You start wondering what is cooking, And so if you
think cooking literally means adding heat, I don't think that's
(40:31):
a broad enough view of what it means, because sometimes
it can just be putting things together in a nice ratio,
you know, or turning things into something that's drinkable, or
you know, when you make a salad, is that cooking?
You combine an oil and an acid together with an
emulsifier and put it over some in seasoned greens and
(40:54):
maybe some herbs if you're growing them, which, by the way,
I think people should be growing herbs free flavor. You
pick it, it grows back, unbelievable. It's a live photosynthesis.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Oh so we should we all have our own little
garden going on.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
I just found wild chives growing. I've been picking them.
I've been using them all week. It's crazy. And here
in the Northeast it's just about ramp season. My wife
just went on a walk. She goes the ramps are out.
She was out of a lot with our neighbor and
she was about to pick them, and the neighbor said,
I am not letting you eat anything from the woods. So,
but isn't that what made like a wild spring onion? Yeah?
(41:28):
Very nice.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Isn't that what made Noma famous?
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Aren't they?
Speaker 2 (41:31):
He's like literally like a restaurant from foraging.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeahs find something ironic and one of the most.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Native meals you can have, and they're getting stuff for
free by sending a bunch of interns in the woods
to pick them.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yeah, right, Frankie, we've all learned it is not sustainable.
That a sustainable model. Uh okay, I guess I got
one last question for you, Frankie. And this might be
like asking someone to pick their favorite kid, but do
you have an absolute favorite? Just go to struggle something
that is affordable that kind of fits within the parameters
(42:03):
of what you're trying to steer folks towards in order
to save money, but that's also just top notch when
it comes to flavor and incredibly delicious.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Yeah, it's spaghetti, garlic and oil, sometimes broccoli, sometimes red pepper.
You can pull the whole thing together in fifteen minutes.
We had a version of it yesterday for lunch. I
had some broccoli rob I chopped it up real fine.
I put the spaghetti in my salted water, and when
it was about seventy percent done, I threw all the
chopped broccoli into the water with the spaghetti, dumped the
(42:34):
whole thing through a sieve, didn't even have a second
pan going saved a little bit of the pasta water,
put it all back into the pan with a little
bit of the pasta water, and I put some chili
oil on it that I made, you know. And that's
a variation of sautein garlic and oil with a little
bit of red pepper flakes and throwing spaghetti in it,
which is great. You can use frozen broccoli. By the way,
broccoli has more protein gram for gram than steak. We
(42:58):
were talking about.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Putting under that for it does I had no idea.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
It's nuts, so there's a ton. There's a ton of
protein and crciferous vegetables.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
I love spaghetti because it seems so simple. It can
be salty, it can be spicy. It's textraally pleasing when
you cook that pasta al dente and the salt in
the water is at two percent salinity and you twist
it around your fork and you bite through it, and
you get all these moments of textraal variance as your
teeth bite through the perfectly twirled spaghetti cock cock cock
right through and then you've you've got this oily vegetable
(43:30):
that you put in there. Yeah, it's it's very good.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
I know what I'm eating right now, Seriously, Broccoli, by
the way, I feel like we've just been doing this
lightly roasting it in the oven. Broccoli is so much
better roasted in the oven, and it brings out so
many more flavors in it than it does like cooking
on the stove top.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
I mean, you're getting the miard reactions, so you're even
getting some burnt, charred stuff. But you can pretty much
take any vegetables and throw it in an oven at
four hundred degrees for twenty minutes with oil and salt,
and it's gonna be amazing. You know, if it's a
if it's a harder vegetable, you're going to cut it
into smaller pieces so the distance the center is less,
so you know it's not raw in the center. And
if it's something really soft, you can leave it pretty big. Yeah,
(44:10):
broccoli in the oven. And it's so easy, right, You
just throw it on a sheet tray.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
So easy. Yeah, so easy, dude, Frankie, We so appreciate
you coming on the show Man. Where can our listeners
find out more about Struggle Meals and season eight coming up,
and I know Season Nate's going to be great, but
you can go back and watch all the old stuff
too that like Matt and I have been doing over
the past couple weeks, learning a lot in the process.
But where can folks find out more about you and
what you're up to.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Well, you can follow me at Frankie Cook's Frankie I E. Cooks,
not Frankie Hy. And you should definitely go to Taste
made dot com because they tell you all the places
where you can watch the show, and there are so
many that I would say there's a seventy percent chance
that if you're listening to this show, you already have
access to watch the show in some form, which is remarkable.
(44:55):
The distribution has gotten really pretty great, and we've done
like four hundred recipes now we just filmed the one
hundredth episodes, so the show is doing great.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Congrat It's yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Thank you. It's an endlessly there's so many possibilities for
affordable food and it really only needs to be crappy
if you want it to be that way, you can do.
You can do a lot with very little and it
goes for everything in life.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
As we've said, yeah, it just takes a little bit
of effort, and you are providing that inspiration. We'll be
sure to link to all the different places where folks
can find that content. Frankie, thank you so much for
talking with us today.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
You're very welcome. And if you get into cooking everybody,
it will bring yourself satisfaction, which is we'll bring you joy,
I promise.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
All Right, man, what's a fun conversation talking about food
here with Frankie. How many times during this conversation were
you just visualizing exactly what it was that he was describing.
Starts making your mouth water a little bit about spaghetti, spaghetti,
I'll taste it right now, frank Him describing your teeth
going through each consecutive noodle. I was like, it was
like a zoom in, zoomed in shot of like my
(45:59):
own mouth that I can see my teeth like like
chomping down on those noodles.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
I loved it.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
But do you have a specific big takeaway from this episode?
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Okay, so there's yeah, a lot of good stuff and
a lot of informative stuff. If you want to make
good food at home, for less. I think one of
the biggest things that stuck out to me, and I
think you spot on, is that it takes practice, right,
and it takes effort. And so I think we in
kind of modern society, we expect everything to be easy.
It's actually pretty easy to get what you need at
(46:28):
the grocery store.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
But if we live in a world of convenience, Yeah,
we live in a.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
World convenience, and so we've gotten used to everything coming
to us easily. And when it comes to like developing
a skill, and that is kind of what you're doing
as an at home chef. You have to develop a
skill one for when it comes to like, let's say
you're gonna buy a whole chicken and butcher it right,
that's a skill. But then when it comes to like
cooking it properly and making it taste the best that
it can in a variety of different ways, that's another skill.
(46:53):
And so you don't just acquire those things willly neely.
They don't come to you through osmosis or does it
happen overnight like he said. I think he said specifically
he mentioned five hundred days of being aware.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Of the meals around you and what prices are like, basically,
he's taking you completely through an entire year into the
next year. Again, you know where you're repeating ingredients, like
you're repeating a season, and you're starting to then at
that point finally understand, oh this should be in the season.
Oh this is how I can use this. It's a
it's a process.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
So basically, if you start listening to Frankie and making
some changes late twenty twenty four, you're gonna be good
at this. Okay, but I think that's that's cool to
know that you can be done. You're gonna learn a
lot along the way. Then you're gonna have a lot
of fun. You might ruin something like but don't let
that failure kind of set you back and push you
back towards kind of the takeout mentality. I like it.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Yeah, So my big takeaway is going to be I'm
going to try to figure out something like very specific
for folks, which is I liked what he was talking
about when it came to preparing for a meal. So
that kind of sounds daunting, right because you're thinking, well,
how you know, it's hard enough preparing for one meal.
How am I supposed to think through like five different meals. Yeah,
but what he was saying is that even just chopping
up the whole onion as opposed to half of the onion,
(48:03):
is considered meal prep. And I think where creativity can
start to blossom is when we think about breaking down
a protein and then pre preparing or prepackaging, say a
chicken breast or a chicken thigh, or just a cut
of meat. Because if you say you only need a
quarter of a cut of meat or only half of it,
if you put the rest of it in the freezer
and you've got that set aside, and you know that. Okay, Shoot,
(48:24):
I got to cook dinner tonight. What can I make
at home? You know, maybe you can boil some positive
You got some veggies. Oh, look in the freezer. I
happen to have this protein. And starting to take these
different pieces and finding ways creative ways to put them together, well,
in my mind, that's the beginning of creativity is finding
ways to place these pieces and have them interact in
a way that is appetizing and delicious and hopefully nutritious.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
So it might have to be like organized too, right,
I'm sure I have to get some organizational skills in
order to make sure that you're storing things properly. We
didn't really talk about that with him, but that has
to be part of the equation, right, But it also
doesn't easily find what you need when you need it.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Sure, I don't think it needs to be so overwhelming
to where someone is who might be listening things that
they have to come up with an entirely new system.
But just simply putting something in a ziploc bag and
writing on it with a sharpie labeling it yep. That
way you know exactly what is in there, how many
ounces of protein or of meat that is, or maybe
it's a bag of herbs or something like that. But
as long as it's labeled, I think that just having
(49:21):
that knowledge is a way to create sort of an
index of what it is that you have in your
kitchen that you know that you can tap for for meals.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
So, yeah, a lot of good stuff in here. And yeah, Frankie,
I love his approach in Strong Meals. It's such an
interesting show that that deviates from so many of the
other cooking shows you might be used to watching.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
A lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
He's a lot of fun. He's changed the game taking
shows which I in a good way. So all right, man,
let's get back to the beer that we had on
this episode. One of my favorite things to pick up
at the grocery store is a six packup delicious craft beer.
Is it because it's delicious or is it because it's
pre prepared and all you got to do is pop
that time? But that might be part of it. It's
a little bit of both. They make it so easy
for you. Yeah, well, it's even nicer when the listener
sends went our way. This one came from listener Katee,
(50:00):
So thank you, Katie. She said a few of her
favorite Wyoming beers, and this one's called Fluffy Cow Hazy IPA.
What were your thoughts on this one? Yeah, it was
quite tasty.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
I'll mention when we when I first poured this thing,
I was surprised to see how dark it was. I
feel like most of the hazies that that were drinking,
they tend to be lighter like, aren't they like they
in my mind, they often look.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
More like orange juice or even lemonade.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Yeah, yeah, sometimes they're pretty light, and so this was
kind of a it was like a darker amber hazy,
but it was quite tasty. Man definitely had that hot
punch going on, but at the same time it wasn't
too vegetable right. Sometimes those like it it literally feels
like you're eating vegetables well when you're drinking an ipaid.
But this one was more balanced. It was you know,
hot forward, but certainly still had some of that malt backbone.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
I think this one, if I read the label correctly,
it had hints of vanilla or something infused into it,
which I thought interesting made the mouth feel a little
bit softer. So it is this like combo of like
tropical notes, but like almost made a little more smoother
in your mouth because of the presence of vanilla. So combo.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
Is it Trader what's the the hop that has more
electropical vanilla?
Speaker 2 (51:06):
Like?
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Is it Trader Vix? I think it's Vic Secret or
something or Vix Secret? Maybe I wait, what's Trader Vix?
And my thinking of Trader.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
Vix is a lovely coxtail bar.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
I believe that is what I'm thinking of.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
It is not that it is what you.
Speaker 1 (51:16):
Said is a Vic Secret Vic Secret? Maybe I don't know,
or are you thinking about Victoria's Secret?
Speaker 2 (51:21):
Maybe I am.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
Now it's like it's some combination of all the words
that we just said. I don't know, uh, but Katie,
we are incredibly thankful for you. We appreciate you donating
this Groooner Brothers brewing beer to the show.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
No doubt. But that's gonna do it for this episode.
For links to everything that Frankie is working on, including
his socials, you can find those up on our website
at howtomoney dot com. That's right.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Yeah, we'll make sure to link to some of the
specific episodes that he mentioned, but that's gonna be it
for this one, buddy. Until next time, Best Friends Altum,
best Friends out
Speaker 3 (52:01):
The only people
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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