Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, everybody. I'm Kelsey Nixon and this is Kitchen Prescription,
the podcast you listen to when you don't know what
to make for dinner. Today is episode one hundred and
twenty four Salid School. So we are knocking on the
door of May, and chances are you might be feeling
a little bit anxious, as we all know that if
you're in the thick of raising kids, May is known
for being one of the craziest months of the year,
(00:27):
with spring sports and performances and end of school celebrations
and just general life craziness. I myself am in the
midst of our own extracurricular activities on weeknights, school projects,
field trips, and that general busyness, which there's a good
chance whether you are in a chapter of raising kids
(00:48):
or not, you are also just feeling this. So I
am sending solidarity. I always know it's going to happen,
and then it's here, and I'm like, we're holding on
for dear life. But despite the pace of life right now,
one thing I'm still trying to get in every day
is a daily salad. When I eat better, I feel better,
And getting a hearty salad in each day is a
(01:10):
practice I really love. And you know, there's so much
talk about supplements right now, and I myself, you know, partake,
but at the end of the day, I try and
remind myself the best thing for me to do to
get all of the vitamin D and the potassium and
(01:31):
the like, whatever it may be, is to just put
the real foods in my body. And the easiest way
for me to do that is to just make a
really hearty salad every day. So since that's been top
of my mind slightly, we're gonna go and have a
bit of a mini session of salad school my best
tips for building a delicious salad with ingredients that you
(01:52):
have on hand. I've kind of got a formula and
some salad rules I'm excited to discuss today. But before
we really get into that, do what we always do
on the podcast and start with three ideas for recipes
that you could throw on your meal plan for the week.
So first up is we are coming off Easter and
there's a good chance you have some leftover ham, and
(02:13):
if that is the case, I highly recommend my honey
baked ham and Swiss sliders. It is a favorite recipe
around here. It's one of my favorites because it's a
recipe everyone in my family likes to eat and nobody complains.
They are so easy to pull together. They're great for
a crowd, like even if let's say you have visitors
(02:33):
coming for the holiday or they've been here for Easter
and they're still here. This is a great thing to
make for a crowd of people. I've recently made these
honey baked hamas with sliders for like a large church
event where we had to feed a bunch of women.
I've made them for game days. I've made them for kids'
birthday parties. They're just a really great option. So honey
(02:54):
baked haments with sliders. If you are dealing with leftovers,
or you anticipate that you'll be dealing with leftovers, check
those out. Number two. Number two and three. These are
both recipes that I the fall under my category of
car dinners. We as I mentioned the busyness picking up.
We've got such a busy week ahead that we're gonna
(03:16):
be eating on the go multiple nights, and so both
of these recipes, I think we're gonna be able to
have the first one at home, but it they both
can go on the go easily. So the first is
my ginger pork and rice bowls. Just a really easy
way to use a ground meat ground pork. You could
do chicken or turkey or beef really and then you
(03:36):
have the rice which really makes it hearty, have a
delicious sauce and a bunch of fresh veggies in there.
I use the rubber made Brilliance kind of separated containers
and this way whether or not, you know, one of
my kids would eat this, but the other two they're
just gonna have hot dogs at the ballpark. But I
don't feel like I have to have a hot dog
(03:57):
go at the ballpark. I can bring this. It's really
easy eat whether I'm in my car or I'm sitting
in the stands, whatever it may be. And then the
third one is my Greek shrimp and orizo salad. I
almost made this for Easter, decided against it, but shrimp
is another great protein. It comes together so quickly. It's
doesn't take a long time to cook it if you
(04:18):
can get your family on board. Finally, my kids started
liking shrimp and I was like, yes, because it is
so quick, it's easy to marinate. It's kind of like
a canvas as it takes some flavors. But this shrimp
and oorzo salad is great. It's wonderful warm, it's wonderful cold,
it's it's also a great one to consider if you
have like a baby shower or bridle shower coming up
(04:39):
and you're looking to make a recipe. That's awesome. So
those are the three on my list for the week.
Honey baked hammons with sliders to use up leftover from Easter,
the ginger pork in rice bowls, and the Greek shrimp
and orzo salad. You can find in print all of
these recipes in Recipe Club individually or in our weekly
meal plan and our weekly milk plan always includes five recipes.
(05:01):
Actually there's six because there's a bonus, but I typically
cook about four or five nights a week, and so
there's five recipes. These are just three of the highlighted recipes.
But when you check out recipe Club or you're in there,
you'll notice you have a shopping list with this. There's
one click shopping for all of these recipes. So if
you want to send it your groceries directly to the
(05:22):
local grocery store that you use most often, you can
do that I really kind of created a recipe club
to fix all of the things that drove me crazy
about getting recipes online and try and simplify the process
so you're not going to see any ads, no long
drawn out stories, just the recipes you need to help
you meal plan quickly and get dinner on the table
or in the containers to take in the car. If
(05:44):
you're a week is like my week, I also use
my recipe binder a lot. In fact, have my recipe binder.
We did a workshop series this week or this I
was this month, I think it was two weeks ago,
where I showed you how I organized my binder and
I kind of did it tutorial on the best practices
for organizing your binder. And one of the things I
(06:04):
talk about is switching out the tabs for whatever season
of life you're in. And so during the month of May,
or as we approach May, I will usually add all
my five ingredient recipes into my binder because I am
relying on quick stuff and I'm wondering if I have
enough recipes that warn't a car dinner tab. I don't know,
(06:24):
maybe not. Maybe we call it like make in take
dinners or something. Like that. But you know what I
mean when I say car dinners because I know I'm
not the only one who feels this. So anyways, if
you want to check out Recipe Club or get yourself
a binder, you can head to Kelsey Nixon dot com.
We also just launched Oh this was so exciting this week.
We just launched a kids binder and classes for the summer.
(06:49):
We have the cutest kids binder. It's like in the
swimming pool blue color. It's a premium binder, coated and
vegan leather so it's indestructible. Comes with eight recipes, two
for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. And then there are
live cooking classes. So we're gonna have a breakfast class, lunch, dinner,
and dessert class that's gonna be June sixteenth through the nineteenth.
(07:09):
So we'd love to have any of our kids attend
live or the classes will be recorded and they can
be viewed afterwards in our new Recipe Club Kids hub.
So I know a lot of you have kids who
love to cook, and we are excited to spend time
with those kids because ultimately, wouldn't the greatest victory be
that your kids actually make dinner for you. I'm not
(07:32):
sure that's gonna happen every night, but it could maybe
happen one night a week, twice a month. I like
the sound of it. Anyways. Okay, let's jump into the
back half of the podcast and discuss salad school learning.
How to make a great salad is a life skill
(07:53):
everyone should nail down. Think about the really good salads
you've had, maybe at a restaurant, a potluck, and what
was it about it that you loved so much. Now,
think about the salads that you've had that weren't so great.
Maybe they were over dressed, Maybe they had huge leaves.
This is my biggest pet peeve. Maybe they were too
simple or too complicated, or maybe it had a giant tomato,
(08:14):
like a whole cherry tomato on a bed of big
iceberg lettuce leaves. No, we can do better than that.
So I want to get into a few simple salad tips, techniques,
and tools to help you make really, really good salads,
whether you are making them to take somewhere to like
a pot luck, whether you're making them for an event,
(08:35):
maybe an Easter dinner or Mother's Day brunch, or if
you're just making yourself a salad on a Tuesday afternoon
for lunch. All of these things are gonna be helpful.
So first of all, something people don't think about is
seasoning your greens with salt and pepper before you add
the other components and dressing to your salad will make
a huge difference. So I'm gonna add one other thing
(08:56):
to hear. If you've been around here for a while,
you know that I love this little gadget called an
oil sprayer, and it's essentially just it is like a
little spray bottle that is specifically designed for olive oil.
It is dark, which will help prevent basically will make
the oil last longer. But the nozzle in the sprayer
is made to sprints olive oil evenly across lettuce, leaves
(09:21):
or greens or like if you're roasting vegetables, so that
everything gets a nice even coating without big globs of
oil here and there. So what I will typically do
is I will take my greens for my salad and
it will sprit sprit sprits not too much, and then
season with salt and pepper, and it's almost like the
oil helps adhere the salt and pepper to the leaves.
(09:44):
We're not talking out a bunch of hair, just just
a little bit of bas of flavor Number two, after
you've seasoned your greens. I really really prefer chopping my greens.
The only instance in which I don't if you're doing
like a classic wedge, but you're a classic wedge is
like a restaurant food. To me, I'm never making a
(10:05):
classic wedget home, So chop your greens. I have a
little gadget called salad scissors, and they're specifically made to
chop ingredients and salads, but obviously a good old fashioned
chess knife will do just fine. I've also been seeing
a trend on TikTok and Instagram of doing like food
processor salads, so you like put everything in a blender
(10:26):
and you are not a blender but a food processor,
and you chop it up really fine. I can get
behind that. And then there's also been that tool where
it's got like the fine grates and you put your
veggies and you chop it or you essentially like smack
it down and it chops everything to the same size.
Also great for a chop salad, but I like, especially
(10:47):
my greens. You want you want it to be easy
to like pierce with your fork and put in your mouth,
and if you've got big old lettuce leaves, that can
be frustrating and it just doesn't create a good experience.
So next is a salad tip I learned from Ininegarten
the Queen to prevent soggy greens. So when you're preparing
(11:07):
a salad in advance, I suggest making or adding the
vinagrette or dressing to the bottom of their serving bowl
with the greens and veggies on top. That way, when
you're ready to serve it, you'll simply toss the salad
and you won't have any sogginess from dressing it too early.
So this is really nice if you're planning to Sometimes
(11:28):
you take the salad and the dressing on the side,
but if you have a salad where you just want
to have it pre dressed, then I suggest doing this,
putting the salad dressing in the bottom, everything on top,
and then tossing it right before and then you don't
have to have an extra component or anything like that.
Really really great. Next, speaking of dressing, is I highly
(11:50):
suggest making your dressings. It's one of the simpler things
to do at home that makes a huge difference. I
don't have a ton of pre made salad dressings in
my fridge. I might have a few, Like I really
love the olive garden Italian vinegrette and I use that
like as a marinade on things sometimes, And I really
(12:12):
like some of the offerings from Primal Kitchen, But I
really just kind of like making my own, and traditionally
I think the correct way. Like for a vinegrette, the
ratio is typically one third part vinegar to two thirds
part oil, olive oil, avocado oil, whatever. Then you usually
add some sort of oh, what do we call an
(12:37):
aromatic a shallat, garlic, ginger, something like that, and then
mustard is often an ingredient. It's used as both an
emulsifier and to add some tang. And then fresh herbs, salt, pepper,
and sometimes a little sugar Instead of discranulated sugar. You
(12:57):
could do maple syrup, agave, honey obviously, but those are
kind of the basic components to a classic vinaigrette or
salad dressing. But if you're wanting to make more dressings
at home, I have a salad dressing cheat sheet and
recipae club that is so great for that. In fact,
we just launched our Salad collection this month and Recipae Club,
(13:18):
so you can purchase printed copies of our most popular
printed salad recipes and as a bonus, you get the
dressing cheat sheet and it's got salad dressings they make
most often at home with this formula and then the
also my six favorite store brought options as well, So
(13:38):
keep that in mind. But don't forget about your dressing.
Don't make it an afterthought. It truly can be the star.
Speaking of cheat sheets, I also have a salad cheat
sheet and recipe Club, and this is just a lives
in my recipe binder, and when I feel like I'm
kind of getting sick of making the same salad over
and over again, I will quickly glance at my salad
(13:59):
sheet sheet. It's the formula I technically use for everyday salads.
It's perfect for making hearty salads that also kind of
turn into a meal, so that also typically include grains
in protein, and anytime I want it to be a
full lunch or a full dinner, I'm definitely adding those
two components. So I always start with greens, arugula, baby lettuces, romaine, kale,
(14:26):
shredded kale, i use a lot grains. The most popular
grains I'm using are like farro or wild rice or
pearled cous. Goose is another one. I love to use.
Proteins obviously, like a shredded rotisserie chicken is the easiest.
But also don't forget about ground protein like ground chicken,
ground turkey, ground pork that you can saute in advance.
(14:50):
You can easily freeze it or keep it in your
fridge and you can warm it up quickly either in
a skillet or in the microwave, and that goes on top.
That's so great. Think of that for like you can
do like a burrito type bowl where you have some
sort of greens grains with rice the protein and so on.
There's so many things you could do. Brito bell is
just a hit with my kids right now. So that's
(15:11):
why it came to mind veggies. So obviously your veggies
can vary here. You can do anything from traditional cucumbers
and tomatoes and carrots to pickled veggies. We have a
really delicious recipe and recipe Club are regular salad with
pickled veggies and couscous. You make a Green Goddess dressing
(15:32):
to go with it and it is crazy delicious. But honestly,
for my everyday salads, what I'm usually doing is I'm
opening up the fridge and seeing what I've got to
work with, and I like to mix it up. I
like to mix it up, so like, for an Asian salad,
I might do carrots and at a mommy and broccoli,
and for like a more traditional salad, I might do
(15:53):
apples and avocado, and do like cheddar cheese, kale, and
a balsamic vinegar. There's just so many different things to do,
and what's great about the cheat sheet is it gives
you ideas for the combinations. I do like having some crunch.
That's another component. Oftentimes that's in the form of a nut,
so chopped pistachio's, chopped pecans, or even just peanuts. I
(16:18):
really like having that. But you could also do like
crushed pieda chips or crushed tortilla chips. But having some
variants and textures really nice. And then obviously you have
your dressing crunch. Also, I'm gonna say cheese, even though
you're not crunching cheese, I usually add some sort of
cheese and look, cheese has some protein in it, which
(16:38):
is great. So whether it's like a crumbled feto or
crumbled goat cheese, or I really love the unexpected cheddar
cheese from Trade or Joe's, I'm usually adding a little
bit of cheese. Now, don't worry if this all feels
too overwhelming to remember. Like I said, I had those
printable cheat sheets that lay it out beautifully for you
so you can easily follow along. You can print them
(17:00):
and store them behind a cabinet in your kitchen. You
can put them in a recipe binder, you can put
hang them up in your pantry. But they can be
really good references and reminders that getting more veggies in
via a salad is a great practice to have. Like
I said, for each of the categories, I have listed
out the different options within those categories and have a
(17:22):
photo showing them as well, so if you're more of
a visual person, you can look and know exactly all
of my suggestions for grains or for veggies, or for
proteins or for crunch, and hopefully that's helpful. I think
by breaking it down into the categories, I feel like
I can mix and match with ingredients I already have
on hand, and it's a great way to use up
(17:43):
ingredients that I need to use up that are in
my fridge and I don't get stuck in a rut
of making the same thing over and over again. Now,
on the backside of the cheat sheets I mentioned how
on the salad dressing one you'll see my favorite store
bought salad dressings and the recipe Club recipes that I
use those for. But on the back of the salad
(18:03):
cheat sheet, I share my favorite combinations of those six categories,
so they're simple enough that honestly, no real recipe is required.
But we also like to have the fully written recipes
and recipe club for you so you can reference those,
especially for the dressings, so you'll see that on the
front is the different categories with the different options. On
the back are the actual salads. I am not over
(18:25):
exaggerating when I say that learning how to make great
salads has really changed the lunch game for me over
the past year, and it's been really helpful as I
try to focus on getting a daily salad in it
really doesn't take that much effort. I've become more confident
with what ingredients I need to have on hand, and
I know that if that's something you wanted to do
as well, you would have huge success in doing so,
(18:48):
and you would enjoy your daily salads so much. So
you can find in print both the Salad sheat Sheet
and the dressing cheat sheet in Recipe Club. Like I said,
you could also get the salad sheat sheet actually as
a bonus when you buy our recipe Binder, and the
dressing cheet she comes as a bonus when you buy
our printed salad collection, so don't forget you that. You
(19:09):
can always use the code try Me to check out
Recipe Club for only a dollar for your first month.
So if you are interested in checking out what Recipe
Club is, how it is different from a food blog
or a cookbook, and how it really is a simple
dinner system you can rely on to make dinner time
feel more manageable, use that code try Me and we'd
love to have you in the club. All right. Finally,
(19:30):
let's finish with my weekly gimme five. These are five
things that make my life easier or more enjoyable. I
mentioned my salad scissors at the top, but I have
been using those for well over a year and they
really are the best for making chop salads. I love
them so much, and especially as we have transitioned from
winter to spring, I do find myself making even more
(19:51):
salads and pulling out these often as a tool to
help me do that successfully. My favorite bowl for potlucks.
I just went to a potl like this weekend and
I got Easter here in a day or two, and
there is this great salad bowl. It has like a
lid that technically turns into a cutting board, but it
also has these salad tongs tossers kind of nested in there.
(20:15):
I've mentioned this before. It's such a good bowl, though,
so I wanted to bring it up again because I've
been using it more recently as I've been taking a
salad somewhere, and every time I take it somewhere, people
are like, where'd you get that? So that's on my
gimme five list. I also have the Oxo, who's a
fantastic company that makes kitchen products. They have this salad
(20:37):
dressing maker called the Twist and Poor and it's so cool.
You can make the dressing in the bottom container and
then it has this little contraption so that you can
twist it right before you pour it onto your greens.
And I will use Mason jars a lot of the
time and just shake it up. But I'm finding that
I'm using me most of my Mason jars for other
(20:59):
things like pickled veggies and onions and anyways. I like
having this as well for just a standard like shallot vinigrette.
It's really great to have on hand. Okay, Number four
is I feel like Gap is having a moment when
it comes to fashion. I feel like there's this resurgence
of love for Gap and I am here for it.
(21:19):
And they just just caught my eye this long denim
Gap skirt that's kind of like a really it's a
really lightweight denim, but it's got a like kind of
an elastic waste, but it's so cute. It comes in
petite sizes. I'm only five to one, so I like
it one O. There's a petite option, and at the
(21:40):
time of this recording, everything's forty percent off a GAP.
I feel like Gap is always doing a sale though,
but it's so great. I'm it's different than other denim
skirts I've seen. It just looks comfortable and I feel
like this this is my chapter for comfort when it
comes to what I'm putting on my body. So that's
on my list, and then finally is our Kids Finder.
We have so much time working on getting this product
(22:02):
ready to lunch, and I spent a lot of time
on the recipes, cooking with my own kids, kind of
getting feedback about whether or not Davi would like this
or that, and making sure the age is totally appropriate.
I've got so for me, my kids are the target age.
I've got a thirteen year old that, well he's technically twelve,
he'll be thirteen next month, but he feels thirteen to
(22:24):
me already, where it's like he could totally make these
recipes start to finish on his own. I've got an
eight and a half year old who could make some
of them start to finish on her own, but needs
just a bit of parental parental direction. And then I've
got a five year old who is so excited about
cooking but definitely kind of needs my guidance through but
the recipes she likes. And so it's been fun to
(22:46):
spend so much time kind of testing with my own
kids as we get ready for this fun event in June,
and the fact that everyone's getting a binder. We've printed
recipes and there's a fun sticker sheet in there. It's
going to be really fun. So that's on my list
as well because it you know, when your kids get
excited about cooking food certain recipes, it makes dinner easier.
(23:10):
It makes it easier because they've bought in already, they're
excited about it. All right, that's it for today. You guys,
make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you
never miss an episode. Always meant to be a quick
twenty to thirty minute listen while you map out your
own meals for the week. I always listen to a
podcast while I meal plan. It's just part of my
own simple dinner system, and I hope that this might
(23:31):
be a good fit for you as you do the
same and maybe adopt a similar habit. All right, thank
you so much for listening today. I'm so glad you're here.
Until next time, happy cooking. I'm Kelsey. I'm going to
chatting as well next week