639 – Cooking Without the Crazy: Kathi Lipp&#8217;s Pre-Cook Checklist

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Meet Our Guest

Tonya Kubo

Tonya Kubo is the illustrious and fearless leader of Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook group and the Clutter Free for Life membership program. A speaker and writer, Tonya makes her home in the heart of California with her husband, Brian, their two spirited daughters, and one very tolerant cat. Visit her at www.tonyakubo.com.

Transcript

Kathi (00:01.23)

Okay, this is 639, five things I always do before I start cooking, but I just remembered something I wanted to talk to Tonya about.

Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter-Free Academy where our goal is to help you take small doable steps every day to live with less clutter and more life. And I am back with co-host of Clutter -Free Academy, it’s Tonya Kubo. Hey, Tonya. Are you sick of talking about cooking?

Tonya Kubo (00:32.588)

Hey, Kathi.

Tonya Kubo (00:37.985)

No, I love talking about cooking. It’s like my favorite thing.

Kathi (00:39.552)

I love talking about cooking too. I know this is Clutterfree Academy and we keep talking about cooking, but I feel like they are very, they go side by side. It’s the stuff we have to do every day of our lives. you and I are both cooking with a limp right now because you don’t have an oven either, do you? Yeah, so my air fryer seven and one combo is getting doing

Tonya Kubo (00:52.78)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (01:00.364)

I do not.

Tonya Kubo (01:06.392)

Hahaha

Kathi (01:07.928)

quadruple duty at this point. Yes, what kind of air fryer do you have?

Tonya Kubo (01:10.387)

As is mine.

Tonya Kubo (01:14.481)

I think it’s called a Kalorik. It’s K -A -L -O -R -I -K. Got it from Kohl’s.

Kathi (01:16.556)

Okay?

Okay, okay, okay. We have the Ninja 7 and 1 and that is now my ride or die. I love that thing. And it flips up. It makes me so happy.

Tonya Kubo (01:24.482)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (01:28.289)

Yeah

yeah, yours takes up a lot less space than mine. Ours, we wanted French doors so that we could get things easily in and out. So this was one of a couple versions that had that at the time.

Kathi (01:35.512)

Nice, yes. No, so smart.

That is awesome. Well today we are talking about I well I’m talking about and Tonya’s I want to hear your ideas as well But I just realized and it’s taken me. I don’t know 57 years to figure this out if I spend about five minutes prepping before I start cooking I don’t feel so stabby While I’m cooking like I enjoy cooking until I have to cook

Tonya Kubo (01:48.748)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (02:01.229)

Mm -hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi (02:12.078)

And then when I have to cook, I’m like, I’m just annoyed by everybody. And so I’ve realized this will take, depending on the state of my kitchen, let’s be honest, five to 10 minutes before I cook and it makes all the difference in the world. So I just wanted to go through these five things pretty quickly. So the first thing is comfortable shoes. I have an ankle issue.

Tonya Kubo (02:16.491)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (02:23.384)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (02:41.517)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (02:41.588)

in that, the tendons in my feet are too short. And so if I’m on my feet for any amount of time, my ankle swells up. It’s delightful, let me just tell you. And so I used to, because we don’t tend to wear shoes in our house, I used to just wear like my slippers or something. And by the time I was done, I was crying. So now I wear it, and for like all day cooking.

Tonya Kubo (02:52.098)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (02:58.253)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (03:04.161)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (03:09.358)

I have a brand that I use Vionics that I’m a big fan of. They’re for people with flat feet. But I have heard recently about Hokas. The universe or the Holy Spirit, I’m not sure which, is telling me over and over again about Hokas. And you have a pair.

Tonya Kubo (03:12.322)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (03:21.141)

Yes.

Tonya Kubo (03:29.258)

I do, I have a pair of their sandals and they’re really nice. So I have very high arches, which means naturally that I just put a lot of pressure and weight on the front part of my foot. And especially on those bones that are like below the pinky toe and the toe next to it, know, the toe that stays home and the one that goes wee wee wee all the way home. Those two toes get a lot of pressure underneath them.

Kathi (03:42.488)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (03:47.511)

okay.

Kathi (03:51.02)

Yes, yes. Okay.

Tonya Kubo (03:56.44)

And so Hoka’s because they have that high art support, they help balance out that pressure. Cause like you, Kathi, I mean, I don’t have foot problems, but I have hard floors in my kitchen. And I just find that the bottom of my feet will hurt so much after even just an hour of trying to walk around barefoot cooking.

Kathi (04:15.118)

Yeah, yeah, I did get a standing mat too. That has been really, really helpful. Yeah. So my yeah, and I’ve had some major foot surgery. This was like 30 years ago, but I have to baby my feet. So I was at physical therapy the other day for another broken part of my body. And they all suggested hocus, which is really interesting. I’m going to have to research a little bit more because I have the flattest feet in the world. Like

Tonya Kubo (04:20.0)

Which are helpful, yeah.

Tonya Kubo (04:25.516)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (04:42.221)

Yeah.

Kathi (04:43.018)

Yeah, so I have to see if that if that’s what’s gonna work for me But putting good shoes on can make a big difference Especially if you’re going to be doing some batch cooking or something like that, and I don’t do put this down every day It’s just there all the day all day long, but that standing mat has really been super helpful to me. Okay number two Before I cook I empty the dishwasher and clean out the sink

Tonya Kubo (04:53.74)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (05:01.196)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (05:10.687)

Yes.

Kathi (05:11.84)

So tell me why this is important to you, Tonya.

Tonya Kubo (05:14.924)

Well, for me, it’s a couple of things. First of all, it helps to clean as you go, right? There’s nothing worse than spending an hour, two hours cooking, sit down to eat, and then afterward, you can’t even see your sink, right? Your sink is buried in dishes and then you have to go. And then it feels, I’m sure it’s not another hour of doing dishes, but it feels like an hour of doing dishes.

Kathi (05:21.324)

Yes, right.

Kathi (05:34.274)

Yeah.

Kathi (05:42.83)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (05:42.998)

Whereas when you start off, if the dishwasher is empty and the sink is empty, then you can be putting dishes in the sink as you go. And then when you’re waiting for something to come to a boil or you’re waiting for the oven to come to temperature, you can just start loading your dishwasher as you go.

Kathi (06:00.908)

Yes, it makes all the difference in the world to not feel like you have to move something before you do something else and clear off the counter before you do something else. And for me, like one of the things that I have found that is really important for me is to be able to put the colander in the sink so that when I’m rinsing things off, I’m not having to like move the stuff out. It just makes it so much easier.

Tonya Kubo (06:08.34)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (06:19.867)

yeah.

Tonya Kubo (06:23.17)

Mm

Kathi (06:28.138)

And any professional chef, any kitchen will tell you starting off with clean counters that you’re able to put things on, that you have room to work, et cetera, et cetera, is chef’s kiss. yes, so it is my biggest part of prep to do that. And if I know I’m gonna be cooking the next day, I’ll make sure that I run the dishes the night before.

Tonya Kubo (06:35.202)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (06:42.188)

Yes.

Tonya Kubo (06:56.257)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (06:56.82)

So that I can start off with that clean sink. Okay, we’re gonna take a yes, please Yeah

Tonya Kubo (07:00.536)

Can I, before we take a break, one more thing I think that goes along with the clean dishes, like clean dishwasher, clean sink, clean your counters. If you can start with like cleared counters, I’m not saying you have to scrub your grout. I’m just saying clear the counters off so you have space for staging.

Kathi (07:06.103)

Yes.

Kathi (07:10.572)

Yeah, it’s so true.

Yes. Yeah.

It’s become my life’s goal to keep as little on my counters as possible. the right now, if you look at my counters, the things that I have on it are our standing mixer because it weighs 700 pounds and it scares me. Yeah, I’m not moving it. It’s it’s my biggest fear in life, Tonya. It is my biggest fear in life.

Tonya Kubo (07:38.274)

Same, same. I’m so scared to drop it on my toe.

Mm

Kathi (07:48.108)

Then, like my knees are weak just as we’re talking about it. Like that feeling you get behind your kneecap, that’s my feeling right now. So I have my standing mixer, my paper towels, which I’m still trying to figure a way to get like mounted underneath. Yeah, that’s my next goal. My air fryer, God bless it, we salute it. This is gonna sound weird, but my ice cream maker.

Tonya Kubo (08:06.004)

up.

Kathi (08:16.48)

It fits into that weird corner that nothing really, you know, and so I can pull it forward and it makes a big difference. And then I’m trying to think of anything else I have on the sink except for the kitchen, you know, the soap. Like that’s my goal is to have it as clear as possible, to have as much room as possible. And I will be honest, a big part of that was getting a kitchen island. That helped a lot. Okay, we’re gonna take a quick.

Tonya Kubo (08:20.289)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (08:36.376)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (08:41.09)

Yeah.

Kathi (08:45.026)

break and then we’re gonna come back and we’re gonna talk about tip number three, about five things I always do before I start cooking. Okay friends, we’re back. So number one was to lace up our running shoes. Number two, empty the dishwasher, clean out the sink and Tonya added, just clear the counters as much as you possibly can, keep your counters clear. And then number three for me is to pull all the ingredients out of the fridge, freezer, and pantry.

Tonya Kubo (09:05.741)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (09:13.708)

Yes.

Kathi (09:15.586)

Because can we talk about how many times I’ve started a recipe and realized, I don’t have all the things I thought I had.

Tonya Kubo (09:22.488)

Probably twice as many as I have and I’m like have done that at least a hundred times.

Kathi (09:27.348)

It’s so annoying, right?

Tonya Kubo (09:30.038)

And I feel like this whole episode is you sharing one of your tips and me going, yes, that, do that.

Kathi (09:34.55)

Yeah, that’s okay. Yes, but it makes such a difference to say, okay, I have everything I need. And when I do my big week cooking for Sabbath soup, I actually have baskets that all the ingredients for this recipe go into this basket, all the ingredients, not the fresh stuff, I don’t put you know, because I do this the night before, but it makes such a difference. And then I realize, okay,

Tonya Kubo (09:40.961)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (09:44.962)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (09:48.76)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (09:54.733)

Right?

Tonya Kubo (10:00.279)

Yeah.

Kathi (10:03.766)

Either if I don’t have an ingredient, either I can shift. I can say, you know, okay, so in my chicken and wild rice soup and I don’t have chicken, so we’re gonna do pulled pork in that and it’s gonna be fine. Or, you know, something like, or we’re do turkey in it or something. We can always shift. Or if I don’t have heavy cream, I can do half and half. Like there’s a million ways you can change up a recipe. It’s okay as long as you know going in.

Tonya Kubo (10:08.962)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (10:21.005)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (10:26.808)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (10:32.404)

Right. I mean, it’s so important because I think about like this weekend, I did a bunch of cooking and there was one recipe and I’m like, okay, mentally, right? Ticking off like, okay, got that, got that, got that. yeah. You know what? I’ll make that for dinner tonight because I’ve got all the things. And then when I went to set everything out and compare it to the recipe, I did not realize it called for sour cream. And I was like, I didn’t know that. And if I had looked at it the day before,

Kathi (10:33.521)

Yes.

Kathi (10:47.288)

Yeah.

Kathi (10:54.672)

Tonya Kubo (11:00.716)

then I could have saved some Greek yogurt. But the day before I was making sourdough pancakes, which call for buttermilk. And so I just use a combination of milk and Greek yogurt. that’s, well, milk and Greek yogurt, right? That makes a good thick buttermilk. And so I was like, use the Greek yogurt. So then it was like, okay, so we need to make sure we get sour cream the next time we go to the store when I want to make this recipe. But otherwise, I would have gotten

Kathi (11:03.694)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (11:12.002)

Vinegar. Yeah. okay. okay, cool.

Kathi (11:21.421)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (11:30.764)

like four steps into the process, because sour cream comes in at the end, and then not been able to finish because I didn’t have sour

Kathi (11:35.116)

Yes.

Right. This is why, you know, this is one of the things I do beforehand. But having an inventory of what you have is actually kind of awesome when you’ve got that much going on. So, yeah, pulling everything out, saying I do have everything I need or I can flex or I can make a different recipe. It’s the idea of mise en place, you know, just to have everything prepped.

Tonya Kubo (11:47.223)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (11:58.85)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (12:06.538)

everything you know all of that ready to go and You can flex you can think of you know If you don’t have the buttermilk which I don’t know why anybody buys buttermilk because you can just make it so easily and What would I use it for these other things but you can say okay? I don’t have like you said. I don’t have the sour cream. Let’s flex. Let’s do something different We can make we’re smart people we can make different choices Okay number four

Tonya Kubo (12:19.914)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (12:29.004)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (12:36.568)

For years, I tried to follow a recipe on my phone. my phone is small, your phone is small, all of our phones are small. So I’m gonna say either, there are two things here. Either print out the recipe, which I find to be the most helpful for a couple of reasons. One, if I print it out and I make adjustments to it, I can write that directly on the recipe. Two, I can find the recipe again.

Tonya Kubo (12:39.64)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (13:00.076)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (13:05.858)

because what is more frustrating than having a recipe you love and never being able to find it again? You know, it’s because you’ve been looking for it either in the cookbook or whatever. And three, I have a binder of all my favorite recipes and I can go back and I can look for things and I can say, we really enjoyed this. But also it’s just so much easier to move around your kitchen. Now,

Tonya Kubo (13:06.145)

Right.

Tonya Kubo (13:12.663)

This is true.

Tonya Kubo (13:16.32)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (13:31.864)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (13:32.13)

This also works with an iPad or a tablet of some sort, but what do you do, Tonya, when it’s not necessarily a cookbook?

Tonya Kubo (13:43.262)

Yeah, for us. So I’ll use my phone. Brian will always print out the recipe because, you know, he gets distracted if he picks up his phone. You know, where I but you know, it’s funny that you bring that up because our printer is out of ink right now. And this weekend I was making one recipe, but it called for an ingredient and there was a second recipe for that.

Kathi (13:49.806)

Mm

Kathi (13:54.391)

Yeah, me too.

Tonya Kubo (14:07.488)

And it was so annoying. Like I had, I had each recipe on a different tab on my phone so I could flip back and forth. But there was a point where I was like, if I just had these printed out, that would be so much easier.

Kathi (14:07.584)

yes.

Kathi (14:19.2)

Yeah, and that’s really where I am. I get very easily distracted or sometimes I’ll want to play a video on my phone while I’m cooking or you know because you and I are both in the social media space I want to be recording what I’m cooking which is not what everybody wants to do but sometimes that is what I want to do and just having that laid out being able to make adjustments to it. I also I have a cookbook holder

Tonya Kubo (14:27.862)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (14:33.943)

Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (14:47.02)

that is the size of a piece of paper that has been very helpful to be able to hold all of that. Or just having a magnet and putting it on the side of my stove, out of reach so it doesn’t catch on fire, or on the side of my refrigerator. That’s a great way of doing it as well. then, number five, having a stand is great whether you have a tablet.

Tonya Kubo (14:47.106)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (14:52.482)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (14:59.667)

Okay, yeah.

Tonya Kubo (15:05.496)

Mm

Kathi (15:14.918)

Cookbook or printed out a recipe. I really think a cookbook stand is Critical and I’ll put a picture of my cookbook stand in in the show notes so that you can all see it I got it from Day Spring. I love it. Then number five

Kathi (15:44.14)

This goes along with just getting yourself ready. It’s almost like if you think about your favorite cooking shows, how they have everything laid out, being your own sous chef. So you’ve already, you you’ve cleaned out the sink. You’ve already put the ingredients together. You’ve got the recipe. And then the next thing is having all the tools laid out. what? OK, so this is what I call my fancy lady cooking. OK, let me tell you about my fancy lady cooking.

Tonya Kubo (16:11.51)

Mm -hmm. I want to hear about the fancy lady.

Kathi (16:15.148)

Because you know, I just bought a kitchen island. I’m so grateful. It’s not big, but it has a lot of storage. It has a surprising amount of storage. And we are making another shelf to go in there so that we can store even more. But in there, I have a set of glass bowls that are different sizes. I have my salt and pepper. I have my nesting.

Tonya Kubo (16:22.134)

Mm -hmm. Okay.

Tonya Kubo (16:30.488)

Mmm.

Tonya Kubo (16:36.152)

Okay.

Kathi (16:42.862)

measuring cups and measuring spoons. I have a cutting board and on top of this kitchen island, I have my knife block. Like everything I need is right there ready to go and I love it. Yes. So I just go on what the side I’m not cooking on. open up.

Tonya Kubo (16:55.864)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (17:01.58)

Nice.

Tonya Kubo (17:08.705)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (17:09.942)

the doors, I just put everything on top of the island, I’m ready to go. So how can you make storing your tools easier for yourself? There are, you know, some of it, some of it really, and you know, you’re listening to Clutter-Free Academy, so you’re not gonna be surprised by this particular idea. But to get rid of everything in your kitchen that you’re not really using, so you can get to the things that you’re using,

Tonya Kubo (17:16.044)

So good.

Tonya Kubo (17:20.181)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (17:36.376)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (17:38.9)

on a daily or at least weekly basis. What accommodations have you made in your kitchen? I’ll ask you this in a second. I’ll tell you mine first that have made storing and getting to your tools easier. For me, it was all the Rubbermaid, I’ve replaced all my random Tupperware storage with the Rubbermaid Crystal Series.

Tonya Kubo (17:40.418)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (18:01.794)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (18:06.722)

which are all square sizes and they fit so beautifully into our pullout drawers. It’s just made such a difference that I don’t feel anger every time I go to our storage containers. Yeah, how about you, Tonya?

Tonya Kubo (18:08.758)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (18:19.884)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (18:23.946)

Yeah.

So that’s been a big one for us. In fact, we were just talking about how, cause you know, we invested in a set probably a couple of years ago, but you know, when you have small children, not everything comes home. Or if they fidget, they like to fidget the little flaps off, which really affects, it’s a huge problem in my house is everybody fidgets the little side flaps off. So then we, you know, switched to using some like, like gladware style.

Kathi (18:36.77)

Mm -hmm, right.

Kathi (18:42.222)

interesting. Yeah, that has not been a problem with Roger. Okay.

Tonya Kubo (18:55.468)

containers, this weekend, you know, it’s like, okay, we need to go back to using that because the Gladware containers just don’t hold up well in the wash, right? They get misshapen. But for us, it’s been all of those containers, like everything that we might use to package up food, whether it’s for a school lunch or to package up leftovers is in one cabinet. So I’m only going to that cabinet if I need to focus on food storage.

Kathi (19:02.774)

Right. Yeah.

Kathi (19:16.695)

Yes.

Tonya Kubo (19:22.602)

And then we have another cabinet. So we do have our like bakeware and mixing bowls and cabinets next to each other. But then we have a cabinet that’s for what I call like big food prep. So that is where the cheese grater lives. We have two sizes of food processor. So we have like the mini chopper and then we have the larger one. We only use the larger one like a couple of times a year, usually around the holidays. But that mini chopper is so nice. You know, chop up a few cloves of garlic.

Kathi (19:33.442)

Yeah.

Kathi (19:37.048)

Yeah. mm -hmm. Yeah.

Kathi (19:46.087)

Right.

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (19:51.966)

onion, a few carrots, that works out really, really well. And so that is in one specific cabinet. And it just makes life so much easier if you’re not having to dip into five different cabinets and then reach to the back.

Kathi (19:58.168)

Mm.

Kathi (20:03.094)

Yes, yeah. I think so much of willingness to be cooking at home is removing those steps. Those extra steps that just like, my gosh, are you kidding me? That’s why getting, you know, our pantry is in our garage. It’s in an entirely two rooms away from the kitchen. And so to be able to gather everything at once, having that little basket that I take out there and say,

Tonya Kubo (20:11.874)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (20:21.848)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (20:26.07)

Right.

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (20:32.672)

And the other thing I do, which I’ve mentioned on other shows is

Tonya Kubo (20:36.04)

I was going to say, we gotta talk about the baskets, Kathi.

Kathi (20:38.958)

Yeah, the baskets are great. So I have this basket. It’s just a plastic basket that I think I got at Target. I may have gotten a couple of the styles at Walmart, but I definitely got some of them at Target. It’s rectangle. Yeah, I would say it’s about like about a 9 by 13, that kind of size. And it has handles. And what I do is when I print out the recipe and I’ll even print out recipes,

Tonya Kubo (20:50.205)

And it’s square or rectangle, right? Okay.

Tonya Kubo (20:58.306)

Mm

Kathi (21:07.394)

that are from a cookbook I own so that I can put that on a clipboard to put in that basket. And so that recipe, I’m not trying to remember all the things I need and go to the garage and come back and we’re like, dang, I forgot the pinto beans. And I go back to the garage. No, no, no, I’m getting everything. I’m checking it off as I go. I have got everything I need in that basket with the clipboard, with the recipe.

Tonya Kubo (21:07.48)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (21:15.957)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (21:26.881)

Right.

Kathi (21:36.558)

So that i’m going and i’m gathering all of that because I think it’s the going back and forth You know an additional 50 steps to get those pinto beans is what makes it like I don’t ever want to cook. It just takes so much energy. No, no, no, no We’re gonna prep everything ahead of time put it in that basket gather everything that we need and Take that basket wherever our prep is going, you know, if you’re if you’re taking things to that food processor

Tonya Kubo (22:01.826)

Mmm.

Kathi (22:06.592)

or maybe it’s to the standing mixer. Like I’m just taking everything with me and I’m not going back and forth a thousand times. It makes all the difference in the world.

Tonya Kubo (22:15.84)

Yeah, well, and you know another benefit to that method is, at least in my mind, is for those of us who live in households, especially with small children, sometimes we buy things and they don’t actually make it to making the recipe. So like, for instance, there was a recipe I made, it was like dinner on Monday night, and it used crushed-up Ritz crackers.

Kathi (22:32.476)

Mmm, yes, yes.

Tonya Kubo (22:40.936)

I had been trying to make that recipe, Kathi, for two weeks, but people kept eating all my crackers. And so finally I’m like, Hey everybody, see this box of crackers? This, these are mom’s crackers. They are for a recipe. And everybody looked at me like I had a third eye. But as you talked about that, it’s like, well you could actually just put, you know, whether you need a sleeve of crackers, two sleeves of crackers, put that in the basket. And then everybody knows whatever’s in the basket is off-limits.

Kathi (22:41.297)

Ha

Kathi (22:52.59)

Yes.

Yes. Right.

Kathi (23:09.324)

Yes, and I just remembered we talked about a chicken and rice recipe. I think it was on the last podcast. Okay, but it was the poppy seed chicken recipe and I will I’ll drop that recipe in here because it’s terrible for you is the least healthy recipe, but it’s the one my son always asked for when he’s coming home. And you know what? If you’re going to have something that’s not healthy, have something that’s delicious, right? So yeah.

Tonya Kubo (23:18.904)

Uhhhh

Tonya Kubo (23:34.782)

yes, yes, we all want the chicken poppy seed recipe, don’t we? don’t we folks? listeners?

Kathi (23:38.326)

Yeah, I will make sure. Yes, it’s so good and it uses Ritz crackers. That’s what that was the trail that helped me remember that. Yes. Yes, I could help you with that. It having those and that’s another one other kitchen tool I love is having some blue painter’s tape on hand because you can say with the blue painter’s tape if it’s.

Tonya Kubo (23:47.281)

I have some Ritz crackers right now. I feel like I need this recipe.

Tonya Kubo (24:00.696)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (24:05.292)

You know something that you can’t write on with marker. Don’t eat this stop it people or You know, I use the blue painter’s tape to remind myself like to What was I gonna say if I’m running out of something or you know measurements those kind of things or I can use it to seal up Packages like their blue painter’s tape is a great tool to have in your kitchen Okay, so the five things I always do before I start cooking Tonya what’s

Tonya Kubo (24:06.488)

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Kathi (24:35.114)

What’s the most important thing that if you’re saying, okay, if you can’t do five, just do this?

Tonya Kubo (24:41.76)

Empty the dishwasher, clean out the sink before you get started.

Kathi (24:43.746)

I think you’re right. I think I have to agree with you there because it’s about lowering the barriers. It’s about lowering the barriers. yeah, having that clean surface I think is so, so important. Tonya, this has been great. Thanks for hanging out with me.

Tonya Kubo (24:50.198)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (24:58.85)

Thanks for having me.

Kathi (25:00.448)

And friends, thank you for hanging out with me. You’ve been listening to Clutterfree Academy. I’m Kathi Lipp. Now, go create the clutter-free life you’ve always wanted to live.

#659 Simple Soups for a Meaningful Lent Season

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#658 The All or Nothing Trap: Why Good Enough is Good Enough

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by her clutter buddy, Tonya Kubo, to tackle the all-too-common mindset of "if you can't do it right, don't do it at all". Together, they explore how this thinking impacts our homes and hearts, and...

#657 Rediscover Peace: The Psychological Benefits of Decluttering

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by Tonya Kubo to delve into the hidden costs of clutter and how it impacts our lives beyond the physical. They explore the emotional, spiritual, and financial toll that clutter can take and discuss...

Modern Asian Baking Cookbook

#638 Cooking, Community, and Conversation: How to Start a Cookbook Club

by Clutter Free Academy Team | Oct 8, 2024 | Clutter Free, Clutter Free For Life, Clutter Free Home, Clutter Free Podcast, Home, Mental Load, Podcast | 0 comments

Listen Now

638 – Cooking, Community, and Conversation:

How to Start a Cookbook Club

Do you know how sometimes cooking can feel like a chore?

Well, imagine turning it into a party where everyone brings a dish, shares their cooking adventures, and leaves with new recipes and closer friendships.

In this episode of Clutter-Free Academy, Kathi Lipp and Tonya Kubo dive into the delightful world of cookbook clubs. Kathi introduces the concept, explaining how these gatherings can transform cooking from a solitary chore into a social, enriching experience.

Listeners will discover:

What is a cookbook club and how to start one
How to choose and assign recipes from a selected cookbook
Tips for hosting, including using paper plates for easy clean-up
How to incorporate discussion questions to enhance the social aspect

Kathi and Tonya also touch on the importance of making cooking enjoyable and how cookbook clubs can reignite passion for home-cooked meals.

Want to start your own cookbook club? Our kit makes it easy. Get yours here.

And as promised, here is Kathi’s favorite scheduling app! http://www.signupgenius.com/

Preorder Sabbath Soup here and receive your free download bonus Sabbath Soup Shortcuts PLUS a personal shout-out on a future CFA episode. Email Tonya Kubo at tonya@kathilipp.org to register for your shout-out. The preorder bonus ends October 8, 2024.

Click here to be notified when the next podcast episode is released!

Also, stay up to date and sign up here to receive our newsletter.

Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest

Kathi Lipp gives readers an easy-to-follow process for meal planning and prep, so that they can enjoy a full day each week of real rest and refreshment.

Could you use a break from cooking (and everything else) once a week? Not only is rest vital for your mind and body, it’s good for your soul too. God designed us to enter into Sabbath rest one day per week, but as you know, meals still need to be made. Your family still needs to be fed.

Sabbath Soup includes convenient, seasonal meal plans that take the guesswork out of shopping and cooking. More than just a collection of delicious recipes—including main dishes, breads, breakfasts, desserts, salads, sides, and yes, soups—this is your guide to establishing a weekly rhythm and routine of meal planning and prep that allows you to have a true day off.

Do something good for your soul and experience the peace that comes with a full day dedicated to spending time with God, family, and friends. Savor your Sabbath as you proudly proclaim, “Soup’s on!”

Preorder your copy of Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest here. Preorder offer ends October 8, 2024.

Links Mentioned:

Preorder Sabbath Soup here and receive your bonus down Sabbath Soup Shortcuts. Preorder bonus ends October 8, 2024

After you preorder Sabbath Soup, email Tonya Kubo at tonya@kathylipp.org to register for your Shout-Out on a future CFA episode!

Kathi’s favorite scheduling app – http://www.signupgenius.com/

Other cookbooks Mentioned:

Against All Grain Cookbook

Betty Crocker Cookbook, 13th Edition

America’s Test Kitchen Cookbook

More With Less Cookbook

Clutter Free Resources:

Join our members only Clutter Free for Life Facebook Group

Tonya’s newest podcast:

What role do you think cookbook clubs can play in building community and fostering relationships?

Share in the comments!

Let’s stay connected

To share your thoughts:

Leave a note in the comment section below.
Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.

Subscribe on iTunes or subscribe to our newsletter now.

Meet Our Guest

Tonya Kubo

Tonya Kubo is the illustrious and fearless leader of Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook group and the Clutter Free for Life membership program. A speaker and writer, Tonya makes her home in the heart of California with her husband, Brian, their two spirited daughters, and one very tolerant cat. Visit her at www.tonyakubo.com.

Transcript

Kathi (00:01.058)

Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter-Free Academy, where our goal is to help you take small, doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And I am here with the host of all things clutter-free, Tonya Kubo. Hey Tonya.

Tonya Kubo (00:28.002)

Hey, Kathi.

Kathi (00:29.842)

so, we are doing this. This is such a fun episode, and it’s inspired by my friend Sarah Troutman. We love Sarah, who by the way is such a fabulous cook. She’s kind of amazing. Yeah, she was my original soup friend that when I would get sick, she would show up at my house with like a cardboard box.

Tonya Kubo (00:37.513)

We love Sarah.

Tonya Kubo (00:44.12)

She really, really is.

Tonya Kubo (00:51.459)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (00:56.246)

They had soup and bread and salad and, yeah, a lifesaver in those times. Because everybody gets sick every once in a while, and you’re like, and these were, this was kind of pre Door Dash day, or at least it was pre me thinking, yeah, Door Dash is an option because that seems very, that seems like what my friends in San Francisco and New York do, little bougie. So instead of Door Dash, I had Sarah.

Tonya Kubo (01:10.168)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (01:18.094)

Too bougie for you, Kathi Lev. Too bougie.

Kathi (01:25.462)

But I was talking, she and I were messaging back and forth and she’s like, I can’t wait for your book, Sabbath Soup, because we are doing a cookbook club and I’m going to feature this as one of my selections. I’m like, a cookbook club, tell me more.

Tonya Kubo (01:43.822)

Leave it to Sarah to come up with an idea like this. I love it. Okay, tell me about it.

Kathi (01:48.626)

So we have now adopted this as something we are doing for Sabbath Soup, and Sarah’s group is going to be the first test case. And so I thought it would be really interesting to talk about, we have developed a whole, like, here’s what you can do to host a cookbook club. And in fact, we are going to have some downloads.

Tonya Kubo (02:11.192)

Mmm.

Kathi (02:14.848)

So that if you want to host a cookbook club, not just for Sabbath Soup, but for any of your favorite cookbooks, here are some tools that you can use. So, first of all, Tonya, tell me some of your favorite cookbooks, because I always find this fascinating. I think your favorite cookbooks tell me a lot about you.

Tonya Kubo (02:21.006)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (02:33.79)

Okay, well, so the Against All Grain cookbooks, probably that’s my favorite series of all time. And, you know, it would be faster for me to just tell you about my favorite like food websites. But, but there’s, there is a cookbook that I really enjoy called Simple Asian Baking. And it’s more like Asian-inspired recipes that you can make at home. But

Kathi (02:37.707)

yeah. Mm -hmm. Yes.

Kathi (02:48.851)

Yeah, that’s okay.

Kathi (02:58.114)

interesting.

Kathi (03:02.483)

Tonya Kubo (03:03.038)

lot of fun stuff there. And that’s from, it’s Subtle Asian Baking. See, I don’t even know the name. But yeah, that was an awesome cookbook. It came out of a Facebook group. So, I like that one a lot. And then, know, Betty Crocker, Betty Crocker on Better Homes and Gardening cookbooks never let me do.

Kathi (03:09.036)

That’s okay.

Kathi (03:17.502)

God bless her.

Right because they’ve been tested a thousand times. So, a couple of my favorites are and of course now the America’s Test Kitchen. I love their cookbooks. They have a cookbook that came out probably about five or six years ago that you could injure yourself if you dropped it on your foot. But like my absolute favorite

Tonya Kubo (03:23.87)

Yes.

Tonya Kubo (03:31.832)

Ooh!

Tonya Kubo (03:39.054)

Mm

Kathi (03:49.846)

Blueberry muffin recipe is kind of based on that I’ve done a little twisting to it with some lemon and stuff like that, But I love that also one for me. That’s really old But I love it’s the more with less cookbook and this was made there was a woman, and she has since passed her name was Doris and She was a Mennonite, and she gathered up

Tonya Kubo (03:53.986)

Mm

Kathi (04:16.334)

all the favorite recipes from fellow Mennonites around the world. And I love it. It is such a basic cookbook, but I will tell you this cookbook saved my bacon when I was living in Japan, and I didn’t have access to all the foods that you might have in the United States because it’s such a basic cookbook recipe. And it was really tailored that no matter where you are, what ingredients you have available, you can

Tonya Kubo (04:21.238)

Mmm.

Tonya Kubo (04:40.632)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (04:46.07)

You can eat beautiful food. And then when I was a young mom and, or, and a single mom and I was B -R -O -K -E, so, you know, four syllables broke, this was a great way to say, hey, whatever I have on hand, I can turn into something. So, if you were going to have one of those cookbooks, what you would do, here’s the concept for a cookbook.

Tonya Kubo (04:48.494)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (04:55.532)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (05:03.628)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (05:09.25)

Mm -hmm.

I was going to ask you, like at first, I need to understand the cookbook club.

Kathi (05:14.594)

Yeah. Right. Yes. So, I don’t have this is how I think about it. All of my favorite people are cooks. I have a couple of people that I allow into my life who are not cooks, but they really appreciate eating. So, they’re allowed to hang out with us. But I love people who are creative, who like to experiment with food.

Tonya Kubo (05:26.072)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (05:34.787)

Mm

Okay.

Kathi (05:44.396)

who like to try new things and really learn new skills. And that’s what I feel like a cookbook club can do. You can hang out with cool people who are interested in the same things that you are. And here’s the thing, you and I both know this, that cooking and getting dinner on the table, two separate skills. There are times that we really enjoy cooking. Your daughter, Lily, loves to cook. You love to cook; Brian loves to cook.

Tonya Kubo (05:50.541)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (06:10.968)

Mm

Kathi (06:13.768)

I love to cook; Roger loves to barbecue. Again, two very different skills. But you know, sometimes it’s just like, okay, I have to get dinner on the table. Last night, the watermelon almost took me out, Tonya, because I bought this watermelon. No, it was the emotional weight of the watermelon. decide, they are, and so I said, instead of a vegetable, we’re just gonna have

Tonya Kubo (06:16.355)

Yeah?

Tonya Kubo (06:28.648)

How’s that? Did it fall on your foot?

Tonya Kubo (06:34.235)

watermelons are a commitment.

Kathi (06:42.496)

We had some chicken, and we had some potato salad. I’m like, what could be better than a watermelon? And Roger was chopping it all up and it tasted like water. And I was so, and it was a little, wasn’t mealy. just did, I don’t know. It was so sad. And I’m like, I’m done. I don’t need to eat. Like I can’t. So I did gather my gumption and I created a zucchini, not zucchini, cucumber, red tomato, I mean red.

Tonya Kubo (06:48.76)

What could be better?

Tonya Kubo (06:53.639)

Kathi (07:12.318)

onion tomato salad with feta and we soldiered on but like there are just times when you get to six o ‘clock and you’re like no I can’t I do not have the emotional energy but if you’re excited about cooking something then that I don’t know there’s a different energy wouldn’t you say

Tonya Kubo (07:33.08)

There is, there is. And I think that when you’re excited about cooking something, it doesn’t feel like a chore, right? Like I am energized by the process of making the dish and then sitting down to eat it feels like a reward. Whereas when I am not excited about it, then…

Kathi (07:45.612)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Kathi (07:51.798)

Yes.

Kathi (07:57.154)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (07:58.964)

Even eating it feels like a chore. Like sometimes, Kathi, quite honestly, I don’t have the energy to chew. Right?

Kathi (08:04.598)

Yeah, yes, right? I totally get it, I get it. There are times, you know, like I love food, let’s not get it twisted, but there are sometimes I’m like, I resent Roger for wanting to eat dinner. And by the way, he would be the first person to say, I’ll make a peanut butter and honey sandwich, which by the way, sounds disgusting to me. But he’s fine with that, but I’m like, no, you know, I should make a meal. yes, so.

Tonya Kubo (08:13.187)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (08:32.282)

Kathi (08:33.618)

I feel like one of the advantages of a cookbook club is to get excited about the art of cooking and not just the chore of cooking. And I will also say this, I feel like any time somebody else can teach us a little hint, a little idea, a little shortcut, it’s a beautiful thing. So you’re going to laugh at me, but I did not know with my citrus juicer.

Tonya Kubo (08:38.156)

Mm -hmm. Got it, got it.

Tonya Kubo (08:52.109)

Mm

Kathi (09:01.75)

that you were supposed to put the cut lime, lemon, orange, whatever it is, dome shape. I thought you were supposed to fit it into the cup. So, you know, when you squeeze it, it turns it inside out and you get as much juice from it as possible. But I shared that yesterday on the live and people are like, I never knew that I never knew that. And I was like,

Tonya Kubo (09:07.64)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (09:11.672)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (09:16.183)

Tonya Kubo (09:21.23)

Mm

Kathi (09:29.896)

I didn’t either. So, like anytime you can learn something like that, I feel cooking can be such a solitary activity. When we gather together, we can start to figure some of those things out and be a little bit smarter than when we started.

Tonya Kubo (09:45.816)

Got it. Okay, so that helps me understand sort of why I might want to get together with a bunch of people and talk about cooking and cookbooks. How does the cookbook club specifically work?

Kathi (09:52.308)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kathi (10:00.086)

Yeah, so if you don’t mind, what we’re going to do is we’re going to take a quick break. We’re going to come back and then I’m going to dive into kind of what you need for a cookbook club. And it’s very easy to start and I hope you’ll be inspired by the end of this podcast. Okay, we’ll be right back. Okay friends, we are back with the who, what, where, when, why, how. We already did the why, and the how of the cookbook club. So.

Tonya Kubo (10:04.334)

Okay.

Tonya Kubo (10:10.274)

Got it.

Tonya Kubo (10:24.032)

Yeah

Kathi (10:26.53)

If we were going to use Sabbath Soup, which by the way, we’re going to have all these things down in a printable for you.

Tonya Kubo (10:32.866)

By the way, it’ll be easiest to use Sabbath Soup. Just going to throw that out there, because we’ll do it all for you, almost.

Kathi (10:36.93)

Yes, we will do it all for you, but this will be a great blueprint for future clubs that you want to do. yes, so first of all, just pick a date and time. So, I’m actually doing this. We are doing a cookbook club here at the Red House in October. And we are going to, you know, I’m inviting some people, getting the date on the calendar early. And

Tonya Kubo (10:42.946)

Yes.

Got it.

Tonya Kubo (10:55.182)

Mm

Kathi (11:03.26)

Just decide, you know, do you want to do this monthly? Do you want to do it quarterly? I really feel like post-pandemic quarterly might be your best option unless you have a bunch of people that live really close together and your kind of already do life together. It’s just that it’s hard to get people to gather together, but food is a great incentive. And so, I like to use an app like there are lots of scheduling apps out there, being able to like

Tonya Kubo (11:20.59)

Mm.

Kathi (11:32.012)

pick a date and time, I’ll put a couple of my favorites in the notes so we can find something like that. But to find a date and time, I’m going to do it on a Saturday from three o ‘clock to six o ‘clock, or three to five, three to six, depending on how long people want to hang out. And just say, so that people can still go home if they have Saturday night plans, they can still do that. So here’s kind of the kit we’ve come up with. So, first of all,

Tonya Kubo (11:43.16)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (11:57.838)

Mm

Kathi (11:59.754)

with the Sabbath Soup Kit, you’ll get eight recipes. So these are some of my favorite recipes in the book that kind of all go together. So like our mac and cheese, which is amazing, tomato gin soup. So I’ve got a couple of main dishes, a couple of side dishes, a couple of desserts, a couple of appetizer things that can be used as appetizers.

Tonya Kubo (12:19.211)

and

Tonya Kubo (12:24.494)

Mm

Kathi (12:27.994)

Everybody who comes brings a dish unless you decide otherwise. So you’ll have some recipe cards. Then you’ll also have some blank recipe cards. And I’ll tell you what we’re going to do with those in a bit. The menu board. So this is just a sheet of paper about like, what’s the menu? And so you’re going to write what the dishes are and then put the name next to the person who cooked it. So if people have questions and things like that, they can ask, you know,

Did you use a special kind of pasta? Like whatever it is. Then we’re having, we’ve got some extra, because we’re going to be a little extra here. So we’ve got some verse cards that we wanted to be able to make the table a little zhuzhier. And then tabletop cards with some questions that you can ask each other to get to know each other better. And then finally, some little fold-over food signs. So you can say, this is,

Tonya Kubo (13:01.186)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (13:18.776)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (13:26.838)

This is the macaroni casserole, the tomato gin soup, that it is, it contains meat in it. So people will know. So, you know, in Sabbath Soup, we have a ton of recipes that are vegetarian, but that may not be what you guys want to do. So you can put on there exactly what it is. So the fold-over food signs are just a cute way of being able to put things on your table and go from there.

Tonya Kubo (13:37.176)

Mm

Kathi (13:56.98)

Anything you think I missed there? Anything? Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (13:58.824)

Yeah, I just have one thing that I think I understand, but I’m not sure. So when you’re doing a cookbook club, I was thinking everybody brings a specific cookbook, but this is like you feature a cookbook and then everybody makes one item out of the cookbook. Is that how we do it?

Kathi (14:03.319)

Go for it.

Kathi (14:12.268)

such.

Such a great question. Sorry, I started in the middle. This is the curse of knowledge, Tonya. So yes, so the person who’s hosting, when I say hosting, doesn’t necessarily have to be at their house. Like Tonya could pick the cookbook, but Tonya says, hey, our house is under construction, so we’re going to meet at Kathi’s house. So if Tonya’s the host, she’s the one who’s picking the cookbook and assigning the recipes. that’s, yeah, that’s the next thing we’re going to talk about.

Tonya Kubo (14:19.568)

hahahaha

Tonya Kubo (14:34.584)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (14:40.728)

Got it, okay.

Kathi (14:44.308)

So if you assign the recipes, and you can do this a million different ways, you can draw them out of a hat. You can say, hey, you did the main dish last time, could you do dessert this time? Or something like that. Or maybe somebody’s just having a rough month and they say, all I can bring is the chopped carrot. Well, that’s fine, that’s okay. So you’re preparing the meals at home. Now I will say,

Tonya Kubo (14:57.486)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (15:05.87)

Mm

Kathi (15:11.998)

I was part of a cooking club one time where we all got together in somebody’s big kitchen and cooked together. I don’t know that I’d recommend that. If you do have somebody who maybe doesn’t have kitchen space, they could come over early and prepare. But I think it’s better to just, the host doesn’t have a thousand dishes, especially prep dishes and things like that. But.

Tonya Kubo (15:17.486)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (15:27.735)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (15:34.338)

Mm

Kathi (15:38.472)

That way everybody’s cooking at home. They’re bringing it with them and they’re bringing their dish home to clean out. And so it makes it a little bit easier. And then my vision for it is we just put everything out on the table. have, so you set up the space, just having one table where everything’s put. We have a rolling kitchen island. So I would probably put everything on that.

Tonya Kubo (15:46.626)

Got it, okay.

Tonya Kubo (16:05.73)

Mm

Kathi (16:07.69)

You might have a sideboard or a part of the table. Or if you want to do it family style, you could just put everything in the middle of the table and let people serve. I am going to suggest that it’s okay to use paper plates. Like this may just be the time where you want to keep it low-key. And this is not for everybody to take a huge portion of macaroni and cheese.

Tonya Kubo (16:23.853)

Okay.

Kathi (16:35.938)

This is for everybody to try a bunch of different dishes. And so maybe it’s a half portion, maybe it’s a quarter portion, enough that people can come. So I would recommend probably no less than five people and no more than 10. That feels like a good number. And that way you can, you get to try a bunch of different things from this one cookbook.

Tonya Kubo (16:40.526)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (16:52.824)

Mm -hmm. Okay.

Kathi (17:04.64)

I think it’s a great way to test, is this a cookbook I wanna put in my permanent collection? Here’s my theory and I don’t know, your results may vary. Tonya, if I can get eight banger recipes out of a cookbook, I’m down. I’ve got the Against the Grain cookbook, I bought it specifically for the chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Tonya Kubo (17:06.998)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (17:11.384)

Got it.

Tonya Kubo (17:21.838)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (17:30.476)

It’s a really good chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Kathi (17:32.212)

So real and you guys if you don’t know Against The Grain, it’s for gluten-free cooking, right? Am I saying that correctly? It’s all grain-free. Okay

Tonya Kubo (17:38.875)

No, it’s for it’s all grain free. So it’s not just it is gluten-free by default, but it is free of all grain. So no rice, no nothing.

Kathi (17:45.61)

Yeah, okay.

Okay, so yeah, Michelle Cushatt was the one who introduced it to me. So like it uses like coconut flour and things like that, right? Okay, I am not very familiar with that whole world, but I have to do some gluten-free cooking for our retreats and things. So that’s why I got that. But.

Tonya Kubo (17:56.172)

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (18:06.551)

Mm -hmm.

Yeah, the pumpkin donut recipe, highly recommend.

Kathi (18:12.77)

see, this is good to know. See, I love that. Okay, I’m going to need to look that one up. And then I think that you can, when you’re sitting down, you’re eating all this delicious food, whatever cookbook it is, you can say, hey, this recipe was really easy. Or you know what, this challenged me to do some different things. And to also share, hey, as I was looking through the book, here are some other recipes I hope to try. And

Tonya Kubo (18:31.275)

Mm

Kathi (18:41.482)

I just think it’s a delightful way of sharing some time, also improving our skills, improving our cooking repertoire. I also love that we get to talk about one of our favorite things, food. And my suggestion would be as you’re sitting there, everybody grab their calendars, somebody suggests a cookbook that they love, and you plan your next time together.

Tonya Kubo (18:49.027)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (19:05.614)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (19:12.174)

Got it, okay, so let me make sure I understand this. So how we do this is first of all, we decide that we want to have a cookbook club. Five people, 10 people sound good, but I would argue it’s whatever sounds like a party to you and not overwhelming, right? And then you’re going to, one individual is appointed to pick the cookbook. Now that person may host the event at their house.

Kathi (19:19.094)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (19:26.506)

Yep, that’s

Tonya Kubo (19:37.49)

or it may be at a centralized location. Like I can imagine for some people, they might like having this at a social hall, just depending on what they have access to. And then everybody cooks a recipe out of that book. It sounds like your recommendation is just to make sure that sort of we have a great experience out of the cookbook that the host assigns the recipes. Everybody brings, you know, they cook at home, they bring it potluck style. Then you sit down and everybody gets to try a little bit of something.

Kathi (19:43.382)

Sure. Yeah.

Kathi (19:57.91)

Mm

Kathi (20:01.953)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (20:07.042)

four recipes, probably four to eight, it sounds to me, like what you would have. Get a little sample, then that lets you know whether you want this cookbook. But then you are also talking about, you know, just having conversations and sort of other things that make it more of an experience. Is there anything you want to add to that idea versus just a utilitarian, let’s try some recipes.

Kathi (20:10.934)

Yeah.

Kathi (20:25.814)

Yeah.

Kathi (20:29.762)

think that there is a great opportunity with some table talk discussions. If you have some questions, like one question that I asked at a party recently that was such a great question was from the jobs you’ve worked, what is something you always do or never do because of your specified knowledge? So, Tonya, I’m going to ask you that question.

I think that’s a great question. Like you’ve had a lot of really interesting jobs that people don’t know. You’ve done everything from being a newspaper reporter to inseminating cows. And so you have done, you’ve had a variety of experiences. Is there something from your schooling, your work, something that you do or don’t do because of your special knowledge? Look at your smile. That’s so funny. Okay. She’s got an idea.

Tonya Kubo (21:04.555)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (21:26.818)

Well, there’s a few of them, but I think the easiest one is naming our children. Brian was a schoolteacher. I was a former reporter. I wrote up youth sports results. So we made the decision very early on that we were not going to do any creative spellings. And we were going to choose names that were easy to say and easy to spell.

Kathi (21:31.905)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (21:35.718)

yeah. Yeah.

Kathi (21:43.969)

Yeah.

Kathi (21:49.354)

smart, smart, smart. Yeah. I love watching the videos when you go into like a vet’s office and it’s like, what is one thing you would never name your dog? And it’s always Bella. Like, you know, like every dog is named Bella, even the guys. So yeah, it’s such a great question. Like at this party we were hosting, we asked that and our son’s friend said, I would never buy seafood on the weekend because it’s, it’s

Tonya Kubo (22:00.898)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (22:16.322)

Mm

Kathi (22:19.314)

it’s been delivered probably by Thursday and by Sunday, you don’t wanna touch it. And I thought that is so fascinating. Someone else said that they would never buy a car like a Tesla because, and this is no Tesla slander, this was their experience with their job, because Tesla builds all the different components of the car. And he said, as a car buyer, he would rather have

Tonya Kubo (22:22.638)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (22:37.303)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (22:49.152)

Goodyear who specializes in the tires and all the specially but he works for a lawyer who’s specialized and he does statistics for this lawyer on car crashes and things like that and I thought you know and Roger Rogers contribution was you know, we joke about y2k people don’t know how close we were and I thought that was a fascinating answer. So

Tonya Kubo (22:52.355)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (23:03.714)

Got it.

Tonya Kubo (23:12.91)

Yeah.

Kathi (23:17.506)

We’re going to include some discussion questions, but you can also just Google, know, table talk questions and have some of those up there. Also, you know, if you can, getting those recipe cards and if everybody fills out a recipe card, and then people can grab the blank cards and fill out the recipes for the ones they like, or you can photocopy them or something like that. The other thing I will say about a cookbook club,

Tonya Kubo (23:25.88)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (23:47.746)

Do not be afraid to reach out to the author and see if they will zoom in for 10 to 15 minutes. I think especially, you might not get, I can’t remember the author of Against the Grain, you might not get her. But somebody like me or somebody who, I’ve got a couple of friends who have written cookbooks. We would love to zoom in for your,

Tonya Kubo (23:51.896)

Mmm.

Tonya Kubo (23:56.909)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (24:04.418)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (24:13.582)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (24:14.818)

your little gathering and talk about our experience with the cookbook and recommend some recipes that maybe somebody would enjoy and you know, so the best way to do that I think is really through social media to message them through social media unless there you have a contact or something like that But that’s what I’m going to be doing for Sarah’s club is they’ve already asked me if I will zoom in for 15 minutes to talk about why I cook, you know did

Tonya Kubo (24:29.902)

Mm

Kathi (24:43.584)

the recipes I did, what was my heart behind the book and to suggest some other recipes they might enjoy. And I think that that’s just a little bit extra. And don’t we love being just a little bit extra?

Tonya Kubo (24:45.24)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (24:57.442)

Just a little bit.

Kathi (24:59.074)

Yeah, so guys, we’re going to include the instructions on how to have a cookbook club and all the resources we mentioned here in the notes. And if you would be if you’re going to be doing the Sabbath Soup Cookbook Club, let me know. I would love to if at all possible zoom in for 15 minutes. We’ll have a great discussion. And knowing me will stay longer than 15 minutes. But if you want to keep it to 15 minutes, we can.

but I’m going to be doing this here at the Red House with a group of friends and I’m really looking forward to it because here’s what I love. I just have to clean my house and cook one dish and let the party begin, right? And I’m very excited about that. I’m very excited to see the twists that people are going to put on these recipes. It’s going to be a lot of fun. So Tonya, thanks for hanging out with me today.

Tonya Kubo (25:37.719)

Yeah!

Tonya Kubo (25:45.621)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (25:51.086)

Thanks for having me.

Kathi (25:52.32)

And friends, thank you for hanging out. You’ve been listening to Clutter Free Academy. I’m Kathi Lipp. Now, go create the clutter-free life you’ve always wanted to live.

#659 Simple Soups for a Meaningful Lent Season

Are you looking for a simple way to bring more meaning to your Lenten season while also creating space for family connection? In this episode of Clutter-Free Academy, Kathi Lipp and Tonya Kubo share their love for soup and how it can become a meaningful Lenten...

#658 The All or Nothing Trap: Why Good Enough is Good Enough

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by her clutter buddy, Tonya Kubo, to tackle the all-too-common mindset of "if you can't do it right, don't do it at all". Together, they explore how this thinking impacts our homes and hearts, and...

#657 Rediscover Peace: The Psychological Benefits of Decluttering

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by Tonya Kubo to delve into the hidden costs of clutter and how it impacts our lives beyond the physical. They explore the emotional, spiritual, and financial toll that clutter can take and discuss...

Sam’s Club Smoked Shredded Chicken

#637 Cooking Ahead: How to Feed Your Future Self

by Clutter Free Academy Team | Oct 1, 2024 | Clutter Free, Clutter Free For Life, Clutter Free Home, Clutter Free Podcast, Home, Mental Load, Podcast | 0 comments

Listen Now

637 – Cooking Ahead:

How to Feed Your Future Self

Hey there, friend! Are you feeling overwhelmed by the thought of cooking dinner tonight?

We’ve been there.

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, we’re diving into the world of easy, delicious meals that won’t drain your energy or your wallet. In this second installment of their two-part series, Kathi Lipp and Tonya Kubo continue their discussion about Kathi’s new book, Sabbath Soup, offering practical tips and strategies for stress-free meal planning and cooking. They discuss the importance of valuing both time and energy when it comes to meal preparation, and offer encouragement to listeners who may feel overwhelmed by the daily task of feeding their families.

Listeners will discover:

The importance of cooking ahead and freezing leftovers for low-energy days
Strategies for involving family members in meal planning and preparation
The value of establishing clear expectations and dividing kitchen responsibilities
Insights into the recipes featured in Sabbath Soup and their ease of use for both novice and experienced cooks

Listeners will leave this episode with practical strategies for making meal planning and preparation less stressful and enjoyable, even during busy or low-energy periods.

And as promised:

Kathi’s Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

Hint: This dough can be frozen as pre-scooped balls or ready-to-slice logs.
Prep Time: 20 Minutes
Bake Time: 10 minutes
Yield: 112 cookies (recipe may be halved)

Ingredients:
5 cups oatmeal
2 cups butter, room temperature
2 cups granulated sugar
2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
4 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
24 oz. chocolate chips
1 8 oz. Hershey bar, grated
3 cups chopped nuts (your choice)

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 375°F.
2. Measure the oatmeal and place it in a blender to blend into a fine powder.
3. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and both sugars. Add the eggs and vanilla and stir to combine with the butter mixture, then stir in the flour, blended oatmeal, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir in the chocolate and nuts.
4. Scoop the dough into balls and place about 12 to a cookie sheet, evenly spaced, baking in batches. Bake for 10 minutes.
5. To freeze for later baking: Flash freeze scooped dough balls on a cookie sheet. Individually frozen dough balls are easier to handle and will keep their shape better when transferred to a freezer bag for longer-term storage. Alternately, form the dough into a log about 2 inches around and wrap in plastic wrap. Put the dough in the bag and write baking directions on the bag. I like to experiment with the cookies and find out what the baking time and temp is for frozen dough as well as thawed dough. Bake for 10 minutes, and then keep checking every 2 minutes to get them just perfect.

Did you miss Part 1 of this conversation? Listen to 636 Batch Cooking Basics: Reclaim Your Time and Energy in the Kitchen here.

Preorder Sabbath Soup here and receive your free download bonus Sabbath Soup Shortcuts PLUS a personal shout-out on a future CFA episode. Email Tonya Kubo at tonya@kathilipp.org to register for your shout-out. The preorder bonus ends October 8, 2024.

Click here to be notified when part two in this series is released!

Also, stay up to date and sign up here to receive our newsletter.

Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest

Kathi Lipp gives readers an easy-to-follow process for meal planning and prep, so that they can enjoy a full day each week of real rest and refreshment.

Could you use a break from cooking (and everything else) once a week? Not only is rest vital for your mind and body, it’s good for your soul too. God designed us to enter into Sabbath rest one day per week, but as you know, meals still need to be made. Your family still needs to be fed.

Sabbath Soup includes convenient, seasonal meal plans that take the guesswork out of shopping and cooking. More than just a collection of delicious recipes—including main dishes, breads, breakfasts, desserts, salads, sides, and yes, soups—this is your guide to establishing a weekly rhythm and routine of meal planning and prep that allows you to have a true day off.

Do something good for your soul and experience the peace that comes with a full day dedicated to spending time with God, family, and friends. Savor your Sabbath as you proudly proclaim, “Soup’s on!”

Preorder your copy of Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest here. Preorder offer ends October 8, 2024.

Links Mentioned:

Preorder Sabbath Soup here and receive your bonus down Sabbath Soup Shortcuts. Preorder bonus ends October 8, 2024

After you preorder Sabbath Soup, email Tonya Kubo at tonya@kathylipp.org to register for your Shout-Out on a future CFA episode!

Clutter Free Resources:

Tonya’s newest podcast:

Can you share your top tips for meal planning when your energy is low?

Share in the comments!

Let’s stay connected

To share your thoughts:

Leave a note in the comment section below.
Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.

Subscribe on iTunes or subscribe to our newsletter now.

Meet Our Guest

Tonya Kubo

Tonya Kubo is the illustrious and fearless leader of Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook group and the Clutter Free for Life membership program. A speaker and writer, Tonya makes her home in the heart of California with her husband, Brian, their two spirited daughters, and one very tolerant cat. Visit her at www.tonyakubo.com.

Transcript

Kathi (00:01.472)

Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter -Free Academy, where our goal is to help you take small, doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. I’m Kathi Lipp, and this is part two of our special episode on managing meals when you’re low on energy. If you haven’t listened to part one yet, I encourage you to go back and check it out for some great tips on meal planning and energy -saving kitchen strategies. In the second part, we’re gonna build on those ideas with specific meal suggestions, ways to get your family involved in the cooking process, and some of my favorite recipes from my new book, Sabbath Soup. So let’s jump right in where we left off.

Kathi

this past weekend we had our kids over I was so low energy I had burnt myself I was not feeling well it was just a bad week but past me had made my cookie dough recipe which I am happy to include in this episode in our show notes but it makes it makes enough for like 120 cookies it’s like it’s a

Tonya Kubo (19:43.277)

Kathi (19:44.034)

It’s big, you can cut it in half, but I never do because I freeze it into portions that will do like a dozen cookies. I, and both of the kids were like, my gosh, this is so good. And I’m like, yeah, homemade cookies, but I didn’t make them today, which is beautiful. And then so much of this is about freezing leftovers. Freezing leftovers for a day when you’re not, on the good energy days,

Tonya Kubo (19:47.091)

Mm

Right.

Kathi (20:12.812)

Take care of your future self on the low-energy days.

Tonya Kubo (20:16.44)

my gosh, and that is so in alignment with what we talk about in our free group, Clutter Free Academy, all the time, right? Because we get people who have chronic illness. And I think that’s one of the issues is in our community, I know we have a lot of people who struggle with low energy for a variety of reasons. you know, a lot of good points in what you just said, but the big one is, that because you never know when the low energy period may hit, it is

Kathi (20:21.504)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Kathi (20:32.706)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Kathi (20:44.396)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (20:45.998)

to seize and make the most of the moments when you have abundant energy.

Kathi (20:51.222)

Yeah, and Tonya, let’s talk about this because some people do not have low energy. They just have chaotic lives. And that leads to low energy. We have people in our paid and free group who have chronically ill children. But the family still needs to be fed, right? And so they’re going to cook ahead and freeze so they can just pull out that meal when it needs to be pulled out.

Tonya Kubo (20:55.764)

Right

Tonya Kubo (21:05.15)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (21:20.444)

what depends you have a crazy work schedule. You know, I know a lot of people, me included, you know, you were getting ready for back to school. Because not only do you have girls that are going to school, you have a teacher who hasn’t quite made it to school yet because he’s been so sick, but he’ll get there. But you know that that time is coming. It may not be that you are low energy.

Tonya Kubo (21:31.347)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (21:37.224)

He’ll get there.

Kathi (21:45.45)

you know, a couple of days a week, it may be that your life is chaotic for a couple of months a year. And so to think about that and plan ahead for that is a beautiful thing.

Tonya Kubo (21:57.396)

Great, well thank you for all of those fabulous ideas and also the consideration. That’s what I love so much about Sabbath Soup is that you have taken time to consider that not everybody lives a life of leisure and the book is set up to really help each of us no matter what’s going on in our lives. Just take advantage of the time, the energy, and the money that can be saved from meal planning.

Kathi (22:13.366)

Hmm

Kathi (22:27.362)

Can I also say, you were talking earlier about here’s how to feed your family of 20 on $200, right? Here’s the thing I wanna say, I value your time. And if you love to make homemade tortillas, go off, friend. But I also believe if you can find tortillas for $3 .99 and you are not totally financially strapped,

Tonya Kubo (22:28.626)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (22:33.736)

Hahaha!

Tonya Kubo (22:46.344)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (22:57.216)

that that is that’s I believe that by the tortillas because your energy is also conserving your energy for things you love and maybe you love to make homemade tortillas. I’ve had homemade homemade tortillas. I do. I love to eat homemade tortillas, but if I’m baking them in something or I’m doing it’s not going to happen. So I value your time. I value your energy.

Tonya Kubo (23:02.856)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (23:20.029)

Mm

Kathi (23:26.26)

and I want you to have your resources.

Tonya Kubo (23:28.87)

All right, so since you brought up the tortillas, that’s a great segue into my next question, which is, what are some go -to meal ideas that you would suggest for people when energy is love?

Kathi (23:33.388)

Mm

Kathi (23:42.314)

Okay, you’re going to be shocked, but soup. I know that’s shocking.

Tonya Kubo (23:44.916)

No, well, it’s also my go-to. I’m not going to lie. That and fried rice. That’s what we make around here.

Kathi (23:51.302)

Right, yeah. Yeah, but you know that it doesn’t take a lot of energy to prepare a soup, especially if you have that leftover bag of shredded chicken in your freezer. And by the way, can we also talk about Sam’s Club has a smoked shredded chicken that is just divine. Yeah, you don’t have a Sam’s near you. The next time you come to visit,

Tonya Kubo (24:04.5)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (24:14.64)

Okay.

Dumb.

Kathi (24:19.222)

We’re gonna have to dry, we’re gonna have to go to a Sam’s and you’re gonna have to experience the magic. Yay, we love a good field trip. But also, you know, I love soup because, I’ve got some leftover celery, I’ve got some leftover tomatoes, I’ve got some leftovers, that can all be thrown in there. And it, you know, those extras that you have can be thrown in. It takes very little effort to do that. So I love that. Rotisserie chicken. Whether you rotisserie it, you’re,

Tonya Kubo (24:23.391)

Field trip!

Tonya Kubo (24:37.022)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (24:49.038)

Okay, let’s be honest, you’re gonna roast it. Or you buy it at the store. Both of those are perfectly wonderful options. I just encourage you within a day or two of getting at home, you know, your first meal is eating just the straight rotisserie chicken, yum. Your second meal is putting that into like a salad or a soup. And then your third meal is

Tonya Kubo (24:49.598)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (25:06.643)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (25:16.852)

you’re going to do like a chicken salad with Greek yogurt and lemon juice and almonds and you some seasonings like that rotisserie chicken is going to do triple duty and then if you still have leftovers you can put those into the freezer like a rotisserie chicken you can buy pre-shredded chicken that’s that’s totally fine I would just make sure that as soon as you open it up you freeze it

Tonya Kubo (25:33.62)

Mmm.

Kathi (25:44.586)

whatever you’re not using so it doesn’t die a terrible death. I love chili. I love chili on, because if I make a double batch of chili, I’m gonna have chili for dinner. I’m gonna do a taco salad another day. I’m going to do chili on baked potatoes. And by the way, baked potatoes is on this list too. Because you can put anything on a baked potato, right?

Tonya Kubo (25:45.982)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (26:08.13)

yeah.

Tonya Kubo (26:11.643)

you

Kathi (26:12.45)

I love a good baked potato. it’s my favorite, right? And then buying greens. So if you are low energy and you’re like, can’t think about washing and chopping, that’s fine. Buy a box of pre-washed salad. then, we had salmon the other night. So of course I had salmon on my salad the next day. You can have that shredded chicken.

Tonya Kubo (26:14.566)

I love chili on baked potatoes. That’s like my favorite.

Tonya Kubo (26:38.836)

Mm

Kathi (26:41.974)

think of all the combinations you can have. I want you, I think another thing that is really a great staple to have on hand is canned tomatoes. Because you can turn canned tomatoes into just about anything. You can turn it into a sauce, you can turn it into a chili, you can turn it into a marinara, you can turn it into just about anything. It’s great, like last night I had, we had

Tonya Kubo (26:55.624)

Hmm.

Kathi (27:11.21)

we I did just a box jambalaya. It was just the rice and I cut up I put in some sausage in there that we had leftover some shredded chicken and then I put in a can of just tomatoes, chopped tomatoes and it was one of Roger’s favorite meals. Like it’s so easy. It took no energy to prepare. It worked out you know the other thing I would say

Tonya Kubo (27:32.862)

Yay.

Kathi (27:40.306)

is I love to have, I do a big batch of chopped onions and sliced mushrooms and I throw those in everything. I throw them on salads, I throw them into soups, I throw them onto baked potatoes, I put them on pizzas, like those will go onto anything, I love.

Tonya Kubo (27:46.569)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (28:00.168)

my gosh, those are all such great ideas and such delicious, delicious ideas as well. So Kathi, so these are great ideas for when we have low energy. But one thing you haven’t mentioned is sharing the…

Kathi (28:04.82)

Yes, we love delicious.

Kathi (28:19.711)

Mm

Yes.

Tonya Kubo (28:23.732)

So talk, I mean, not everybody has the benefit of living with other humans, right? Some people live alone, but for those who don’t live alone, like talk to me about how we can enroll the other humans in our home who aren’t currently laid up sick on the couch to lighten our load when we have low energy days.

Kathi (28:27.712)

Right. Right. Right.

Kathi (28:38.656)

Yeah

Yeah, well, so let’s talk about different stages of life. You have two girls who Lily loves to cook, right? Where’s Abby on that scale?

Tonya Kubo (28:48.468)

Mm -hmm.

Yes.

Abby doesn’t quite understand why she needs to do chores. Aren’t there other humans around here? Yeah.

Kathi (28:58.762)

Okay. Yes. Okay. I understand. So she’s more of a cat. Like, yes, yes. So I think it’s important for, you know, at of the age that she can be that everybody participates. And sometimes that participation is dishes. Sometimes that participation is cooking. But

Tonya Kubo (29:05.242)

Abby is a cat definitely.

Tonya Kubo (29:14.974)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (29:26.89)

We all eat so we all cook. We all eat so we all do dishes. you know, Abby also, you know, has other things going on in her life. We let you parent as you parent. it’s here’s the thing. And Abby has the most wonderful heart in the entire world. But I would definitely lean into the Lily side of things and say, you know, Lily get well, Lily is excited about cooking because that could change.

Tonya Kubo (29:29.107)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (29:49.0)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (29:56.094)

Right.

Kathi (29:56.352)

We don’t know, it could change. But how can you support it without it becoming a huge thing for you? You know what I mean? So what are some simple meals that she can prepare without a lot of supervision? What are some cheats that she could have? Like one of the things that Roger and I do, now that we’re not cooking for a bunch of people, we used to make big batches of rice and eat off of it, you know, for days.

Tonya Kubo (30:21.757)

Mm

Kathi (30:24.768)

We don’t do that so much anymore because we’re not doing that kind of cooking all the time. He has to watch his, I don’t know, there’s something with white rice. He has to watch. And so we do more like brown rice, but every once in we want white rice. So we just have like a little container. But if it’s Roger’s turn to cook, if he’s doing something, because I have a late meeting, he knows he can grab one of those white rices. He can grab some salmon.

Tonya Kubo (30:30.163)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (30:54.402)

and do it very easily. I think it’s just establishing the expectation. You know, it took Roger and I 15 years to figure out, I don’t mind cooking and cleaning in the kitchen. He doesn’t mind doing dishes. He hates cooking and cleaning in the kitchen and doesn’t mind doing dishes. But we were both trying to out-nice each other by doing the most detestable chores. And now

Tonya Kubo (30:54.569)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (31:10.376)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (31:18.13)

Mmm.

Kathi (31:23.53)

You know, I cook dinner. I could cook all day, all week long if somebody else will do the dishes, right? And I still have to do some dishes, that’s fine. But Roger doesn’t mind. say, talking it through and saying, I don’t want to be resentful. I want to, I want to, you know, feed our family with joy, but I need partners in this. So what, how can that look together? And I think that’s a great of start.

Tonya Kubo (31:30.004)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (31:40.317)

Hmm.

Tonya Kubo (31:47.572)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (31:53.566)

start of a great conversation. And if people just say, you know, my husband refuses to cook, it’s not a cooking issue. It’s a marital issue. Like, Roger doesn’t refuse to cook. He doesn’t enjoy it. But he will because he knows that sometimes I need the support. If somebody will not support you when you need the support, that’s a marital issue. And that’s beyond what Sabbath soup can do. But if we can approach it as, you know, I want input.

Tonya Kubo (32:02.984)

Hmm.

Kathi (32:22.89)

into what you wanna eat this week. And I think that’s a big part of it. Letting our family have some decision -making in the meals gets them excited about the cooking. How have you incorporated Brian and Lily into your cooking?

Tonya Kubo (32:31.763)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (32:40.84)

Yeah, so, well, we’ve, how I’ve managed to incorporate all three. So Brian is great at cooking in a pinch at any point in time. Like, you know, if he knows if I have a late meeting, he can usually whip something up so long as there is either pasta or rice and thawed-out animal protein of some sort, right? I would make my leftover meal always be soup. His, he is the reason we have a lot of fried rice in this house. What we are doing differently this year,

Kathi (32:57.634)

Perfect.

Kathi (33:08.246)

Yeah, okay.

Tonya Kubo (33:11.264)

I am actually pulling Abby into the meal planning since she is our pickiest eater in the house So if she helps plan the meals we are more likely to have meals that she will eat and then Lily is cooking one night a week

Kathi (33:15.38)

got it, okay.

Kathi (33:27.21)

Okay, because Abby loves some decision-making. Yes. But what you’re doing is you’re taking everybody’s strengths. And I know when Lily’s cooking, does she get to pick what she’s going to cook for the most part? Yeah, everybody.

Tonya Kubo (33:32.03)

She does. She does love herself some decision-making.

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (33:44.338)

Yep. Yep. Soup de nuts, whole thing. I will buy whatever it is if that’s what she wants to cook.

Kathi (33:49.224)

Yes. Okay, so tell me one of the meals that Lily has cooked.

Tonya Kubo (33:54.784)

she’s so cute. So she loves to make what I call fancy ramen. So she does the soft-boiled egg and she does the enoki mushrooms. Not going to lie, Kathi, I never bought an enoki mushroom until like three weeks ago, but that’s a big one for her. The other thing that she really loves to do is she likes making pancakes, cookies, and things like that from scratch.

Kathi (34:00.172)

All right.

Kathi (34:09.035)

Yeah.

Kathi (34:19.635)

Okay.

Tonya Kubo (34:21.178)

she would prefer to come up with a recipe all by herself. I have encouraged her to follow a lot of recipes to sort of learn, let’s just say proportions before venturing out on I’ll just add flour and milk and salt together and think a pancake comes out.

Kathi (34:31.008)

Right. Yeah.

Kathi (34:38.772)

Well, you know what? It’s good to experiment to a point, but it’s also good to have some knowledge. And next time she comes to the Red House, Miss Kathi will be more than thrilled to buy all the ingredients so she can cook for us. I love that. Yeah. And, know, I, you know,my super sneaky way, which isn’t really sneaky because Roger knows exactly what I’m doing. Like when we had the kids here, you know, let’s barbecue, let’s create pizzas.

Tonya Kubo (34:39.966)

You

Tonya Kubo (34:52.062)

Sounds good.

Tonya Kubo (35:06.59)

Mm

Kathi (35:08.79)

You know, anything outside, Roger’s on it. And I will say, since we got the new Air Fryer, like, ninja combo, Roger’s much more…

Tonya Kubo (35:11.687)

Nice.

Tonya Kubo (35:18.524)

I was like your whole contraption thing that does all the jobs in one? Yes.

Kathi (35:22.644)

love it. I love it. Roger’s much more willing to cook because he feels like things come out well. So yeah. Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (35:27.986)

Yes. Well, and that’s important to Roger, right? And think that’s the thing that we didn’t specifically talk about, but is important, is know what’s important to each person in your family. For Roger, he’ll do just about anything if he has confidence that it will come out well. Right?

Kathi (35:38.337)

Yeah.

Kathi (35:43.688)

Yes, yes, exactly. Exactly. He doesn’t want to fail on it. You know, when we were cooking, when I burnt myself, it was because I was making the tomato Jen soup. Just a little hint, people. By the way, this is one of my favorite recipes in the book. Don’t you know, you the soup has a base of bacon grease? I know that sounds crazy, but it’s so good. But don’t drop the butter from a high

Tonya Kubo (35:56.584)

Mmm.

Kathi (36:12.2)

altitude into the bacon grease. Just a little tip, just a little pro tip. Yes, but we were making that tomato basil soup and I had to stop because I was in so much pain and the recipe, Roger was able to make the Cuban sandwiches with no pain whatsoever because I’ve really tried to lay out the recipes very easily so you’re not like

Tonya Kubo (36:15.572)

Pro tip, tip, pro tip from Kathi Lip to you.

Kathi (36:37.784)

shoot, I should have done that. no. Like the recipes in this book are ones that from a novice to somebody who really loves to cook will be able to do pretty easily.

Tonya Kubo (36:48.27)

Nice! And where can we find out more information on the blog?

Kathi (36:53.73)

Yeah, so definitely check the notes here because we’ll have a link to all the places you can buy the book, which is anywhere. It’s called Sabbath Soup and you can get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your favorite Christian bookstore, any place like that. But also we have a pre-order gifty, which is just, it’s like a, what would you call it? It’s a sample. Yeah, so you.

Tonya Kubo (37:16.456)

It’s a sampler. I call it a sampler. It’s a sneak peek.

Kathi (37:21.728)

But it’s a hefty sampler. Like you’re gonna get a lot of stuff with it. Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (37:24.112)

Yeah, well, yeah. And I mean, it’s stuff that’s not in the book, right? That just really helps to get you between now and here because there is nothing worse, Kathi, than buying a cookbook that you are excited about and then having to wait for it to arrive. Don’t ask me how I know listeners. Don’t ask me how I know. But it’s just really hard. So this gets you this closes the gap between when you order the book and when it actually arrives.

Kathi (37:29.579)

Right? Yeah.

Kathi (37:36.769)

Yeah.

Kathi (37:40.48)

Yes. Yes. Yep.

Kathi (37:50.72)

Yep, exactly. So we will put that we’ll drop that below. And by the way, I’ll just say as an author, boy, if you tell me that you’ve pre-ordered my book, you’re my favorite. just I mean, I’ll say that for any author. It’s the most amazing gift. It really is.

Tonya Kubo (38:09.318)

I’m sorry, I’m making funny facial expressions at Kathi. You cannot see my funny facial expressions, but it was because I had an idea. well, my idea is, is that people who pre -order the book and let us know, if they let us know, we should give them a shout out on the podcast. And we will publicly thank you for pre-ordering our book. But you have to tell us because the way that like the…

Kathi (38:16.834)

Do tell.

Kathi (38:22.86)

Mm

Kathi (38:26.965)

yes!

my goodness. Yes. Yes.

Tonya Kubo (38:36.904)

The way that technology works, don’t oftentimes get your name. So we cannot thank you properly on our end. if you tell us you pre-order, they should let us know by emailing me specifically, tonya@Kathilipp.org. Email, I’m not gonna make you send me a screenshot. Okay, we know you don’t have time for that. But yeah, just email me, tell me you pre-ordered the book and we will shout you out in a future episode.

Kathi (38:42.772)

Yeah, how should they let us know?

Kathi (38:50.337)

Okay.

Kathi (38:55.413)

Okay.

No, no, no, no, we trust people.

I love that. I love that. Okay. We have a couple of super-sized episodes here, but it was worth it friend Thank you for going on this sabbath soup journey with us guys. We appreciate you so much You have been listening to Clutter Free Academy. I’m Kathi left now go create the clutter free life. You’ve always wanted to live

#659 Simple Soups for a Meaningful Lent Season

Are you looking for a simple way to bring more meaning to your Lenten season while also creating space for family connection? In this episode of Clutter-Free Academy, Kathi Lipp and Tonya Kubo share their love for soup and how it can become a meaningful Lenten...

#658 The All or Nothing Trap: Why Good Enough is Good Enough

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by her clutter buddy, Tonya Kubo, to tackle the all-too-common mindset of "if you can't do it right, don't do it at all". Together, they explore how this thinking impacts our homes and hearts, and...

#657 Rediscover Peace: The Psychological Benefits of Decluttering

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, host Kathi Lipp is joined by Tonya Kubo to delve into the hidden costs of clutter and how it impacts our lives beyond the physical. They explore the emotional, spiritual, and financial toll that clutter can take and discuss...

#636 Batch Cooking Basics: Reclaim Your Time and Energy in the Kitchen

by Clutter Free Academy Team | Sep 24, 2024 | Clutter Free, Clutter Free For Life, Clutter Free Home, Clutter Free Podcast, Home, Mental Load, Podcast | 0 comments

Listen Now

636 – Batch Cooking Basics:

Reclaim Your Time and Energy in the Kitchen

Ever feel like you’re running on empty, but your family still expects dinner on the table?

This episode of Clutter Free Academy is for you!

In part one of a two-part series, Kathi Lipp and Tonya Kubo tackle the common challenge of meal planning and preparation when energy levels are low. Drawing from her personal experiences and upcoming book “Sabbath Soup,” Kathi shares valuable strategies for creating nutritious meals without exhausting oneself.

Listeners will discover:

The importance of pre-planning meals to avoid unhealthy quick fixes
Strategies for breaking down meal prep tasks throughout the week
Utilizing technology and services for efficient grocery shopping
Energy-saving techniques for food preparation

Kathi and Tonya’s relatable anecdotes and practical tips make this episode a must-listen for anyone struggling to balance healthy eating with limited energy.

Preorder Sabbath Soup here and receive your free download bonus Sabbath Soup Shortcuts. The preorder bonus ends October 8, 2024.

Click here to be notified when part two in this series is released!

Also, stay up to date and sign up here to receive our newsletter.

Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest

Kathi Lipp gives readers an easy-to-follow process for meal planning and prep, so that they can enjoy a full day each week of real rest and refreshment.

Could you use a break from cooking (and everything else) once a week? Not only is rest vital for your mind and body, it’s good for your soul too. God designed us to enter into Sabbath rest one day per week, but as you know, meals still need to be made. Your family still needs to be fed.

Sabbath Soup includes convenient, seasonal meal plans that take the guesswork out of shopping and cooking. More than just a collection of delicious recipes—including main dishes, breads, breakfasts, desserts, salads, sides, and yes, soups—this is your guide to establishing a weekly rhythm and routine of meal planning and prep that allows you to have a true day off.

Do something good for your soul and experience the peace that comes with a full day dedicated to spending time with God, family, and friends. Savor your Sabbath as you proudly proclaim, “Soup’s on!”

Preorder your copy of Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest here. Preorder offer ends October 8, 2024.

Links Mentioned:

Preorder Sabbath Soup here and receive your bonus down Sabbath Soup Shortcuts. Preorder bonus ends October 8, 2024

Clutter Free Resources:

Tonya’s newest podcast:

What are your top three energy-saving tips for meal preparation?

Share in the comments!

Let’s stay connected

To share your thoughts:

Leave a note in the comment section below.
Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.

Subscribe on iTunes or subscribe to our newsletter now.

Meet Our Guest

Tonya Kubo

Tonya Kubo is the illustrious and fearless leader of Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook group and the Clutter Free for Life membership program. A speaker and writer, Tonya makes her home in the heart of California with her husband, Brian, their two spirited daughters, and one very tolerant cat. Visit her at www.tonyakubo.com.

Transcript

Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter -Free Academy, where our goal is to help you take small, doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. Today, we’re diving into a topic that’s close to my heart, how to manage meals when you’re low on energy. This is actually part one of a two -part episode because we had so much to talk about. In this first part, Tonya and I will be talking about the challenges of cooking when you’re tired, when you’re overwhelmed, when you’re stressed.

and I’ll share some strategies from my new book, Sabbath Soup. We’ll cover meal planning, energy saving kitchen hacks, and how to make the most of those days where you have not enough energy to do all that needs to be done. So let’s get started.

Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter-Free Academy, where our goal is to help you take small, doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And Tonya and I are back, better than ever, yay! Well, we’re very high energy, but.

Tonya Kubo (00:25.094)

Yay!

Kathi (00:30.176)

That’s not always the case. As we discussed last week, it has been, well, definitely, I don’t know that, well, how I want to say this. Your family has been very low energy because of lots of illness. We’re wondering now if Roger just has long COVID because this guy cannot get on top of it. We are eating healthy, he’s out there working out.

Tonya Kubo (00:50.772)

Mmm.

Kathi (00:58.24)

I don’t even know if I’ve told you this, Tonya. We have dug a trail around our property so that we can go on walks. Yes, it really is nice. But yeah, we just can’t get Roger feeling good. so, and I was down and out over the weekend. And here’s the thing. You may not.

Tonya Kubo (01:08.374)

how nice!

Kathi (01:25.822)

We do not have the physical location where we can do DoorDash. most people, when I did DoorDash one time when I was at my mom’s house, Tonya, I was aghast at how much it costs.

Tonya Kubo (01:30.632)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (01:42.024)

yeah, no, it is not affordable. Well, not for us. I mean, it depends on where you live though, right? Because I have friends who, you know, drive big vehicles and stuff and they swear that they save the money in gas.

Kathi (01:45.163)

And here’s

Kathi (01:56.706)

We have a big vehicle. We’ve got about the biggest vehicle you could have. That’s some interesting math. I don’t understand it. I’m not calling your friends liars or dumb, whoo. Yeah. We have not had a lot of energy around here. And I think that this is something that as people get older,

Tonya Kubo (02:07.726)

Yeah

Kathi (02:24.354)

You know, we all want to say hey, we’re gonna always have the same amount of energy I used to be low energy because I had all the kids now I’m lower energy. I just think because the ravages of time and so I do know like I’ve learned I have to balance my energy like in the morning and into you know, I morning until lunch I am good to go then I have my afternoon dip

Tonya Kubo (02:31.507)

Right.

Tonya Kubo (02:42.494)

Mm

Kathi (02:51.074)

and then I’m really good until about 630 and at 630 I’m done. Like I’m not, I’m not, I was gonna say I’m not laying in bed. I am lying in bed, but I’m still working. I’m doing, working on like social media and things like that. But I don’t know. How about you? Where are your energy peaks and valleys?

Tonya Kubo (03:11.988)

Yeah, well, I mean, for me, I have the most energy from like 4 am to noon. Like hands down, 4 a.m. to noon. Four o ‘clock is an evil, evil time, Kathi. Why do people want to meet with me between the hours of two and four pm Like it’s just, that it is not my favorite. They don’t, they obviously don’t. The world is not built around me.

Kathi (03:21.581)

Sure.

Kathi (03:33.794)

They don’t love you. Yeah, obviously.

Well, and here’s the thing, your children want things from you during those hours.

Tonya Kubo (03:44.688)

Right? You feel my pain. Yeah. And, and I would say for a lot of people, know, weekends are a high energy time. It’s, it’s not a high-energy time for me, but I do my best. am somebody. And this is where I think you and me are a little bit different. I do better in a single marathon.

Kathi (03:46.878)

It’s just wrong. Yeah. Yes, absolutely.

Kathi (04:00.439)

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (04:10.868)

than I do in breaking things up into say 30-minute chunks throughout the day.

Kathi (04:11.926)

Hmm.

Kathi (04:15.584)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It depends on what I’m working on. But yeah, I like to be able to quit a task when I run out of energy. So yeah, we, you know, as many of you know, I have a book coming out October 8th, it’s Sabbath Soup. And I didn’t really write this with in mind with, you know, three different people when you’re low on time, when you’re low on money, and when you’re low on energy.

Tonya Kubo (04:24.143)

Yeah

Tonya Kubo (04:44.99)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (04:45.33)

Now, all three at the same time is hard. Like I get it. That is super, super hard. And I’ve been in that place where when I was a single mom, there wasn’t a lot of money. I was working full-time. And when I was done for the day, I wanted to be done for the day and it just wasn’t an option. So for all my single moms out there, I no longer feel your pain, but I remember your pain very, very deeply. And

Tonya Kubo (04:53.843)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (05:14.696)

Tonya is currently a single mom because her husband is sick on the couch but I just think that there are times when we have to say you know because all the articles I ever read are about when you’re prepping food You know how to save time how to save money But I think there has to be this third option of when you just don’t have the energy When you need to take care of your future self But how do you do that when your current self?

Tonya Kubo (05:37.341)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (05:44.47)

doesn’t have a ton of energy. And so we’re gonna talk about that. Tonya is interviewing me because it’s my book, but Tonya of course is going to add her own brilliance into this. So let’s talk about it, Tonya.

Tonya Kubo (05:46.11)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (05:58.08)

Yeah, so Kathi, one of the things that I get very stabby about, because as you know, I was raised by a single mom. And so I was raised by a single mom. Money was super, super tight. I now as an adult, when I read all of these ideas, right, of, you know, like how to feed your family of 20 on $200 from Costco, totally exaggerating there.

Kathi (06:05.643)

Right.

Kathi (06:22.238)

Yeah. Right.

Tonya Kubo (06:25.012)

I get frustrated because when I look at these meal plans, when I look at these ideas that are in these articles, it’s like they think that if you don’t have a lot of money, you somehow have 32 hour days, right? Like you’ve got time to go and buy wheat, wheat berries that you then toast and grind yourself to make your own bread. And

Kathi (06:45.204)

Right, right.

Tonya Kubo (06:49.0)

What I appreciate about Sabbath Soup, and even when you were talking about the concept of the book, is that you don’t do that nasty thing where you assume having less in one area, whether it’s time, energy, or money, means you have an unlimited supply in the other area.

Kathi (07:05.154)

Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you about a book I read probably 10 years ago. It’s called On a Dollar a Day. And it was this couple who, you know, we talk about stunt memoir and that’s really what this was. But they both, he was a school teacher or no, she was a school teacher. He worked in some kind of program for the disadvantaged.

Tonya Kubo (07:10.664)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (07:18.728)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (07:34.646)

and disadvantaged youth, I believe. And they were talking about what it looked like to live on what the California welfare system gave to people. And I know a lot about this. My mom was a social worker, and it’s so true. And it’s not like this as much anymore, but…

Tonya Kubo (07:51.443)

Mm

Kathi (08:00.674)

in order to get your benefit, it took almost an entire day where you’re not earning money to go apply, do the paper, all that kind of stuff. And I just know that for a lot of us, we are lacking sometimes in all three. And I don’t know that, this book does not have all the answers. Let’s be 100 % honest.

Tonya Kubo (08:06.28)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (08:19.272)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (08:27.75)

And if you are lacking financially, you and I are big believers in go find a food program because thousands of pounds of food get tossed out every day in the state of California. Let’s get that to some humans, shall we? And then if you don’t have time, it’s okay to go to Costco.

Tonya Kubo (08:30.792)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (08:36.466)

Right.

Tonya Kubo (08:42.824)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (08:54.036)

and get some prepackaged meals. It’s okay to get the rotisserie chicken. But I’m also gonna give you some ideas on how to stretch that rotisserie chicken. If you don’t have the energy, say like you’re a senior citizen, there are programs for senior citizens for prepared meals. Have somebody, if you can’t do it, have somebody check those things out. But if you’re in that place where you’re like, I do enjoy cooking, or I want to cook because I wanna control the ingredients that are going in my recipes, or I don’t wanna have to leave the house all the time for this kind of stuff. Or I actually like my cooking. I enjoy the type of cooking I do. I just wanna give some easy ideas for people who maybe don’t have a ton of energy to be able to cook. And yeah.

Tonya Kubo (09:49.242)

Mm-hmm. Well, Kathi, I’m sorry. mean, based on your experience, how have you seen a lack of energy impact eating habits? Because that’s the piece where, you know, I’m just going to go grab something quick. I’m just going to go grab something quick. And I hear this from people all the time, you know, a week’s worth of just grabbing something quick oftentimes is not making us feel our best.

Kathi (10:07.009)

Right.

Kathi (10:16.034)

No, it’s not. And you know, you know, I have struggled with obesity. I was born at 10 pounds. Let’s be clear. I’ve struggled with obesity my entire life. Not saying that a 10-pound baby is obese, but you know, it I come from a long line of people who struggle with obesity. And, you know, I know that if I don’t have if I’m not pre-planning, then what I’m doing is

Tonya Kubo (10:41.492)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (10:45.34)

sometimes the energy comes in deciding, especially in the moment. And so if we’re trying to decide in the moment, the easy things to grab are the pizzas, the easy things to grab are the fast food. hear me loud and clear. I like some fast food. Like I can get down on a Taco Bell taco that that is, you know, I enjoy Chick-fil-A -A every once in a while.

Tonya Kubo (10:48.82)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (11:05.437)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (11:09.395)

Yeah.

Kathi (11:15.17)

A McDonald’s Diet Coke is about as close to bliss as I could get. But I know that in order for me to feel good, in order for me to have energy, I can’t be doing those on a regular basis. And let me be honest, know, Tonya, I have a couple of disadvantages. I still have extra weight on me, which, you know, I’m working with and on, but it’s still a reality.

I have a short tendon in my foot, which doesn’t sound like it would be a big deal. But if I stand for any length of time, my right ankle just hurts. And I still have a little bit of a back issue, which is mostly cleared up with losing some weight. But if I’m standing for long periods of time, it does not. So I really have to think about my energy management when it comes to everything I’m doing.

Tonya Kubo (12:09.502)

Mm

Kathi (12:13.416)

This is part of it. And so our food impacts how we feel. If we’re doing that, you know, frozen pizza, the frozen French bread pizza, by the way, which we keep on hand, and we probably have once a week and really enjoy it. It’s the days when it’s Roger’s turn to cook lunch. And because I’ve got an extra meeting and anything that’s too complicated in the kitchen, he could do it. We had him.

Tonya Kubo (12:25.716)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (12:42.176)

do some very complicated things when I burned my arm recently, but let’s just say it does not bring him joy. So, it’s okay to have the, go back to kind of those comfort foods, but you can’t do it on a regular basis if energy is an issue for you.

Tonya Kubo (12:48.66)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (12:57.662)

Mm -hmm.

Right, okay. So what do you think, since Sabbath Soup is a book that really is focused on weekly meal plans and meal planning, what do you think are some things, because I can imagine that if energy is a challenge, that could sound daunting. So I’m wondering in your mind, you know, what should somebody consider when it comes to planning meals for low-energy weeks?

Kathi (13:18.881)

Yeah.

Kathi (13:26.516)

Yeah, so I like to break it up. So, you know, on Mondays, I’m going to make the plan for what I’m going to cook and I’m going to do an inventory and kind of see what we already have. And by the way, you know, if past me had some leftover chicken, chopped it up, put it in the freezer. What a gift, right? Because that’s chicken I do not have to cook. So I’m going to look for those kind of things when I’m having a low energy week and plan my meals around that.

Tonya Kubo (13:47.454)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (13:56.448)

Tuesday I’m gonna create my shopping list Just like okay. Here are the things that I want to cook, but I don’t have on hand, And Tuesday for low energy. Can I just tell you if you live near a Sam’s Club? That is my favorite thing in the world because I place my order on Tuesday and I go pick it up on Wednesday or if I’m going into town on Tuesday, I place it on Monday whatever but I I don’t have if I’m having a low energy week

Tonya Kubo (14:10.142)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (14:19.828)

Mm

Kathi (14:25.832)

I don’t even have to go inside the store. It’s all there waiting for me. And if you’re like, well, nice for you, Kathi, I don’t have a Sam’s Club. Like there are no Sam’s Club in the Bay Area. That’s okay. Target, you can do the same thing with and it’s free. You can do the same thing with where we are like a Rayleigh’s or a Safeway. A lot of places have where you can pick those up. Now both Safeway and Rayleigh’s have a charge, but if you’re low,

Tonya Kubo (14:28.852)

you

Kathi (14:55.1)

on energy, that’s a great energy-saving idea. Thursday, this is where I save my energy because the hardest part of cooking for me is all the chopping. that, that’s the thing that just kills me, right? That and dishes. So on Thursday, what I’m going to do is I’m going to get out my food processor and I’m going to chop anything that needs to be chopped. And if you’re like, that sounds like too much.

Tonya Kubo (15:07.774)

Hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (15:24.126)

I get it, friend, go to Trader Joe’s and get their mirepoix or you know, which has the carrots and onions and celery already chopped up. Buy the bagged salad, do what you need to do. But if you’re like, no, the money’s the other thing I’m trying to save, then that bag of carrots is so much cheaper than buying chopped carrots. Let’s just do that. Unless there’s a great sale, know, do what you need to do. But I’m gonna get everything out.

Tonya Kubo (15:44.852)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (15:53.442)

One thing that I’ve done, Tonya, that may seem silly, but I don’t care, is I have an extension cord that runs to my kitchen table. Okay? So I’m gonna wash all my vegetables at the same time, and then I’m gonna sit down at my kitchen table with all my little containers, and I’m gonna chop all my vegetables, and I’m gonna put them into the containers, and I’m gonna chop them, and I’m gonna do all that while I’m sitting down. Yes.

Tonya Kubo (15:56.094)

Mm -hmm.

Okay.

Tonya Kubo (16:07.742)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (16:21.224)

Right, and let me clarify though, because you mentioned extension cord and then chopping vegetables, some people may not connect the dots. It’s because you use a food processor to help you do that.

Kathi (16:28.47)

Sorry. Right, right, sorry. Key, key point. You are so smart. So yes, so I am going to, I’m going to chop all those with my food processor. I’m only washing the food processor once. I may wipe it out every once in while, but I’m only washing it once. And then that is all ready for assembly day on Friday, which is beautiful.

Tonya Kubo (16:33.282)

haha

Kathi (16:56.35)

Another thing that I feel like is really, really key is I am not rushing myself on cook day. So I’m putting things into a slow cooker. Like it can cook all day. It can be doing what it needs to do. Food is marinating. Like it’s a slow process. It’s the slow food movement. Another thing, if you struggle with something like I do with my ankle,

One of the things I’ve done is I’ve got a standing mat that I’ve put in my kitchen. So those are so nice. And it makes such a big difference with energy. Another thing is we don’t wear shoes in our house just because we’ve got a lot of outdoors outside. But we have bears.

Tonya Kubo (17:32.702)

Those are so nice.

Tonya Kubo (17:43.988)

Mm

You have bears that have to go potty somewhere.

Kathi (17:51.498)

Yeah, and this morning there were turkeys that were not letting moose go outside to go to the bathroom. So she just stood there and barked and then Roger came down and is like, what is the drama? I said, it’s turkeys. And he said, you’re just going to have to deal with it moose. And I said, the turkeys are eating our grapes. And he says, not today. They’re not. And so Roger runs out there, shoes them all away. And Roger, I mean, moose was able to go outside. But you know, I don’t even know what I was saying.

Tonya Kubo (17:56.468)

Waaaah

Tonya Kubo (18:09.812)

No.

Tonya Kubo (18:17.256)

Yes.

Kathi (18:21.366)

But it thinking in batches is to plan. Like I cook all of my hard boiled eggs for the week in one batch. I cook all of those type of, you know, I’m trying to do all of my dishes in one thing, you know, one load. I’m doing all of my chopping in one load, thinking about it like that, breaking it down throughout the week so you don’t have to worry.

Tonya Kubo (18:31.122)

Hmm.

Tonya Kubo (18:40.691)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (18:50.782)

You’ve already got the food cooked. It’s a beautiful, beautiful concept.

Well, that’s all we have time for this first part of our discussion on meal planning when you’re low on energy. But don’t worry, we have even more great tips and ideas coming up in part two. In our next episode, we’ll dive into some specific meal ideas, how to involve family in the cooking process, and I’ll share some of my favorite go -to recipes for low energy days. You won’t wanna miss it. Thanks for listening to Clutter -Free Academy. I’m Kathi Lipp. Now.

Go create the clutter -free life you’ve always wanted to live.

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Snapware Pyrex 18-piece Glass Food Storage Set

#635 Batch Cooking Basics: The Sabbath Soup Way of Saving Money on Meal Prep

by Clutter Free Academy Team | Sep 17, 2024 | Clutter Free, Clutter Free For Life, Clutter Free Home, Clutter Free Podcast, Home, Mental Load, Podcast | 0 comments

Listen Now

635 – Batch Cooking Basics:

The Sabbath Soup Way of Saving Money on Meal Prep

Have you ever had those moments where you’re staring into the fridge at 5 PM, wondering what on earth you’re going to feed your family?

Well, friend, We’ve got some good news for you!

In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, Kathi Lipp and Tonya Kubo discuss the concept of Sabbath cooking and how it can save both time and money. They explain the benefits of meal planning and batch cooking, emphasizing how these techniques can reduce food waste and lower grocery bills. Kathi also discusses her upcoming book, “Sabbath Soup,” which provides a comprehensive guide to this cooking method.

Listeners will discover:

How to use ingredients you already have on hand
Batch cooking techniques for soups, salads, and casseroles
Tips for proper food storage and freezing
The financial benefits of cooking ahead and reducing food waste

Kathi shares personal anecdotes about her experiences with budget-friendly cooking and offers practical advice for listeners looking to implement Sabbath cooking in their own homes. Plus, here’s the Zucchini Boat recipe Kathi raved about in this episode!

Stuffed Italian Zucchini Boats with Italian Sausage

Preparation Time: 20 minutes Cooking Time: 35 minutes

Ingredients:

4 medium zucchini
1 lb. Italian sausage
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (15 oz) diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
2 tablespoons olive oil
Directions:

Preheat your oven to 375°F and lightly grease a baking sheet or dish.
Cut each zucchini in half lengthwise and use a spoon or melon baller to hollow out the centers, leaving about a 1/4 inch thick zucchini “boat”. Place the zucchini on the baking sheet.
In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the Italian sausage and cook until browned and no longer pink, breaking it up with a wooden spoon as it cooks. Remove the sausage from the skillet and set it aside.
In the same skillet, add the chopped onion and minced garlic, cooking until the onion is translucent.
Add the diced tomatoes, basil, oregano, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Stir well and cook for a few more minutes.
Add back the sausage and cook for another 2-3 minutes until everything is well combined.
Spoon the sausage mixture into each zucchini boat, pressing it down and filling to the top.
Top each zucchini boat with a generous amount of mozzarella and Parmesan cheese.
Bake in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and bubbly and the zucchini is tender.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes before serving.

Did you miss #634 Time Saving Strategies For Busy Cooks: Sabbath Soup Secrets? Listen in now.

Preorder Sabbath Soup here and receive your free download bonus Sabbath Soup Shortcuts. The preorder bonus ends October 8, 2024.

Click here to be notified when the next episode is released.

Also, stay up to date and sign up here to receive our newsletter.

Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest

Kathi Lipp gives readers an easy-to-follow process for meal planning and prep, so that they can enjoy a full day each week of real rest and refreshment.

Could you use a break from cooking (and everything else) once a week? Not only is rest vital for your mind and body, it’s good for your soul too. God designed us to enter into Sabbath rest one day per week, but as you know, meals still need to be made. Your family still needs to be fed.

Sabbath Soup includes convenient, seasonal meal plans that take the guesswork out of shopping and cooking. More than just a collection of delicious recipes—including main dishes, breads, breakfasts, desserts, salads, sides, and yes, soups—this is your guide to establishing a weekly rhythm and routine of meal planning and prep that allows you to have a true day off.

Do something good for your soul and experience the peace that comes with a full day dedicated to spending time with God, family, and friends. Savor your Sabbath as you proudly proclaim, “Soup’s on!”

Preorder your copy of Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest here. Preorder offer ends October 8, 2024.

Links Mentioned:

Souper Cubes

Tonya’s newest podcast:

Clutter Free Resources:

Preorder Sabbath Soup here and receive your bonus down Sabbath Soup Shortcuts. Preorder bonus ends October 8, 2024

Learn more about Clutter Free for Life

Do you have a personal favorite batch meal recipe?

Share in the comments!

Let’s stay connected

To share your thoughts:

Leave a note in the comment section below.
Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.

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Meet Our Guest

Tonya Kubo

Tonya Kubo is the illustrious and fearless leader of Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook group and the Clutter Free for Life membership program. A speaker and writer, Tonya makes her home in the heart of California with her husband, Brian, their two spirited daughters, and one very tolerant cat. Visit her at www.tonyakubo.com.

Transcript

Kathi (00:00.354)

Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter -Free Academy, where our goal is to help you take small, doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And I am here with Tonya, who, it’s been a rough week at the Kubo house.

Tonya Kubo (00:28.866)

hahahahah

Kathi (00:30.86)

friend. Monday night I saw on social media that you had canceled an event and I’m like well somebody died because Tonya never cancels events and you had a major illness which fortunately recovered quickly and now Brian Kubo is on the DL.

Tonya Kubo (00:53.905)

Yes, but he is totally like he’s got some next level stuff. I was not contagious. I did not get him sick.

Kathi (00:58.9)

gosh.

Kathi (01:02.844)

Okay, well that’s yes that is very important and even though I’ve been sick this week I have not seen Brian so it’s not my fault but it is kind of funny that we are talking about cooking on this episode when you are not allowed to do that in your home.

Tonya Kubo (01:16.977)

No, only because the smell of anything makes him wretch all over the place. And I don’t want to it up anymore, Kathi. I’ll be honest. I’m not that great of a person, actually. I don’t want to clean up vomit. I’m good.

Kathi (01:21.086)

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I understand. It was the one thing my mom said it like not in their marriage vows, but before they got married. And my dad, let’s just say my dad was not a hands on dad, but he knew he knew that was his job. Anyway, we’ll move off of vomit. This show is going to require it. Yes.

Tonya Kubo (01:34.014)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (01:41.237)

And talk about food!

Kathi (01:49.696)

This show is going to require a trigger warning. So how did you end up feeding the kids last night?

Tonya Kubo (01:55.351)

Panera delivery.

Kathi (01:56.77)

Yes. So here’s what I want to talk about because the you ate cheese and crackers, the kids ate Panera. And I think when we think about saving money when it comes to cooking, we think, OK, austerity. We’re just not we’re not going to do any so. Or if if we don’t do that, then we’re going to order Panera. Like there are 10 ,000 variations in between.

Tonya Kubo (02:03.807)

Yup.

Tonya Kubo (02:15.541)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (02:21.897)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (02:26.856)

Right.

Kathi (02:27.05)

And that’s what I wanna talk about today. So we are turning the tables. Tonya is interviewing me because we’re talking about my book, Sabbath Soup, because I wrote it with the concept, some people don’t have the time to cook. We talked about that last week. Some people just are on such a tight budget that cooking for an entire week feels impossible. And then some people just don’t have the energy.

And lots of people have a combination of the two. So I wanted to give ideas for everybody who was in this situation. So Tonya, I’m gonna turn it over to you.

Tonya Kubo (03:04.507)

Yeah, well, so I think we have to start off and I feel like I start every episode about the book this way, but like I think I need you for the benefit of our listeners to explain what you mean when you’re talking about Sabbath cooking.

Kathi (03:17.175)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (03:21.826)

Yeah, so in Jewish households, is just what, or you know, I wouldn’t say conservative, observant, thank you, thank you. That is the exact word that I would have never gotten to. That there is a 24 hour period where you’re not cooking. Now, I am not religious about this. Look at the double entendre there.

Tonya Kubo (03:31.431)

observant.

Tonya Kubo (03:49.139)

Yeah

Kathi (03:50.498)

Double meaning but what I’m trying to I believe in a Sabbath. I really am at the conclusion Tonya Good spiritual health is good mental health that there is nothing that is a spiritual practice that is anti-mental health and I lived for so many years going 24 -7 and Never truly having a break because even if I said hey guys

Tonya Kubo (04:02.751)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (04:09.545)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (04:19.732)

we’re going to stay at home today, we’re going to watch movies, we’re going to read books, people still wanted to eat. And even can we just also say, and I probably should have saved this for the energy one, but even if you’re ordering food out, there is mental stuff that goes with that. Trying to get, you know, find a place. Of course, I’m coming back to my favorite quote of Abby’s ever, you know, during, during the pandemic.

Tonya Kubo (04:25.449)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (04:38.645)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (04:46.407)

Yeah.

Kathi (04:48.802)

I want to go to a restaurant. I want to eat something that mom’s not eating. I want to eat something that dad’s not eating. And Roger’s like, I feel that so deeply. And I understand. Roger is probably more appreciative of somebody cooking for him than Abby is. Because for Abby, that’s just expected. Of course, you’re going to cook, Mom. But.

Tonya Kubo (05:05.641)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (05:09.311)

Duh.

Kathi (05:11.618)

There is a factor to all of this. And if you’re on a budget ordering out for food, well, it could be great for a once in a while treat, is probably cannot be your go -to solution. And so Sabbath says for 24 hours I’m not cooking, but I’m still eating. I’m still indulging.

Tonya Kubo (05:16.01)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (05:27.859)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (05:36.034)

in things that I love. I’m still enjoying food. I am enjoying rest. I’m enjoying connection. I’m thankful for what has been served in the life I have. But we pull back for those 24 hours without a list of to-dos to really connect with those around us and connect with God.

Tonya Kubo (05:59.815)

Okay. So I think then, because I have the benefit of seeing inside the book. I don’t have a copy of the book. I just want to point out to everybody, I don’t get copies of the book any earlier than anybody else does. Okay. There’s certain things that the publisher does not give you special privileges to, but I was going to say, no, you have a copy of some other book that has your cover taped to it or hot glued to it or however it is they make that work.

Kathi (06:17.66)

Right, and I don’t even have a copy of the book. Let’s be clear.

Kathi (06:26.59)

Yes. It’s. It is beautiful and the book inside. Hey, I got a free cookbook. I love it.

Tonya Kubo (06:28.831)

but it looks like a copy of the book and it is beautiful. I was gonna say, yeah, you have a free cookbook, it doesn’t have to be yours. So I know that the book is organized into a series of weekly meal plans. So I want you to help us understand how meal planning and this week-by-week cooking idea ties into your perspective on Sabbath.

Kathi (06:38.572)

Yes.

Kathi (06:43.926)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (06:56.83)

Yeah, so I will just speak for myself. If I don’t have a plan, every meal is an emergency. Especially when we tend to have kind of the same breakfast every morning. We tend to have very similar lunches. But dinner, I try to have some variety. I try to do some different things. And if I don’t have a plan, then

Tonya Kubo (07:11.56)

you

Kathi (07:22.258)

What ends up happening? You know that frozen pizza you have in there for emergencies? That’s a monday night’s meal like if I don’t have a plan That is my first go -to because roger always wants to make sure i’m not stressed And so his thing is like why don’t we just do the frozen pizza? But here’s the thing that like we were just talking about hey Tonya Do we need to delay some things and you said that’s just kicking the can down the? the road and it’s

Tonya Kubo (07:28.659)

Yeah

Tonya Kubo (07:47.049)

Mm Down the road, yeah?

Kathi (07:48.648)

It’s, you know, because Tuesday’s coming and we need to eat something on Tuesday. So I like to have a plan for a couple of different reasons. One, if I plan out my meals in advance, I can do it one of two ways. I can plan the meals, know the ingredients I need and look for those on sale. Or what I tend to do is say, okay, here’s what we have an abundance of at the house.

Tonya Kubo (07:51.209)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (08:15.902)

Let’s meal plan around that. How can that fit into something? And so, but I would say if if meal planning is new for you, I would just take a a week’s worth of meals from the book or from, know, you can get them other places if you want to and do that because it is going to be less expensive than you trying to come up with a new meal every day. It’s going to be it’s going to be less expensive than that one.

Tonya Kubo (08:29.779)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (08:44.852)

Wednesday night when you get super frustrated and you just say I Can’t decide let’s go out to dinner. So this is when we’re when you meal plan on Monday Yeah, you shop on Tuesday or Wednesday you start prepping on Thursday you cook on Friday or Saturday and then you don’t have to worry about meals for the rest of the week and I I’ve been very purposeful in these meal plans to say

Tonya Kubo (08:50.933)

Mm

Kathi (09:12.268)

hey, that thing you’re cooking for your big Saturday night dinner, you’re gonna use those leftovers on Monday. That big pot of soup that you’re reheating on Sunday after church, that’s Tuesday night’s meal as well. So if you have enough people in your family, you may have to double on some of these recipes, but for the most part, you are going to be strategic in what you’re doing. you know, I like…

I’ve put some really budget stretching recipes into the book so that you are, you’re good to go. Like these are things that are often on sale. You may have in your freezer or in your pantry.

Tonya:

Okay. So this sounds great, but what I’d like to do is just recap sort of this money-saving aspect, because I think you and me talk about this so often, Kathi, that it all makes sense in our heads, but I’m not sure it would make sense to a first-time listener. Right? So,

Kathi (11:24.886)

Perfect.

Kathi (11:28.556)

Perfect.

Kathi (11:45.855)

Right, let’s do it.

Tonya Kubo (11:48.789)

Part of the money saving aspect is when you’re meal planning, you’re also looking at your calendar to see what’s going on. Like, are you really eating at home five days a week? Are you eating at home seven? And you’re only shopping for what you actually need. And then because you, and I love this about your meal plans, because there’s this idea of leftovers on purpose, making the big meal on this night and using some of those leftovers a couple nights later, then you’re minimizing food waste, which…

Kathi (11:56.81)

Mm -hmm. Right.

Tonya Kubo (12:18.119)

You know I’ve looked this up, Kathi, because I’m really passionate about this, but that is like the number one cause of overspending in food costs in the US is the amount of food waste. It’s like billions of dollars in the US every year just goes to a landfill.

Kathi (12:21.376)

Yes.

Kathi (12:32.418)

Tonya can we talk about that because I don’t know that I’ve really thought about it this way before but I think many of us have fallen into the Costco syndrome where we are buying in bulk things that we do not consume in bulk and

Tonya Kubo (12:44.999)

yeah.

Tonya Kubo (12:48.511)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (12:52.295)

yeah, Brian will tell you all the time. It’s so much cheaper to buy English muffins at Costco and throw one package away than it is to just buy the number of packages week to week from the grocery store that we would use. Now to listeners, I know you can phrase English muffins. That’s not the point of the example. It’s just, that’s what he always says. It’s like, we could buy this and throw half of it away for less money than it would cost to buy just what we needed from a different store.

Kathi (13:13.002)

Yes, yes, right.

Kathi (13:21.692)

Mm -hmm. Yes. Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (13:22.089)

But there is a cost, right, to throwing away food. And I think that that is one of those points that when you really have to watch your budget or when you’re choosing to watch your budget, you can’t lose sight of using up what you have on hand is so valuable. But Kathi, you know, I always talk about how even communism sounds like a lovely thing in theory. It’s in practice where it kind of falls apart. So.

Kathi (13:33.452)

Mm

Kathi (13:46.024)

Hahaha!

Yes!

Tonya Kubo (13:51.667)

Tell me how to prevent the practice of Sabbath soup and week to week meal planning. How do we prevent that from falling apart in practice?

Kathi (14:00.896)

Yeah, so first of all, you may not need to do this kind of cooking every single week. That is okay. You may say, hey, I don’t want to roast a chicken. I think buying a Costco chicken is a perfectly valid option. I think where we fall apart so often is in the extremes. Like if you don’t plan for your whole week,

Tonya Kubo (14:14.717)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (14:25.375)

Hmm.

Kathi (14:30.506)

you’re gonna fall apart. Now, let me be honest with you. I plan for the whole week, almost every week, but also within that week, I have things like, hey, this is where I’m gonna do a Trader Joe’s meal. Or this is the night we’re going out. I think that it’s really important that balance, extreme balance is important.

Tonya Kubo (14:56.297)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (14:58.484)

that there, like you said, there are some weeks where it doesn’t make sense. But can I tell you all the times that it does make sense to cook ahead? We just went on an RV trip. We took all of our meals to San Jose. And we knew we were gonna be eating out at certain points with certain friends and things like that. But I cooked all the meals for our week ahead of time, froze some of them, put some of them in the fridge.

Tonya Kubo (15:11.861)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (15:24.595)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (15:28.378)

We spent hardly any unplanned money because we knew exactly what we were doing. are our bill has gone down considerably since we’ve been implementing this system because like today, Tony, you know, it has been a hectic week around here. Roger is not feeling his best. He’s feeling better than Brian. I will assure you of that. But like, you know what?

Tonya Kubo (15:39.605)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (15:53.948)

Yeah.

Kathi (15:58.018)

And here’s the other thing that threw me off. I had defrosted some chili and we were using that for taco salad and I got downstairs, I’m like, I was looking through the fridge, where’s the chili? And Roger’s like, yeah, I was extra hungry. And I’m like, well, I’m super glad you enjoyed that. So I could go to the freezer and I pulled out some chicken stew that I had frozen. Like, there’s no panic.

Tonya Kubo (16:14.708)

you

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (16:24.223)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (16:27.756)

There’s no, no, we now need to go to Taco Bell or something like that. If we go to Taco Bell, it’s because we want to go to Taco Bell. And so I think that it’s really what you’re doing is in one day, you’re cooking about the equivalent of three dinners. You’re cooking a big soup. You’ve got a big like, you know, something like a casserole or an enchilada casserole or something like that.

Tonya Kubo (16:48.297)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (16:57.632)

And then you’re also cooking like a meat and potatoes or a meat and rice or a meat, you know, something like that. So there are these three big meals that are going to last you for about six days. or, you know, five days plus you’re gonna have some left over, whatever it is. And then you’re regaining not just time, but energy and money.

Tonya Kubo (17:05.397)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (17:16.725)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (17:25.494)

because that is not going to waste. You have a plan for the leftovers instead of them just being in the fridge, growing green penicillin. That’s not what we want. So that’s how, if you’re buying all the groceries up front, but then you’re using most of the groceries. And if you have some groceries leftover, like if you have some asparagus leftover or you have some heavy cream, you can freeze that.

Tonya Kubo (17:44.639)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (17:55.124)

You can throw that into a salad. You can be creative with those leftovers, but you’re using up most of what you’ve bought.

Tonya Kubo (18:04.191)

Got it. Okay, so you’ve talked about making a big pot of this or a big batch of that a few times. So could you share like what are some batch cooking techniques that you feel work really well or maybe lend themselves really well to Sabbath cooking?

Kathi (18:08.31)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Kathi (18:22.732)

So for sure soup like soup is my go -to soup. I will make every single week I make it on Friday or Saturday put it in the fridge and then reheat it on Sunday for after church like part of this Tonya that saves money time and energy is You’re not saying what are we gonna have after church this Sunday? No, you’re having soup. You’re having soup. It’s easy It’s done. You just add some bread and maybe a salad and you’re good to go

Tonya Kubo (18:26.343)

Okay.

Tonya Kubo (18:44.426)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (18:52.672)

So I feel like that is a really good thing. Another thing that is interesting for batch, which people may not think about, are salads. So on Thursday, when I’m cutting up like all the mushrooms, all the onions, that kind of stuff, I’m doing that in big batches. And I’m using those onions, not just in salads, but I’m using them in the soup that we’re making or the casserole. And then,

Tonya Kubo (19:01.429)

You

Kathi (19:17.498)

I am cutting up a bunch of romaine lettuce. That’s the lettuce we happen to like in our house. And I am washing it and I’m laying it out so that it dries. That’s the key for it not to turn brown. And I’m storing it with a paper towel. So if you’re looking to save money, cutting up your own romaine lettuce is cheaper than doing say like a bag salad. It’s cheaper than all of that kind of stuff.

Tonya Kubo (19:28.405)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (19:45.314)

Another thing that I feel like really lends itself, so anything you can do in a crock pot lends itself to this. Casseroles are great. You know, and when I say casseroles, people are like, casserole. Okay, lasagna is a casserole friend. You know, I love to do like a broccoli, cheese, chicken and rice bake. That’s a beautiful thing. Enchiladas can be done as a casserole.

Tonya Kubo (20:00.574)

Right.

Tonya Kubo (20:07.209)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (20:13.226)

You know, anything where it’s a big pan of things that you know your family will love. And so we do a lot of that type. And then you can think about this as well. Ingredients are great for batch cooking. So Tonya, we’ve talked about this before. You have a bunch of ingredients. What are you gonna make that into?

Tonya Kubo (20:16.403)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (20:35.647)

Yeah, I make fried rice. Always.

Kathi (20:36.674)

Yep, I may make another batch of soup. I may make a stir fry. Like right now our garden is bursting with zucchini. We are zucchini 24 seven around here. And so, you know, we have a lot of ingredients on hand. Like we have a lot of mushrooms right now. We have a lot of onions. We’ve got some, you know, we’ve bought on sale.

Tonya Kubo (20:44.693)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (21:06.272)

ground sausage. So we’re doing a lot of zucchini boats and we’re but you don’t here’s the beautiful thing when it comes to saving money. Yes, I’ve given you recipes unless it’s something you’re baking, you know, like a pastry or something like that. Recipes are suggestions. So if I wanted to make a zucchini boat and if you don’t know what that is, I’ll attach a recipe to here and I didn’t have ground sausage.

Tonya Kubo (21:21.172)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (21:24.511)

right.

Kathi (21:34.516)

I would do that with ground beef and a ton of garlic and onions and mushrooms. And if I really love Roger bell peppers, even though I think they’re disgusting, and we would juice it up in a different way. Just recently, I made my macaroni and cheese, which is a great recipe from the book. And we didn’t have the right kind of cheese, quote unquote. We didn’t have Gruyere.

Tonya Kubo (21:47.167)

Ha

Tonya Kubo (21:50.773)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (22:03.54)

And so we had this port wine cheese and we did that. It was delicious. consider that when you’re trying to save money, consider recipes suggestions. And that’s when you use the frozen pizza. When you’ve made a recipe and you’re like, well, that did not turn out. OK, that’s fine. You have a frozen pizza. Nobody’s going to die. But you may discover something great along the way.

Tonya Kubo (22:19.516)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (22:33.663)

Got it, okay, that’s really helpful. So we’ve talked about what recipes lend themselves really well to cooking in batches or how batch cooking can work out really well. We’ve talked about the money saving aspects. Talk to me about storage.

Kathi (22:51.002)

Yeah, okay, so let me talk about soup because I There there’s a four -step process. Okay, so with soup first of all when I make a pot of soup I let it cool down and I put the whole pot in the fridge. That’s just what I do because Here’s the beautiful thing on Sunday when I come home from church I’m just gonna pull that pot out and put it straight on the the the burner

Tonya Kubo (22:54.761)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (23:17.417)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (23:17.684)

Like it’s a one pot meal. Now before I do that, if it’s just me and Roger, I’m gonna pull some of that stuff out because I know I don’t wanna reheat it like seven times. It does take some of the moisture out. So with a soup, and this is really with almost any kind of food, let it cool down completely, okay? Just before you pack it away, let it cool down completely. While you’re eating it, let it cool down completely. It’s fine. And then,

Tonya Kubo (23:25.257)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (23:45.204)

Choose your containers. I will tell you I’m loving They’re from Costco and I’ll put them in the comments. They’re just clear containers With a clear top. I’m sorry. I should have looked this up before we did this that snap into place but They are the perfect size There there there’s like a long casserole size. There’s more of like

Tonya Kubo (24:07.967)

Hmm.

Kathi (24:13.802)

I’ve chopped up an onion, let me put that in the container. There’s, I have a little bit of sauce. And then I don’t wanna waste these carrots, I’ll use them on tomorrow’s salad. Those are the four sizes. Yeah, I’m very scientific about this. But once it’s cooled down, you can put it into a container like that. The other thing I have that I really like, they’re called Souper Containers, S -O -U -P -E -R. And I will also put

Tonya Kubo (24:26.291)

Right. I like this.

Kathi (24:43.616)

those in the notes. But those are just a rubber container that are have a square divot that are perfect for a block of soup. And they have a lid that goes on top of it. That’s what I pulled out today when I found out we didn’t have any more chili. And so we’re having chicken stew for lunch. It’s perfect. It’s easy. It’s good to go. So you know, think about the containers. If you’re really struggling with your

Tonya Kubo (24:54.453)

you

Kathi (25:13.236)

your space. Maybe you only have one fridge and you’ve got a large family. It’s okay to freeze things in ziplock bags. It’s not the most economical, but can you reuse ziplock bags? Maybe you used a ziplock bag to store some green onions. That maybe can be used to do a soup. I always freeze things laying down on a cookie sheet.

Tonya Kubo (25:41.823)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (25:42.41)

so that when you’re storing them in your freezer, they either store flat, they store flat. So you can either store them laying down or up. And make sure you label them with the date because you think you know what that soup is. Can I tell you once it’s frozen? You don’t know what that’s stupid. label and freeze it. so,

Tonya Kubo (26:02.803)

It’s hard to tell.

Kathi (26:08.756)

Sometimes when I’m just looking for something to eat, I’ll just flip through. It’s like a card stack of frozen stuff. And that’s how I freeze like my extra limit. That’s another thing is before how can you make sure that things don’t go to waste? Like somebody gave me a bag of lemons off their tree. And that was awesome. You know, we did lemonade and we did lemon and RST and I did lemon bars. And then I was like, I am lemon doubt.

Tonya Kubo (26:14.101)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (26:37.877)

you

Kathi (26:37.94)

So we just got our juicer out and we juiced all the lemons and we froze that lemon juice and we used it all winter long. It was wonderful. Do the same thing with half and half. Do the same thing with heavy cream. I store it like a cup at a time because I want it pre -measured and I’ll put that in the Ziploc bag and store it like that. So it’s about really making use of everything you have in your house.

Tonya Kubo (26:57.461)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (27:07.253)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (27:07.522)

Use your freezer and your pantry. Clean. The other thing that is great about the once a week cooking process is on Monday, I’m in there like cleaning out my fridge, like saying, what do we have? we could have that on a salad tomorrow. that needs to be eaten today. You know, we are not, we are not wasting money in this house.

Tonya Kubo (27:28.863)

Right.

Tonya Kubo (27:32.741)

Okay, well I’m so glad you brought up the fridge cleaning example because, you know, we’ve talked a lot about financial benefits, but it sounds like fridge cleaning, for instance. There are other advantages to stop cooking. So what would those be?

Kathi (27:46.038)

Yeah, so I think one you get to rest. I think that’s the most important thing. Two, you get to use up what you’ve already bought. The cheapest food you will ever acquire is the food you already have. And I know that sounds like a simple idea, but you know, if it works for you to say, hey, I like this whole week’s plan, except I’ve got a lot of ground beef.

I think I’m going to do spaghetti instead of, you know, this rice dish that Kathi had in there. Please, again, these are ideas. They are not, you’re not going to throw off the system. I want you to use what you have. We all go through lean times. Now, we all have different economic situations. You know, for Roger and I, we are trying to save money right now.

because as you know, Tonya, we’ve made some big investments in our business. And one of the ways that we can control costs is by how much we eat out and what we buy at the grocery store. It’s not that we’re trying to live paycheck to paycheck, but dude, I’ve been there. I have lived that life. I have lived the life where I don’t have, you I’ve got $50 to get us

Tonya Kubo (28:45.098)

Mm

Kathi (29:13.058)

I was a single mom, you know, I have $50 to get us through the end of the month and I need to make this stretch. So I know, I know how, I think it’s really important for us to have the skills to say, this is how I can shop on the cheap, cook on the cheap. You may not need to do it, but it’s like, it’s like, it’s like a CPR class. I pray I never have to use it.

Tonya Kubo (29:15.349)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (29:41.034)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (29:41.622)

but I’m so glad I’ve got those skills.

Tonya Kubo (29:45.091)

my gosh, this is so good. I’m so glad you have those skills too, because that allows you to transfer them to the rest of us. So Kathi, can you just recap for our listeners the main ways, like what are the actionable tips from this episode? How can Sabbath cooking save them money?

Kathi (29:50.685)

Yes, that’s what we want, right?

Kathi (30:03.223)

Yeah.

Yeah, so, you know, taking a Sabbath from cooking isn’t just about rest. It’s a secret weapon for your wallet. It really is. There are some weeks where you’re going to need to plan better because finances are tight. And so I want you to have the skills to do that. There are going to be other times where you can be a little bit more extravagant. You can buy the fancy chocolate. You can get the good cut of meat. But let’s…

Let’s take them one at a time. One, plan your meals. If you do nothing else, if you do nothing else, plan your meals. Because if you plan your meals for a week, you say this is what we’re going to eat Saturday night through, you know, Friday, you know, Friday night, you are already going to save money. Take inventory of what you have on hand. Use what you already have.

So you’re not just buying fresh ingredients on top of fresh ingredients on top of fresh ingredients. I don’t want you to do that. I also don’t want you to be spending money on meat when you have that in your freezer, when it’s a lean week. So take an inventory of what you have. Prep yourself. So there are times when I am really running out of time where I will buy pre -chopped vegetables. But we all know that chopping your own vegetables saves you money.

Tonya Kubo (31:06.143)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (31:31.753)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (31:31.818)

So if you can plan like on Thursday, I’m gonna chop all the vegetables and I’m going to pack them away. I’m gonna store them in a way that they’re gonna be great for a while to come. You I do this with strawberries. Like one of the things I do is I will wash and cut strawberries and then I let them completely dry and I put them in mason jars and they last forever. It’s crazy how long they last when if I don’t do that,

Tonya Kubo (31:58.505)

Hmm.

Kathi (32:00.578)

if they just sit in their original container, sometimes it’s three days. I don’t understand strawberries, I really don’t. But I do this with cucumbers. You know, we are big cucumber eaters around here. And so to be able to cut that, you are 10 times more likely to use cut mushrooms than you are mushrooms that are whole. Like just set aside some time to cut.

Tonya Kubo (32:07.509)

You

Tonya Kubo (32:14.805)

Mm

Tonya Kubo (32:26.367)

Mmm.

Kathi (32:29.972)

and then cook. Once you’ve cooked it, you’re not going to not eat it. You’re not gonna say, let’s just chuck it and go to Pizza Hut. No, you’re not gonna do that because you’ve already cooked it. You know how moms always say we have food at the house? Well, lots of times when my mom said that, that we had ingredients at the house. We didn’t have food, we had ingredients. But now you have food at the house. And that’s what I want to help you save money.

Tonya Kubo (32:50.965)

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (32:57.366)

to not feel deprived. I think that’s a big thing too. When we are tied on budgets, we don’t wanna feel deprived and there is not a week’s worth of recipes in here that will make you feel deprived.

Tonya Kubo (33:00.255)

Mm -hmm.

Tonya Kubo (33:10.014)

Nice. Okay, tell us how we can learn more about Sabbath cooking in your book.

Kathi (33:15.168)

Yeah, we’re gonna drop a link in there and we’re gonna give you, if you pre-order the book, because the book doesn’t come out until October 8th, if you pre-order the book, you are going to get a week’s worth of menus and some other ideas and samples and recipes and fun things. So you will get that automatically emailed to you so you can get started right away. So we’ll drop the link into our show notes so you can grab that right away. But the book is available, on Amazon.

Barnes & Noble, your favorite Christian retailer, like anywhere you want, you can buy the book.

Tonya Kubo (33:51.641)

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Kathi. I have had fun switching roles where I get to ask all the questions and I just appreciate you walking us through these steps that I know for you are habitual at this point, but for many of us, it’s like brand new information.

Kathi (34:09.354)

Well, and thank you for asking me because you’re right. I have the curse of knowledge and so to be able to share this in a new fresh way is so great. So Tonya, thank you for hosting. Thank you for being amazing. And friends, thank you for being here. You’ve been listening to Clutter free Academy. I’m Kathi Lipp. Now, go create the clutter-free life you always wanted to live.

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