Sunday Dinner With Coach Dan

Sunday dinner with Dan. Sunday dinner with Dan. Sunday dinner with Dan. Sunday dinner with Dan. Hey, hey, hey, everybody. It's Sunday dinners with coach Dan right here in Cadre. Welcome in. If you're watching this live, I'm so glad you're here. And if you're catching this on replay, I'm still so glad you're here. We'll give everybody a minute to chime in. I've got tons of great stuff to throw your way today. All in regards to healthy eating and food prep for the week ahead. Great make ahead meal ideas.

Tons of info to chuck your way today. Junk food junkie. Hey, how are you? Welcome, welcome. One of my favorites. You might be my all time favorite, Katie. Thank you. I'm so glad to be on today. It's a beautiful day where I am. The snow is just trickling down really soft. It looks like somebody's shaking powdered sugar from the sky. It looks gorgeous. So I hope everybody's doing well where they're from. Where you are today, I'm going to talk meal prep. I had a question from our founder Luke last week or so and it was regarding ideas for quick lunch, ideas for busy people and busy is a word we hear more and more and more.

So there's no shortage of busy people and there's also no shortage of ideas that you can implement throughout your week in order to plan ahead and make sure that you have healthy food options ready to go. This is what happens when you don't plan and you get hungry. You grab for whatever is quick and easy and usually it's not the best thing for us. Right? Hey, Brian. Welcome in. Jackson loves the snow. Planning is everything, right? It's really a key. Planning is so key to healthy eating. We know that when we're hungry, things that are all ready to eat at a grasp are usually not great things.

There's one thing that I want to discuss. It's a really great idea if you're trying to implement healthy eating into your week. Keep prep and keep things that are healthy in the front of your fridge. So when you open them up. So when you open your fridge up, there they are. And one thing I want to talk about in regards to that is Mason jars. We're going to talk a ton about Mason jars today because it's a fantastic way to bulk prep and keep things fresh ready to grab throughout the week. Whether it's fruit or a healthy soup or a salad or protein, veg and a carb.

There's so many different ways to utilize these jars and you can tell I'm a little excited about it. I think it's a fantastic way to get healthy food in your diet. Okay, so here's what we're going to talk about first. Covers. So there are all sorts of options for covering the Mason jars. First of all, these are really inexpensive, and they're available everywhere, even a hardware store. So look for Mason jars. Also, lots of people want to get rid of these. So check your community freebies, check marketplace and see if people aren't getting rid of these just for free.

They last forever. They're glass. Obviously, they wash up. And so I'm going to just talk about a couple of the lid options. Of course, these are the ones they come with, right. When you buy the mason jars, they come with this seal and the lid. But there are also, I don't know if I showed you this, these plastic ones available, right. They're so much easier. They're only one piece, so you don't have to fumble with the two, you know, reusable, washable. They're a great option. Right. But there's also really fun stuff, too, like for the smaller jars.

Like if you want to use them for a flower vase, you can buy these. These I got at the dollar tree. And you can just put, just put little, your stems in here, little water, and it holds all the flowers up. It's so cool. And there's, there's another one, too, you know, like a shaker that you can shake things out of. And speaking of shakers, I don't know if you guys knew this, but you know this, right? Parmesan cheese, the dust. Cheese dust. It's not the best option with parmesan cheese, but so many of us have it.

And if you do the jar, the jar from this, it's these. And so I keep them. They're fantastic. You can be. Shake them out, pour them out, and just keep dressing in there for your salads. So when you're making a salad, you can drop one of these in the bottom, put everything else on top, and when you dump it out, you've got your little dressing separate. Another way to address dressing, which we made last week on my live. And if you didn't catch it, check it out. I made a, just a base vinaigrette dressing.

This is delicious. And we're gonna be using it today, too. So if you are using dressing for a salad, put the dressing in first, then your protein. If you're using protein dressing and protein makes really well. And then the veggies on top, keep the veggies away from the dressing, and they will last four, five days in the fridge. Really well. All right, so there are the larger ones, too. We're talking today about using the mason jars for quick lunches. Also, I'm going to be talking about a bunch of different meal ideas.

But, you know, if you're taking something to a party or you want to feed a group of people or larger group, these larger mason jars are the ticket. You can put together a really healthy salad. You can have your dressing. Right, ready. And when you're ready to serve it for the group, poof, ready to go. All right, so we'll prep a salad. But before we do, I want to give you guys a bunch of ideas. So this mister Luke and everybody else, these are great ideas for mason jar lunches. Okay. Taco salad. So you lay your lettuce and cooked ground turkey or ground beef, black beans, cheese, salsa, avocado, all in the mason jar.

And tip it out whenever you're ready to go. The next one is greek salad. Lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, olives, feta, chickpeas are all great ingredients for a greek salad. And if you want to throw those in a mason jar, you're ready with the greek salad. All right. Chicken caesar salad. You've got your romaine and your croutons and your parm and your chicken and your caesar dressing. Asian noodle salad, you can make noodles ahead. Shredded carrots, cucumber, sliced peppers, umami with a peanut dressing.

I mean, you can get the picture, right? It just goes on and on and on. A quinoa salad. Quinoa, which is a great source of fiber. It's a healthy grain. And you can mix it with roast vegetables and feta. It's so good. And you can do pasta salads. Next week, at Katie's request, we're going to be doing lasagna, and I'm going to be talking about a lot of healthy pasta options. You can do falafel and hummus. You can do a caprese salad with mozzarella and tomato and basil. Or a veggie burger bowl. Get a veggie burger.

Add in everything like your quinoa and your avocado, tomato, lettuce. So there you have it. There are ten different ideas that you can use, maybe just to trigger your imagination, that you can use when you're looking to fill up your mason jars. Okay, so talking about dressing, I told you about these, you know, these tops, and they fit. You know, they are the small, the small, small mouth. Not the wide, and then for dressing and keeping liquid things away from the dry. I use these so much in my demos, in my cooking demos, and when I'm doing misen plus, which is getting all the ingredients together before you start cooking.

And they're fantastic. You can measure out all your herbs and spices and ingredients ahead of time. They're a little small for large recipes, but they're perfect for dressing in dips when you're including them in a mason jar lunch. So there are those. There are all sorts of options when you look around in the marketplace. These screw together and stay together as two. So. And, you know, you can use whatever you've got in your house if you've got a small jar left from preserves or, you know, whatever.

Think about that. Utilizing the things that you already have without having to go out and buy them. That's why I love these, these little tops and that idea. All right, so I'm just gonna real quick, like, we're gonna build a little salad. We're gonna put the dressing in first. This is. Oh, that vinaigrette that I made. It's so good. Oh, and I wanted to let you know, too, that all of these recipes, I'm going to be doing a blog post and including those. So check out the blogs on Cadre IO. There's a lot of great information there, too.

So a little dressing in. First, we're going to do the romaine, but I wanted to talk, too, real quick about romaine and how it's such a great vessel for healthy lunches. Grab an entire head of romaine, throw it in a large bag, and tear the leaves off, and use this as a vessel. Fill it with veggies. You can fill it with lean protein, with healthy grain, whatever. And it's a great vessel for. For any, any type of healthy snack that you want. Instead of bread, instead of wraps, instead of the carbs.

It's a great little vessel. And I'm gonna do a pear, gorgonzola, walnut, and these two coming up, so you'll love that. All right, let's get going. A little tip tear. Don't cut your lettuce if you're not gonna be using it right away. Torn lettuce browns much more slowly. Another thing that I learned, and I learned it from traveling in Europe, salads don't have a lot of lettuce. It's mostly veggies. And I realized I'm not a big. When I eat salad, I love the stuff. I'm not really a great fan of the lettuce.

And that's a great thing about these, too. And cooking healthy for yourself is you get to pick, right? I get to pick what I put in here, like broccoli. Oops. I missed. Nothing but rim. What? Is that what they say? I'm not very sporty. Oh, nothing but net. Nothing but rim. Nothing but rim. That's how I played basketball. All right, shrooms. Now, before I get cutting, remember one of my tips, you gotta put your wet cloth down on the counter hand, and it keeps your cutting board anchored so it won't slide all over the place, and it'll be much more safe.

Let's put you down here just a tad. So I like my shrooms kind of chunky. You can quarter shrooms like that. Make them pretty. I wanted to show you guys this. Grated carrots, so easy. Just get a cheese grater and just grate it up. I want to also say that most of a large percentage of the nutrients in our veggies is on the skin. And so often we. We peel it away down the sink. If you're making a salad like this for yourself and you've scrubbed this carrot, it's ready to go. It's not the prettiest, right.

It's got, you know, it's got its little nooks and crannies, but they're so, so much goodies in there for nutrition, so I like to just shred it up like it is. Also, when I'm using veggies and soup and I'm cutting them up, I often will leave them rough and not pretty. This is an Ikea shredder. I got it years and years ago, and I love it because it's got the big shredder, the little one. And I just checked before I did this live, and they still make these, so you can find them online. If you don't have an Ikea near you.

Not now. Don't want you to leave my life. And it's got this little dealio that serves two purposes. One, now I don't have to clean out this. I just have this tiny little thing. And if I want to save what I've graded or not, use this until the end. It serves as a great cover for whatever's inside. Great space saver on these. All right, so we got shredded carrots. Another thing we want to talk about is how we eat with our eyes, make things pretty. You want a variety of different colors so that you're activating all of your senses.

And plus, it looks so much better. This is some green pepper. One on the floor for Jack. Jack is my dog. And also peas, snap peas, sugar peas. Snap peas. Oh, I love these. They are like candy. They're so sweet. Excuse me for talking with my mouth full. Mmm. Oh, my God. They're so good. So I crammed a few of those in there. All right, now, you guys, look. There it is. You can put walnuts, almonds, anything that you can think of. I like to tell people this, too. When you go out to eat, what do you order?

What do you want? When you look at the menu, what looks good, I always think about that. I, when I started collecting cookbooks years and years and years ago, I also collected menus because they were a fantastic idea memory jogger or a research for different food options and different ideas. Just to have the idea and then to be able to create it yourself is pretty fun. And I love also to see how close I can get with copycat recipes, like a copycat panera broccoli soup recipe that I have that I'll share with you, too.

Coming up. All right, so I want to go through not just these lunch ideas, but also I wanted to talk real quick about meal ideas in general. So for breakfast, the mason jar is fantastic. For overnight oats, you can put in oats or chia seeds and almond milk and vanilla. Let it sit overnight, and then add fruit and whatever else you like it in it for a quick breakfast. Like you saw, we just did the salad ramen. We talked about chia seed pudding, mixed chia seeds and coconut milk and honey, and then let the jar sit in the fridge overnight, add fresh fruit, nuts, you can do a greek yogurt parfait.

You can do a chicken quinoa bowl. And this is something you may not have thought about, but you can cook in mason jars. So if you took this and you sprayed it and you put eggs and veggies in, you can scramble them in a bowl before you can even kind of scramble them in the mason jar. Look at me eating through this whole life. I'm sorry. These are just so good. I should swallow. So doing, like, a frittata in the mason jar and actually cooking it in the oven is possible. You can also use these in the instant pot to cook whatever.

So that's a great idea, too. So all in all, I love these for healthy food prep, make ahead batch cooking. Luke, I want to know what you're using mason jars for, how many you've made and how many you ate throughout the week. That's your challenge. Let me know how you liked it. Any of you else, any else of you, any more of you, the rest of you, feel free to leave a comment below. Let me know if you tried it and let me know if you have any great ideas for mason jar. Make ahead quick meal ideas. Alright, you guys, thank you so much for tuning in.

Don't forget, next Sunday at 04:00 eastern standard time, I'm going to be doing lasagna and we're going to do it really healthy. Okay? And also, I want to tell you what's coming up this week. We have so many fantastic content creators. We have our founder Luke who starts the week off every week with Monday motivation. These times that I'm going to list our eastern standard times, but on the app, the Times should list as local for you. Hit schedule up on top of the app and it'll give you the rundown of everything that's coming up for live content.

And so Luke is on Monday motivation at eleven. We've got Evan next Monday night dealing with toxic and he's on at 730. m. What's in your toolbox? I love girls mentorship. They're fantastic. Great energy, great information. We've got our own Carrie, who is in charge of all the coaches here at Cadre and Carrie is going to be on and talking about looking at the fruit. That's what Carrie's got going on. We've got that's on Wednesday. We've got Nick on Thursday. From Shakespeare to you, he's on at ten.

And then Reese is on Friday at twelve and she is making your dreams come true every Friday. So there you have it. We've got a bunch coming at you. I hope you found some of this Mason jar info helpful. I really hope you guys utilize this tip and let me know how it works out for you if it saves you time, money, energy, but most of all, if it makes you smile because you're eating healthy. Thanks again for tuning in to Sunday dinners with Coach Dan. And thank you so much for being a part of Cadre and I'm so happy you're here.

Stick around, there's tons more coming right here on Cadre. Thanks. Bye, you guys. You guys want some.