You’re Invited! Sunday Dinner w/ Dan

Go again. Now we're on. Hi, everybody. It's Dan with Cadre. Hey, Cadre family. I've got Brian here tonight helping me out with the camera, and I wanted to wish you all a happy Sunday and invite you to my Sunday lives. You are invited. Dinner with Dan. And every Sunday I'm going to cook and talk about tips and tricks and different strategies that you can use in the kitchen to make your life a little bit easier. And then I'm going to talk about the week ahead and how we can use planning strategies to alleviate stress and anxiety as we look at the week ahead, knowing that the more prepared we are, the more prepared I am, the less stress and anxiety I feel.

So let's get started. I want to teach you tonight a technique in Papillot is the french term, and it's a fancy way for saying, you know, cooked in an envelope. Or in this case, we're going to be using parchment paper tonight. You can use foil, as you've seen done a million times. I'm sure. The reason I love the parchment paper method is because it's elegant. The fish steams in the paper and cooks with the vegetables, and it puffs up, and when you cut it open, it's just beautiful. It releases all the steam, and it's just a big show.

Luke says, good evening, Dan. Hey, Luke. Alex says, hey, Dan. Hi, Alex. Nick the poet joined. Hi, Dan. Great. Oh, great. Thank you, guys. So I'm gonna get started. So I have one. Brian doesn't like fish, so I'm just. I'm gonna show you how I do this, for one. But here's something you guys might wanna check out that will help you alleviate some stress. I don't know about you, but every time I went in my foil drawer and tried to pull out foil and baggies, I cut my hands on that metal strip, and I'd get all aggravated.

So if you see these, check them out, and, you know, it's one of those things that's just made life a little bit less stressful. Katie said. Hi, sunshine. Hi, Katie. And Sean Hurdle said he'd never heard of it before. Hi. Okay, so parchment paper. And you know what I think I have here, Brian? I think that's wax. Paper feels waxy. Yeah. That's not parts, but. All right, off we go. Hi, Katie. Here's the parts bat. Okay, here's our parts valve. What's your fish? The fish. You can use anything for this method, but this is cod.

It's a piece of cod. What we use for fish and chips a lot. Mostly I'd make salmon, but we got back from, we had a weekend rental, and I didn't feel like going out again to the store, and I had this frozen, so I thought a piece for myself. I thought this is a great thing to teach everybody that wants just a real easy way to cook. It's healthy, it's no stress, it's no fuss. There's zero cleanup, and it looks really cool. So I thought this is going to be the bomb. Need this much? You just need enough for your little piece of fish.

So I'm gonna tear off just a smaller piece. I got all riled here and pull that weight from up. Okay, so this is our piece of parchment, and I wanna fold this in half for this piece of fish. Now, this can be done with a large filet. It can be done with a couple smaller pieces if you're just having it for two, or which is another three. And it can also be done a bunch of individuals. So I also like that because the method works for whatever size group that you have going on. So now we have the envelope creased, and I'm gonna take the fish and just lay it in the paper and papiote.

All right, so there's our fish on the paper, and this is what goes on it. Whatever you want. All right, so we've got some mushrooms. Whatever you do put in here, you want it to cook relatively quickly. This fish is going to cook within twelve minutes in this parchment paper, which is another reason I love this recipe, is that it's so quick and healthy, and it's really healthy. The only thing that I'll put in here is a little bit of butter and some lemon. So I'm going to surround my little fish with some mushrooms.

I like to go for a lot of color because we eat with our eyes, and so I like to pick peppers out with different colors. It just makes it look so much prettier. And remember, you want things that are going to cook relatively quickly, so these are all going to heat up quick. If you do pick carrots or potatoes, throw them in the microwave for a quick bit to get them head started, and then you'll be in better shape. They won't be raw. We did it with potatoes one night, and everything was done except the potato.

Who likes a raw potato? All right, so we're almost done here with our veggies. I'm gonna slice an onion to go on here too. Pulls that over and use my cutting board. So when you slice an onion, here's just a little slicing tip. Take the little. This part off. Right? And then if you want, no tears, as long as you keep this root on intact, it'll help reduce the tears. I didn't know that. Yeah. And if you just take that off, it gives you a little flat surface to cut your onion. Safety first. It's a relaxing dish to me.

This really is. It's so simple and it's just very calming. All right, so we're gonna do this. We're gonna peel this onion up real quick, and you can slice this stuff however you like it. I like the bigger chunks of onion, so I just. And I'll probably only use half and use the other half later. This is just me. All right, now we get a little butter in here. There's two, three other things that I like to put in. I like lemon butter and dill. Again, this is so versatile that you can use any spices you want, if you want blackened, if you want cajun, if you want italian.

Really, the sky is the limit. The method is what we're looking at here to keep things simple with easy cleanup and keeping our health in mind. This is irish butter that comes in a little tub, and I'm using it tonight because it's soft. I had some butter in the fridge, but it would have tore that filet up. All right, now we want some dill and lemon. You guys, wait till you see this when it comes out. Katie said it looks delicious. It's gonna be so good. And you would pay, I mean, if you got this in some of the really a real nice restaurant, a french restaurant, you probably pay $30 easily for this.

Okay, so now we're gonna fold this over, and we're gonna make this envelope. And this is how we keep everything. We keep everything sealed with egg white. So you just take an egg white, and this is the best way to separate the egg white. You just back and forth in the shell. And you can use egg yolks. I'm sorry. You can reuse these egg yolks, so don't throw it out. If you want to freeze it, you can freeze it. Egg yolks are a prime ingredient in your mayo. I'll teach you guys how to make homemade mayo one week.

And hollandaise, too. Okay. So I use egg white to seal in this paper to make sure that the steam doesn't come out and everything stays nice and tight, because basically, you're steaming all of this. This is all getting steamed. Alright. And that's that. Is that. So I fold this over. Now I want to make it pretty. Right now there are methods, different folding methods. So if you google this, you can find like, oh, they said to make it a heart shape and do this and that. There are different methods of folding this.

I learned this one from Jacques Pepin and he did his square like this, which I liked, so I decided I was going to use his technique. Alright, so we fold these corners up and make this pretty little envelope. Right? And then we transfer it over to our sheet pan. Now I can see when I transferred this over this seam right here. It opened right up. So I want to make sure, I make sure I really seal these guys. They might have gone a little light on the. Yeah, it's a romantic dinner, too, when you see how it comes out.

Yeah, this is great for date night. If you're trying to make things really nice and you want to impress, this is a great holiday meal. So much is so heavy, you know, with roasts and big turkeys. And sometimes it's nice to just have something a little bit more light. And look how quick it. That's it. This is done right. So now we just put it in the oven, a 450 degree oven. And we're going to throw it in the oven. 450 degrees. And it'll be in the oven for twelve minutes. Okay. And while it's in here getting cooked, we're going to talk about anxiety.

While you're waiting. While you're waiting for dinner, why don't we have a little chat about anxiety? But seriously, we are. Okay. Twelve minutes. So here's the deal. I had this thought today. I was thinking about stress and anxiety. And I thought about how I. How I have handled stress and anxiety and not handled it, and how I've used different methods and I was trying to think of what is a way that I could kind of explain this, just break it down really simple. And it kind of came to me. It came to me that what I had to do first when I was anxious or stressed out was to identify that I was just to acknowledge, hey, this is stress.

This is anxiety. Labeling our feelings is so important because it kind of just puts you in the current space, the time and space. I am feeling this. So just being aware, feeling stressed out and anxious, I realized was a big step. A lot of people go through a day or a moment and they go off track and they're all freaked out and upset. And a lot of them can't even really identify why or they can't identify what they're feeling in the moment. So always becoming aware of the feeling for me was, like, the first big.

The big deal. And the quicker you can do that, the more you practice being aware of how you're feeling, the easier it gets. You'll be really quick at it. Like, all right, I'm totally stressed. The other thing, the. This is kind of like a three step deal, and I thought that I thought of. And the second step was identifying the source. Right. Okay. So I know I'm feeling stressed, anxious, and angry. Why? Like, what is it? Is it loud music? Is it that I didn't get enough sleep? You know, as somebody?

Are my core values being challenged? Whatever it is, I want to identify it. So I want to acknowledge that I'm feeling stressed and anxious, and then I want to determine why. I also, while I'm doing this and practicing it and look for patterns. If you're always anxious, you know, at 05:00 when the school lets out next door, then, you know, it's probably a pretty good indicator that kind of noise makes you, you know, a little anxious. So when I'm becoming aware of my feelings and then I'm looking at the source of them, I can start seeing different patterns that might pop up.

And then the third thing is tools. We have so many tools at our disposal, especially with Cadre. I mean, Cadre is this wealth of information from all of these different people that come together and share their knowledge, their experience. And so Cadre is a major tool that is available now, and it's such an awesome thing. I'm so excited to be a part of it. I almost. I do. I get choked up about Cadre because Cadre came along at a time where I really needed it. You know, I was just. Just in a spot.

Things were great, but there were a lot of areas in my life that I needed to kind of shift some focus, too. And anyway, Cadre has just been awesome. So there's so many tools that we have at our disposal. But the thing I wanted to say about tools is not all tools work for everybody. Meditation may be awesome for, you know, sue, but, you know, Kim made never. I mean, she just. It just might not work for her. She may do better journaling. So the point I'm making is, don't give up looking for tools.

Find the tools that really work for you and that you feel are giving you that shift downward and that shift back into the present also, this is really cool. I wanted to leave this, this little how to stay present. We talked about being present a lot in coaching, and. And some people, me included, had a problem, really exercising, being present. And one little tip I heard that I thought was great was if you just start by brushing your teeth and being present in the thought that you are brushing your teeth, that's kind of one small step that you can practice every day.

You should be brushing your teeth every day, at least once, and make sure you've eaten. So, you know, it can get so complicated. Stress and anxiety and how do I do this? There's so much out there about it. And so I really thought about how kind of simplifying the thoughts and making an approach available that's really easy and not, it won't make things worse. It's just not something that you have to overthink. Hey, you know, try to catch myself when I'm feeling stressed out. Identify what the source is.

Look for patterns. Try to eliminate those sources moving forward. That's another thing about identifying what makes you stressed out and what makes you anxious. A lot of those things can be alleviated if you identify those as patterns. Start making a list of the things that make you anxious and start thinking about ways that you can navigate your life around those. We talk about roadblocks and coaching and knowing that they're going to come up. Those roadblocks are going to come up. Knowing that noise can cause anxiety in you.

You're not going to have a life noise free. You know, it's always gonna come up. But being able to have a plan for when it does come up and navigating around the obstacles is a powerful, a powerful thought to have. So, are there any questions? Anybody have any questions in the room? We have about five and a half minutes until our fish is done. Katie asks, does cooking help you with anxiety? Cooking has always helped me. Yeah. When I was a little boy, I grew up in a house with three brothers, and they all played football, and they were rough and tumble, and I was not.

I loved singing and I liked acting. And another thing I loved was food and cooking, ever since I was little. So I would watch Julia Childs and the galloping gourmet on a tv in the basement, like, while my brothers were out playing football. Then I would pretend I had my own cooking show and I would just get lost in it. So I have been passionate about food my whole life, and cooking does relax me, especially methods like this. And another method that I'll talk about on another Sunday dinner with me is mise en place.

Mise en place. Having all of your ingredients ready to go. When you watch cooking shows, they're not running around the kitchen, like flailing around you know, digging through an onion bin in the pantry. Hopefully everything's set out and ready to go. Recipes give me anxiety, so I have to do it. Yeah. Right. So that, yeah. Brian Dunsky gets anxious with that whole process of hunting things down and measuring. So I'll talk about different ways to cook more calmly and to cook more effectively. And, oh, my gosh, I can't wait.

I have so much to share with you guys. I'm really excited. I am so excited that there's only four minutes until the fish is. How long did you have to cook it? Twelve minutes. Twelve minutes? Yeah. So any other questions about, I don't know, stress and anxiety and any food questions? Katie loves how you make it simple and easy recipes. Simple and easy. So. Oh, I wanted to talk, too, about this parchment paper method where you can do foil packs. Right. If you're just hanging out by yourself and you don't care about the show factor, the method, the foil method does exactly the same thing, and they're great for traveling for, you know, you can heat a foil pack with an iron in your hotel room.

Like, throw a towel down on the desk and just throw that iron on your foil pack. I've seen people make grilled cheeses, too. I digress. Chicken. You can use chicken or just vegetables for this method. Chicken takes about 20 to 25 minutes per breast. In a breast would take 20 to 25 minutes in parchment paper or the foil pad. Katie gets anxiety when she sees a complicated recipe and she struggles at times when she's super stressed and overwhelmed. Yeah. You know, I suffer from dyslexia, and when I'm stressed out, I can, you know, when I'm not stressed, I can read relatively easily.

When I'm tired or stressed or under pressure. Hungry. Hungry, though, I just get really confused. So, yeah, if you ever find me really confused, I'm probably. Katie. He gets, he gets snippy, too. You know, another thing that I, that just came to mind was self parenting. You know, growing up in the environment I grew up in, I didn't learn how to. I mean, I wasn't really parented effectively. My parents did the best they can. I'm not, I'm not saying, you know, I'm not trashing parents mine, but I left that home not prepared to parent myself.

And I still find in my late fifties, remembering, you've got to eat, man. You've got to eat something. When was the last time you, you know, blah, blah, blah. Fill in the blank. So just having that self love for self care and giving yourself the space to, you know, make mistakes and not beat yourself up with basic needs. Right. The basic needs are so important, and they're always, like, the most difficult. I remember in therapy, my therapist said we were talking about self love, and I just could not grasp it.

And she's like, it's like taking a shower, you know, we're making a good meal, just starting. And I actually just got, you know, it was moving to think, like, wow. Yeah, I really should kind of pay attention to stuff like that. So, you know, the whole deal I want to wrap my head around with Sunday dinner with me is to get together to share a recipe, to share some tools, and then to talk about the week ahead. And, you know, this next week ahead is, like holiday week for so many people. Oh, I can smell that.

It's smelling like a holiday. And so that is gonna mean different things than two weeks from now. So I love the thought of having you guys with me as my family and working on this together and coming up with plans that make sense, that work for each of us individually, and just also make myself available to you through Cadre. And I know that connections are so much better when we get to know somebody. How do you connect if you're not getting to know people? And I thought this would be a really great way for people to get to know a little bit more about me.

It's beeping. It's gonna be pretty. Oh, my goodness. Look at that. Let me just move this right over to the plate. Hopefully, we catch the steam, right? And I think I'm just gonna take it right over the table, Brian. Okay, you ready? Yeah. Now, before I eat, I wanna show em my little tip for the. For this is a Christmas tip. Okay. So Brian found this Christmas tree in the loading dock of the studio warehouse where his studio is. Somebody threw it out. Somebody threw it out. It had never been used.

It was in its package. So we're decorating it, and this is how. These are balloons, right? Time saver, money saver. And, you know, obviously, when you're done and celebration. Yeah, some of them go in a little. I will say you do waste a couple balloons, and you could do any color you want. You can do any color you want. Any size. So I saw this hack, and I wanted to share it with you guys. I thought it was so cool. And then when. Yeah, when Christmas or, you know, your holiday's over, just pop them.

Pop them with your fork after dinner, and you're good to go. All right, let's talk about planning the week ahead. Coming this way. But first I want them to see what happens when you open this up. So get close into the plate. All right, hang on. That's right there. Oh, you see the steam a little bit in the video. Look at that. Push this paper down on this side for me. Yes. There you go. Oh, you can see the steam. It's just delicious. Lemon, look at this fish. So watch how flaky this fish is. It is so tender.

And this is just a little bit of butter. There's not any salt, pepper. All it is is dill, lemon and my veggies. Oh, my God. And it was easy. It only took you a few minutes. Wow. It's really, really good. All right, here's some stuff. Thinking about going the week, starting the week ahead. When you're planning your week ahead, grab a cup of coffee, tea, sit down with your calendar, any source of I have to do this? And sit down with it. Open your books up and include every single thing you can think of, whether it's take the trash out or whatever, and write it down.

Next you're going to go through and you're going to prioritize the things that really need to be taken care of and move those off into just a little section by themselves still on your calendar, but make sure that they're in their own little area where you can keep an eye on those things so they don't slip away. You address your priorities and then you always want to schedule in a little free time, too. So don't make it all about go, go, go. Make sure that you are also blocking in time to refuel and to take care of yourself.

And then you also don't want to forget key dates like anniversaries and birthdays and different things like that. So take a look at, you know, you might not have that on your, on your regular radar. We have information coming at us from so many different places. Was it a text on Facebook or was it this or that? So for me, I'm starting to go old school and I'm doing a month at a glance calendar because it's just in one place that I can count on. So don't forget those key dates. And then if you are packed, if you look at that schedule and it's too much, remove some stuff, look at your priorities and look at what's really there and remove some of those things that can be done in another week if you need to.

And then don't forget to add alerts. You can use alerts now and they're so effective if you've always got your phone with you. You can set an alert. You can even set it to vibrate, and you can even set, you know, one or two to make sure you're not missing key meetings or appointments. And then this is the biggest key. And I always think about this one client when I talk about this. She was scrambled every day, running, running, running, frantic, always behind. And I just looked at her and I said, do you pad your schedule on?

She looked at me and she goes, what does that mean? What do you mean? And I said, pad your schedule. Like, give yourself 25 minutes after, you know, an appointment or, you know, pad your schedule. Put in some blocks of time in case meetings run over or, you know, don't pack your schedule back to back. So many of us are on this path of productivity. I've got to do this. I've got to do that. When are you going to have this done? And you said, you do this. We all only have the same amount of time in every day and we get to choose how we want to spend it.

So keep those things in mind as you room through. Don't forget to schedule in some wiggle time so you don't freak out. Make a healthy meal. And don't forget to check in on Cadre if you guys need any help throughout the week. There are so many great people there and they are my new family, my Cadre family. So don't forget, Cadre is always there for you guys. And don't forget to check in next week. I'm going to make another tasty dinner and we'll talk more about how we can alleviate stress and anxiety in our life.

Have a great holiday. Have a good night. They're thanking you and telling you how beautiful it is. Look how pretty. So good. Come on up. Finishing.