Sunday Dinner with Coach Dan

Hello, everybody. It's Coach Dan Ancadre, and you are watching Sunday dinner with Dan. Thanks for checking in. We'll give people a minute to hop on. Hey, everybody. Let me know you're here if you are. I am Coach Dan Ancadre. I am a life coach. I'm a professional organizer, and I am a food creator, and I am obsessed with. Obsessed with everything culinary and have been my whole life. What I love to do on Cadre is bridge the gap between organization and mental health and connect people to connecting to those two things, organization and how we feel about ourselves, how we feel about our lives, the relationships we have with other people, they are always connected to organization.

When you think about it, if you're gonna have a party, you have to organize it. You have to tell people to come. You have to plan. I mean, I should say, if you're gonna have a good party, you're gonna have to plan, right? You're gonna have to organize. There are people that get paid lots and lots of money to organize parties. So organization plays a huge part in what we do every day, not just, you know, is your countertop clear, or how's your desk look? Organization plays such a big part in every aspect of our life.

It plays a huge part in how you present to the world. If you show up to a meeting disheveled and rushed and things spilling out of your briefcase because you're a hot mess, that's going to translate. If you show up to a party well organized, or, I'm sorry, to a meeting, meeting, party, hopefully you're having fun at work. You get what I'm saying? If you show up organized, you show up together, you're going to present differently than when you show up disheveled. So I think it's a great thing to think about.

It's something that I've always made a huge part of my life. I couldn't have made it through my life as I have without organization. I know it sounds deep, but I suffered from crippling anxiety and depression as a child, and I developed structures to help me exist in the world in a place that I could tolerate. And I wasn't even aware that I was developing systems and habits that would help me along the way. So I love to talk about that. And anyway, I'm going to talk about that today when we're cooking right here on Sunday dinner with Dan.

So, listen, I had an opportunity to meet one of my Cadre colleagues, Brennan, who is currently interviewing all of us and creating beautiful, beautiful videos of us and our lives. And when Brennan was here, it was such an amazing experience. It was so cool, as you can tell. I really, really enjoyed it. It was great. And we shared a meal together and we cooked together and I met one of his family members. It was one of the greatest experiences so far this year. And Brennan made spring rolls. It's one of my favorite things to make.

And I loved that he, you know, suggested that and I happen to have everything necessary to make it. So we did. He did. He made it. And I can't remember if I made the peanut sauce or not. But anyway, it was great. If you ever watched the promo for me that the video that Brennan created, which I hope you'll be able to see at some point, you'll see his egg rolls making their way to or spring rolls making their way to the table. All right, so that's what I wanted to talk about tonight. There's two things I love to do on Sundays here on this live, and the first is to share my passion of food and creating food with you and teach you some tips and tricks that you can use in the kitchen to make your experience a little bit better.

And I also love to talk about the week ahead because Sunday is, for the majority of people in our country, the beginning of the next week or the end of the last. I always thought about Sundays as the end of the week and that Monday, you know, was the beginning. Whatever way you think about it, whether your week starts on a Wednesday or a Tuesday night or a Sunday morning or whatever, we all have a start to our week. Well, actually, not all. I mean, all of us have different schedules. That's what I should say.

All of us have different ways of operating. But if there is one day or time that you can identify, that kind of signifies the beginning. Maybe it's the day that you get your schedule for work or the day your kids come and you get to have a week with them, or whatever the case may be. Identify a time where you can sit, collect your thoughts, and think about the time ahead, whatever it is, your work week, your workday, and think about ways that you can create some organization to help you navigate through the process without so much stress and without so much anxiety and without struggling, you know, with all the other factors that bombard us throughout the day, just trying to make it out the door and complete the tasks.

Right. So anything you can do to help prepare for your time ahead, I love to focus on. And Sunday, for me, is the day that I like to share that with you. All right, so let's get to it. We're going to make spring rolls. Spring rolls, you'll see all over. Egg rolls are the deep fried rolls. Most people know from chinese food what an egg roll is. Spring rolls. Same. Same technique, just different wrapper. And it's much healthier. Last couple things that I've cooked have been. I wanted to teach people how to make a mother sauce.

Mother sauce has butter and flour, and a lot of people are looking for healthier eating options, myself included. And this is a great, great, healthy vessel to contain really healthy ingredients. And they're filling. They're good for you. So I'm going to teach you how to make these. And these are available in most of the grocery stores now, because so much of our supply is, you know, we have so much more available to us than we ever did in the store now. So if you can't find them, look for an asian grocery store.

Or they are available, of course, online. So I like to always encourage people to shop local first, if you can. And if not, you know, we know where to get things online. So spring roll wrappers come here, and they are rice paper. They really are. And they are. I love to work with these, and the process that we use to work with these is hydration. You take a rice wrapper, a couple of them are stuck here out of the sheet. It's like this. You set it down into a plate of water, and then you pull it out, and you start filling it with your ingredients and wrapping it like a burrito or all the other food items that we wrap.

Okay, so we're gonna do that today. These are also available in. Oh, here it is. Sorry, right back. Also available in whole wheat options or brown. I'm sorry, brown rice options. Still rice paper, but brown rice. So I was getting my grains confused here for a minute. Okay, so a couple things I wanted to do first. We're gonna do a couple things. We're gonna talk about prepping your stuff, right? So you have to slice and prepare the things that go in the spring roll. A lot of. A lot of ingredients that go in the spring roll are prepared so they're pretty because you can see right through the paper.

And the way you line the ingredients up in the roll really matters. We eat with our eyes as much as we eat with our bellies and our mouths. So if you make food look appealing, it just enhances the whole experience. Right. If something tastes really good, but it's like brown slop on a plate, hey, it tasted good, but it looked kind of gross. You hear people say that all the time. So with spring rolls, you rarely hear people say, that's really ugly. They're kind of pretty, right? You can see through them.

You can see the ingredients. So I wanted to just talk a little bit about prep, and I wanted to show you one of the. One of the things that I use in the kitchen a lot, and that is a mandolin. So this is a really inexpensive one. It's got a little. You can see the red here from slicing the radishes, which I'm going to put in. I'm going to see if I can get myself and the board move the camera back. So we're going to use some radishes when we fill our spring rolls. And I love using the mandolin because it gives me an even consistent slice of vegetable all the way through.

They're all the same. Really, really cool. So you've got to be really careful with this because this is sharp, and it comes with different blades. Like, you can shred. You can, you know, do shred wide. This turns around and allows you to julienne, which is a very thin slice of the veggies. So this is a great kitchen tool to have. It's very versatile in how you'll use it for different dishes. But basically what it does is it is a food processing tool that, when slicing, gives you a consistent slice through the product.

And I love consistent when it comes to sprinkles. So I'm just gonna show you real quick, another thing. I'm gonna show you how to slice it. Another thing I wanna mention is the cutting board. I'm always up for safety, so these are great, right? These flexible cutting boards, they're really inexpensive. I like to tout their, their use in the kitchen because they're so easy to work with. You can fold stuff up and dump them in a pot. They're really easy to store. They're thin. You can identify different ones by the color or the label.

Use one for seafood, one for poultry, one for beef, veggies and the like to help assist with cross contamination. So let's do a radish. That's what I was doing before. That's why it's red. This is a guide that helps you when you get down to the edge of. To the bottom of the vegetable. This is extremely sharp, and this guide will allow you to make sure that you're protecting your. All your little digits. So you just. There's a couple ways you can do it. You can just press the veggie down or the, you know, the food down, whatever you're making.

And then press this down on top, right? So your hands are now free. And here they are, all your little slices. This is great for making potato au gratin and all sorts of dishes where things need to be sliced thinly. So there you go. It's a mandolin. You can get these all over the place. So just do a little research and pick out the one that you like. And I highly suggest it. All right. Another thing I want to talk about. Oh, I used that to shred my carrots. I've sliced some peppers. I have prepared some rice noodles.

I have some edamame. I'm thawing. They were frozen organic edamame. I've got my radishes, as I just showed you, and some fresh cilantro. And let's get it together. All right, so we are going to. Oh, and stay to the end. Cause I have a recipe for peanut dipping sauce for these that you're really gonna love. All right. Oops. I put the lid in the water. Oops. I have to dry it off. One thing about being a food creator, it's so funny. It's like, normally when you're cooking, you're just doing it by yourself, family or whatever, and you're cooking for the camera.

It's so different. One tip, just quick, quick, quick dip in the water because it's gonna hydrate throughout the process. It also has a natural bend to it. If it bends a little, you'll feel it bend up, so it'll help you with that process. Okay, here we have our dealio. I'm gonna put in my rice noodle. Okay. So if you've made a burrito, if you made any kind of thing wrapped like this, it's just the same technique. Right? I like to start with this, with what I'm lining up a little bit closer to me.

It gives you one over and then the ability to roll more. Another tip, do not overstuff these, because if you overstuff them, they're really hard to roll. And it's much easier to roll one with not a ton of stuff in it than it is to roll one that's packed full. Cause it'll split the wrapper. Another thing you wanna do is work relatively fast with these wrappers. And what you're gonna just picture what you're going to see. It's kind of like our week ahead, right? Visualize, what am I gonna see when I roll all this together, and it'll help you kind of line things up when you're putting them on.

I can already tell that the wrapper is starting to gum up and get pliable. And so that's my. My reminder to move quickly. I am not going to use protein today for this. I am not going to. This is just a veggie roll. Very healthy, very fresh. There's a lot of protein in edamame, which is one of the things I'm adding here. So I can feel the wrappers already pliable like that. Did I use that? Oh, my cilantro. Don't forget my cilantro. And these leaves. Oh, they're so pretty. When you place one single leaf across each.

One single leaf across each wrapper, and it gives you the most beautiful green product when you're done. Okay, so you fold it over. Right? And then you just roll it up like that. So you. And I'll do one more, too, or maybe two more. Okay. And they're so quick, and I kind of give the edges just a little. Keep everything in there. You got to make that noise, too. It helps a lot. Oh, I didn't think about my plating dish. It's one of the things that I like to encourage, too, is when you're cooking, we talk a lot about prep and mise en place and getting things ready ahead of time.

My mom, we had lots of parties at our house. We had a pool. My parents were really involved in our community, and we had a lot of entertaining at our house growing up. And we'd know parties were coming because the buffet or the dining room table, the chairs would be cleared, and there would be plates, empty plates, platters, serving utensils laid out. All laid out. And my mom had already determined what was being served, who was providing it, whether she was cooking it, it was being catered or whatever.

And she had the serving platters already identified and placed, like, days ahead. Now, we had another table to eat at, luckily. But she was able to organize herself that way so that when the time came to entertain, all that stuff was decided and she wasn't scrambling around trying to get things together. Okay, so we've got our one pretty roll there. I'm gonna do one more, and then I'm gonna show you the sauce. Okay. This has got kind of a natural bend there. I just place it in the water really quick, like, to pull it, turn it over, tap it down, pull it out again.

Move the plate to the side, and it's on the mat just so that you can see it. Okay, ready again. We've got a rice noodle to start the base. So think about your week ahead. This week? What do you have going on? Right? Like, is it a busy week? Is it a vacation week? What is your week? Do you have a week? Is it just a couple days? But what can you do to think about what do I have coming up? Preparation. Right? Like, what's going on in the future when we, when we blast out the door and we're like, oh, my God, I forgot.

I have a blah, blah, blah. The experience is a lot different than if you've got it on the calendar. You've visualized what you want out of the experience. Do you want it quick in and out? Do you want to stay? Do you want to. Is it something that you're going to dread, that maybe you need to do a little bit of Brennan's meditation ahead of time for identify what you're doing, man. Pay attention and. And make sure that you've got stuff in place to allow you to do that. If you're going to need to carry 40 things to the car in the morning, well, get something by the door and fill it up so that you can grab and go, or even better, load the car the night before, get out of the shower, you grab your coffee, have a healthy breakfast, then you're like, later, all the stuff's in the car.

All right. And a couple little more edamames, right? Sunday dinner with Dan, who doesn't love a little Sunday dinner and thinking about the week ahead? Hopefully you love it. Now, this one I did a little different. I rolled it over, and these are also very forgiving. I rolled it over first, and then I rolled, which is also a technique. And actually, I think that technique is used more than the one I did first. But the point I'm making is it's not rockets. I mean, you don't have to follow the exact process.

It doesn't have to look absolutely gorgeous like this one. That's not the prettiest, right? That one's a little prettier. But the point is, is that it's healthy, it's budget friendly, it's quick, it's kind of fun, and it's definitely a recipe I would suggest having in your pot. I'm gonna take a little sip of coffee here. A little break. Oh, my gosh. So good. Another thing I love to recommend is just enjoy the little things, like a cup of coffee. Just sit and enjoy it. So much of us take for granted everything that we have given to us or provided to us or that we've earned for ourselves.

Take a moment, get present, think about how the sip of coffee tasted and be grateful for it, and then show some love to somebody else. Find somebody that's struggling or doing, you know, just struggling along and maybe not doing as well as you at the moment and give them a hand. It's so rewarding, and it's really what makes the world go around. We all have our days. I've had mine. I've had quite a few recently, actually. And being part of Cadre has really helped me out so much, just knowing that the community's there to help me if I need to reach out.

There's tons of already prepackaged content that's available to you, and there's so many people that are available live as well to help you out. So keep Cadre in mind. I'm glad you're here, by the way. All right, so enough of that. Now, I want to tell you how to make this peanut sauce. And got to grab one thing. I'll be right back. I should say I got to grab two things. It's one thing different about my lives. They're in action. I'm not sitting at a desk. So forgive me, but had I prepared, I would have this ready.

I was a little rushed today, so you have to forgive me, but one of the things that I'm going to teach you now is how to make this really, really great peanut dipping sauce. It's so good. So there are a bunch of different really simple recipes for this, but this is one that I thought was really interesting and one that I wanted to try. So I have measured out my peanut butter, peanut sauce. Peanut butter. And you want to use smooth peanut butter when you're making peanut sauce. And so you start with that, right?

You put that in the bowl. This is approximately half a cup. And I'd like to encourage you, really, to check online for recipes for peanut sauce. There are so many variations, but I'm gonna teach you a real simple one today, and I'm gonna also identify some products, food products, flavors that you can add that are pretty standard. You'll see them a lot in peanut sauce. So I've got the peanut butter, and one thing that I'm gonna do is add. This is a recipe that I just found recently, and I'm gonna add chicken stock, chicken broth to it.

I don't need the cutting board anymore, so I'm gonna get rid of it so I can move this closer. So you start with the peanut butter. And this recipe called for chicken stock. Now, I love this product. You can find it. It's a paste, a stock paste that you add water to. You can use all sorts of different products. Pick the one that you like the best. You can use bouillon, whatever. So a little splash of water in here, and we use the water to really thin down the. Oops, that's a little too much. Thin down the peanut butter.

Okay. And it called for the chicken stock, so I'm gonna add a little bit of this. This is also something I love to use when I'm cooking instant pot meals, which I'll be doing a lot more of, too, coming up here in the future. So we're gonna incorporate the peanut butter and the hot water, and then we're gonna start building the flavors. This will just take a minute for the. For the oils in the peanut butter to loosen up and marry with the chicken. Chicken stock. It creates a real nice depth of flavor in the peanut butter.

Now, remember, we've got this water here, so if we want the consistency a little bit more loose, we can change that up a little bit. This recipe is really simple, and it calls for hoisin sauce, chicken stock, peanut butter, and soy sauce. I'm gonna use a different soy sauce, and I'll tell you about that in a second. So I'm just gonna add a little. This is. I'm sorry, this is hoisin. Hoisin is like, if you've had chinese food and you get a plum sauce, hoisin is similar to that. It's a sweet sauce, and it's actually made with sweet potato, as I'm realizing here.

But this is a delicious asian sauce that you can use to build flavors. It's also great if you want to dip mushu rolls in it or whatever. So a little bit of that in. We're gonna add a little bit of calls for soy sauce, but I'm gonna use tamari. Tamari is kind of a little bit of. It's like the lobster of soy sauces, and it's actually brewed soy sauce, so the flavors are a little bit more intensified. Just a dash of this. You'll find this right next to the soy, if you wanna give it a shot. And then sesame oil.

This calls for sesame oil, and I use a hot sesame oil. In Japan, I traveled extensively, and I learned about this seasoning that they have in a lot of their omelet shops and gyosa noodle shops, and it's delicious. And so I found it and sourced it here. Hot sesame oil. I'll hold this up to the camera for you, and you can check your. I know that that IMAGE is. Is not mirrored there, so. Or mirrored. I'm not sure which is WHICH. I'm not the camera guy. That's Brennan's. That's Brennan's department.

All riGht. And that's. That's PRETTY Much it. Right. But I do want to. I'm going to give it a taste. Oh, wow. Ooh, the chicken stock. Yes, yes, yes. And all about it, I'm gonna use. So I actually, to tell the truth, just found this recipe this morning. So I really encourage you to stretch your comfort level. Get online, pull up some recipes, see what you have in your house. If you are running low on time, use words when searching, like quick or simple or a few ingredient, and then you'll have better luck there.

Right. All right, so it's show time, and I have my spring rolls here and a rogue noodle. And then I'm gonna just do a little of the peanut sauce. I don't know why I'm doing three dots. I just feel like being creative. Play with your food, right. And then you'll see this one's a little bit tighter. Right? Tight. This one's a little bit looser. Right. You can be tight. You can be loose throughout the week, but just make sure whatever you're picking grooves with your core values. We'll talk about core values coming up, too.

What do you value? Right? Okay, so you can go quick, you can go slow, you can go tight, you can go loose. Whatever way you go, you can make these. See how they are really good. I hope you try this. I hope you do a little bit of planning this week. I hope you sink in, really visualize what's coming ahead. My mom would be for me talking with my mom, but I hope you have a great week ahead. Don't forget, interact with the live. If this was helpful, let me know. Save it. If you want to refer to it later, you can hit follow for more of my content here on Cadre and leave a comment.

And let me know if your mom told you it was rude to chew with your mouth full. Thanks for showing up. It's great to see you all and look for more of me and all of my Cadre family members right here for health and wellness on Cadre. Have a good week, you guys. These are really good. You should try them.