Hey Reader!

In the 140th issue of The MF Kitchen, you'll slice into the details of:

• Recipes for my Large Elote Pizza and XL Strawberry Birthday Cheesecake Protein Fluff Bowl!
• My Favorite Chicken Dinners That Taste Like Takeout (High Protein)!
• Pro tips for anyone making macro friendly recipes...
• The backwards origin story of appetizers...
• One of the most calorie-dense foods (and my perfect substitute for it)...​

Preheat your ovens…

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Weekly Recipe Roundup 🍽️

Large Elote Pizza Elote Pizza but low calorie and high protein! Click below to download the recipe and make it easy yourself: ​Large Elote Pizza.pdf​

XL Strawberry Birthday Cheesecake Protein Fluff Bowl Disclaimer! This is A LOT of volume! Lol better bring a big appetite! This was the recipe I would use years ago during the deep depths of my cuts when my appetite was CRAZY! ​​Click below to download the recipe and make it easy yourself:​ ​XL Strawberry Birthday Cheesecake Protein Fluff Bowl.pdf​

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Recipe Recreation Of The Week 🤌

😮‍💨 617 Cal Carne Asada Loaded Fries

Macros for the WHOLE Batch of Loaded Fries:
​617 Cals, 50g Carbs, 23g Fat, 53g Protein

Here's the recipe and video:​
👉 ​​https://www.instagram.com/reels/DZaadEfxGqU/​

If you haven't already, join the FDL Community so you can share your own creations.

​Click here to join now!​

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This Week's Flavor 🎥

My Favorite Chicken Dinners That Taste Like Takeout (High Protein) If you want 4 high protein chicken dinners that taste just like your favorite takeout meals without all the extra calories, this video is for you! Live on YouTube! Search for "My Favorite Chicken Dinners That Taste Like Takeout (High Protein)"

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Zach's Beats 🎧

​ ​Girlz Wanna Have Fun - Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike Remix​

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One FAQ ❓

Answer: This is the worst. You see all these “macro-friendly” recipes on social media promising that they are delicious AND macro-friendly.

You save like 20 of the recipes with the best intentions of making them.

But you never do lol.

So when you are ready to make one of them...

Here are my top 5 mistakes beginner macro-friendly cooks make (and how to avoid them):
​

1.) Not all recipes are made equal.

This is a HUGE problem on social media.

People post recipes that look amazing but actually taste like shit.

Developing truly authentic macro-friendly recipes is really difficult.

It takes a TON of trial and error (aka a ton of failures).

And most macro-friendly food creators don’t want to put in that work.

So they will resort to stealing recipes and/or putting out really low-quality original recipes.

Unless this person has a track record of people actually making their recipes, I’d tread carefully with the recipe you decide to try.

Always look in the comments for someone validating that they made the recipe and how it went.

Here’s an example from my Breakfast Burrito IG post.

It was posted almost three years ago.

But you’ll see a bunch of comments from relatively recent people who made the recipe.

2.) The Top 3 Macro Friendly Recipe Creators

I wanted to share some of my favorite food creators (besides myself) whose recipes I trust are amazing starting points.

​Tom is the man and one of my really good friends.

His recipes are incredible for meal prep. He’s literally the meal prep king at this point.

Def an amazing follow.

​
​Dez holds it down in Australia for the macro-friendly cooking community!

He’s got a ton of bangers on his page and I highly recommend checking him out.

To be honest, they are the only two I can wholeheartedly recommend right now.

So between myself and all their content, there is a lot to play with!
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3.) “I made your recipe and it didn’t turn out well.”

Whenever I see this, my first question is, “did you follow the recipe exactly?”

And sure enough, like clockwork, the answer is always the same...

“Yes! Well actually, I did substitute out this and this but that’s all I changed!”

I can promise you with all my heart that I don’t just add ingredients just for the hell of it.

I wish I could make every single recipe possible with the same 3-4 ingredients.

It’s just not the case and would be really weird if it was lol.

But my mindset for each recipe is, “How can I make this with as few ingredients as possible without sacrificing flavor, consistency, or macros?”

And the recipe you see posted is a finalized version of that.

It’s food science.

And subbing ingredients messes with the food science equation.

Thus giving you an end recipe that is much different than the original recipe would’ve given you.

Don’t substitute ingredients until you know the rules of the game.

It’s a recipe for disaster (punny I know 🙃).
​

4.) Don’t skip steps.

So let’s say your recipe still didn’t turn out amazing even though you used all the right ingredients (in the right amounts).

Why did the recipe still not turn out well?

My next question for you would be, “Did you follow the directions to a T? Literally every single step?”

And most times when I get an answer to this question, it’s that they skipped or modified a few different steps but didn’t think they were a big deal.

We are going for a truly rare outcome in the culinary space.

Delicious & macro friendly.

So each step is super important because all the details matter.

We don’t have incredible amounts of extra calories in the recipes that make it more resilient to a little extra cooking time.

Attention to detail is rewarded with you being able to eat delicious food, in large amounts, while reaching your goals.
​

5.) It’s ok to eat the same foods all the time.

For most people, they eat the same 5-7 meals all the time.

I kinda wish I could just eat the same foods all the time but it's my job to innovate.

So that means I have a ton of meal variety in my diet due to all the R&D.

But my point is, all you are trying to do on this macro-friendly cooking journey is to find 5-7 recipes you'll use for the rest of your life.

Yes, it might end up being 20-30 truly amazing ones you use all the time.

The best example I have for this is comparing it to the gym.

When you first start working out, you learn the basic movements.

And you do those a lot until you get really good at them.

Then as you go on, you learn more and more movements targeting different muscle groups.

And before you know it, you have like 40-50 different exercises in the gym that you can use to build your training program around!

So just like the gym, you need to learn the basics.

Your short-term goal is to get to that base of 5-7 recipes.

Then you can expand over time. There’s no rush!

I really hope these 5 tips helped.

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Weird Food Fact 🤓

Going off our restaurant bread story from last week...

Appetizers seem pretty straightforward right?

Just something tasty to nibble before the real meal starts?

But their origin story is actually pretty surprising…

Believe it or not, back in ancient Greece and Rome, appetizers weren't meant to increase your hunger.

They were used to curb it.

Meals in those days could stretch on for hours.

So hosts served small bites (olives, nuts, and salty cheeses) to keep guests satisfied enough to stick around, socialize, and enjoy the main feast without rushing or getting impatient.

Fast forward a bit, and the French introduced "hors d'oeuvres" which translates to "outside the main work."

These were fancy, flavorful snacks designed to showcase a chef’s skills and creativity (exciting your tastebuds before the main dishes arrived).

But there was another sneaky bonus for restaurants that caught on later...

Appetizers encouraged diners to order more overall.

That small initial bite of something tasty actually makes you more hungry.

Leading you to order more food (and spend more money) than you otherwise might have.

Pretty clever right?

So next time you're tempted by mozzarella sticks, wings, or the famous blooming onion 🤣 before your meal, just know you're participating in a delicious bit of culinary history.

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Serving Surprise 😮

I heard a friend mention recently that she "treated herself" to a spoonful of peanut butter.

If there is any food that is the epitome of serving sizes being DEPRESSING, it's peanut butter.

I love me some PB but the serving size is TINY.

That's why I am a big fan of using a food scale.

It doesn't care about your feelings or how hungry you are lol.

It just tells you the grams and you have to deal with how depressing that is 😭

Some foods give you a lot of food volume.

A LOT do not (and peanut butter is one of those).

BUT I am here to be of service! I love me some PB so I am going to give you a protein peanut butter recipe that's only 60 calories per 2 TBSP!

It's super easy to make and here's how you do.

1. Add to a bowl:
   1. 45g Vanilla Whey/Casein Blend Protein Powder
   2. 30g Powdered Peanut Butter
   3. 3g-5g (depends on how sweet you want it) Zero-Cal Sweetener
   4. Pinch of Sea Salt
2. Then slowly add a little bit of cold water and mix.
3. Repeat this process till you have your desired consistency!

Since your protein powder does makeup over half of this recipe, a high-quality one is a MUST if you want this to taste amazing!

If you try it, let me know how it turns out 😁

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That's it for this week.

If you take one thing from today, let it be this:

Your only real goal right now is finding 5-7 recipes you love.

That's it.

Nail the basics, get your rotation down, and expand from there.

You got this!

Much love and happy cooking,
​Zach