Hey Reader!
In the 52nd issue of The MF Kitchen, you'll slice into the details of:
- Recipes for Crispy Chicken Tender w/ Low Cal Garlic Parmesan Sauce and my Protein Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Dessert Pockets!
- Europeans thought this food was poisonous until...
- How to make meal prep less of a chore and keep your tastebuds JUMPIN for joy!
- 740 calories for only a few bites! I remade it for only 65 calories.
Preheat your ovens…
Weekly Recipe Roundup 🍽️
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Protein Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Dessert Pockets
My savory versions of this recipe have been going viral and you guys have wanted a sweet version!
So here we go with the chocolate chip cookie dough protein dessert pockets! Only 131 calories!
Click below to download the recipe and make it easy yourself:
Protein Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Dessert Pockets.pdf
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Recipe Recreations Of The Week 🤌
Zach's Beats 🎧
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Jayceeoh is a homie and he has some of the best mixtapes!
If you love BigBootie Mixes but a bit more edm/dubstep and not just a mix, he's got you!
SUPER 7 Volume 12 - Jayceeoh
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Weird Food Fact 🤓
If you were to describe yourself as a food, what would it be?
For me, this is a simple answer.
I’d be a potato lol.
Partly because you are what you eat and I eat A LOT of potatoes 🥔
But also because the potato is one of the most versatile foods there is!
And it’s deceivingly macro-friendly.
But enough about my love affair with potatoes lol.
Let’s go back in our food time machine to Europe in the 1500s.
Not only were Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael creating some of their most iconic works during this time.
But also the humble potato was treated like a straight-up villain.
You read that right…
There was a period in history when potatoes weren’t the comforting mashed goodness or the crispy fries I eat every single day.
Instead, they were feared.
Why?
Because Europeans believed they were poisonous.
And honestly, they had a valid reason for feeling this way.
Potatoes belong to the nightshade family (a group of plants that includes some legit killers like deadly nightshade (aka the belladonna)).
Eating nightshade plants back then was a dice roll with your life.
And when potatoes showed up in Europe in the 1500s, people weren’t exactly lining up to experiment.
To make matters worse, potatoes grow underground.
Back then, if you were pulling your food out of the dirt, it probably wasn’t considered trustworthy.
Toss in some sketchy-looking leaves and stems, and you’ve got a veggie that screams “Eat me if you dare.”
For years, farmers avoided potatoes.
Even when they finally started planting them, they often fed them to livestock instead of people.
But eventually, someone got brave enough to boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew!
By the 18th century, potatoes were fueling entire populations and saving people from famines!
Moral of the story? Don’t judge a food by its cover (or its weird family tree).
Potatoes went from being feared to being one of the most beloved (and versatile) foods of all time.
Actually I wouldn’t say beloved!
They still get a bad reputation for no reason just because they are a starchy carb.
Carbs are your friends!
Especially potatoes that provide a lot of food volume, are super satiating, and taste AMAZING.
Here are a few of my favorite recipes with potatoes to most definitely give a try:
One FAQ ❓
Question of the Week:
“I love the idea of meal prepping, but I get bored eating the same thing every day. How do I keep it interesting?”
Answer: Meal prep can be a pain in the buttcheeks.
It can also leave you stuck eating the same meals every single day.
Makes me think of when I visit my parents.
I love them sooooo much but after a week, we all need some time apart 🤣
So today, I want to show you a delicious meal prep system I’ve created that will make meal prep less of a chore and keep your tastebuds JUMPIN for joy!
The Delicious Meal Prep Guide: The 6 F’s Framework
1.) Flow: Create a Smooth Prep Process:
This is going to be your standard operating procedure.
Every single time you meal prep, I want you to think of:
"What went well? What took too long? What do I want to improve on for next time?”
This is just a mindset shift that will make the other 5 F’s I am about to share much more beneficial!
But how this can also look in practicality is prepping everything in a certain order.
For example:
veggies → carbs → proteins → sauces
For sweet recipes, it could be having the dry ingredients mixed in little baggies and then only having to mix with the wet ingredients.
2.) Flexibility: Mix and Match for Variety
Think as if you were going to your perfect restaurant.
You could build whatever you wanted.
You start with the base which could be a salad, a wrap, a tortilla, rice, potatoes, etc.
I see the base as your vessel.
Then you have your protein which could be chicken, steak, salmon, eggs, shrimp, etc.
Then you have your accessories which could be your different variety of veggies and additions.
Lastly, you have your sauces/dressing.
This is how I love to do my meal prep for ultimate flexibility.
3.) Flavor: Elevate Even More Variety
This is where you can elevate the components of your mix and match or just the final meal preps you create.
You can switch it up via seasoning, marinades, and sauces.
This for me is mainly my protein sources and my sauces.
You can season and marinate your chicken a million different ways.
And you could just keep your protein the same but switch up the sauce to give it a whole new vibe.
The possibilities are truly endless!
4.) Freshness: Avoid Burnout
If you are meal prepping a lot of meals, I advise just a few times a week (if you have time) to make a meal from scratch.
This can break up the monotony of your meal prep and give your taste buds a little variety.
When doing this, I like to make 3-4 servings of this meal to incorporate into my meal prep as well so it’s not just spending that extra time on one meal.
5.) Fast: Keep Quick Recipes In Your Arsenal
I like this for when I am in a pinch with either running out of my meal prep or wanting some variety.
I usually do this for my sweet recipes like some protein cookie dough or something sweet I can make in minutes to tackle my sweet tooth.
And help hit my protein goals.
These no-bake protein dessert snack cups (Nutter Butter or Oreo) are a great example of this.
And they can be meal prepped as well.
6.) Freezer Stock: Build Your Backup Plan
This is a game changer as well because of how long frozen meal preps last!
I was eating on my Breakfast Burritos for at least a month.
Was having 1-2 per week.
And I also invested in a company called Eat Counter who is innovating on this concept by creating frozen meal prep macro-friendly meals that taste insane.
BY FAR the best I have ever tried and the macros are insane.
Definitely check them out.
The 6 F’s Recap:
- Flow: This is your system for success.
- Flexibility: Meal prep should feel like visiting your perfect restaurant.
- Flavor: This is the key to turning “boring” meal prep into a creative, delicious experience.
- Freshness: Avoid burnout by breaking up your prepped meals with scratch-made meals a few times a week.
- Fast: Have quick recipes in your arsenal for when you’re out of meal prep or need a change of pace.
- Freezer Stock: Have a frozen macro-friendly meal prep backup plan ready to go!
Hope this all helped! Let me know if it did.
But also, what else I missed and should add to a full guide to give you guys in the future 👨🏻🍳
Serving Surprise 😮
Was doing my grocery shopping at HEB the other day and saw something I couldn't unsee.
It wasn't like going to Walmart and seeing some wild stuff lol
But anyways haha, HEB is known for having a great bakery.
For all my Florida peeps, similar to the goated status of Publix Bakery.
I usually just walk by and never stop to look.
But on this day I thought, “let me just take a peak! Might find some inspo for a recipe!”
And then I saw these:
This tiny cheesecake is 740 calories… Like what.
And so it indeed gave me inspo to get back in the lab to iron out an oven version of my 57 Cal OREO Mini Protein Cheesecakes!
I had nailed the air fryer version of these but the oven version was being fickle.
The biggest struggle with any protein cheesecake that's actually lower calorie is it tends to look amazing while cooking but then sinks in the middle while cooling.
I solved the puzzle 🤌🏻
These are only 65 calories with 8g protein and are made in the oven!
Here’s the link to the recipe!
BUT here are the 4 Non-Negotiable Steps to ensure your cheesecake comes out amazing:
- Blend wet ingredients on LOW for only a few seconds. We don’t want to incorporate too much air because then the cheesecake will rise and then fall too much when setting.
- Gently fold wet with dry ingredients. Overmixing will lead to poopy cheesecake.
- The water bath (bain-marie) is essential if you want your cheesecake to stay firm and not sink in the middle.
- When done baking, turn the oven off and slightly open it. Let your cheesecakes sit in there for 25 minutes so the temperature change is gradual. Too fast and they will fall flat.
BONUS Pro Tip: Add these to the freezer with the toppings and HOLY SHIZZZ are they taken to the next level! You will now have Ice Cream Cheesecakes! TRUST ME.
You can also once frozen, add to a bag freezer-safe bag for meal prep!
Just let them thaw on the counter for 10-15 minutes and then they are good to go.
P.S. Here’s a Biscoff Version of the recipe I recently did as well!
It is honestly baffling how fast time flies 😅
This is issue number 52 of The Macro Friendly Kitchen.
Aka a full year of writing this for you guys!
If you’ve read all the emails, this is how many words you have read:
Just for comparison, Harry Potter & The Sorcerers Stone is 77,000 words!
So I just wanted to say thank you for being here and spending your most valuable resource (your time) with me.
It means the world and I will continue to give everything I have in these emails!
Cheers to the macro-friendly future and issue number 104 this time next year.
Hope you are still with me then!
Your friend,
Zach
P.S. I have a huge update coming next week for the first-ever macro tracking app made for people like us who love to make and track our recipes into our macros.
Aka please hold off on picking which app you are going to use this upcoming year for tracking your macros!
Can promise it’ll be worth hearing this update first before making that decision 😎
Going to be a SUPER app. The first of its kind made specifically for us.