Hey Reader!

In the 58th issue of The MF Kitchen, you'll slice into the details of:

• Recipes for my XL Grinder Salad Wraps and Meal Prep Mini McGriddles!
• Cheese was made before writing (yes, you heard that right)...
• My top 5 underrated macro-friendly ingredients!
• I love cereal but don't love the calories. Here's what I use it for instead...

Preheat your ovens…

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Weekly Recipe Roundup 🍽️

XL Grinder Salad Wraps This wrap is a dieting cheat code! Only 516 calories for both halves with 58g protein! Click below to download the recipe and make it easy yourself: ​​​XL Grinder Salad Wraps.pdf​

Meal Prep Mini McGriddles You can eat over 12 of these meal prep mini McGriddles for the same calories as McDonald's but with 60g protein! ​​Click below to download the recipe and make it easy yourself: ​Meal Prep Mini McGriddles.pdf​

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Recipe Recreations Of The Week 🤌

This is your sign to make my low calorie French Fry recipe 🍟

Macros for the Whole Meal:

​518 Cals, 54g Carbs, 3g Fat, 71g Protein

Here's the recipe and video:​
👉 ​​https://www.instagram.com/p/DEnRnUXuG9e/​

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Zach's Beats 🎧

​Still Into You (Zeroic Flip) - Paramore​

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Weird Food Fact 🤓

Okay, let’s talk about cheese for a minute…

Because the story of how it came to be is simple, but also kinda crazy.

Picture this: 7,000 years ago, some random dude named Young Gouda is just chilling in a field in ancient Mesopotamia (I made him up, but stick with me…).

He’s got his goats, a clay pot of milk, and absolutely no clue what’s about to go down.

The milk’s been sitting out too long under the hot sun and it starts to curdle.

Now, Young Gouda is either curious or just really damn hungry… so he tries it.

BOOM! Cheese is born.

The crazy part is that this dates back to before writing was even a thing.

I’m talking pre-alphabet era.

Humans couldn’t even spell their own names yet, but we had cheese.

Fast forward through the centuries, and cheese became a big deal.

People realized they could tweak the process:

• Add salt? Lasts longer.
• Age it in a cave? Changes the flavor.
• Use different milk? Goat, sheep, or cow, each brought their own magic.

By the Middle Ages, monks in Europe were crafting wheels of cheese that would make modern-day foodies weep.

Parmesan was born in Italy in the 1200s.

Gouda started in the Netherlands around the same time.

The French were already on Brie around this time as well.

And today, cheese is even bigger.

Here are some fun facts:

• We eat over 46,297,075,058 pounds of cheese every year! That’s about 6.6lbs per person globally. And some of us are carrying that average HARD.
• The most popular cheese is mozzarella due to its heavy involvement in something we know and love... PIZZA!
• The most expensive cheese is "pule cheese" from Serbia. It's made from donkey milk and costs around $600 per pound...
• There's a cave in Missouri that currently houses 1.4 BILLION pounds of cheese.

They should give tours of this place!

But needless to say, I'm glad someone tried the curdled milk.

Because I don't know where I'd be today if I didn't have cheese 😆

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One FAQ ❓

Answer: When making this list, I ended up with 15 lol.

So I did my absolute best to bring it down to my top 5.

I use each of these on a weekly basis and some of which I don't mention too often.

Here's my top 5:

1) Reduced Sodium Chicken Broth/Stock:

This is an absolute GOAT for keeping leaner protein sources nice and juicy.

I used it recently in my Chicken Tenders and Fries meal to cook the chicken tenders perfectly.

I also just used it in my Egg Roll in a Bowl Ramen to make sure the 96/4 lean ground beef didn't try out.

Another favorite way is to use it to reheat food in a stovetop pan. Add the leftovers to the pan on medium/high heat and add a splash of the chicken broth to bring it back to life.

2) Black (Onyx) Cocoa Powder

Ever wondered about the exact cocoa powder that OREO uses to achieve that unique chocolate outside cookie? This is it.

Funny story, my first order for this was 6 years ago. There was this one little Amazon storefront that had it for sale.

I remember posting about it in my private Facebook group and then it was sold out for months haha.

The person from the shop must've been like, “What the hell just happened!?”

Anyways, I love using this ingredient to give anything that OREO flare.

It's really bitter so remember, a little bit goes a long way.

Anything OREO on my page, you'll see I used this in a minimum effective dose type way.

3) Nutritional Yeast

This is NOT the same thing as dry active yeast (that you use when making dough).

Most common mixup happens with my FDL Pizza dough (which is one of my most popular recipes of all time).

I totally get it though. It seems like it would be the same thing if you've never seen “nutritional yeast” before.

But nutritional yeast is a seasoning and not the dry active yeast used to add “rise” to your doughs.

This adds a nice cheesy flavor with very few extra calories and it's high in protein.

It's also dairy-free and is a great way to add that cheesy flavor without dairy.

I love to use it in anything I want to give a nice cheesy undertone flavor.

4) Birthday Cake Batter Flavor Extract

LOVE this ingredient as a simple way to give a birthday cake flavor to anything you want.

A tiny bit goes a long way!

It's hard to find many things that have this flavor profile so this gives you a ton of flexibility with making anything birthday cake.

In your oats, cakes, ice cream, etc.

5) Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce

These are AMAZING to give anything a Chipotle vibe.

I have made some incredible salad dressings or dipping sauces with these.

I made a Chipotle Honey Mustard in this recipe.​

And I made a Chipotle Ranch Dressing for this salad!​

But that's the list!

Those are the 5 that I use to add more flare to a lot of my dishes.

Highly recommend grabbing a few of them this week and trying them out (let me know how it goes!).

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Serving Surprise 😮

This is something I've mentioned before but I think deserves a little reminder...

I use cereal as a topping!

It’s how I see a lot of these calorically dense foods like OREOs, cereal, etc should be used.

They provide the flavor and texture to a much lower calorie/higher protein base like much of my sweet recipes.

So today, I wanted to rank some mini-cereals that are perfect as a topping.

Here are my top 5:

1) Lucky Charms

2) Cheerios

3) Reese's Puffs

4) Trix

5) Cinnamon Toast Crunch

NORMALLY, Cinnamon Toast Crunch would be #1.

But the minis missed the mark with that really rich cinnamon toast crunch flavor (pretty bland).

Now you can try making your cereal a topping instead of the main course and see the magic for yourself.

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There’s something I love and it’s the concept of stacking.

Specifically, stacking wins.

The little daily wins that seem tiny in the grand scheme of things.

Going for a walk instead of just sitting on the couch.

Cooking a meal at home instead of ordering takeout.

Getting to bed early enough so you can get 7-8 hours of sleep so you are superhuman the next day.

These wins may seem tiny but they STACK up.

You are what you do the most.

So by stacking these tiny wins, they become much bigger.

Aka they become subconsciously who you are and what you do.

And before you know it, you’re looking back at the week, then a month, then a year, all filled with habits that made you better.

Baby steps. Just start stacking!

Your fellow win stacker,
​Zach

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