What We Eat In A Day! What Chefs Really Cook At Home, Fall Edition

Food Friends: Home Cooking Made Easy

Hosts Keri and Sonia share their personal eating habits over a two-day period during the fall season. The episode focuses on practical home

Key takeaways

• Sonia utilizes Bob's Red Mill Scottish oatmeal for a quick 10-minute fall breakfast.
• Keri relies on overnight oats with coconut, chia, and hemp seeds to stay full throughout the morning.

Main topics

• Fall breakfast ideas
• Meal prepping strategies

Notable quotes

Sometimes the best cooking inspiration comes from asking a simple question: What did you eat for breakfast today?

Conclusion

The episode serves as a practical guide for busy home cooks to find jo

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Sometimes the best cooking inspiration comes from asking a simple question. What did you eat for breakfast today? What did you make for dinner last night? And what are you going to have for lunch? I love hearing what Sonia is cooking and eating because I always walk away with a new idea to try out or a fresh way to think about feeding myself and my family. Hi, it's Keri. Today, Sonia and I are back with another edition of What We Eat in a Day. We're each sharing what we ate and cooked for breakfast, lunch, and dinner over the course of two days. These are the meals we're really eating at home, the recipes we rely on, the make-ahead dishes that save us time and that help busy mornings feel easier and lunches a little more exciting. You can find all the recipes from this week's episode in the show notes. You can also get them sent straight to your inbox by subscribing to our Substack, foodfriendspodcast.substack.com. And if you want to see the photos of what we eat in a day, we'll be posting them to Instagram. Keep listening to hear what we eat in a day. Speaker 2 (0:54) Welcome to Food Friends, a podcast inspiring home cooks to try new dishes in the kitchen by sharing trusted recipes, Speaker 1 (1:02) tips, and friendship. Hi, I'm Sonia. And I'm Keri. We met in Los Angeles over 15 years ago as personal chefs and haven't stopped talking about food since. We're so glad you're here. Hi, Carrie. Hi, Sonia. This is always one of my favorite episodes. I agree. What I eat in a day is something I want to know about you. And this is one of those trends that you brought to me. I'm not the trend person, but I think we want to know what are people eating and what ideas are going to inspire. me and what I'm going to cook in my kitchen. I'm Speaker 2 (1:39) so nosy about food. I'm not nosy about everything, but I'm so nosy about food. I love looking at people's shopping carts. I love videos about what people eat in a day. To your point, it always leaves me inspired in my own kitchen. It's how I learned a lot of Korean recipes are from Korean what I eat in a day videos on Speaker 1 (1:55) YouTube. So I love hearing about what you're making too. Yeah. Part of what I miss about us not living in the same city is that I can't just come into your house and open up the fridge. That's one of my favorite things to do is go to someone's house. that I know really well, or maybe not so well. I just opened up their fridge. That was one of my favorite things about being a personal chef. Yes. I Speaker 2 (2:13) could not agree more, Carrie, about peeking in people's fridges. So I guess you're food nosy too, which is probably why we're Speaker 1 (2:19) friends. It's perfect. Speaker 2 (2:20) All right. So for my first day, the weather is cooler. The mornings are really crisp and cool. And I am craving warming breakfast. I saw this thing in Adam Roberts of the Amateur Gourmet who's been on our show. He was posting his stories about making English porridge, which was so interesting. Hey, Speaker 1 (2:38) what's English porridge? Speaker 2 (2:39) Okay, so again, this is according to him. I don't know if someone from England will disagree, but in his version, it was a combination of steel cut oats and rolled oats. And he also includes milk in the liquid that he's cooking them in. So I think it was a mix of milk and water. And he's stirring it for a long time. It's like a 30 minute cook. And the way he just made it look, it looked very creamy and warm and comforting. I didn't want to spend 30 minutes on breakfast, but I did want that kind of experience. So at first I was like, okay, I'm just going to make his recipe, which I will link in our show notes. So I was planning to make his recipe, but then I was in the oat section of the grocery store and I saw that Bob's Red Mill had something called Scottish oatmeal or Scottish porridge. And I just have to read the little description about it, which is that oatmeal originated in Scotland centuries ago and was different from our modern rolled oats. It was a coarse meal. that was produced by slowly grinding the oat kernel between two large millstones. And I looked at the bag. The bag said it took 10 minutes or less to make a serving of oatmeal. What Speaker 1 (3:44) a Speaker 2 (3:44) win. Speaker 1 (3:44) Yes, especially for breakfast. Yeah. So Speaker 2 (3:47) that's what I made for this breakfast. But then what I also did is in a separate pan while the 10 minutes of simmering were happening, I sauteed some apples in some coconut oil with a little cinnamon, which is something I learned from a chef, Vicky Krinsky, who's a healthy chef I worked with on a cooking show years and years ago. And she used to always make oatmeal with sauteed apples. and partly because when they're cooked, they're actually gut healthy. And so the idea of apples and cinnamon and oatmeal just sounded like the most fall thing I could have. I added a little coconut sugar, which is kind of like brown sugar for a little sweetness. I like to add a tiny bit of nut butter to my oatmeal just so it fills me up and adds a little protein. It was really good. I'm kind of a Scottish oatmeal convert now. Speaker 1 (4:30) Is Scottish porridge, is it actually oats? It's just like a processed oat? Speaker 2 (4:34) Yes. Bob went to Scotland and learned how to process. Bob was a real person. Speaker 1 (4:39) Yes. Yeah. Bob's Red Mill. Yes. He was a real person. Which Speaker 2 (4:42) is an Oregon company. Anyway, it's the way you grind the oats. It's still oats, but as opposed to rolled oats, which is where they're flattened. Speaker 1 (4:49) They smash Speaker 2 (4:49) them. Yes. Yeah. Or as opposed to steel cut oats. This is like a coarse meal. It's not a flour. It does make you think more of porridge. Similar Speaker 1 (4:58) to cream of wheat. Is it like a... It's not. You just cooked it in water, right? You didn't cook it in milk. Speaker 2 (5:04) I cooked it in water. I just followed the package. It's not... quite as smooth as cream of wheat. It's not quite as textured as steel cut oats. It's somewhere between those two things. I do like to add a splash of half and half before I eat it. I like a little richness in my oatmeal. I like that Speaker 1 (5:19) you just have half and half at your house. I don't have, I don't keep that on hand. No, because we drink black coffee. So we don't have... Jonathan likes Speaker 2 (5:27) it for his coffee. I also drink my coffee black, which I did have with breakfast. And all of this basically took all the same amount of time making coffee, making Speaker 1 (5:34) porridge. Speaker 2 (5:35) And I wanted a slower morning. So for lunch, that was a pretty filling breakfast. So for lunch, I had... Already made tuna salad for the week. You know, that's one of the things I do. I love to make an egg salad or a tuna salad or chicken salad, have it ready to go. I just made the simplest salad of greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, put a scoop of tuna salad on top. Was Speaker 1 (5:54) it your tuna salad? The only tuna salad that I will eat in the world is your tuna salad. It's yours. It's your version. Yes. Amazing. It's Speaker 2 (6:01) my version of tuna salad, which has a ton of herbs and a little bit of freshly chopped dill pickle and no onion and not too much mayo, but just. enough. I'm really particular. It's Speaker 1 (6:12) light. Speaker 2 (6:12) I really Speaker 1 (6:12) like how light it is. I don't like it too oniony either. But some people do. But this was a great, Speaker 2 (6:17) I love tuna on a salad. I love it in a sandwich too. But if I'm wanting a lighter meal, that's energizing for me. And then for dinner, I actually made something I've never made before, which is chicken piccata. Oh Speaker 1 (6:30) my gosh. I love chicken Speaker 2 (6:31) piccata. You Speaker 1 (6:31) made it? I used to make chicken piccata all the time for a client. Did you? Yeah, it was his favorite meal. I would make it for his birthday. I also had never made chicken piccata before when the request came in. And so I really had to learn how to make it. And over time, I've sort of figured out how I like it. I like the gravy. Mine is a little bit, I think almost a little heavier than basic chicken piccata with a lemony pan sauce. You make it more Speaker 2 (6:55) of a gravy. Yeah, I Speaker 1 (6:56) make it more of a gravy because we like to serve it with pasta and lots of capers. I think that's kind of where I learned how to love capers. It has to have capers. Speaker 2 (7:05) Funny enough, I made it because of my client who also wanted chicken piccata. And sometimes when I'm making things, I'll double up and make stuff for us as well. Or I'll just make it again that week because it's like I already have a menu plan. So I'm like, oh, I already know what to make. I made this once. I'll make it again. My client sent me this recipe. It's from Ali Slagle in the New York Times. I think it's a very good recipe. I think I like the light lemon pan sauce. I understand the desire for gravy. I didn't reduce it too much. I like something you can sock up that sauce with, which I'll get to in a second. But to make chicken piccata, all you do is you lightly dust chicken with flour. In this case, she tells you to take your chicken breast and cut it in half lengthwise. So you have two thinner breasts for every one piece, which I think is very smart. But you don't have to pound anything like schnitzel. is so great. You dust that in flour. You cook that in your pan with olive oil. She has olive oil and butter. You could do one or the other, both. You just brown it, cook it through. It cooks pretty quickly when it's that thin. Then you take out the browned chicken and then you're making your pan sauce. So she has you do shallot and then whole lemon slices. And I Speaker 1 (8:08) actually... Oh, interesting. Yes. I Speaker 2 (8:10) like that. Yeah, so it's shallot that you caramelize in that residual chicken fat and you slice lemon thin and you caramelize it and then you add stock, lemon juice, capers, all those usual things. I will say I thought the lemon slices weirdly were a little too bitter in this