Ep 54: The Empty Nest Reset: Finding Your Fall Kitchen Rhythm

Written By Christine Van Bloem

As the seasons change, it's time to reset your kitchen and life for fall. This week you'll find practical tips for getting back into a cooking rhythm. From pantry refreshes and meal planning to setting routines and embracing small wins, this episode is packed with advice to help you enjoy cooking again.

We also touch on mindset practices to make cooking a pleasurable experience. Don't miss the upcoming free Mediterranean masterclass on September 18th for more tips and inspiration.

Be sure to visit EmptyNestKitchen.com and sign up for my weekly newsletter filled with super practical cooking advice and free resources.

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  • Christine Van Bloem: 0:22

    Well, the days are getting shorter. The air is starting to get just a little bit crispier, and if you still have kids in college, they are happily back at school right now. My wish for you. So it's time to start thinking about resetting our kitchen and really resetting ourselves for the fall. I remember our first fall as an Empty nester, and I was so nervous about it. And listen, my son was very happy going off to college. My daughter could not wait to go out on her own, but I was so nervous. I took a second job teaching at the local high school because I knew that if my days were not so jam packed. I knew I was gonna struggle with it, and I remember trying to figure out dinners. I mean, there were nights when I think we had a bowl of plain cooked pasta that I put Worcester shear sauce on because that is my comfort food. Or we would eat like cheese and grapes if we even had the grapes. I mean, it was. Such an interesting time because I just lost all will to cook, right? I just didn't wanna do anything because I no longer felt that pressure. When you've got kids in the house, you feel like it's your duty. Even if you get takeout right, you're gonna make. Good choices most of the time with the takeout and with the kids gone, it was almost like I didn't have to think about myself anymore and I didn't, you know, I do the cooking in the house, shocker. But I didn't have to think about my husband anymore. And bless his heart, he was really, really good about it. But it's totally, I mean, it's totally okay if you are looking for some mojo again, even if it's just from the summer, because we can all acknowledge things, get a little lazier in the summer and with in the best possible way, and with all of the good, fresh foods that you're just constantly being bombarded with a good piece of bread, loaded with tomatoes and a ball of burrata. I mean, that's fantastic. But now with the weather just starting to change, it brings us back to this place where we're gonna wanna put a little more effort in, because again, those tomatoes aren't gonna be great anymore, and there aren't any peaches anymore, or they're just the canned variety. So. The fall is a perfect time. I love the fall. Just like I love New Year's because I am such a new year, new me kind of person, that it is the perfect time to just bring it on back. So how are we gonna do that? I've got a couple of practical tips for you on how we're gonna reset our rhythm in the kitchen because we are all about. Little wins, right? Little doable things instead of that big monster list of, oh, I really have to take everything out of my cupboards and clean that. No, no, no, no, no. Baby steps, my friend. So let's start going in with a little bit of a pantry refresh, right? This is when I'm looking at more things like all of those yummy whole grains. I love that. 10 minute farro from Trader Joe's. Oh my gosh, that stuff is so good. Make the whole package. Take what you didn't eat, put in individual freezer bags, pat it down flat and then freeze it so you cook once and you have it for three different meals. We love that part. Canned tomatoes. They have a lot of benefits, right? Canned is where we're gonna be at canned lentils. Now, a lot of people didn't know that lentils will come in a can, but if you're gonna try those lentil smash burgers, and I know some of you just want, you know, thinking about it. Trust me when I tell you I love a cheeseburger, right? These are not cheeseburgers. This is so important. This is not like a meat substitute. I don't really do the meat analogs like the Beyond or the Impossibles. I am not looking for that, but if I'm looking for something that tastes really good and feels really good. Well, that is when I'm gonna get into those canned lentils and doing a little lentil esque smashburger, a little bit of nutritional yeast, and we will talk about that in a future episode. But nutritional yeast is so great because it brings this umami and this cheesiness without. Being cheesy at all. It's really good stuff. So we're looking at bringing these things in and of course, you know how I feel about better than Bullion. I really like it, especially the lower sodium versions, because you just keep this in your fridge once you open it, and Costco has it. It has the chicken, the beef. And the vegetable. So I typically just buy the chicken and the vegetable. I know it's less than$10 for a gigantic container of it, so go check that out at Costco. Um, I don't mind buying a big old quantity of that because I use it so much for chicken broth and vegetable broth. It's so good to have, and it's gonna keep for months in your fridge. But do yourself a favor. Keep that little sharpie around so that whenever you open a package of anything, you just jot the date on it. It is going to help you so much. When you look in and you see that container of sriracha that you bought four years ago, it'll help you stay on top of all of that. But don't be afraid if you are just getting started. Don't be afraid to buy a little smaller quantity. You gotta do what works for you now. Believe it or not, I am not a music person when I cook, and I, I don't even like drink a glass of wine when I cook. It is so rare that I would do those things, but I've started, when I get in the kitchen, I'm now listening to like a favorite. Podcast and I'm kind of getting into the groove of being in the kitchen and having that be kind of the cap on my day. So I'm starting to set little routines, and that's something that you can do too, because I have said this a hundred times, you deserve to eat really well. That doesn't mean you have to spend an hour cooking dinner every night. Ew, yuck. Gross. Right? It just means you deserve to make it a pleasurable experience for yourself and do, if that's music, if that's a mocktail whatever. If it's a big old glass of sr, then do what you do to make it something that you enjoy, right? Look at that. How easy are these little steps? So good. Now. Small batch cooking right? Doesn't mean we're gonna make enough, um, tomato sauce. Have you ever seen, I'm obsessed with these videos of the Italian families, Italian American families, maybe that the whole family gets together to make sauce and it's like. A whole day affair, and everybody has their special job when they're doing it, and grinding the tomatoes and candy, the, I mean, it is, I look at that so lustfully. I know if it was me, I would be so annoyed to be doing it, but I look at that with such, you know, ugh, jealousy, because that to me looks amazing, and I can't imagine having good, fresh tomatoes, right. Canned in your pantry. All year long. Oh, what a fantasy. But what I can do is I can do the tricks like I do with that farro so that I cook once and eat it three times. I'm always looking at what's gonna freeze well when I'm doing things, what can I sustain as it goes through? And that's the kind of thing, those whole grains. They freeze really, really well. But again, a flat pack is gonna save you so much room in your freezer and make sure you squeeze as much air out. As you can because air is the enemy of all things frozen. Okay. And if you have those, like if you have a soup or something, you can add a little bit of the farro or brown rice or whatever you're making there to kinda up that fiber quotient. And then what if we are. I'm trying just one simple new recipe a week. It is. Okay. Most people repeat recipes all the time. Everybody has a standard repertoire. People go from like three to seven recipes typically that are part of that gig, right? I do the shrimp and white beans. I love that. I do my butternut squash, farro bowls. I love those. I kind of do it seasonally. My Turkey hominy chili. Stupid, delicious. You can find that on my website, but I will tend to make these things and try one new thing every week. If someone else is doing the work, I'll try two, right? Or maybe even three. But it's more about not getting stuck in a rut, but being open to trying new things and just getting a little creative every once in a while. And then that brings me to getting, oh, getting a little woowoo on this. Because here's the thing, I have always been the least woowoo person that you would ever meet, but. Um, a year or two ago, I started, I was so stressed out. I started doing a little bit of meditation and I started reading some books on mindset. Now this is so funny because my husband said that he can quiet his mind down. Like the whole time. And those are the people that meditation is so good for. But it is like squirrels on a hamster wheel in this brain, and I am not the person who can quiet my brain, so I try. It's really more important. I do like guided meditations. It's really more important to me that there's a message in there that I can kind of get behind and it's very, you know, I call it tinkle music when it's like doing the little bells or the little things to calm you down. I do actually like that. I kinda have to get into that, back into that a little bit more. But the thing I really, really. Love is kind of shifting your mindset. And a lot of people say that, like just think differently. And I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm a 58-year-old woman, and just thinking differently is not who I am at all. Right? That is, I am hard baked with what's in that brain. So thinking differently isn't really easy, and sometimes I get in a wave where I am, you know, writing it down every day. And I mean, I'm not doing these so much anymore, but the I am good enough or I, you know, no, I am, I am. So I feel pretty good there, but now I'm so much more into like, you know, I. Deserve to have a happy life or I have a happy life, which is even better. And for me, even pros get tired of being in the kitchen. I mean, trust me on this, any chef, I remember my chef Mike, uh, when I was in culinary school, and he told me he ate Chinese food and McDonald's and he worked at one of the top. Restaurants in the city and I was so horrified. And then when I got into it myself and it was like eating over the trash can or pulling up to the Roy Rogers drive through because their chicken tenders are the best. Uh, but it, whatever it is, you know, it just became. Something that I had to kind of tell myself that I want to eat well and that I really like to do it. So I have, you know, done the mindset thing of being like, no, I, I deserve to have a great evening. Like, not just, I deserve to come home and flop on the couch because. That couch has an imprint of me on it, let me tell you, from being prone all the time. But now I'm like, no, I'm, I'm pleased to go in. For me, a big part of that is having an actual plan of what I'm gonna do because I can cook on the fly, right? I can go in and see what I've got in the cupboard, see what I've got in the freezer, and pull something. Together, but I have found that if I even have just a loose plan for a couple of days, it, it helps me tremendously because getting that rhythm back is what I am all about right now. It's like finding that pace that's gonna get you through the fall. And I hate to say it because it's the middle of September. But the lead up to the holidays because we know, we know Halloween stuff's already out there. Before you know it, Thanksgiving, Christmas, bing, bang, boom. It's all here. But listen, if you are ready to get your rhythm back and to feel really excited again. I'd love it if you would join me for my free Mediterranean masterclass on September 18th. We're gonna talk about how this way of eating can bring like energy and joy and ease back not just to your kitchen, but to yourself. Even if you're just cooking for one or two, so that's Thursday, September 18th, there's a link in the show notes, but you can do it at Empty Nest Kitchen dot com slash or back slash masterclass, right? So. Easy, Empty Nest Kitchen dot com slash masterclass. I would love it. I'm gonna share all of my favorite tips with you. It's an hour. You can sit there and your bunny slippers sip in a glass of sanair and you're gonna learn a lot. That's gonna help you to figure out how to get your own. Rhythm back. So I hope to see you on Thursday and you know, as always, I'll see you in the kitchen.

Christine Van Bloem
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Ep 53: Small Bites, Summer on a Plate