I’ve spent the last 10 years showing you the how, now I want to teach you the why. Learn more about macro-friendly cooking, get recipes not seen anywhere else, and so much more when you join 71,557+ others by entering your email below!
👨🍳 The MF Kitchen #22 - 3x food hack
These Buffalo Chicken Chalupas are only 247 calories with 35g protein!
Aka this whole plate is less than 500 calories and is quite literally a flavor bomb 🔥
A Dessert Pizza that can be made in minutes, requires one bowl, no kneading, no rolling out of the dough with extra flour, etc!
All with 95g of protein 🤯
Macros for 1/4th the pan:
451 Cals, 47g Carbs, 11.5g Fat, 40g Protein
Here’s the link to the recipe:
👉 https://www.instagram.com/reel/CumsHk9L8Ki/
Country EDM is the vibeeeeeee 🤠
The only way I’d been able to find sriracha has been online for almost two years.
Recently in HEB, I found it back in stock.
BUT it looked wayyyyy different.
I posted this pic on my story and it resulted in my DM’s being flooded asking me why this happened.
So I decided to do some digging.
The story is actually wild.
Let’s just say, I don’t think Huy Fong Sriracha will ever be the same.
It’s a super long story but here’s the concise cliff notes version I wish someone would’ve given me lol.
Meet David Tran, founder of Huy Fong Foods in 1980. He named it after the refugee ship that brought him out of Vietnam.
He was selling it small scale until 1988 when he met Craig Underwood who owned Underwood Ranches (aka who produced the beautiful red jalapeño that makes sriracha, sriracha).
Things were great and dandy for 28 years! Sriracha became one of the most iconic sauces of all time.
Then David Tran starts being weird and shady to Craig…
He created a new company called Chili Co to get out of his deal with Underwood Ranches which was a real estate/crop deal where David Tran was paying for all the land and farming of the increased red jalapeño production.
The weird part is why he created Chili Co. It was supposedly for his sister-in-law to get a raise because he didn’t think his family who owned Huy Fong would agree. Total speculation but there seems to be something more going on there…
But this all blew up the relationship with Underwood Ranches.
This all went to court and Underwood Ranches was rewarded with over $24 million in damages from Huy Fong Foods.
And so this has all come full circle with Huy Fong Sriracha back in store but with different red jalapeños thus changing the color and flavor.
AND Underwood Ranches using their red jalapeños to create their own sriracha brand.
I haven’t tried it yet but I’ve heard it’s what Huy Fong’s used to be. Will let you know when I get to try it.
All in all, I’m grateful David Tran created Sriracha back in 1980!
But this story is a reminder that greed is a wild drug that can and will ruin all good things.
Question from Sara (Waco, Texas) – “Any volume hacks for meals? How do you add volume without adding many calories? Def curious about your hacks to make cereal more voluminous!!”
Answer: There is an index I’m putting together called the “CPG” which ranks foods based on their “calories per gram.”
This is super helpful because it gives a ranking of how much food volume you get per calorie.
Aka – how do you eat a lot of food for not a lot of calories?
Not going to dive into that now but let me know if that’s something you’d want to hear more about!
For this answer, I am going to use the cereal-specific question.
The cereal we know and love just is not very voluminous aka you get a lot of calories for not a lot of food.
It’s delicious! But not macro-friendly.
So how do I make it macro-friendly?
Puffed Cereal.
Not going to front like this stuff tastes like heaven, but it’s pretty much flavor-neutral and adds a nice crunch.
Similar to what any leafy greens do for a salad.
This gif shows you what 100 calories of each cereal looks like on the same plate.
The puffed cereal is at least 3 times as much volume.
So what I like to do is find that happy medium of getting the cereal flavor while also getting as many bites as I like aka more cereal volume.
I go with a 1:1 ratio:
30g Puffed Cereal
30g Cereal
So then I get the best of both worlds.
This bowl of cereal is literally 200 calories (without the milk). That’s wild for how much cereal it is.
Yes, would I love to just eat ALL the cereal?
Of course lol.
But is this a happy medium that I can live with and actually enjoy?
FA SHO.
Another thing I like to do in order to add protein to the cereal, is I do my frozen ice cream cookie dough technique that I share in this recipe.
Here’s the link to the recipe:
👉 https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cfr0o8JFEEe/
It’s incredible and I highly recommend it.
In the future, I’ll cover more savory ways on how I add volume to my meals!
Spoiler alert, how to make veggies taste amazing 🫡
In 2024, we have more macro-friendly options at the grocery store than ever before.
BUT 99% of them suck.
They are incredibly expensive AND taste like poop.
I dream of a world where the default for food is macro-friendly and delicious.
It’d solve literally so many of the health issues in this country.
So when I do find something that is truly amazing, I don’t want to gatekeep.
Enter Eat Counter.
Nope, this is not an ad.
But I can’t act surprised about how incredible these products are.
Early in 2022, I was asked to join the board of Eat Counter as a lead investor.
This was my first ever private investment in any company outside of my own.
That’s 10+ years of saying no to all other offers.
But I knew this was a massive need in the direction of making macro-friendly mainstream and accessible to all at affordable prices.
So my buddy Tom (who you probably know as Stealth Health Life) and I began helping to formulate truly game-changing macro-friendly options for the freezer section.
Macros of the Gods on each product.
The taste is incredible (actually baffling how good it is).
And it’s soooo damn easy to make (mindlessly convenient).
They are still small so not nationwide yet. But I’m lucky to live in Texas where we have a ton of stores that have these in stock.
Specifically, they are now in some Wal-Marts, a lot of Targets, and a few other grocery chains.
Here’s their store locator if you want to see if they have them in stock near you!
👉 https://eatcounter.com/pages/findstores
And that’s issue 22 of the Macro Friendly Kitchen in the bags!
Currently nursing a hangover because I went out last night to celebrate one of my best friends (Layne Norton) winning another national title for powerlifting.
He deadlifted 719lbs to win the title. Wild lol.
We are the worst at getting pics together but here’s a throwback to us in Australia.
Sending you all the good vibes for an amazing week ahead.
Much love and happy cooking,
Zach
I’ve spent the last 10 years showing you the how, now I want to teach you the why. Learn more about macro-friendly cooking, get recipes not seen anywhere else, and so much more when you join 71,557+ others by entering your email below!
