Hey Reader!

In the 14th edition of The MF Kitchen, you'll slice into the details of:

• Recipes for Meal Prep Freezer Breakfast Burritos and a Birthday Cake Batter Protein Ice Cream!
• Why the McDonald’s ice cream machine is always broken (I did the research and the answer is not what I expected)…
• How I use different types of flours in my recipes (and which ones you should DEFINITELY have in your kitchen)…
• Why I don’t expect you to be a drug dealer (it’ll make sense lol).

Preheat your ovens…

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Weekly Recipe Roundup 🍽️

Meal Prep Freezer Breakfast Burritos! I don't do many freezer meal prep-type recipes. But I know you want more of them so I'm dabbling! Today we have these Meal Prep Freezer Breakfast Burritos that are insanely good. Only 472 Calories with 47g of Protein! Makes 6 burritos that are ready in 3 minutes when you want to reheat them! Click below to download the recipe and make it easy yourself: ​Meal Prep Frozen Breakfast Burritos.pdf​

Birthday Cake Batter Protein Ice Cream! I'm a kitchen appliance snob. The only two I recommend every kitchen have are: an Air Fryer a Ninja Creami Literally, dinner and dessert... covered. LEGIT ice cream but with macros of the Gods! This whole pint is only 255 Calories with 36g of Protein! Click below to download the recipe and make it easy yourself: ​Birthday Cake Batter Protein Ice Cream.pdf​

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Zach's Beats 🎧

Me in 4th grade thinking I had swag knowing every word to this whole album lol. ​Chris Brown - Expanded Edition​

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Weird Food Fact 🤓

It's Not Just You 🍦

I spent FAR too long researching this so I hope you enjoy haha.

It has been estimated that anywhere from 10%-25% of McDonald's ice cream machines are NOT working at ANY given moment.

There is literally a website called https://mcbroken.com/ where it tracks in real time which locations ice cream makers are working or not 🤣 It does this by repeatedly placing orders for ice cream at various McDonald's locations to see if the order is accepted or if it is marked “currently unavailable.” What's more is that over 60% of McDonald's desserts rely on the ice cream machine. So why are McDonald's Ice Cream Machines always broken?

Two glaring problems:

#1 - The manufacturer of the machines.

Way back in the 1920s, Charles Taylor created the first-ever soft-serve ice cream machine.

In the 1940s came their partnership with McDonalds that lasted till 2017 (but most McDonalds in the US still use their machine).

The machine they made is unique to McDonald's so they have a monopoly on helping McDonald's fix the machines.

25% of their sales came from their technicians coming to fix the machines which is crazy!

But I don’t think this is the real reason why it’s always down...

#2 - The 4-5 hour cleaning procedure every single day.

This came from my research on previous McDonald's employees.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the process:

• It takes at least an hour to break down the machine to be cleaned.
• And then you do the pre-programmed cleaning setting (similar to a dishwasher), which takes 4 hours to complete.
• But if you happen to mess up the cleaning process, the machine will tell you an error at some point during the cleaning process.
• Thus you’d have to start the 4 hours over again.
• And if you didn’t know exactly why the error occurred (which a lot of time it’d say “unknown”), you’d be shit out of luck lol.

The two screenshots below from former employees outline this process super well.

It all makes sense now after all these years 😭

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One FAQ ❓

Question from Emma from San Diego, California) - “First off, big fan of these emails. Incredibly helpful even for someone like myself who's been tracking macros for a while! My question is, can you give a breakdown of which flours you keep in your kitchen and why you use each?"

Answer: Thank you Emma! The funny thing with these emails is that I have been doing this for over 12 years now and I am still learning so much on a daily basis.

These emails are just getting it all out of my brain in a way that can benefit both the beginner and someone like yourself who's been macro-friendly cooking for a while!

So let's break down each flour. I am going to list them in the order of importance aka how often I use them.

1) All Purpose Flour (must-have in the kitchen)

The name says it all. It's the goat of versatility. And this flour will act as the base for a lot of recipes. It's not the most macro-friendly of flours but I find ways to use minimum effective dose. I use it for sweet and savory recipes. Things like: cakes cookies muffins brownies pizzas chicken tender/nuggets mac & cheese It's #1 on my list for a reason!

2) Coconut Flour (must-have in the kitchen)

This one is like that friend who you LOVE but can only handle for short periods of time lol. A little bit goes a LONG way. I use coconut flour in tandem with all-purpose flour so I can lower the calories in a recipe. Because coconut flour is so absorbent, I can sub out about half the amount of flour I use in a recipe. For example, you might see me use only 12g of coconut flour in a recipe but that means I subbed out 48g of all-purpose flour to help improve the macros.

12g Coconut Flour = 51 calories
48g All Purpose Flour = 170 calories

But that doesn't mean sub out all the all-purpose flour.

The balance is key because too much coconut flour leads to a dryer than the Sahara end product.

3) Self Rising Flour (not a must-have)

You'll see me use self-rising flour sometimes in recipes only for convenience. It's mainly in my FDL Pizza recipe just because it saves me having to add two more extra ingredients. Aka self-rising flour is simply all-purpose flour with added baking powder and salt. You can make your all-purpose flour into self-rising like this: Per 1 cup of all-purpose flour, add 6g of baking powder, and add 1.5g of salt.

4) Oat Flour (potential must-have)

All of us pretty much have oats in our kitchen so that's why this is a “potential must-have.” You can make it by simply blending up oats. Super simple. I like to use it as an all-purpose flour substitute in sweet recipes that I want to have that 'oatmeal' vibe. The cool part is that it's more absorbent than all-purpose flour so you don't have to use as much.

Plus it holds moisture really well aka it doesn't dry out easily.

So I like oats as a gluten-free substitute for all-purpose flour.

I know there are other gluten-free flours but I never use them so I can't really comment on their effectiveness.

5) Almond Flour (not a must-have)

Almond flour is super duper dense. It's not great for baking just because it's such a heavy style of flour. It's been made popular by the 'low-carb' community but it's super high in fat. And because 1g fat = 9 calories, it's the highest calorie per g flour I have in my kitchen. Carbs get a bad wrap but they are only 4 calories per gram aka 2 for 1 calories in comparison to fats.

I really only use almond flour in cookie or cookie dough style recipes because it does give the cookies a nice richness of flavor.

A little bit goes a long way.

So yes I think you should try it sometime but don't buy a massive bag haha.

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And that's all the flour I have in my kitchen!

I keep it simple for the most part!

I hate having excess ingredients that I never use and take up space.

Hope this list helped!

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Serving Surprise 😮

My Seasonings & Spices Dealer

Unless you are a drug dealer, you'll want to read this.

I am not a fan of measuring cups.

But I am a fan of measuring spoons.

Why?

In measuring cup sets, the smallest is usually the 1/8th cup.

That's about 15g.

Your food scale can do a much better job of tracking that accurately.

Now comes the drug dealer...

Drugs are potent. They need to be measured with the utmost precision.

To measure ingredients in the 0-2g level, you'd need a drug dealer-type scale to get it that precise.

And seasonings and spices are easy to overdo so you don't want to add too much.

So I love measuring spoons because they can measure ingredients on a much smaller scale without needing a 'drug dealer-type' scale.

I got mine for $8 off Amazon and I highly recommend it!

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As I am about to send this out, I am currently nursing a pretty solid hangover lol.

Saw one of my good buddies get married yesterday and we got after it.

Annoyed because I didn’t take any pictures besides this plate of food haha.

But the memories made were abundant so I can’t complain.

Memories are really all we are left with in the end. They are the ultimate form of wealth.

Anyways, I am going to nurse this hangover and I hope you've had an amazing weekend thus far!

Sending you good vibes for this week ahead,
​Zach

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