Simple Shifts Podcast: Girl Dinner

In this episode of Simple Shifts: Conversations on Food, Life, Weight and Mindset, Martha and Peter discuss the concept of ‘girl dinner’—a trend that emphasizes easy, minimal-effort meals. They explore the bio-psycho-social model of well-being, the cultural context of simple meals, and practical ideas for assembling quick, nutritious plates. The conversation highlights the importance of mindful eating and portion control while also reflecting on food trends and the cyclical nature of eating habits.

Key Takeaways

Change is good and can lead to new explorations.

We are bio-psycho-social beings, influencing our well-being.

‘Girl dinner’ is a trend emphasizing minimal-effort meals.

Cultural practices like tapas and mezza reflect similar concepts.

Easy meals can be nutritious and satisfying.

Portion control is important for mindful eating.

Food trends often recycle old ideas with new names.

Comfort food preferences can differ by gender.

Assembling meals can be a fun and creative process.

Listening to our bodies is key to healthy eating.

Girl Dinner Podcast

Video Transcript

Martha McKinnon (00:00)
Hi, welcome to Simple Shifts, conversations to fuel your body, mind and soul. I’m Martha McKinnon from the blog Simple Nourished Living and this is my brother and partner Peter.

Hi, how’s it going?

Peter Morrison (00:17)
Hi. It’s going pretty good. How’s everything going with you?

Martha McKinnon (00:19)
Everything’s going really really well. As people who are paying attention may notice that we’ve changed our tagline because I couldn’t… Well, it was time for a change.

Peter Morrison (00:21)
Change is good.

Martha McKinnon (00:27)
Yeah. So that’s kind of exciting for me because it just rolls out. We’re going to explore all the ways that we can fuel our bodies.

Peter Morrison (00:30)
Well that doesn’t sound like it rolls right off your tongue. Biosocos…bio…psycho…social? I guess once you’re used to it but…

Martha McKinnon (00:42)
Everything’s going really, well. We’re going to explore all the ways that we can fuel our body, mind and soul since I believe that we’re bio-psycho-social beings. We’re not just a body, we’re not just a mind.

Peter Morrison (00:59)
Bio-biopsychosocial?

Martha McKinnon (01:05)
We’re a bio-psycho-social being. What does that mean to you?

Peter Morrison (01:13)
What does that mean to you? Biopsycho.

Well, bio is your body or biology, psycho is your head, your mind, and social is your interaction with the community.

Martha McKinnon (01:26)
Yeah, and all of those, would you think, I believe that all of those influence our overall well-being.

Peter Morrison (01:31)
So equally or like 33 % each?

Martha McKinnon (01:36)
Well now you’re getting way too technical. I don’t know. You would say the mind is way more powerful than those other two aspects.

Peter Morrison (01:46)
I would say psycho is way more and biology is way more.

Martha McKinnon (01:53)
Yeah, I would agree with that. Especially coming off, I just came off an amazing weekend workshop with Dr. Joe Dispenza. Do you know that name?

Peter Morrison (02:06)
Not deeply, no. I’ve heard it, but I don’t know much.

Martha McKinnon (02:04)
No, well he’s a researcher, he’s been around for 40 years, he’s a researcher in the whole mind-body space. He’s done a lot of research around, his real interest is around spontaneous healing. And so he’s done a lot of research on mind-body and he would agree with you that the mind is really much more powerful than we realize and probably a bigger contributor if you think of biopsychosocial.

Peter Morrison (02:35)
Because with the social, you could choose to interact or you could withdraw and be really solitary or alone. So you have much more control over the social aspect, I think.

Martha McKinnon (02:43)
Yeah, well, but there’s a lot being talked about in terms of loneliness and its negative effects on our overall health and wellbeing so that our connections, our environment, our social support can really impact our overall wellbeing. yeah, for sure. So today we’re gonna talk about girl dinner. Have you heard of girl dinner?

Peter Morrison (03:06)
I have not.

Martha McKinnon (03:12)
You have not, I hadn’t heard of it either. And it makes me feel sometimes like I just live in an alternate bubble because it came up, the term came up in a live stream that I was watching and it automatically just caught my attention and I had to go out and research it. And it’s, it’s a phenomenon that’s been around under those words, girl dinner for like two or three years.

Peter Morrison (03:40)
Okay.

Martha McKinnon (03:42)
And it took fire in the world of TikTok where, you know, a woman shared her, her plate of food, which was essentially just us, you know, as sort of the snack items she was planning to eat for dinner. And it just took on a life of its own. And it’s, you know, it’s, it’s got a huge sort of following on Tik Tok where, know, like millions and millions and millions of views. There have been articles written by nutritionists. It was written up in the, in the New York times. It just took on this whole life of its own.

Martha McKinnon (04:11)
I thought it really had applications in relation to what we talk a lot about here because we get a lot of input, you we share recipes and a lot of cooking and meal prep, you know, for that’s designed to be healthy, you know, and Weight Watchers friendly on Simple Nourished Living. And we get a lot of comments and feedback from folks who say, I don’t want to cook. I’m too tired to cook.

How can I feed myself? How can I nourish myself with minimum effort? And this girl dinner really plays into that, solving that problem. Because it’s basically just opening your fridge, opening your pantry, coming up with various components and putting them on your plate and calling it dinner. And redefining what we think of as dinner and as a meal. It doesn’t have to be as complicated I think as we sometimes make it out to be.

So there’s been a lot of talk about it because when you think about it, that terminology, I mean, I think we’ve all know what that means in our life without calling it girl dinner. Have you ever had the night where you just sort of open up the fridge and pull out the leftovers and assemble it on the plate? Or, you decide to have cereal for dinner or you decide that cheese and crackers and some grapes will be just fine because you’ve had a big lunch, you know, and so.

Peter Morrison (05:31)
Right, right.

Martha McKinnon (05:43)
And there’s other cultures too like tapas, the small plates in the Spanish culture, know, chichetti in the Italian culture, mezza in the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern culture. So it’s existed for a long time without necessarily being called, you know, Plowman’s lunch, which is big in pubs, you know, in the British Isles. So, but I thought it was really, it would be interesting in another way for our readers to think about a way to feed themselves.

But I thought it would be interesting in another way for our readers to think about a way to feed themselves. So if you were going to put together a snack plate for yourself, what might you put on a plate?

Peter Morrison (05:58)
It makes me think of those, what are they, Snackables or Lunchables or something that.

Martha McKinnon (06:10)
Right, exactly. So there’s sort of like a more adult version of Lunchables.

Peter Morrison (06:42)
Well, what would I put on? Well, I like protein, so I would see if I had any ham or prosciutto or even chicken breast, you know, can slice up into small pieces. Probably would include cheese. I love cheese. Dried fruit, maybe.

Martha McKinnon (06:51)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Peter Morrison (07:12)
Nuts. I think nuts would be included.

Martha McKinnon (07:15)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Morrison (07:16)
A dip of some kind, whether it be hummus or like a yogurt based tzatziki.

Martha McKinnon (07:26)
Yeah, so you can really mix and match. if we just started to listen, I think what would be fun to list in the in the notes for this episode is just all the things that you might include, right? On a lunchable plate on a a girl dinner plate. So I mean, cracker, right? Any type something something carby like crackers or breadsticks, bread, you know, on and on in the nuts like you said any type of nuts, roasted nuts, salted nuts, unsalted nuts, mixed nuts, chickpeas would be fun like the those crispy chickpeas would be sort of a fun crunchy item.

Peter Morrison (08:01)
So it’s not necessarily on it’s not necessarily. What am I trying to say? It’s not food that’s not cooked.

Martha McKinnon (08:20)
No, I don’t think necessarily. think what it’s really demonstrating is just something very, very easy that can be just pulled together. So it could be warm and it could be, you it might, you know, it could be something you microwave in a minute, right? If like leftovers, I think, I mean, when I think of it and when I think of the ways that it’s showing up, it’s just, I think it’s demonstrating and it’s sort of, it’s demonstrating maybe the reality of life sometimes in that sometimes I think there’s so much out there that suggests in the world of food magazines, cooking magazines, cooking shows that involve just a lot of work, a lot of effort.

Martha McKinnon (08:49)
And sometimes we’re just tired at the end of the day and we want something just really quick. So it’s almost like sort of just a realistic approach, I think, to eating and feeding ourselves. So don’t think it has to be necessarily cold. It could be your leftovers, I think, from lunch that you warm up and arrange on a plate.

Peter Morrison (09:30)
So I did type girl dinner into Google and of course AI, the AI, it has the results, which is basically how you described it. And then for examples, it lists a meat and cheese snack pack, fruity jam, pickles, a big bowl of cereal, avocado, cucumbers, goat cheese, pepitas, chicken salad, egg salad, lettuce cups.

Martha McKinnon (09:51)
Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (10:01)
Right? And that’s pretty easy, right? You just gotta grape tomatoes with some, some of those little mozzarella balls. You don’t even have to get out a knife at that point. Or if you’re really feeling it, you know, you can slice up your tomato and slice up your mozzarella for sure.

Peter Morrison (10:01)
Sliced tomato, mozzarella, which I love like the caprese salad.

Peter Morrison (10:20)
And some of those mozzarella balls come already seasoned with Italian seasoning, but you know, a drizzle of olive oil, vinegar, pesto would be nice. Also it lists, for an example, peanut butter, butter and banana sandwiches.

Martha McKinnon (10:20)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right.

Peter Morrison (10:42)
So I think you did a fruit wrap, like think it was quite a while ago, like a peanut butter, banana, strawberry fruit wrap. Like you could slice it up. Pinwheels.

Martha McKinnon (10:44)
And the other thing I thought of is like back in the old days, I know, mean, lettuce wraps are great, but also, you know, when you take the wrap or the tortilla and put in your, you know, your meat, your cheese, your veg, roll it up and then slice it like pinwheels, you know, and arrange it on a little plate. Again, that’s going to be like a five minute, a five minute girl dinner, you know, that can be really, really satisfying. The girl dinner thing is an interesting phenomenon too, because obviously it’s not just for girls.

Our mindless eating deep dive into the books did suggest that comfort food for women tended to run along the less easier, less work kinds of foods seemed more comforting to women than to men who sometimes think of more involved, complicated, fully cooked meals as their types of comfort food. So the whole concept of girl dinner does follow in line with what we learned from Mindless Eating.

Peter Morrison (11:40)
Mm-hmm

Martha McKinnon (11:43)
So what else could we put on it? mean, so yeah, having chicken salad, having hard boiled eggs, deviled eggs, lunch meat in the fridge, having, you know, chopped vegetables ready to go, baby carrots, celery sticks, fresh fruit, dried fruit, know, grapes, berries. It makes me think of the way that Revan and Tim, my daughter-in-law and her husband feed their kids a lot because you know James is eight years old and there’s so many foods that he doesn’t like, but they can always put together sort of a balanced meal because he loves fruit, you know, and he loves cheese and he loves crackers. So often his meal will be a little bit of butter noodles with, you know, strawberries and a little bit of chicken or something. So there’s just all different ways to put together a plate that’s going to meet your requirements for nourishing yourself. It’s kind of a fun concept, I think.

Peter Morrison (12:41)
It’s a very fun concept. My one question or a question, I guess, from a Weight Watchers or weight management perspective, is it is it dangerous to you to sort of put food out on a sort of a charcuterie board type?

Martha Mckinnon (13:12)
I would definitely, I mean if I were doing it myself, I would definitely want to portion it on a plate. So it would be like just on a single plate. I definitely have problems if I’m at a party and there’s like our sister Brenda does the most gorgeous charcuterie boards and they’re often huge and varied and that sitting in front of that like and all you can eat buffet a smorgasbord of choices would be dangerous for me.

Peter Morrison (13:28)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (13:34)
I think what’s most often pictured on TikTok in these places is just the single serve plate where you would arrange it on your plate. The two or three slices of turkey roll and your little tomato mozzarella and you would just arrange it on a plate for yourself and that way then you’ve perfectly portion controlled it out for you.

Peter Morrison (13:52)
I see, okay.

Martha McKinnon (14:02)
I’d make the plate, put everything away, sit down and have my meal. Of course, if you’re still hungry, you know, like we learned from mindless eating, maybe wait five, 10 minutes to see if you really are still hungry before diving back into the fridge or pantry. But yes, I would definitely put it on a, you know, a single serve plate from a portion control standpoint.

Peter Morrison (14:29)
Right, was thinking, I’ve seen this before, I don’t know if it’s Hungry Girl, probably Hungry Girl, but like a cold cut ham or turkey around like a mozzarella cheese stick. And you could slice that up to kind of pinwheel style and have little protein packs.

Martha McKinnon (14:42)
Yeah, so it makes it fun. It makes it pretty, you know, when you sit down to enjoy it. You know, could wrap the cold cuts around a dill pickle, a a spear too. Yeah, so lots of, when you start to just think about fun, fun ways to just kind of mix and match and put all these little foods together. And there’s hot, like, if you are curious, if you just, again, Google it, there’s lots of photos, lots of images to give yourself ideas.

Peter Morrison (14:54)
Mm.

Martha McKinnon (15:12)
You know, you mentioned the dips. I mean I could imagine myself taking it in theMexican direction with, you know, portioning out my serving of tortilla chips, you know, with a bean dip, with some guacamole, with some salsa, you know, maybe with some cheese and just sort of taking it in that direction. And again, making it just a fun, easy way to get the flavors of Mexican food without having to do a lot of work.

Peter Morrison (15:4)
Mm hmm. Yeah, there’s so many different hummuses, flavored hummuses. And there’s also, I don’t know what would like the like the almond based. I don’t know what the brand is. There’s like an almond based hummus kind of I guess it wouldn’t be hummus then.

Martha McKinnon (15:41)
I know, right? But lots of different, like, nut spreads, seeds, spreads, dips, you know. And when you start to explore, like we’re saying, what’s available on the grocery shelves, those kinds of items just keep getting more and more expansive.

Martha McKinnon (16:12)
So, girl dinner, there you have it. I mean, I think it’s just a great way for those of us who want to minimize our time in the kitchen to consider getting dinner on the table.

Martha McKinnon (16:28)
Yeah. So if our readers have had experience with this, if this is something they like to do, I know when I was doing some research around it, people say that’s been around forever. You know, my family called it clean out the fridge night. My family called it smorgasbord instead of clean out the fridge night. You know, there’s a lot of us who probably have been doing it and not, you know, not naming it that, not picking up on the, you know, the latest trend, which sometimes often is just renaming something, something old becomes new.

Peter Morrison (16:31)
An interesting idea, who knew?

Martha McKinnon (16:58)
With a name change.

Peter Morrison (17:03)
Well, it makes me think of like the whole sheet pan dinner phenomenon. And you’re like, well, mom’s been doing sheet pan sausage and peppers, you know, for since the seventies or whatever. So. Right.

Martha McKinnon (17:07)
Right. We just didn’t call it a sheet pan meal, right? Yeah. So a lot of these, a lot of these, I don’t know, dishes or ways of eating just get renamed and then take on a new life. know, cottage cheese is another example of a food that seems to have become just like it’s become repopularized in our world of wanting to eat more protein and watch our carbs.

I mean, cottage cheese was like a standard diet plate offering back in the 70s that then I guess people sort of forgot about. Now my gosh there’s you know how many different ways are we figuring out to make things without a cottage cheese now because it’s now it’s become it’s become trendy again. So it’s fun to kind of watch. You know you’re getting old when you can recognize the repeats right it’s like I lived through that already and now I’m seeing it come back

Martha McKinnon (18:07)
Alright, so if any you have other ideas, we’d love for you to share in the comments regarding your thoughts around girl dinner. And we’ll be back soon with another episode.

Peter Morrison (18:10)
Awesome.

Martha McKinnon (18:23)
Take care, bye bye.

Peter Morrison (18:25)
Have a great day everyone.