Episode 160: Meal Planning for People Who Hate Meal Planning
Introduction
Hello. Welcome back to the show. You’re listening to episode 160 of Live Free Creative podcast, Meal Planning For People Who Hate Meal Planning. I’m excited to share some tips, ideas, and some solutions to some of those meal planning problems many of you may have experienced.
I have to tell you that I am recording this episode (as well as last week’s show) from Costa Rica.
When you listen to this, if you listen, first thing, Thursday morning, when it releases, I will have probably just arrived home. It’s been a fantastic ten-day celebration of our 15th anniversary in paradise. So wonderful. I’m so happy to be here and happy to have the chance to bring the podcast along and to record on the fly.
Sponsor: Golden Coil Planner
The other day, I woke up early, right around the time the sun was rising and I walked down from our hotel room to the beach, just about a three-minute walk. I sat on kind of an old log that was hanging out underneath the palm trees and watched some early morning surfers catching these incredible waves that were breaking just off the shore, this cliff up behind them. Just a gorgeous, inspirational way to start the day. And of course I had brought with me, my trustee Golden Coil planner.
This episode is brought to you by Golden Coil. And I’m so happy to be partnering with them again this year to share about their incredible product. Golden Coil is a planner company. That’s totally customizable pages so that you can slide in tracking pages that you need. Depending on what you do for work, you may want to include financing or expenses pages.
You may include some meal planning pages. We’ll talk about that a little bit more in this episode. You can include a mood tracker or habit trackers for different types of daily habits that you’re forming.
I love there’s also a bunch of creative entrepreneurial pages for a storyboarding if you like to create videos, or if you’re someone who works with companies in any way, there’s like partnership pages where you can create some of those plans. The actual planning part more than the scheduling.
I think we think about planners as like where we write down our schedules. It’s the big kind of capital P “Planning” that I really love using my Golden Coil. When I can pull out some note pages sitting on the beach and look out over the waves and into the horizon and ask myself the question, “What is going really well?”
“What are the things that I’m really appreciating in my day-to-day life or in my business or in my family?”
And of course, when you’re sitting on the beach in Costa Rica, you can think of a lot of things quite easily.
I also have a chance to sit down and write down, ask myself what are some things that I want to work on, or that I’m focused on right now?
Where do I want to give my attention and my time?
I also am revamping a program right now that will be ready soon. The doors will be open for you to register for the program sometime next month. Right now I’m finessing some of those details. And it was really fun to have just the wide open space in an early morning to flip open to a note page in my Golden Coil and to write down some of the ideas that I have for how to guide people through the process and the pathway that I’m hoping to teach them about. I planned the ways that I can be as clear and concise and efficient and effective as possible as a teacher and a coach and a guide through my program.
I love keeping all of this stuff in one place. And my Golden Coil is the place that I keep it.
It’s been the place for the last five years, maybe six years now that I can dream big and then page by page, turn those dreams into reality. Into actionable steps where I actually move forward with them and I’m able to bring them to life.
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Segment: Life Lately
I want to start today’s episode with a little life lately. And by asking you for a little favor.
Applying to Graduate School
Other than spending my anniversary in Costa Rica, one big exciting thing happening in my life lately is that a few months ago I made the big decision to apply for a master’s degree for this coming year. If accepted to the program, I will begin in September of 2022. And right now I’m in the process of finishing my essay and my resume.
I’ve already asked my letters of recommendation. Recommenders to send in their letters. And I know one at least has already been submitted the other two or are in process. It’s all very fun. It’s very exciting. And I’ll be honest. It’s a little bit nerve wracking. I have toyed with the idea of graduate school ever since I got my nursing degree, I have a Bachelor’s Degree of Science in Nursing, along with my Registered Nurse License that I got way back in 2008.
Even then as I was going through school, I loved school. I love learning. And I had considered a few different degrees that I might want to go back and get later on. And then as I had more children and got involved in running my life, as well as my business, I had kind of put that on the back burner until about a year ago.
I stumbled across a degree called a Master’s of Applied Positive Psychology. I heard about the term first in a book called The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor, who has a PhD doctor of Positive Psychology. And it was the first time that I had kind of put together that this was an entire field of study.
That self-development, as I have been learning about it and teaching it for many years, has a science to it. And that there’s something beyond just good advice and positive thinking. There are specific research and evidence that goes into what contributes to human happiness and flourishing, and how can those things be optimized in order for someone to live their best life, you know, “living their best life”.
I have a good friend who is currently in a positive psychology and religion program. And as I saw her get started, I recognized the feeling that I wanted to do a program as well, that this was a master’s degree that I wanted to pursue. That I want to learn about these things and become even more of an expert in the field of wellbeing so that I can continue to share ideas for living a creative, adventurous, and intentional lifestyle.
All of those things, I believe, are pieces of this human flourishing. So I chose a program that’s nearby. It’s at U Penn in Philadelphia. It’s kind of a cool program designed for professionals. So you’re only on campus one weekend, a month. And the rest of the time you’re doing online studies. And if I am accepted, I believe it will fit really well into my lifestyle.
And I’m like giddy thinking about it. It was funny because I found the program decided I wanted to apply for it and got really excited about it. And then I realized: it’s not like a sign up thing. I don’t just register. I’m actually applying and there’s a chance that I won’t get in. And I had to kind of come to terms with that as well that I’m going to put forth my best effort and the best application that I can and try to, you know, showcase why I would be a good candidate for this program.
It’s a pretty competitive program to get into and, you know, the, my best is all I can do. So just like I’ve told you many times before in different episodes over the last several years, you can only do what is in your control to do. And sometimes you have to leave the rest in someone else’s hands. So what I can do is fill out the application, write a great essay, submit my resume, pay the application fee, and then keep my fingers crossed.
Now all of this exciting new. Is also accompanied by a little favor that I would love to ask of you podcast listeners, especially those of you who have listened for a while, or for whom this show is part of your weekly routine, part of your lifestyle and something that you would consider having benefited from.
A Little Favor, Please
When I mentioned a couple of weeks ago on Instagram that I was getting ready to apply for this program. I had someone comment and say, Hey, could we, as your podcast listeners write a letter of recommendation for you, like a joint letter of recommendation. And I kind of chuckled and thought, oh, that’s so sweet.
I love that idea. And of course I’m have to ask like individual people to submit my latest recommendation as I’ve been working on my essay. However, it has occurred to me how it really was quite helpful to have some specific reviews from members of the podcast community, or if you’ve read my book and you really enjoyed my book to have some, almost like case studies of how the work that I’m already doing in the field of self-development and intentional living is benefiting people now.
Because a piece of my essay is explaining to the admissions board how getting this degree and furthering my education in the field of positive psychology will impact my career. And I’m trying to explain what my career is right now and how I already am teaching and sharing ideas and inspiration for living a more intentional fulfilled life.
And I think including some of your examples and some of your stories could be really powerful, not only would it be heartwarming and feel really fun for me to read through how this podcast has affected your life over the last several years or how my book has touched you and influenced you, but also that I may be able to turn around some of those and share some specific examples in my essay so that the admissions committee (who has no idea who I am from, you know, anyone else) will maybe be able to get a little bit of a feel for the work that I’m doing. The work that I will continue to do in the future.
So that said, my favor to ask is this, if you feel so inclined and would be interested in helping me in this way, I would love for you to a either leave a written review on iTunes. I would say, just email me and you can, of course just email me, but I feel like these things are. Are like what would be perfect review fodder.
So you can either email me miranda@livefreecreative.co or leave a written review on iTunes about how the podcast specifically has helped you or influenced you to live more intentionally or more happily, or to feel more engaged in your life or your relationships.
You can use an example of a specific episode that’s been touching, or just generally the show as a whole.
I also would love to invite you if you’ve read my book and you felt like it is something that you’ve continued to think about, or it’s impacted you in any way that you leave that review on Amazon.
And again, you can email me the review. You can leave it on Amazon. And I’m going to just this week, I am planning on sending in my resume before Thanksgiving. So I have about a week and a half to finish it up.
So, I’ll keep checking back in for new reviews. But if somehow this week, or this weekend, you could leave a review in one of those two places, or send me an email acknowledging or explaining, or just sharing a quick story about how some of the work that I’ve done has been impactful for you, I would be eternally grateful.
And thank you so much for your support and for continuing to be part of this community and listen to the show and read the book and engage with the work that I create in a way that is beneficial. So that my friends is life lately. And my favor. Thank you so much in advance, to those of you who are going to go and write a new review in one of those places, or send me an email. And now let’s get talking about meal planning.
Meal Planning For People Who Hate It
I know I have talked about meal planning before I’ve written about it on my blog for years. Over five years. And I have a whole online course dedicated to the topic of meal planning, Seven Days, Seven Dinners. It’s a $17 course with seven lessons that walks you through this process, along with videos and audio and worksheets.
Today’s show is going to be similar and different. I want to talk about meal planning and of course I love the Minimal Meal Planning method that I’ve used before, but I want to talk about it in a new way today. I’m going to talk about four specific obstacles that I think people face when it comes to getting dinner on the table.
Specifically dinner, right? We have to eat breakfast and lunch, or most of us do for whatever reason, dinner tends to be the sticking point. It’s kind of witching hour. If you have young kids at home, it’s after you finished a whole day of other things and it, you know, rolls around every 24 hours.
Dinnertime Is Stressful
I think that it’s fairly universal, this feeling that dinnertime can be a little bit stressful for the person in charge of coming up with the, with the meal, shopping for the meal, planning the meal, making the meal, putting the meal on the table, cleaning up for the meal.
I think universally. Maybe there’s a few of you out there listening who say, oh no, this doesn’t cause any friction at all for me in my life. I’d say the majority of people listening are women and the majority of people listening whether you’re feeding yourself or a family, it’s something that just tends to kind of nag at us if we don’t have a good system.
Now, about eight years ago, I felt so overwhelmed by dinnertime that I decided I needed to simplify. And then I took the simplified plan and I simplified it even further. And then I simplified it even further. And that is what became the Minimal Meal Plan that I’ll explain a little bit more in detail or I’ll link in the show notes a whole episode about it specifically, but why did I get overwhelmed?
What were the obstacles that I was facing? What are some of the obstacles that you face when it comes to your meal planning method or to feeding your family or yourself dinner every day, here are four that I have come up with, and I’m curious if they resonate for you like they do for me.
Four Reasons We Don’t Like Meal Planning
1. We Don’t Like To Cook
Why don’t we like meal planning number one, because we don’t really like to cook or because we lack the skill necessary to create the type of food that we want to eat. Does that resonate for you? You just don’t really feel like cooking or you don’t feel like you’re very good at it.
2. Time
Number two. Time time is a huge obstacle when it comes to doing something repeatedly every single day. Not only the time to make the food, which like I mentioned earlier, tends to happen at a difficult time of day. Especially if you have kids at home that kind of witching hour, when everyone’s hungry, everyone’s tired. Everyone’s sort of like, downhill into bedtime. And yet there’s this big hump of getting through dinnertime.
We also have the time that it takes to think about the meals to plan the meals and to shop for the groceries that is required to make the meals. So time tends to be a big obstacle for people when it comes to dinnertime.
Is time one of your obstacles? Is that one of the reasons that you feel stressed out around dinner?
3. Decision Making
Number three is decision making. Making choices can be in and of itself stressful. There is a very real phenomenon called decision fatigue that I’ve talked about before on the show you may be familiar with that are, it takes our brain a lot of energy to make decisions. And we make so many every day.
There’s a point at which. The decisions that we make deteriorate our ability to then use good judgment. That’s called decision fatigue, that we sort of run out of our ability to make choices. And at that point you feel stressed out. You might feel overwhelmed. You might feel ambivalent.
I don’t really care what anyone eats for dinner. I just can’t choose another thing. Dinnertime happens to be right towards the end of the day, that if you don’t have a plan, you probably aren’t going to feel really excited and creative at five or six at night. Usually if you don’t have a plan, decision fatigue sets in and dinnertime feels pretty overwhelming.
4. Pleasing People (Picky Eaters)
Number four, the obstacle of trying to please everyone involved. If you have kids. I hear a lot from moms who say, I really like the idea of a minimum meal plan, but my kids are really picky. I don’t know what they would eat. Or trying to please a spouse or a partner. “My partner likes variety, and so it’d be really hard for me to repeat meals because he or she always wants to eat something different.” Is this an obstacle for you is trying to please the people around the dinner table with the meal itself?
Which of those obstacles resonates for you?
Between those four, I would guess that at least two or three of them resonate for you. I know that at some point in my life, all four of those have been an issue and been, something that’s been difficult. These have been obstacles to overcome, to enjoy and feel ease around the idea of meal planning.
So in this episode, I want to address each of those and how a minimal meal plan or a simplified and edited meal plan can help you overcome that obstacle and bring the ease and enjoyment back in to a family dinner time.
How Minimal Meal Planning Creates Solutions
The first obstacle I mentioned is that we don’t like to cook, or we don’t have the skill required. The solution that I propose within the minimum meal plan is that you brainstorm the meals that you like, that you want to try, that fit your skill level already, or that you feel really comfortable making.
Now maybe you don’t like to cook at all. Great! With a simplified minimum meal plan– and let me just quickly define for those of you who aren’t familiar with the minimal meal plan that I designed several years ago, the idea is that you choose seven meals, seven dinners, and one for each day of the week, and that you repeat them every week for the season.
Over the last couple years, I’ve modified this a little bit because there’s a few people who feel more comfortable with two weeks in. Great. I mean, it’s your meal plan? Right? So in my family choose seven meals and we repeat them week over week for the entire season. For three months long.
This way we eat seasonally, we’re able to know exactly what we’re making. I don’t ever ask myself what to have for dinner. I just look at my chart and say, This is what’s for dinner tonight. And I already know the groceries are in the pantry and in the fridge because I have one grocery list that I shopped from for the whole season.
So it’s phenomenal. I love it. And it really helps solve this problem of not liking to cook or not having the skill level to cook well, because you choose the meals that fit really well with, you know, things you, that you don’t mind cooking or that aren’t difficult, or that you feel like you can work on.
Solution for Skill: When you repeat the same meals, you learn to cook them well
After one week or two weeks or three weeks making the same things, you develop this. After just a couple of weeks, you know how to make those meals, like the back of your hand and all of the stress of how to make it or how much time it might take dissipates because of the repetition, because as you do it over and over again, you get better at it and you, you understand it.
And this is actually partly how I feel like I’ve learned to cook well, because when I decided to start repeating meals, I got really good making specific meals and then the next season would roll around and I’d have new meals to make, but I get really good at making them and then new meals to make, and I get really good at making them.
So while it’s very repetitive in the season itself, that repetition helps you develop the skill level and helps you feel at ease. Even if you don’t love to cook, it becomes semi-mindless because you’re not having to think about a new step, because it’s the same thing that you made last Tuesday.
You just make it. And that feels fairly easy.
And here’s the other thing, there’s nothing in the minimum meal plan or in meal planning generally that says that every single one of these meals needs to be made from scratch or that every single one of your chosen meals needs to be something that you’re actually in the kitchen cooking the meal plan.
Just means that you’re making the decision ahead of time, the rather than waiting and stressing about the decision at the moment that people are hungry, that you’ve decided in my case once for an entire three-month period, what you’re having for dinner on Wednesday nights. And so every time Wednesday rolls around, you don’t have to make that decision anymore. All of that ease comes back in.
There are no meal police. Do what works for your family.
Wednesday is one of my busier days of the week. I do coaching calls all day on Wednesdays. And so I’m usually working at my office until right before dinner time. Definitely after school time, Dave picks up the kids on Wednesdays.
I’m at my office and I come home. I walk in the door about the time that we normally eat dinner, recognizing that, and I’m going to get to this, this will roll into the next one and to time, but recognizing that we made the decision as a family, that Wednesday nights, we’re going to be burger and fries nights from a local takeout place.
So I would drive through it’s called Cookout. It’s like a Southern in-and-out. Basically I would drive through Cookout on my way home and bring home burgers and fries. So every Wednesday we had burgers and fries, it was planned. I didn’t feel guilty about it. I didn’t feel like, oh no, we’re, I’m just driving through again. I’m such a failure.
I felt like this is so great that we’ve planned a meal that accommodates our schedule, that accommodates our family and that works well for us. I don’t have to think about it. I can just go through the motions and everyone’s hungry and happy and satisfied. So you can see how you can plan whatever works for your family.
There’s no like meal police. No one is going to come and say that you’re doing it wrong.
Of course you want to consider general healthy eating principles. Overall as you’re formulating your family’s meal plan and it’s okay to get takeout. It’s okay to use frozen dinners. Sometimes it’s okay to accommodate your schedule and your family in a way that makes you feel less stressed and more fulfilled. That’s what we’re going for. That example of Wednesday night burger nights actually rolls really nicely into the number two solution. So the number two obstacle was time.
Solution for Time: Consider Your Schedule As You Plan
The number two solution is to consider your schedule as you’re planning your meals. A lot of times I’ve seen meal planning that looks like choosing recipes and plugging them into the calendar so that you’re not repeating meals without a lot of consideration for what your day to day life actually looks like. Without recognizing that I’m not going to have time to make 45-minute enchiladas after I get home from work on Wednesday, because I walk in the door when everyone’s hungry, I’m going to need to have something that’s quicker. That’s make ahead.
Really considering your own time and schedule is essential in meal planning. More than the meals themselves, considering how you’re going to work them into the schedule that your family keeps. You want to be realistic with this as well.
I did a call, a webinar of sorts, kind of a live workshop about fall meal planning a few weeks ago. And one of the women on the call mentioned in the chat that one of her daughters has a lesson. And so they’re often going to lessons during dinnertime, like they’re in the car or they’re on their way. And I mentioned maybe it would be a good idea to plan an in the car dinner. Whether it’s driving through and having that be your one day a week that you do that, or whether it’s planning and actually packing like a lunchbox that rather than feeling guilty about it, or feeling frustrated about it, they, you say, oh, tonight’s a car meal night, so we gotta make sure that we have our car meals ready to go.
And that becomes part of your plan. You’re planning realistically for the schedule that your family.
I think a lot of times the frustration with the timing and the timing of dinner comes when we’re trying to fit our ideal kind of an idealistic view of what we think we should be able to do.
We try to fit into the box of what is actually realistic for our lives and recognize that, you know, it’s not fitting quite right. It’s kind of like the ugly stepsisters foot and Cinderella’s glass slipper. And we really, really want it to fit. We really want it to, but it just doesn’t and it’s okay to take a deep breath and say at this stage or season of my life, this isn’t going to work or I’m going to be really thoughtful about the time that I actually have and not be upset that I don’t fit into that box.
I’m going to create a box and build a box that fits what will feel easy and fulfilling in my own life. That’s a good way to kind of work backwards with the time obstacle.
Solution for Decision Fatigue: Decide Less and Ahead
Number three is decision fatigue. This is something that is really easily overcome with a minimum meal plan because you make the decision ahead of time, and then you just go with it for awhile. And it’s really, really nice.
So some examples that I would give you for decision fatigue are to choose meals on days based on your schedule, choose meals with your family and mind, or maybe include your family in the decision making process. I’ll talk more about that in a second. You can have a flex plan as well. Like maybe if you’re you have like an A/B week or things aren’t the same every single week.
Of course the things are not going to be the same every single week, but if your schedule itself changes every week, maybe you have a flex plan that on a date X happens, Y is what I have for dinner on a day where A happens, B is what I have for dinner. And you still are able to take the decision, the daily decision-making out of it. Even the weekly decision, even like the sitting down for an hour on Sundays to plan your meals.
If you’re a person that doesn’t like meal planning, then this is for you.
Now I should mention this too: If you’re a person who loves meal planning and you’ve got a great system for meal planning and it doesn’t cause stress, and you don’t feel those four obstacles bubbling up in your life, then you’re set. I mean, you can listen to this episode and kind of nod along, or maybe there’s a nugget here or there that you can take from it.
But this episode is for people who don’t like meal planning and they’re feeling stressed out by it. In that case that you are bumping up against these obstacles and you are feeling frustrated and overwhelmed, and like you don’t have enough time where you don’t really want to cook or like to cook, or that you’re having a hard time pleasing everyone.
These are some solutions that I have found helpful for these particular obstacles. So if you don’t have these obstacles, then that’s great. And if you do then continue listening my friend.
So for number three, about decision-making when you make your decisions. You have to remember that there’s not a right or wrong decision that as you’re planning your meals, you can simply choose things that you like and just decide.
We’re going to have spaghetti and meatballs on Monday. We’re going to have fish tacos on Tuesday. I’m gonna pick up burgers on Wednesday. We’re going to do quinoa watermelon salad on Thursdays and on Fridays, we’re going to get pizza or make homemade pizza Saturdays. We’re going to do that really yummy, like white chicken chili with cornbread. And on Sundays, we really like to grill because we’re all home and we have a little bit more time. So we’re going to do Mediterranean kebabs and pita bread and Greek salad.
And then you write it down and then you repeat, repeat, repeat, and it’s the best thing ever.
Solution For Picky Eaters and Pleasing: Involve Them In The Decision, and Lower Expectations
Obstacle Number four, about pleasing everyone can be a touchy one because the truth is that you don’t have a whole lot of control about what other people think about their food. So you can spend a lot of energy and time trying to prepare meals and plan meals that everyone agrees on and that everyone enjoys. And even with all of that time and energy and love that you put into it, it’s possible that one of your kids or some of your kids or your partner don’t love it just cause they don’t feel like it.
I mean, maybe even like the family’s favorite meal some day, someone’s just not going to feel like it. And so I’ve found that if I have to make a decision to have my life feel less stressful and have a great meal on the table every night and do not totally disregard, but just acknowledge that I am not in control of other people’s opinions about that, I can do my best and I can incorporate their input at some point in the planning process, but that I’m not going to be like a short order cook every night for my own sanity.
I may have to accept that sometimes some people are not going to be okay with the dinner and that is fine. It’s okay to have kids that don’t feel like eating what you make.
It’s okay to have a partner that isn’t thrilled and over the moon by, by your your meal every night, especially if you’re the one who is like shouldering the responsibility for actually like planning, shopping, and cooking these meals.
I have found it’s been easy for me…easier for me, I should say, to involve my family in the process at the front end, if you need a whole rundown on the minimum meal planning process, head to the show notes, and I will link that whole episode.
I’ve got a whole episode. And like I mentioned, I have a $17 course. It’s an inexpensive quick course that will give you a full walkthrough. Not only do I touch on how to do a minimum meal plan, but I also touch on some nutrition principles and, and some other things as well.
I ask for my family’s input during the brainstorming process, and then from there I make those decisions and I implement the plan. I do the grocery shopping. I create the meals and if someone doesn’t like what I make, then they are welcome to make themselves some toast or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And that’s that.
If one of my kids is not happy with the meal and they don’t feel like eating dinner that night, they can choose whether they just don’t want to eat (and maybe there’ll be a little hungry) or whether they want to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and have a banana.
I don’t make extra meals. I don’t, you know, specifically make something new for someone because they don’t like it. I don’t make two meals. So. I don’t like make mac and cheese for the kids and then something else for Dave and me. Actually on Saturday nights, Dave and I go out to dinner for date night. So that’s usually the, the night that we have like a full kids dinner, they’ll choose mac and cheese with veggies, or I think right now our Saturday night meal is tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, which they love. That’s a great meal for them to have when Dave and I are out.
I take my kids’ preferences into consideration, but in my house and the way that I have found it to be easiest for, for myself, is to not plan every meal around any one person’s specific needs. It always helps me to just remember that I could make their very favorite meal and they might not feel like it.
Trying to micromanage and having everyone feel pleased with every meal that I make is not likely going to be a helpful goal anyway. So what I do is make sure that mealtime feels really easy and really enjoyable for me.
Whether or not someone’s, you know, loving the food itself, we can have great conversation. They can eat their peanut butter and jelly sandwich or their banana or their toast, and the rest of us can enjoy the meal.
The Basic Minimal Meal Plan Process
So I want to give you a very quick rundown on the general minimum meal plan system and how I’ve been doing it lately with the monthly meal plan page in my Golden Coil planner.
And I will take a picture of this page, this kind of it’s a two-page layout. I include one at the beginning of each month in my planner, even though I only use it for every third month and the other months I just use it for note pages. I’ll take a picture of this.
- Brainstorm With The Family
On the left-hand side. It’s just a lined piece of paper. This is where I brainstorm.
At the beginning of the season I said, okay, let’s brainstorm for our seasonal, our fall meals. I wrote down dinners, snack time and breakfast.
Right now, actually I found for my own ease and enjoyment that I plan all the meals. So we plan breakfast after school snack and dinner. My kids are gone at school during lunch, so we plan those other things. So you’ll see under each of these headlines. Snack and breakfast.
I have just the brainstorming that happened. I asked everyone for input. We have burger night, fried chicken, mac and cheese pizza, chicken pot pies, chili and cornbread, fish, ravioli, shrimp burrito bowl, Sloppy Joes, ribs, ham and cheese, French toast, lasagna, sausage and sides, These are all the different meals that my family came up with.
2. Consider The Family Schedule, and Make Some Decisions
And after we do the big brainstorm, I look at our schedule, and then I start just making some simple decisions based on what feels good for the season. Like what ingredients might feel more fun for the fall, what meals we’ve just had, like in this last, you know, what were our summer meals? And maybe I wanna add a little variation from our summer meals to our fall meals.
I consider which days of the week are more busy. And so, for example, right now on Wednesdays, we have ravioli with salad. It’s a butternut squash ravioli, and you buy it frozen at trader Joe’s. Super simple, Dave makes it. So when I get home from work, it’s already made and ready to go, we just sit down at the table and eat it.
That’s another benefit to having the meals all planned and all the groceries already every week. Whoever is home, whether it’s a babysitter or your partner or yourself, the it’s likely that the meals can happen because everything’s there. And it’s written down on the board. In fact, at this very moment, my sister is babysitting our kids. I shopped for all of our meals, just like I normally do before I left. And the meal plan is on the fridge. And so she’s been able to just keep up with our weekly meals as if we were there in our absence. So really easy, really beneficial.
On the, on the right side of this two-page layout, there is the actual days of the week. It has listed: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and I just use the lunch category right now for after-school snacks. And that goes Monday through Sunday.
3. Reverse Engineer Meal Plan Into Weekly Grocery List
And then there’s a grocery list check box. So once I’ve got all of the meals placed into there, days of the week, then I reverse engineer the meals into a grocery list. So for example, for the meal “Ravioli with Salad” on Wednesday night, I need to put two boxes of squash ravioli on my list.
And then for the salad, I need to make sure that I have one package of romaine lettuce, some grape tomatoes and Ranch. So I’ve got that on my list. So then I move on to the next meal, which is chicken pot pie. And so I make sure that I have the type of chicken that I like, that I have carrots and celery and butter and peas. Right now I’m using, I actually really like making pie crust, but it’s felt like an extra step that was unnecessary. So I’m buying frozen pie crust at trader Joe’s and using that to me. It’s a homemade chicken pot pie with a frozen pie crust, which I feel like is a great compromise. So you can see how I just go backwards.
Crepes, make sure that I have, you know, flour and eggs and strawberries and Nutella. That’s easy, Sloppy Joes, I make sure I have those really yummy brioche rolls and grass fed organic beef and all of the different things that we use to make Sloppy Joes. So I just reverse engineer this one list.
I have one week’s worth of groceries, one week’s worth of meals and my newest trick is that I put that grocery list into my phone. I have it all written down in my. I do it by section. So I have the frozen section, the produce section, the dairy section, the dry section, and I have transcribed it into my phone in a to-do list that has those little circles on an iPhone.
Inventory Before You Shop With The Weekly List
In the note section, you can add those little check marks circles, and I create the weekly grocery list.
In a note with the little circles and one week I check the boxes as I put the things into my cart, and then I leave the note with all of the boxes checked and then the next week I do a little inventory and I see, do I still need Mexican cheese? Do I still need more brioche rolls? Do we have some leftover? And based on if I do need it, then I leave it checked. If I don’t need it, then I uncheck the box.
So it’s kind of like filling it and unfilling it every other week. And it works out really well. I can inventory what I have at home before I go to the store and then only get the things that I actually need. And I don’t have to go through and rewrite the whole list.
I’m not reinventing the wheel every week. I have it in there one time. A lot of times I will bring my planner. I have my planner with me in my bag, but sometimes I just have my phone and my keys. And that way I’m able to still do all of my weekly grocery shopping with just my phone. And I’ve got the list and I come home with everything that I need to not have to think about meals for the rest of the week.
The reason that this type of minimal meal plan works for people who hate to meal plan is that it is as simple as it gets. You spend maybe one hour, maybe two, two hours maximum one time, every three months coming up with your plan and then you just rinse and repeat every day. You don’t have to rethink it. You don’t have to reinvent it.
The things that you’re not good at making you leave off the list entirely. The things that you want to learn how to make, within a couple of weeks, you’re getting down and you’re practicing and you’re getting really good at them. So they don’t take a lot of time anymore.
You’re not spending a lot of time each week coming up with new ideas. You’re not spending a whole lot of time each night making the meals because you’ve already planned ahead. So you can go straight to the fixing part. I usually choose about two meals per menu per week that I can make double batches of and then the next week I don’t have to make that meal because I’ve already got it on hand in the fridge or freezer.
The chicken pot pie is one example. I’ll make the filling for two. And one of them, I will put the pie crust on top and bake it. The other one, I put the pie crust on top and freeze. So the next week I just pull it out and then the next week I make two. And then the next week I don’t make one. So you can see how, because you know, what’s coming because the repeat is happening. You are just set up for success. You don’t have to make decisions over and over again. You can fall back on the decision that you already made and because people are involved at the gate.
You don’t have to worry so much about pleasing everyone every night, whether you choose to do one week or two, this type of simplified meal planning where you front-load your decision-making and then you just let it roll with ease and enjoyment over the season is really, really wonderful. And I hope if you haven’t tried it and you’re struggling with meal planning that you’ll give it a go.
In the show notes, I’ll make sure that I link all of the resources that I have to help you succeed in your minimal meal planning efforts. And I wish you a wonderful, wonderful dinner time.
Conclusion
Thank you so much for tuning in this week to live free creative podcast. I hope that sharing some solutions to some of the major meal planning, obstacles has been helpful for you, that you can think about maybe stepping into a meal planning schedule that will work a little bit better for your family and help you feel the ease and enjoying it that you want to feel around.
I would love to just remind you one more time about the opportunity to do me a huge favor and leave a specific review either on iTunes or on Amazon or on both about how the work that I’ve done on the podcast and in my book has benefited you and helped your life feel a little bit better. And I hope that you’ll be back here next week for another episode of Live Free Creative, same time, same place. Have a great one. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
