#14: Interview with a Plan to Eat Customer, Abigail O'Neel

This week Riley and Roni interview a real Plan to Eat customer, Abigail O'Neel. She's used Plan to Eat for over three years, ever since her mother gifted her a subscription. We chat about her meal planning process, our favorite Plan to Eat features, and tips and tricks for overcoming meal planning challenges! If you love Plan to Eat and want to learn how other people use the program, this one's for you!

Find the recipes talked about in this episode:
Keto Taco Pie
Low Carb Egg in a Hole
Ina Garten's Company Pot Roast Recipe
Calla's Clean Eats Brownie Baked Oatmeal

Connect with the PTE Podcast account for recipes:  https://app.plantoeat.com/hi/PTEPod

Abigail is a ministry wife and the founder and host of The About Her Podcast. She is a graduate of Cedarville University and will soon complete a Masters of Divinity in Christian Ministry at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, located in Louisville, KY. She and her husband, Caleb, enjoy serving together in their local church, traveling, exploring new restaurants, and baking or cooking together in the kitchen.

You can connect with her online and through her podcast:
Instagram: @abigail.oneel or @theaboutherpodcast    
Website:  www.abigailoneel.com
Podcast: Apple Podcasts or Spotify 

Sign up for a free trial + get 20% off your first annual subscription: plantoeat.com/PTEPOD

Contact us: podcast@plantoeat.com

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Transcript

[00:00:00] 

I'm Riley and I'm Roni. And this is the plan to eat podcast, where we have conversations about meal planning, food, and wellness. To help you answer the question what's for dinner.

Roni: Hello, our Plan to Eat podcast listeners. We are back with another episode. And today we are interviewing Abigail O'Neel. She is a real Plan to Eat customer for about three years, and she is also the host of a podcast called The about her podcast.

Riley: We talk about, her meal planning process, how she got started using plan to eat, what her challenges are and just a bunch of tips and tricks.

Roni: We also talk about quite a few recipes at the end. So stick around till the end of the podcast for your recipe, inspo and enjoy.

Hi Abigail. Thank you for being on the Plan to Eat podcast with us today.

Abigail: Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Riley: Well, to get started. Why don't you just go ahead and tell us a little bit about you and what you do.

Abigail: [00:01:00] Absolutely. So like you said, my name is Abigail O'Neel and I am first and foremost a believer. And so I would say my faith informs so much of who I am and what I do, but secondly, I'm also married to my husband, Caleb. We have been married for just under five years. We celebrate our five-year anniversary at the end of may.

And he's my best friend loved being married to Caleb, and he's a worship director. So we live here in Ohio and that technically makes me a pastor's wife, which is also consumes a lot of my time. And then I'm a podcaster. So at the end of August, early September, I started a podcast titled The About Her podcast and we chat about womanhood, hospitality, marriage, and theology.

Riley: Awesome. 

Roni: And congrats on five years of marriage. 

Riley: Yeah,

Abigail: you so much. We still feel so young. So it's crazy that we can say we've been married for five years, but it's

Riley: that's awesome. Hopefully you feel that way forever.

Abigail: Yeah, I certainly hope so.

Riley: Um, so probably a lot of singing going on at your house.

Abigail: There is a lot of [00:02:00] singing. There's always humming. My husband actually sings in his sleep. Sometimes 

Roni: Whoa. I've never heard of that before. That's cool. 

Abigail: very quiet, but because I know like what songs he listens to you, sometimes I can pick out exactly what he's humming in him in his sleep. So it's

Riley: That's another. Yeah. That's another level of, um, like it's ingrained into him so much. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's wild.

Roni: Wow. Well, part of the reason why we invited you on the podcast is because you've used plan to eat for a little while, and we are just kind of wanting to hear, um, how you use Plan to Eat some of your meal planning journey. So why don't you tell us, why you got started meal planning, kind of like what made you become a meal planner? 

Abigail: Yeah. So two things I would say I first got serious with meal planning when we first got married when Caleb and I were married, just because we were very young, he was 19. So still a teenager and I was a whopping 21. And so we were college students and [00:03:00] we just had. Very little financial resources we had little to work with.

And so initially it was just because we wanted to make the most of what we had and to use our money wisely. And we've kind of continued that stewardship into our five years of marriage. We always want to be careful with what we're doing with our money and steward our money. Well, and I know how easy it is to walk into a grocery store and to do.

Blow your budget to walk out with way more than you need, and to put ingredients into your cart that you don't end up cooking and they go bad in your fridge. And so there's just a lot of waste that can happen too. And so first I would just say it's a way of stewarding money and resources as well, but then also my husband and I are very busy.

And so in the evenings we often have meetings or we lead a small group and that just makes running from this to that. It makes eating at home difficult sometimes. And if we don't have a plan in place, we just buy takeout, which is fine. Take out to not always a bad thing, but we don't feel our best when we're eating takeout all the time [00:04:00] and it adds up too financially.

So that can be a financial savings to be smart in that way, too.

Riley: Wow. There's so much to unpack here, but you're using Plan to Eat in all the right ways.

Abigail: Yeah.

Riley: Um, yeah, so we I was just interviewed on another podcast called, this mom knows and the woman who was interviewing me, her name's Jennifer. Uh, Uren and she called it pizza on purpose. Like she starts planning takeout into her meals, into her meal plan.

And so then it's like, it's budgeted. It's planned for, you're still getting a break from cooking. But you don't feel as guilty about the takeout.

Abigail: Yes. Yeah. And we totally take out, we love our takeout, but we just try not to do it every night of the week.

Riley: yeah, yeah. That certainly adds up.

Roni: So then in your meal planning process, uh, w what made you find Plan to Eat? 

Abigail: Yeah. So my mom gifted me a plan to eat subscription. I think it was three Christmases ago. She, my mom's awesome, but she passed on, I guess, the tradition or the habit of [00:05:00] meal planning. And when I first got married, she gave me a notebook of recipes and I'm sure they were printed from her Plan to Eat.

Subscription. But three years later, she gave me my own subscription and just emphasized how much she loves Plan to Eat and why it has helped her. And we really have bonded. With it because we're able to share recipes and my mother-in-law use it too, uses it as well. And it almost feels like social media in some ways, because I've befriended my mom and my mother-in-law and all of my sister's in-laws and all of us just share recipes.

And it's really nice. I'm able to see family recipes that are traditions in our family. And I can just pull those up easily when we want them, or also. Seeing what they're making gives me ideas for my week. So my mom initially got me introduced and then I was hooked after that.

Roni: that's Awesome.

Riley and I often, uh, share recipes with each other where we try to be like each other's meal planning buddy, for when we're like, what are you eating this week? Cause I have [00:06:00] no inspiration. 

Abigail: Yeah. It's great. When you're dry and you don't want a meal plan, you can just pull what they're doing and steal their ideas. 

Riley: Yeah, you've created your own little meal planning tribe, like with all of those people, like people should be jealous of that. So many people that's amazing.

Abigail: It's great.

Riley: That's really cool. 

All these people use it in your life, which probably helps get you mode, stay healthy, stay motivated to meal plan, cause other people are doing it.

So it's kind of like, you're all doing it together. Um, what is your meal planning process within that?

Abigail: Yeah. So I would say it's always ebbing and flowing, changing, evolving. I'm not a pro by any means, but I most often plan on Sundays because with my husband being a worship director, he's at church all Sunday. And so I have a lot of time at home by myself to get things ready for the weekend to plan. So I usually plan on Sundays and.

I always check the calendar. First, we share a Google calendar, my husband and I, because we are busy, [00:07:00] we don't want to overbook ourselves. And so checking the calendar helps me to see. Well, we have that week. What types of meals would actually fit into our schedule and how many meals we actually need? And then I will usually go to the pantry or the fridge to see what we have.

And I like to shop my own pantry and fridge first because usually there's ingredients that we thought we were going to use and we didn't. And so I hate throwing things away and I want to use those things first. So if there's things in the fridge or the pantry, I use those first, so that we're actually using them.

And then. Usually our typical week is like four to five meals and I'll go to the scheduler and plan to eat and I'll add recipes that I've clipped from other websites or that my family that are family recipes and add them to the schedule. And then I use the wonderful automated shopping list, which is like my favorite thing ever.

And I go to.

Roni: Um, so you were saying that your, you said that your mom gave you a paper, be a planner before you started using plenty. So how do you plan to plan to. change that process at all? Going from a, [00:08:00] like a physical planner book to a digital. 

Abigail: Yeah, I think it simplified it. I am still a paper girl. Like I love a paper planner. I like writing things down. So sometimes I'll still do both. And I have, I've made my own printable that I like laminated and it's on the fridge, but I think using plan to eat has made that process. Easier and save me a lot of time, especially the shopping list, because I used to have to go through all my recipes, right.

Individual ingredients down, go through them, see what we already had. And then I would usually throw that paper away and have to do the same thing the next Sunday. Whereas now it's just in the program and it does it for me. And week by week, I can rely on it.

Riley: You are talking full disclosure. You're talking to two girls who love paper.

We work, we work for plan to eat. And we also love paper. 

Abigail: Do you use paper to

Riley: Oh, no, I use plan to eat, but I definitely understand the like draw to paper things. So [00:09:00] I do a lot of my, the rest of my life gets planned on paper, but, my meal planning is all digital now.

But it is a bit of a shift, but I think once you do get into the rhythm of doing it with Plan to eat, um, it really is. Simplifying to your life? Um, I mean, I will still occasionally write like a list, like on my fridge. It's like, I need these things. And then once the end of the week rolls around, I'll add it to plan to eat.

Just cause I don't know whatever's going on. I just need to like scribble it on something really fast. So I'll, I will still merge some paper things into my, into my digital life.

Abigail: definitely makes sense.

Roni: Yeah.

I've never meal planned, um, from, uh, like a pen and paper standpoint. Cause I started meal planning when I started working for Plan to Eat. I certainly did lots of. Write a paper list and then leave it at home before I to Eat but all of my other planning, you know, like weekly planning and work planning and stuff, we do all, you know, like we do share like a work Google calendar and stuff.

And I often will double check that with my like physical planner, but I really [00:10:00] enjoy having a physical paper planner to do all of my scheduling. 

Abigail: Yeah. I will say there was one time before. So when my mom initially gifted me the subscription. Fully look into everything that it offered. And so I didn't know about the automated shopping list or all of those that first few months I was using it. And so there was one time I was at the grocery store and I forgot my list at home.

And I was like, maybe I can put together a list. I just pulled up the app and I made a list in the grocery store because it's so easy. And I ended up using the same list I had before.

Riley: Yeah. It's super helpful to have it on the. Um, but I think that I'm so much of my life is spent digitally. Like everything else in our world is so digital. I think that's why I still rely on some paper things. Cause it just feels nice to not stare at a screen all the time. But certainly my meal planning process, like it just has to be plenty because it's, I'll, I'll always forget the paper list a hundred percent of the time, 10 out of 10 trips to the grocery store with a paper list.

I leave it at home and then I'm just winging it and that does not help me with a budget. It does not help me with what we [00:11:00] need. Um, so yeah.

Roni: Yeah. So what do you think are some of the struggles that maybe you started out having when you were meal planning or maybe things that you still have when you're meal planning that are just, you know, regular meal planning struggles, and then what do you do to try and lessen the struggle of them? 

Abigail: Yeah, I think it's just repetitive and you're doing the same thing every week. So in the same way that you're doing dishes every week and you're like, I just did this. Why am I doing this again? Sometimes meal planning feels the same way. Like, will this ever end, am I always just going to be in the cycle?

But I think because I've befriended. People on plan to eat. Like we talked about there's weeks where I have no desire to do it, but I can go look at their favorites, especially if they've tagged them. Like if they've tagged favorite or easy or quick, like I can look at those and know this is probably going to be good because it's reliable.

I trusted them as being a reliable source, so I will add it to mine. So it just gives you creative ideas.[00:12:00] 

Roni: Yeah.

I think that both Riley and I can identify with that, uh, that meal planning can feel repetitive sometimes. Like, like we still love meal planning and we know why it's beneficial to do it, but you're so right to compare it to something. Some other like household duty where you're like, dang, like I feel like I just went grocery shopping.

I feel like I just did the meal plan. Like it's already here again and both Riley and I tend to get into. A repetitive cycle of just like, I'm just going to play in the same recipe as planned last week. Cause that's, what's easy right now. 

Abigail: Yeah. And I'm very grateful. My husband is very generous with his appreciation or with his thank you's. And so I never feel like it's like unnoticed, but it still can feel like I just did this. This feels pointless sometimes, but yeah, it's so much easier when you can rely on other people.

Riley: I think for me, it's just like exhaustion. It's like, it's like the, I'm doing this thing again. Uh, like the dishes like that, it can just feel exhausting. Like I'm doing all the dishes away and we're gonna eat on paper plates for the rest of our lives. So I don't have to do another dish,[00:13:00] which I'm not going to do.

But like, there are times when it kind of comes to a head where I'm like, oh my gosh, I just don't want to do this thing. Um, but you are right. Roni, I, you said that about like doing the same thing over and over again, like that's a pain point for me is because I get into these ruts of like, these fast, easy meals that I know everybody likes and then I'll just plant them over and over again.

And so then that actually makes the burden, like the exhaustion factor higher, because I'm like, oh, now I've got to branch out now. Okay. The thing that we love now, we hate because we ate it too many times. Cause we overdid it. And so, uh, trying to like mix it up a little. Uh, and like having friends and planted is a really great resource.

Being able to text somebody like I'll text Ronnie in to ask me, you know, ask her, what are you eating? , or using like the random recipe button in the Plan to Eat recipe book. Um, it filters, like you said, that favorites are easy. I rely on those things, uh, particularly on weeks when it feels really burdensome.

Just like you said, I'm totally, totally do the same thing. Yeah. 

Abigail: I will also say that sometimes finding [00:14:00] recipes is difficult too, and I like that you can save recipes into the dashboard and you're not having to go to those individual websites every week. And. As silly as it sounds like a pain point is having to scroll through the entire recipe and like the story behind why someone made the recipe.

And you're like hitting all of the ads because they have 500 ads on their page. It's annoying. And so it also saves that of just the time of scrolling through every food bloggers blog post. 

Roni: Oh. Yeah,

I feel that a hundred percent. Um, I totally threw food bloggers under the bus earlier this year by saying that like, I don't like reading most of the blog posts, like I'm here for the recipe, you know? And that is definitely been something that people really love about the recipe. Clipper is just like, I, I go, I like the pictures.

Um, and like, I like the list of ingredients and I don't have to go back to this blog all the time. And that's the part about the ads is really. Um, thing to [00:15:00] mention as well, because that can be along with popups and stuff can be a little aggravating. 

Abigail: it doesn't even load. 

Roni: So true. 

I think that, sometimes I struggle with that.

I, with that too, it's like the, having to like pick different recipes. I mean, it's similar to this like meal planning, rut. And I know one thing that, you know, people constantly say as a problem for them with meal planning just in general, is that, you know, they're like, how do you be spontaneous when you know, you're creating a meal plan because I don't know it on tat on Sunday.

I don't know necessarily what I'm going to be in the mood for on Thursday. 

Abigail: Yeah.

Roni: And I mean, for me personally, I create a week long meal plan and I don't follow it in chronological order. I'm just like, oh, we have the chicken already thawed. So we're going to make that recipe today. Or, you know, these tacos sound good today and not whatever this other thing we were going to eat does.

So like, I'm very generous with switching around my meal plan. I know. Not everybody has that type of flexibility. We talked to, we frequently talked to, um, another podcast or [00:16:00] her name is Mackenzie Koppa. And she's expert planner of all things. And she has a super busy life. She has four kids and like, they all have different activities, different nights.

Every night of the week, she has a different number of people that she's feeding. And so her thing is. I just make a plan and we stick with it and it doesn't matter what you're in the mood for, because this was the dinner that was planned. So like, there's kind of a couple of different ways to look at it.

If like you can either be really flexible with it and switch things around, or you can just say, sorry, we're in hamburgers tonight, the end. 

What do you think, Riley, do you have any other pain points? 

Riley: so I live about 45 minutes from the grocery store, 15 minutes from the grocery store. So, um, so one that means that takeout is not as attainable for me as it is for other people. Because the point of takeout is for it to be fast. So when it takes you 45 minutes to get there and 45 minutes to get back, then it's cold, then 

it's pointless because. Yeah, for sure. But one thing for me is that some, I usually am pretty rigid in my, uh, like make the plan on a certain day, then work it into my [00:17:00] week when I'm going to go to get the groceries and things like that. But a pain point for me sometimes is like spontaneous shopping. Like, oh, I've got an extra hour in town I'm going to shop right now.

I'll forget to have shot. I will have shopped at home because I wasn't prepared to go shopping. So a pain point for me is buying duplicates. It is like the bane of my existence because I'll stand there, particularly at the spice section I'll stare and I'll think of visualize my own spices. And I just, I just don't know.

I have no idea. My mind just can't come up with it. And so like, it's, uh, it's, uh, you've mentioned it a couple of times, like shopping at home and seeing what you have and not wasting food. So a pain point for me is when I have to spontaneously . And I didn't shop at home. I hate it because I inevitably buy things that I didn't need to buy. Cause I already had them.

Abigail: Yeah. I have like a stash of chicken stock yeah. Chicken stock. I have so much of that.

Riley: yep. I, I do it too. Uh, Rotel tomatoes sometimes I end up with way too 

Abigail: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know [00:18:00] why.

Riley: Yeah, I don't either. I don't use them that often, but when I want to use them, I don't have them. So then I buy them when I don't need them. And then I have extra, it's a weird

Abigail: Yeah. Ooh, serving sizes is hard, especially cause it's just me and my husband. So we often have so much. Leftover, we don't have kids to feed yet. And again, I don't like wasting food, but I'm also not a huge leftover person. There's like very few things that I will eat leftover. So I would say that's a pain point for me too.

Roni: Yeah. So it's just me and my husband as well. And uh, sometimes, well, a lot of times I forget to check the serving size of a recipe and we generally like to have leftovers so that we don't have to cook every single night or, a lot of times my husband will take the leftovers for lunch the following day for lunch.

Oh, I just said that he'll take the leftovers for lunch the following day. Particularly in plan to eat on the website planner, I'll just leave the serving size toggle turned on so that I'm always aware, like, okay, this is how much these recipes serve so that I can just always be looking at it and, you know, [00:19:00] recognize when a recipe serves four and I really needed to serve six or eight or something like that.

But I also have the problem sometimes is like my husband works a very physical physically demanding job. And so there'll be some nights that he comes on to him and he's starving and he'll eat the food that was supposed to be the leftovers for the next day. So that's probably not something that I can, um, fix as easily, but, you know, we run into some trouble with the leftover situation sometimes. 

Abigail: I've never thought about using the serving size toggle thing. 

I didn't even know that was an option. So I'm learning something new.

Roni: Yeah, it's super easy on the website. It's just up in the upper right corner with all of the other buttons. There's a servings and it's a little toggle and you can turn it on. And then it displays all of the serving sizes of all the recipes that are on your meal planner. So, and then they're easily there. It's like an editable, um, number so that you can just go in and you don't have to open the recipe to edit the serving size. You can just go in there and type in a new number. So it's really handy. 

Abigail: Yeah, that sounds awesome.[00:20:00] 

Riley: Yeah, it's really helpful for, I mean, for anybody, because for you guys just feeding the two, um, I might want to make it for or to accommodate, like, if it's a, like a, you know, a meal, you know, you're going to eat more of just than one, like one cup serving or something, or if you want the leftovers. But also if you're having like a party and you want to make sure you have enough, for like eight people or 16 people or something like that, super helpful for that too.

And then that also will change the shopping lists so that all your ingredients duplicate or

Abigail: And it does the math for you.

Riley: all that math. Yes.

Roni: it, it does all the math for you, which is the best part. 

Abigail: love that.

Riley: Yep. I found myself in a, in that same podcast I was talking about earlier talking about how shopping list ingredients, all merged and things like that. And I just like threw out some random numbers and then I realized, oh, I need to calculate those numbers, but I didn't remember what the numbers were. Four four and two, like something super easy to calculate. Um, and so she did the math for me because she had been following along, but I just was like throwing things out there as an [00:21:00] example. And then she made the comment. She's like, well, you don't have to know because plan to eat does it for you. And I'm like, you're right.

I never have to total up ingredient amounts anymore because plan to eat has done it for me for so long.

Abigail: Yeah. Who needs math?

Riley: Who needs math? Not me.

Abigail: Yeah. 

Roni: um, so speaking of some Plan to Eat features, do you have any favorite features in Plan to Eat? 

Abigail: I've already said it, but the automated shopping list, it's just awesome. Like not having to go through individually and come up with my own list. Just putting the recipe on the calendar, automates it and. On a list that I can, I usually will do my list and my scheduling on my laptop. And so it's also nice that there is an app that you can just throw my phone in my purse and go to the grocery store and pull that same exact thing up without having to do any extra steps of adding it to my phone.

So there being an app and that the shopping list saves me so much time.

Riley: Yeah, 

Roni: Yeah, we talk about the shopping list a lot in general, because I think it's pretty much every that works at Plan to Eat it's our favorite feature because it's [00:22:00] so genius. 

Abigail: Yeah, so nice.

Roni: Yeah. Riley, do you have, what do you tell us about your favorite feature? Riley? What do you 

Riley: Oh, my favorite feature. Well, 

Roni: aside from the shopping list that one's already taken? You can't take that one. 

Abigail: I'm excited to hear if you have a favorite feature that I am not familiar with yet.

Riley: Well, now I'm nervous. I'm just kidding. Um, You put me on the spot. Roni, the shopping list is my go-to. Okay. Um, I talk about this all the time. I don't know why it took me a second to come up with this, but the grocery delivery feature. Oh, oh, Um, so you, we have a grocery delivery integration on the. You can select your ingredients. And once you've selected your ingredients, the grocery delivery option appears in the top right corner of the website, or it's in like the settings option in the top right corner of the app.

And so you can send your list to your store, uh, and then you can go pick it up. If you have a pickup option or you could have [00:23:00] it delivered to your house, if you were lucky enough to have

Abigail: my goodness. 

Riley: um, super helpful for me, I only have one daughter, but she's two and shopping can sometimes be a challenge. With two year old. And so, just having the delivery option one, I already said that I live so far from town. And so like sometimes when I'm already in town, Like thinking about, oh, I'm now I've got to spend an extra hour in the store is really daunting, particularly if I've been gone all day or something like that.

And so just, I do the grocery pickup quite a bit. And so I can just send my plan, eat list to whatever store I shop at a shop at king Soopers, which is a Kroger store. Um, if I can send it there and then pick it up and then it's just one additional step of easy. 

Abigail: Yeah, I did not know. That was a thing that's.

Riley: It's a, it's really helpful. Um, you know, I don't use it all the time. I've been using it a lot lately and I went into the store the other day and I told Roni, and she was like, what you went in? And I was like, yeah, I didn't even know where to find anything. Cause it's been so long. But it's really, it really saves me a lot of [00:24:00] time.

Uh, and it helps me keep on budget too, which is something I had mentioned on the show a lot. Because it totals up your items as you go. It's like, it kinda like that. Yeah. Helps you stay on, on budget too. So super helpful. What about you Roni? What's your favorite?

Roni: Well, mine's a little less flashy than yours because I think most people know about it, but I love the Queue a that's pretty much my favorite feature aside from, you know, shopping lists, because I, well, mostly I use my queue as a way to like, store just like my favorite recipes. And so it does help in those times when I feel.

I don't really know what to play in this week. And then I just go to my queue and I can easily plan from there, but I also use it to keep like my favorite bread recipes or my favorite? cookie recipes, which I don't necessarily need to go shopping for those things. Cause it's staples that I already have around my house.

But when I just want to like whip up a quick backup batch of cookies, I don't necessarily want to have to go scrolling through the 80 cookie recipes I have in my plan to eat account. Uh, and I just want to be able to find the one [00:25:00] that I want to make in that time. Yeah, I use the Queue a lot.

Riley: I just thought of another feature that I use a lot that, I mean, I'm going to say it because I don't know if people know about it, but I utilize it so often that I should have thought about it when you were asking me this. But, um, if I save a new recipe with the recipe clipper, I will often use the add to planner option in the recipe, clipper window.

To immediately add it to my meal plan, because I'm really bad about hoarding recipes and I'll just go and like find a bunch of recipes, like, oh, all these look really good. And then I, I will forget that I added them. And so then I will forget to try these new things. And so when I import a recipe, there's like a little planner icon.

The clipper window, when you can save when you save your recipe. And I'll immediately add it to my meal plan like next week or something like that. So it puts it in the forefront of my mind, or it's already on my planner and I just plan around it. And then I'm actually utilizing the recipes that I'm planning. and that helps me stay out of ruts a little bit too.

Abigail: Yeah.[00:26:00] 

Roni: Yeah.

well, I guess I kind of do something, not quite exactly like that when I want to plan a different recipe, but I often use the recently added filter in my, uh, recipe book. So I'll sort my recipe book by recently added, and then I can go in and find a new recipes that I've added to my account so that I don't just like use, so I don't forget to actually try them.

So just if nobody knew about the recently added, that's the best filter. 

In generally we

like to ask our people at the, towards the end of the podcast, what is a favorite. recipe they've eaten recently? Or if you just want to share favorite recipes in general, we always love to kind of get the recipe inspiration flowing on the podcast. 

Abigail: Yeah. So it was hard for me to pick, but I picked two, hopefully that's okay. I have one that's like more complicated in one that's super easy and quick. So the more complicated one is Ina Garten pot roast recipe. I don't know if you've ever had it. I think it's a classic, but it turns out well every time. And so I love that one.

It sounds [00:27:00] complicated, but it's actually really easy. And then an easier recipe is there's a tikka masala recipe that my friend Tori shared with me. And do you guys have Aldi where you.

Roni: Um, We 

Abigail: The grocery store? No. Okay. Well, for those who do have Aldi, there's a sauce, tikka masala sauce that they sell, that you just pour over chicken breasts and put it in a Crock-Pot and set it for six to eight hours.

And that's basically it. And so it's really easy because the Crock-Pot does the work and then you just serve it over rice. So I love that one.

Riley: That is amazing. I always need more recipes that are so easy like that. Um, so while we don't have all the, I'll keep an eye out for a saw, 

Abigail: Yeah, I'm sure there's another type of sauce.

Riley: Yeah, for sure. What have you been up to Roni? What you've been eating lately?

Roni: Well, I haven't eaten this recipe yet, but I did just add it to my meal plan for the week and I've had it before, but it's, a taco pie recipe. It's actually like a no crust taco pie. I think I got it from like a keto [00:28:00] site or something. I don't really care that much, that it's keto, but it's just really good.

And it's super simple. It's just like ground beef and eggs and cheese. And then I. like milk or cream and you just, it's basically like a, a frittata kind of, but it's just like meat and cheese and yeah, it's really good. And, um, it does, I mean, like, it makes a whole pie pan, so, you know, it does make good. leftovers for the next day and it heats up really well and just like some sour cream and some salsa on top. And it's super good. 

Riley: I've had it. I can attest to the fact that. I made a variation of that last week, but I added spinach and salsa into it. Like, so it was a little bit like baked in. I have been eating a bit on the lower carb side of life and I found this recipe for, it's called low carb solution to egg in a hole, which, um, I'm going to be honest. I think this should have just been called, like breakfast pizza, um, because it's a cauliflower crust and, you can put [00:29:00] like, uh, I think she called for a soft, like a butter kind of butter sauce, and then cheese and, bacon. And then you put eggs on top and you bake the whole thing in the oven. So it's like a, it's basically a breakfast pizza.

Does that not sound exactly like breakfast pizza? Um, so I made mine, I didn't use the sauce and I actually ended up using pancetta. And white cheddar. And then I did some chop spinach on this last one. And then you bake in the oven with like the, you baked the eggs on top and it is so good. It's really good. Highly recommended. You don't even know you're eating in cauliflower pizza crust.

Roni: what's the normal, what's the normal egg and a whole recipe. Is it in toast? Is that how you 

Abigail: I think so. Or is that a basket? Is there a difference?

Riley: I'm going to Google it. This is real. This is real time recording everyone.

Roni: Okay. So while you're Googling that, Yeah. this does sound way more like a breakfast pizza than it does egg and a hole because I have a recipe on mine. That's like a carnivore or egg in a hole and you use [00:30:00] sausage as like the ring around your egg, and then you put the egg in the middle so that you don't have like any carbs or whatever.

Riley: Egg in a hole is a piece of toast with an egg baked into the middle. 

Um, I'm going to be honest, this, uh, this breakfast, this recipe I'm talking about is better than this too, because it has pancetta or bacon and cheese.

Roni: And cheese. I mean, I guess you could put some cheese to get sprinkled some cheese on top of that. If 

Riley: For all of our very free listeners. I'm sorry. Uh, you could probably do it without honestly, you could do it without, just use the crest, um, and then do like pancetta it in the eggs. And you would be, it would be really good that way too, 

Roni: And some like tasty olive oil or some 

something as 

Riley: yeah, exactly. Yeah. Some Italian seasoning or something to 

like, kind of 

have a little 

Roni: out. We're all. We always like, experimenting with recipes. 

Abigail: I do too.

Riley: probably the most exciting thing I've had to recently. 

Abigail: Yeah, I do have another one. And I don't know if you are on tik tok [00:31:00] or if you watch Instagram reels that much. Okay. There are these like baked oatmeal. baked oatmeal all is huge right now on Tik TOK. And I have made those everyday for like a month and a half. And so I think it's Calla clean, eats. She has a blog as well, but all of her books, baked oatmeal recipes, they're healthy.

So it's actually like, they're good for you. Cause you're mainly sweetening it with banana. They are so good. And it's like dessert for breakfast.

Roni: Yum, 

Riley: I'm, I'm all about like easy things like that. Like I bake the thing, you know, you baked the oatmeal and then you've got it for a couple of days. I'm assuming you make a batch of them.

Abigail: Um, I think she has some that are batches. And then there's also versions where you just make one in a ramekin or you can make them into muffins too. I've done all of it. I've made it into cookies. Like I, I'm not kidding. I've eaten it every day for a month and a half.

Riley: That's awesome. That's that? That's a high praise for a recipe though. If you can handle it that many times before mixing it

Abigail: And there's variations. Like smores version. There's

peanut butter version. [00:32:00] Yeah.

Riley: some smores brownies, those sound 

Abigail: Yeah. But it's all healthy.

Riley: That's awesome.

Roni: All right. Cool. Well, thank you for joining us today, Abigail. It has been a pleasure to get to know you and get to know your meal planning process. We really appreciate you joining us on the podcast. 

Abigail: I was honored to have been asked. So thanks for chatting with me.

Roni: Do you want to share how people Can connect with you. either online or to your podcast or anything like that? 

Abigail: Yeah. So if you want to follow me on my personal page on Instagram, it's at Abigail dot O'Neel and then the podcast page is at the about her podcast. And the podcast itself is on all major podcast platforms, apple podcast, Spotify breaker, all of the main ones. And then my website is Abigail O'Neel dot com.

Riley: Thank you so much. We really appreciate talking to you and hearing about your yummy

recipes. 

Abigail: Yep. Thank you.

Roni: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you want to connect with all of the recipes that we have mentioned in this episode, previous episodes and any episodes in the future, [00:33:00] we now have a plan to eat account and you can get access to all of the recipes that we've ever talked about on the podcast 

Riley: simply go to plantoeat.com/PTEPod. And you can automatically connect with that account and get all of our favorite recipes. 

Roni: Thanks again, and we'll see you in the next episode.