The Plan to Eat Podcast

#100: Celebrating 100 Episodes of the Plan to Eat Podcast!

• Plan to Eat • Season 3 • Episode 100

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[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. 

USBAudio1.0-1: Hello, and welcome to the Plan to Eat Podcast. Today, Riley and I are recording the 100th episode of the Plan to Eat Podcast, and we are so excited. This is a huge milestone just for us and for Plan to Eat, and I mean, honestly, for a podcast in general. It's like so few podcasts that make it to 100 episodes.

So we're very excited about it. Yes, thanks for listening. Thanks for doing this with me, Roni. Thanks for doing this with me, Riley. I know I haven't been here the whole time. I've been in and out, but I'm glad to be back. And, uh, it's just been an honor to do it. And it's been so fun. Like, this is just content that I have just loved creating.

Yeah, me too. It's always fun. So, this is gonna be a little bit different format of [00:01:00] an episode than what we've done before. Riley and I wanted to kind of go through some of our Most favorite and most impactful episodes from the podcast. It was. Super duper hard to choose, but, uh, we kind of went back to some older episodes just because, I don't know, it was good to like, look back at some older ones and like re remember, re remember some of the insights and the guests that we talked to, I kind of forgot about a lot of things that had happened in the podcast over a hundred episodes.

Yeah, it was, it was kind of amazing to look back and realize like, Oh, we talked about that? Yeah. That is some good info. I know, yeah. Or, wow, he was such an interesting guest. Or, man, I, I have not forgotten this episode because I've literally told 100 people to go listen to the episode because she was so good and things like that.

Yeah, yeah, we've talked to a lot of people. It's really amazing. It's, Kind of a humbling experience to go back and like look through the people that we've talked to and been like, wow, some really important people thought that we were important enough to talk to. I know it's crazy. I'm nobody. [00:02:00] Okay. Well, I wanted to start off this episode by listening to a snippet from our very first podcast episode.

I was so nervous. I remember vividly being so nervous. I, I bet I sound like a totally different human. I was just so nervous. Yeah, it is pretty fun. So let's, uh, it's just a couple minutes long. Let's just take a listen and, uh, see what we think. Okay. 

Roni: let's change gears a little bit and talk about why we started this podcast in the first place. 

I guess one of the things that has changed since I've started is that in general, we've been creating a lot more content for people, for our customers. A lot of that has been the video content that Riley and I had started creating on our YouTube account. And we've been fairly active on social media and stuff in the last few years. Whereas maybe that was not as much a priority in the past. 

And so, I think. Part of the thing for starting a podcast. Number one is that we all listen to podcasts a lot. All, all of us work, all of us who [00:03:00] work at Plan to eat listen to a lot of podcasts. And so it just seemed like a no brainer to be like, well, we should start a podcast because it's obviously something that we enjoy. And so we feel like we could make it something that other people enjoy.

Riley: Yeah. We had to kind of stumble on the right idea for what this was going to be. Yeah, our, our creator Clint, like he, you know, he wanted us to do a podcast several years ago. But I think it just took there, like the right time and the right space and the right, you know, like Roni and I, the way we work together had to evolve to the place that we're in now.

And so we started the, we started the YouTube videos, which has been so fun for us, and we hope that content has been great for our viewers. But we just know that that's not feasible for everyone to watch a video. I am not a video watcher to be very honest. I just don't have the time to sit down and do that.

And so. I am because of that. I am a podcast listener, much more. Well much more frequently because I can do it anytime, walk while I'm walking the dog while I'm making dinner while I'm in the car. I have a lot of [00:04:00] drive time. And so any even, you know, honest, like while I grocery shop yeah, totally.

Yeah. Well, I'll listen to a podcast and maybe that's not friendly or whatever, but know it's my time. And so I get to do kind of what I want with it. So I'll even listen then. And so, you know, it just made sense to kind of transition. From the videos to the podcast and then just the type of content we want to produce for you guys. It all had to just fall in line at the right time. And so we're really excited for the ideas that we have Upcoming podcasts content. And I'm not going to give you guys too much of a idea of what that is because we want to keep you excited. But it makes sense for audience cause we know you're busy people and it's just the, it's just the right fit for us at this time. So we're really excited to do, and we hope that our listeners love it. 

USBAudio1.0-1: Well, we were giggling the whole time, listening to that.

Go record yourself talking and listen to it back sometimes. Um, yeah, I just remember being. And probably why I talked for so [00:05:00] long right then. But, uh, I could also tell how much closer you and I have gotten over the years of doing the podcast, because now it's just such a natural thing. And I feel like at that time, we were really good friends then, but now I just feel like things have changed more.

So it's fun. The main thing that I noticed is the audio quality is so much worse. Yeah. I feel like I've gotten a lot better at editing the podcast. No, you've done such a good job producing the podcast. Yeah, it's funny to go back and listen to that and be like, oh, wow, I'm, people should not listen to that as their first Plan to Eat Podcast episode that they listen to.

Hopefully, um, I think we've gotten so much better at the give and take of like you saying stuff and me saying stuff and us talking to each other. And yeah, it's so, I mean, it is fun to listen back and just think we've grown a lot and that's a good thing. Yeah. I think so too. Yeah. Well, we have a list of some of our favorite episodes and we are not going to do audio clips for every single one of them we do have [00:06:00] three different episodes that we want to just share a little audio clips of to give you an idea of what that episode was like if you haven't listened to it already. Or if you did listen to it, if you've been a long time listener, thank you so much.

And this is just a little refresher on what some of these episodes were about. And some of the people that we've talked to. So, I think that we should start at the oldest and work our way to the newest. What do you think? Sure. Some of the first, the first interview that we had, uh, somebody on the podcast twice was Katie Kimball.

And she was on episode 17 as well as episode 20. Episode 20, we did like a customer Q and A with her, which was really fun. Um, we asked you guys to ask her questions about picky eating and feeding children and getting kids in the kitchen, because that's what she's an expert in. So I have, about a three minute clip here for us to listen to.

Roni: And then, I just have a few takeaways from it. Love it. 

And so you kind of have a unique approach to picky [00:07:00] eating. So why don't you tell us a little about.

Katie: Well, I've learned so much in the past few years about.

picky eating. And what I really want parents to understand is that there's, there's so much guilt. There's so much guilt and anxiety in, in parenting. When you feel that your child's a picky eater, right. So many parents feel like, what did I do? Right.

And then it's really hard to get out of that. And, and also I, when you have a picky eater, um, a professor that I worked with Dr. Kay Toomey, me, she founded the SOS approach and she's she a psychologist? I think she's a psychologist. Anyway, she used to work on a pediatric oncology oncology floor. So she worked with families of children with cancer.

And now she works with families of children who are picky eaters, who are very, very extreme, picky eaters. And she says in her experience, The stress levels of those two types of families are nearly identical. 

Riley: Wow. 

Katie: Having a picky eater is as freaking stressful as having a kid [00:08:00] with cancer, because you're literally afraid for extreme picky eaters that your child will stop eating. Right. So, so for all the parents who like, you know, even if you have a, not so extreme picky eater, especially us women, we snowball affect our thoughts. And we sometimes go there, like, what if, oh, no, this is only going to get worse. And so what I want to tell parents is that, you know, research shows it's really not the parent child relationship.

That is the Genesis of picky eating for, for many, many kids. For most kids. The origin is physical. And there are kids who don't know how to chew and swallow correctly, mass processed baby food, and especially the pouches play roles in this. Um, but it's still, again, it's not your fault if you bought them, that's what's being put in front of us.

Right? Um, there are a lot of kids stats say five to 15% of our kids have sensory processing difficulties. I think that's way higher. I think that's just the diagnose number, but you know, we know a lot of kids are really bothered by [00:09:00] loud noises. A lot of kids are really bothered by like scratchy tags, right.

Are uncomfortable. So I can feel my, my sock. I can feel it bunching up, you know? And so no matter which sense is processing oddly, whether it's over-processing or under processing, that can impact your relationship with food. And, and it's, it's mind blowing to parents. To realize that maybe what looks like picky eating is actually sensory processing disorder or is actually an oral issue with chewing and swallowing and a tongue.

That's just not strong enough. Um, one of our, one of our members and kids cook real food, her little six year old is in feeding therapy. And she's actually a pretty good eater, but, um, her, she has a weak tongue. Like what is that? I didn't know. I didn't know. That was a thing. When I first had kids, she has a weak tongue and so she tends to.

Like her tongue can't move the food to the back of her mouth to swallow. Well, so she tends to hold it in her mouth forever. She wants to eat, but her tongue just doesn't really [00:10:00] let her. Right. And so how frustrating is that as a mom or a dad going honey, quit holding food in your mouth, right. Just swallow it or just spit it out.

You know what I mean? Like, because we don't understand what's going on. And the kids don't know. They don't know how to say, well, mom, dad, like my tongue just won't do what it's supposed to do. Like they don't know. And so this causes so much stress for families. And I think the root cause of a lot of picky eating starts out physical and then fuel is added to the fire then because of the responses we make as parents out of that place of fear and anxiety.

USBAudio1.0-1: I loved this episode. I loved talking to her. I was a new parent at the time, and I felt like it totally changed my perspective on feeding my kid. It gave me a lot of hope, and, I mean, who doesn't know somebody whose kid is a picky eater, right? Like, it, has given me a tool that I can now say, hey, go listen to this episode or go look her up online.

There is hope, and I feel like [00:11:00] that, I just, if you're a parent, Especially if young kids go listen to the full episodes. Go look her up. She's got uh, TED talks on YouTube that are incredible. Um, I just, I think this probably was my number one favorite episode we ever did because it was so helpful for me personally.

Yeah. I got so much out of it personally. Yeah, and she is so engaging. She was so fun to talk to. Yes. Because she I think part of it is that she's practiced at it, right? Like she talks on a lot of podcasts. She's also done the Ted talks. And so she was just super engaging, super easy to talk to. And yeah, I remember listening back through this episode, there's a part where you were asking her some questions and at the end, you're like, I didn't mean for this to be like my episode where like we solved all of my problems, but she was so happy to do it.

And I think she actually really liked that. It seemed like she really liked that kind of like, uh, Let's give the actual situations to people who are listening so that [00:12:00] they can know like, Oh, that sounds really similar to my situation. She's so good at problem solving just in the moment. And she has so many solutions for parents different issues with their kids and picky eating and I mean, not having children, I'm not super in that world, but it had just literally never occurred to me that picky eating could be a sensory issue versus like a, I just don't like food or kids aren't accustomed to eating certain foods.

And I felt like my mind was blown even not even being a parent. My mind was blown being a parent because I feel like most people do not have the tools. To solve those problems when you don't realize that the problems you're solving is not, it's not, it's not even about the food, right. You know, and I feel like that's such the focus point of picky eating is the food.

And sure. It's more of, that's like more of a proxy war, right? It's like, that's the thing you're battling, but it's actually the itchy socks or the socks that are half off their feet or the fact that their feet can't touch the ground [00:13:00] and, or yeah. Pick another thing. She just gives you so much that you, that like you had never thought of.

I'd never thought of it. And it, it suddenly inspires you to be like, Oh, I can do this because this is not the war I've been fighting with pick eating is not, it's not the actual war. There's something else going on and we can fix that. I love that. So all of the episodes that we talked about today are going to be linked in the show notes of today's episode.

If you want a quick way to go. access them and download them and re listen or listen to them for the first time if you haven't listened to them yet. So, but again, Katie's episodes were episode 17, episode 20. Highly recommend both of them and like bring a pencil and notebook with you because you're going to want to take notes.

Yep. Okay. Next up, uh, episode 39 with Linda Feller. Linda is actually one of our bloggers on the Plan to Eat blog. She's a recipe author and food photographer.

And we talked to her all about party planning. She gave us her like [00:14:00] seven step method for having like a great atmosphere, a great party. And we both just really loved this episode. Linda. is awesome to talk to, and it was super fun to interact with one of our bloggers. We don't often get to have, like, personal interaction with the people who write for us on the blog.

So it was super fun to have that more, like, personal interaction with her. And

Linda: the thing that I had to work on was, or had to, things I had to consider was the, the ambiance of this restaurant, let's say.

And, and it had to do with not just, People come, they're coming there for the food, but what is keeping them there? What is making them spend more money? That kind of thing. And so all of that translates into the experience that guests are having in your home too. So temperature right is too hot, Is it too cold?

Lighting. I mean, I just went to a restaurant the other night and the lighting was, the place has so much potential. It's a beautiful space, but the lighting was really harsh. And so my husband and I the [00:15:00] whole time were like, you know, trying to keep that the light out of our eyes and it, it, it diminished the experience a little bit.

Music sound, right, All of those things. You know, the sense, so all the experience, all the all five senses and the way that we experience space have something to do with that. So, . That's sort of what I'm thinking in terms of creating that ambiance. So you know dead of summer, you're throwing a party, maybe some of it's outside, maybe some of it's inside.

Once you have hot bodies in a room, you've gotta crank that AC down, right? You want people to be comfortable and not you. Sweating, music, Is it too loud? Is it too soft? You know, you wanna create a mood and you can do that very easily through your, your, you know, sense of hearing and auditory. Then when it comes to lighting, you know, Well, you can use lighting as a Q too.

That was the other . That's another kind of aspect of that, but, I like to have lights on everywhere. I mean, I think some people may tend to just turn lights on in the rooms they're using, but you know, [00:16:00] people are moving through a space, they're going to the bathroom, you know, you wanna have a little hall light on whatever the case is.

We have everything in our house on dimmers so we can kind of. Walk around and adjust accordingly to sort of set a scene and create intimacy where we want it. Have better task lighting where we need it, that kind of thing. Um, candles, obviously, Tinley lights, those kinds of things can come into play if you're not, you know, if you don't have all the.

The bells and whistles are ways to adjust things. It's also, I mentioned, you know, it can be a cue too at the end of the night, maybe the lights come up a little bit . Right. It's a single, you know, you, you do that when you, you've been out in, I don't know, a concert hall or some 

R&R: High High School prom. Yeah. 

You know, 

Linda: Right.

Yeah. You know, they turn all the lights on, it's time to go home, people. 

USBAudio1.0-1: Remember recording this episode because we were together and that was the first time we'd recorded a podcast episode together. Yeah. And then just loved talking to Linda. Um, and by together, I mean, in person, like we're actually [00:17:00] physically in the same room. We normally had done these over the internet.

So it was just really fun, the energy to being together and then talking to her and I love party planning. I really love all the details of that. And so to just get all of that information from her, I don't know, just super tangible, useful, uh, fun. It's just, it's just all about fun. And I just think people being together is super fun.

So I love that. That's a, that's a good point that you bring up. I do think that episode has so many practical tips in it. So if you're If you're planning a party or maybe you're, you know, nervous about planning a party, that is definitely an episode to go listen to because she, she does such a good job of, giving the practical advice, but also making it feel like it's really not a big deal.

And I think, so the reason why I chose that clip in particular is because that part felt really important to me because I feel like ambiance is maybe something that can be overlooked at a party or maybe the last thing that you think of at a party. Or at [00:18:00] least when I am throwing a party, I'm so focused on the food.

Do I have enough food? Is the food ready at the right time? Do we have all of the drinks, you know? And not like, I'm not necessarily thinking about those like little nuances. Like it might be like two minutes before somebody shows up, I'm like, Oh my gosh, should we put music on or something? I just thought that she brings up such good things that they're just like little tweaks that you can do that really help.

Like set the stage and everyone can do them. Yeah. I mean, within reason, right? Like you might not have dimmers at your house, but everyone can, these are very attainable steps. Um, you don't have to, it's not about making the flakiest treat, or derv, you know, it's not about that. It's literally about. The lights being the right light, or having some music playing, or the temperature.

Mostly controllable factors. And I feel like anybody can do that. And then it just ups your game. And of course we do talk in the episode about some of the food things. But she mostly focuses on tips of like how to make the food super not stressful. [00:19:00] Which is great. Love it. Yeah. She also talks about like how to make your guests feel super welcome.

She gives some tips that I really appreciated for maybe if you have some friends or family members who are a little more introverted or shy and kind of how you can help incorporate them into the party and like make them feel welcomed. So definitely recommend that episode for any time of the year, but you know, maybe particularly around the holidays, if you're having to be hosting the holidays at your house or something, but loved that episode.

So next up we have episode 66. And that is when I was not on this episode. Um, I had stepped away for a while. And you interviewed a pastry chef named Matt Adlard and I just, I remember when this episode launched loving it. Um, but I got a little clip to listen to. It's just basically how he got started and then we can chat about it in a second. 

Matt: So I did work in London and I worked in advertising and media, but you know, I was making no money and working [00:20:00] horrendously long hours. Then I kind of started this blog. as a bit of fun and I would go to London, I'd trek across London every weekend with like a KitchenAid and my pans and my spatulas and I'd go film YouTube videos.

I just remember thinking, you know, this is crazy. I'm traveling an hour across London every weekend just to film these videos. I really hope this... pays off one day. And it did. It did. You know, it took a while. It took a lot of dedication. But I kind of had that overnight success, you know, in 24 hours, my channel blew up.

And from there, it became legitimate. And I was able to turn it into a career.

USBAudio1.0-1: I did love talking to Matt. He was such a genuine person to talk to and you know, he is quite famous on mm-hmm . You know, different social media channels. You know, he's definitely somebody who is an influencer and. He was just the kindest, most personable, like, easy person to talk to, and [00:21:00] when we had that interview, he gave me like 100 percent of his attention, and yeah, I just remember really, really enjoying it, and can totally see why he's popular on the internet, because I think he gives that energy when he's creating his cooking videos, and Yeah, he was super fun to talk to him.

I chose this clip in particular because I just love the visual of him carrying a KitchenAid across London because I'm just, I mean Any major city, if you've never been to London, just pick another major city. I mean, hoisting a KitchenAid Anywhere is a task and it just shows you like the dedication. It shows you the effort.

And it's like such a funny picture of someone who worked really hard to get where they are. The rest of the episode is also incredible. He talks a lot about his journey in the episode and he has a beautiful cookbook, which immediately after this episode came out, I went and purchased for someone.

Kind of wish I'd purchased one for myself now that I'm listening to this episode again. Uh, it was just such an entertaining episode and it makes you want to go bake. It makes you want to [00:22:00] go follow him on the internet. It makes you want to go buy his cookbook. Just, just such a fun journey and such an interesting person.

Yeah. It's funny that you say that because I do have the vision in my head of him, like sitting in the tube with like a KitchenAid in his lap and everyone's staring at him and being like, what are you doing? My nephew is from England and he, they don't travel. Like he traveling an hour for him is a very, very long way.

And so I'm just picturing this guy maybe has the same feeling of like. I have to travel an hour to get anywhere, to get somewhere, let alone with my KitchenAid. It's just such a funny visual. I love it. Okay, well some of the honorable mention episodes, uh, actually one of our most popular podcast episodes overall is episode 26.

We did with Amy Lee Udell. , one of the main things that she talks about that I just wanted to mention is she talks about your meal planning anchor. So she, has a blog and a website where she. Kind of helps people with meal planning [00:23:00] and she uses plan to eat, which was how we got connected with her.

But the thing that she encourages people to do is find their meal planning anchor. And so she talks in that episode a lot about how for a certain period of time their anchor was their paycheck. And I think it was her husband worked a government job or something and they only got paid once a month. And so she had to do all of her meal planning for the entire month and that was her anchor for her meal plan.

It was like the thing that This is the, like, grounding factor in my meal plan. I have to figure out how to make this work for an entire month. And yeah, she's just, she's a super smart in the way that she talked about her different, her aspect of meal planning and this, this idea of anchors, she also was the first person that I heard, um, the freezer meal club idea from, which is funny because I've heard, I've heard it a lot now since then, but she was the first person who like introduced that idea to me of a freezer meal club.

I enjoyed speaking with her also. So I remember in that episode by the end of the month. Every [00:24:00] time they would be eating like rice and beans, but she would still do her best effort of making that an interesting meal. Yeah. Even though they were getting to like the, the last bits, the bottoms of the barrel of what was in the pantry.

And yeah, I love the, it's an idea that makes perfect sense of like having this meal planning anchor, but it's really an idea that you and I had not really explored with such explicit. Instructions. Yeah. And I feel like I just loved that because it gave you and I new information to then be able to share with other people.

Absolutely., this is my honorable mention. Number 60. it was, it's called a surprising twist on summer food. And it's where you and I spoke about using the freezer in the summertime, which when I, you know, even now thinking about the freezer, what do I have in my freezer?

Winter soups. You know, I'm just thinking like, you know, I can feel like the things that you have in your freezer are often foods you eat in the winter time. Right. And so to think about it in light of the summer, how you can utilize it so you're cooking less. We gave a ton of tips in that episode about cooking utensils and [00:25:00] tools that you can use using your grill, using grill baskets, using an air fryer, even using a crock pot in the summer so you don't have to turn on your oven, get your whole house hot, doing less work in the kitchen so you can be outside, which is where most people want to be in the summertime.

Depending on where you are geographically. And so I just thought that was such an interesting, take on the summer and gave, again, a lot of tips and tools for, I don't know, just utilizing it so your summer can be more enjoyable. Yeah, I liked that episode too. I think one of the things that I enjoyed about that episode is that It actually was an episode that required me to do some research to like find some new ideas related to freezer meals a lot of the times when we do podcasts where we're talking about a meal planning topic You and I are so well versed in meal planning that we just kind of riff on the topic and you know Give our personal experiences But that one I I remember I listened to a couple other podcasts about freezer meals I remember doing research about like What's food safety protocol for freezer meals?

Cause I didn't [00:26:00] want to give anybody bad information. So I think that was, it was really, it's just always fun to explore, you know, something that you're familiar with, but like get to learn new aspects of it. Yeah. I feel like we had to push ourselves to think outside of the box on that one. Uh, but once we kind of pushed us there, I think it, I mean, it's been helpful for me.

I've utilized the tips that we talked about. Yeah, me too. Yeah. A couple more recent ones, two interviews that I did without Riley. One of them was with Diana Rice. She also uses Plan to Eat, and she introduced the idea of capsule meal planning. So, she helps people basically find, like, fewer recipes.

So, she has them put, like, maximum 30 recipes in their Plan to Eat account. and then create a series of menus based off of those 30 recipes, and she helps people basically create a three week cycle of menus so that they just always have meal plans that are ready. They're super low maintenance. They're recipes that you're familiar [00:27:00] with and it really takes the 

decision fatigue and brain drain, just like out of meal planning itself. Because you're not looking at 2, 000 recipes that you might have in your plan to eat account, like I'm guilty of. Raising my hand over here. Yep, me too. So, that was just a really cool idea. I really enjoyed that interview with her, so.

I need to go back and listen to that one, because I think I'm currently in a phase. Of my life where I need that I need to implement a new meal planning tactic. Yeah. Which I think is true for everyone. It's we oscillate between, Oh, this is easy and Oh, this is really excruciating. And I'm kind of at a point where I'm just tired of asking my family, can somebody give me just one idea?

What do you want to eat? And then we get into these ruts and, yeah, I just think I just need to get onto some kind, I think I need to try a new tactic to just make it feel a little bit less weighty. And yes, as someone who. Educates people on meal planning. I feel that burden too. Right. I am definitely not above it.

Right. So. I also loved, episode [00:28:00] 93. Did this at the end of the year last year. Um, it's with the couple who do the podcast Rich and Regular. Julian and Kirsten, and there's just, it's just a phrase that Julian said in the podcast where they do a lot of home cooking, you know, for monetary reasons, but also because he, just really loves to cook.

And one thing that he said was that home cooking is not a punishment for not being able to afford to go out to eat. And that phrase has just. stuck with me for the last several months because it's so true. And one of the things that they talked about in there was once you get some skills for home cooking, a lot of times you can actually make food better at your house than you can eat at restaurants.

And I, it, that literally like opened up my eyes for going out to eat. And if we go out to eat, I'm specifically choosing things on a menu that I maybe don't know how to cook or wouldn't normally cook at my house, rather than just getting like a. turkey sandwich or [00:29:00] something at a restaurant that I could super easy make at my house.

So it's kind of like changed how I go out to eat and also made me much more willing to say no to going out to eat and instead being like, no, I actually think I can make a better meal at home. Sometimes permission is what you need. Totally. And I'm thinking like that is a, such a permissive statement because I, I mean, I look at going out to eat as sometimes just a break.

Totally. A break from having to cook every night. And I love to cook. Right. And I love to eat at home. And I do have that feeling of like, it's actually, I prefer it to eat at home a lot of the time. And so just kind of changing the perspective and giving yourself permission to be like, no, you know what?

It's actually better at home. Yeah. You know, and that's, it's okay. Like I, there's nothing wrong with it at all. And I think that culturally we're in a like eating out is fun and it's like, you know, I don't know, it just feels enjoyable, it's a fun experience with people and things like that, but you can do it at home [00:30:00] too.

Right. And obviously, one person still has to cook. I mean, I'm not anti eating out, I just have grown to really think that is true, that it's not punishment. Right. Eating at home is not punishment. I actually love it. I do too. Yeah. So I have just a few more honorable mentions. I don't have a whole lot to say about these.

They were just super fun podcasts that Riley and I did together. Episode 31 and 32, we asked all of you for your meal planning tips and went through, we got so many emails. with all of your guys's meal planning tips. And so those two episodes, we go through a bunch of those different tips and talk about what we love about them.

And we kind of tried to categorize them together because it is really interesting how a lot of People meal plan in similar ways. Like they meal plan based off of the weather. They meal plan based off what they have at their house. They meal plan based off their schedules. There was definitely some themes in there.

Uh, one thing that I know we have come back to multiple times in different episodes on the podcast is One of our [00:31:00] customers mentioned the idea of anytime she has leftovers, she also makes a dough recipe and then essentially makes like homemade Hot Pockets or hand pies and just fills the dough in, with little like buns, makes little buns essentially with, she fills it with whatever is leftover.

So if she had leftover curry, then she has curry buns or stew maybe, she puts it in there. I don't know, all sorts of different things that she was making with that and that was such an ingenious idea of like doing your future self a favor and also not wasting anything. Yeah, it's genius.

And I have used Utilize like once or twice, but definitely not as much as like the excitement that that builds in me. I'm like, Oh, I love it. I like the end result, you know? I love it. I think it's such a good idea and pretty creative, you know, especially if your kids are super into it of like a mac and cheese hotpot.

Yeah. Yeah. My husband would definitely be into it. But yeah, I will agree. I haven't like gotten on the bandwagon of it, but the idea of it makes me really excited. But it's, it's like her habit. You know, I have my [00:32:00] own habits. That other people would look at and be like, that is way too much work. And I'm like, yeah, but it's not work anymore.

Exactly. It's not work anymore for her because she makes Hot Pockets every week. It's not work for me anymore to make bone broth every single time I have a chicken because it just, it's just what I do now. It's just habit. So anything can become a habit. Yeah, that's a really good point. And then I just wanted to shout out, uh, early on in the podcast, we did four different seasonal food episodes.

They're episode 8, 12, 18, and 35. And those episodes were super fun. I think both Riley and I, that was another opportunity where we had to do some research and learn about seasonal foods, and then talk about it with each other. So those episodes were super fun. I remember learning a lot and They're, they're fun to go back to and remember like, Oh yeah, these are the things that are in season for spring and summer and winter and fall.

So, if you're into seasonal eating, definitely go listen to those. If you follow us on social media, I've been doing a monthly recap of [00:33:00] what is in season every month. And I've been doing a little watercolor. That's me. Um, and it's been really fun because I feel like I learned that information back when we did those episodes.

And now it really does inform. I'm not going to buy these oranges. Because it's not quite time or, you know, like that kind of thing. It really doesn't form my grocery buying. Um, and even my kids will say like, Are strawberries in season? I'm like, No, they're not. And we still buy them sometimes and I regret it.

But, you know, things like that. Like, even my kids have started to say, Is this in season? That's very funny. Your kids are so smart. I love that. Okay, I think that's all for our podcast episodes that we were going to mention. Once again, there's 99 episodes to go listen to other than this one.

And again, we appreciate everybody who has listened to the podcast. It's been such a fun project. Yeah, I, we're about to move into some other fun stuff and I, I'm excited for it, but I just want to say to all of our listeners, you guys are the best. The Plan to Eat community is so good. You know, we've shared mission, you know, [00:34:00] like shared goals.

I think that kind of bonds people together. But. When we ask for something you guys deliver and so just let me say thank you for listening Thank you for always being willing to give us feedback when we ask for it send in your questions send in your dinner dilemmas Send in your you know questions about picky eating you guys have just always done the things that we've asked you to do and it Has been it's like we we need you to do that.

It's been so helpful and to just thank you so much. Yeah

Yeti X: You guys are awesome. So we started the podcast in 2021. It was the fall when the first podcast episode came out. And so Riley and I just wanted to mention a few of the plan to eat features that have come out since then, in case you didn't know about any of these special items. A really huge one was we added the option for nutritional calculation on your recipes.

This is available on both the website and the app and you can also display your nutritional information on the Plan to Eat [00:35:00] planner if you didn't know that. 

USBAudio1.0-1: Use it all the time. I love that. I love this feature. Okay.

Let me just say this real quick about this feature. If you are someone who uses like my fitness pal or carbon or the million, my fit, my micros, something or other, there's a million of these kinds of apps. But if you're someone who also cooks. for your family, it can get so difficult to do all the data entry.

And so one of the beautiful things about the nutritional data in plan to eat is that you can literally do your meal plan. And then your nutritional data is, is created for you and you don't have to go and figure out, well, how many, how many carrots did this recipe call for? And how many did I consume? If you're somebody who is, you know, we're still in the kind of time of, um, recording this during the time of New Year's resolutions.

And that's still a big thing for people. So if that is you, this is such a helpful tool. It kind of consolidates all the apps. You can still meal plan. You can still cook a meal for your [00:36:00] family. And. The nutritional data is there for you. 

Yeti X-1: Yeah, it makes it a very streamlined, I agree, it's an awesome feature, and it was a really big deal for the development team. It took a long time to figure out the best way to implement it, and so it was probably one of the biggest features that we had launched in the past several years.

USBAudio1.0-1: In my tenure at Plan to Eat, it probably was the feature that took The longest ever. Yeah, it's very difficult to get that together.

So shout out to that team who put that together You know who you are. Thank you 

Yeti X-2: We also recently improved our social media recipe importing, which has been a game changer for me personally. If you scroll through Instagram or Pinterest for finding recipes and you want to save those recipes, it is super easy now. We also added dark mode on both the app and desktop, that was highly requested and we're excited that we added that.

We also added a search bar in the shopping list on the app, which is another [00:37:00] game changer for me if you have a ridiculously long staples list like I do and you don't have to scroll through it every single time you're adding staples to your shopping list. 

USBAudio1.0-1: Grocery delivery has been revamped and it's no longer in beta. So now you can send your grocery list from the app or the desktop site to your local grocery store for pickup or delivery. And it is very awesome. 

Yeti X-3: Yeah, grocery delivery has been super popular lately. This last year. We made some updates to the cooking view, and we actually have some more updates to the cooking view coming down the pipeline that I am super excited about. We are adding the ability to check off items in the cooking view as you're cooking a recipe as well as the option to add ingredients directly to your shopping list from the cooking view.

I'm not sure if both of those will be out by the time this podcast goes live or not, but it should be out fairly soon after that. And I'm super excited about this because I feel like I'm always like, oh, I just ran out of garlic powder and I want to add it to my shopping list.

So being able to do that from the [00:38:00] cooking view is going to be amazing.

USBAudio1.0-1: every feature that launches and plan to eat, everyone you just mentioned, you know, I'm sitting here thinking, yeah, I use that. Yeah, I love that.

And it's funny. I mean, I just feel like it just everything that, you know, I've been on the outskirts of this for a little while now and it's everything you guys have been doing has just been making Plan to Eat so much better. 

Yeti X-4: It's been great. The development team has definitely been working hard and we really appreciate them. We, um, also recently made a couple of changes to our homepage that are pretty cool. So if you don't go to our website very often go check out our homepage and see some of the updates that we did.

But moving on from features of plan to eat we wanted to talk a little bit about what's to come and We are going to finish today's episode with a little preview of what's to come as well So in the next two months Riley and I are starting a little plan to eat podcast book club We are going to break down the four different sections of the book salt fat acid heat and so If you have never [00:39:00] read that book before, now is the time to grab a copy and you can follow along with us.

We're planning to give an overview of each of the sections and talk about some of the things that we learned from it. It's not going to be totally comprehensive because she gives so much information in that book, you know, we could probably have a whole podcast series to go over all the information, um, because she does such a good job of giving a deep dive and giving you so much information.

USBAudio1.0-1: Yeah, and since I just told you how great you are, if you have some book out there that you want us to review, whether it's a cookbook or if it's some other kind of cooking or meal planning related content, let us know.

Yeti X-5: Yeah, we would love to hear your suggestions. So you may have seen the email that I sent out a couple of weeks ago asking about your dinner dilemmas. And quite a few of you have responded to that email telling us about your meal planning problems or your dinner dilemmas. And that is something we are going to conclude at the end [00:40:00] of each of these episodes.

And originally, I thought that this was going to be something we would do over just like a couple episodes, but we have gotten so many responses from you that, um, we probably have enough that we might be able to get us through the entire year with how many of you have written in to us talking about your meal planning issues and your dinner dilemmas.

So that's really exciting and I'm super excited to talk about meal planning and help you guys solve some of these problems.

USBAudio1.0-1: I'm really excited about these.

Again, this is what I was referencing earlier. When I said you guys have submitted things, we are really excited to help you guys work through your problems. If you stump us because we're going to be doing all of these on the fly. In hopes of just helping problem solve through what you've got going on.

But if we ever get stumped, like we're going to come back to it. So just keep listening and we can't wait to go through them all. And I love it. I love getting to engage with you guys. So I hope that we get to do it the whole year based on the dilemmas we've got going on so far, um, in the list and the extensive list that [00:41:00] we have.

I mean, I'm excited. I'm really excited to work through it. It's a lot. It is.

Yeti X-6: All right, so that's what we're moving on to next. 

Yeti X-7: to our new dinner dilemmas segment of the plan to eat podcast. 

USBAudio1.0-1: Love a new segment.

Yeti X-7: All right. We're going to start by just reading the dilemma and we're going to then give you some of our ideas. We're going to try to keep these ideas, you know, concise, because we do have a lot of these questions to get through.

Um, but we also want to give you as much valuable information as possible. All right. So Sarah wrote in asking for meal planning tips for before and after vacation, or when we're just not going to be at home for an extended period of time, she's concerned about wasting food and overcooking. She also asked for some ideas of her freezer meals so that she has some stuff in the freezer for when she gets back.

USBAudio1.0-1: I love that. It's a great question. And I think something that probably almost all of us navigate. Um, I personally [00:42:00] work backwards from my, the date I'm leaving.

So, we're just gonna work with some random information. I'm going to go on a trip, next Thursday. And I'm meal planning on the Sunday prior because I almost always do my meal planning on Sunday. So I'm working with four, three to four days depending on what I need to eat. My meal plan is going to be based around what I already have at home.

So I'm going to be looking at how many eggs do I need to use up? Um, do I even have any eggs? Breakfast at my house is kind of a big deal. And we don't just eat it for breakfast. We also eat it for dinner. And so, I might add eggs to my grocery list if I don't have any, cause I know I want to have that for breakfast, or we're going to use something like dried oats for breakfast.

Cause that's something that's not going to go bad in my week, week and a half vacation. And so I'm going to try to, um, use up what we already have on hand. And literally all of my meal planning is going to be made around what I already have. If I've got spinach that needs to be used up. If I've got anything perishable in my fridge is going to be my primary ingredients for meal [00:43:00] planning.

Yeti X-8: I was going to say that when I'm planning before I go on vacation, if I'm planning anything that is not using staples that I already have at home, I make sure that I set the serving sizes of the recipes on my planner to be exactly what we're going to eat. Either that or I'll like double it and then freeze the other half so we have something ready when we come home.

But I don't want to be in the weird situation where we have like a half a serving left that nobody's going to eat because that's. That's when the food ends up going to waste. So I think being really conscious of the serving sizes, maybe intentionally making recipes that you're familiar with and know exactly how much it does make, or you do something like make a casserole and then the second half of the casserole is super easy to wrap up and freeze.

Then you have a half a casserole in your freezer.

But I think, um, not overcooking and not wasting food is just really being conscious, like you said, about what you already have at your house.

USBAudio1.0-1: I was literally just telling my husband about a [00:44:00] time in college when I knew I had just a couple of days left in my apartment, I was moving out.

I knew I was going to see a couple of people to eat out, but I also had very little money and also very little, time left in my apartment. So I bought a bag of cereal. This is so terrible. I bought a bag of cereal and a gallon of milk. And that's what I ate. Now, granted, that is like a single college version of me.

And it worked, right? Like I ate it for lunch or I ate it for a snack or I ate it for breakfast or dinner, depending on when I was eating out with friends in that last like three to five days of being at college. But if you have a family. And you're cooking for other people. You really do have to have food to eat.

I'm thinking in particular, in particular, my kids, like, me and my husband can rummage and we'll just eat what we got, but my kids are less in that age bracket of just rummaging, you know? And so you do have to do some meal planning. I'm just sitting here thinking like the casseroles are a great idea.

In particular, I recently made like kitchen sink chicken enchiladas. Like it was one of those clean out the fridge. Like, Oh, I've got some leftover cream cheese. I've got [00:45:00] rotisserie chicken shredded. I've got, Oh, I've got this half a block of Colby Jack and a quarter block of pepper Jack and one can of enchilada sauce, like let's see what we can do.

And we made it work and I. It made a lot. And so I actually ended up freezing it into three small pans, like three small foil pans. And so then two of them went in the freezer. One of them we ate that night and ate the whole thing. So that might be a good option, especially when you've got something at home.

Like you already, this is your idea. I'm just thinking of a time I actually did it. You know, things like if you buy lunch meat, so you have sandwiches and stuff, that stuff freezes. So like if you've got tons left over at the end of the week, don't stress too much. Just throw it in a container that can be frozen and throw it in your freezer so that it's there when you get back and it doesn't go to waste.

Yeti X-9: Yeah, we talked about this in the summer freezer episode that Riley mentioned earlier, like most stuff can be frozen. That was one thing we learned in that episode.

USBAudio1.0-1: Yeah, really truly. Yeah. I'm also the kind of person who's going to, um, we've got three eggs [00:46:00] left. I'm going to boil them and I'm going to take them with us.

Yeah. And then I've got snacks for the road. Same thing with like, honestly, with like meat and cheese, like I'll take the three leftover cheese sticks that we have and the rest of the lunch meat in the car for my kids when they decide to get hungry 12 minutes into our trip. Um, and obviously if you're taking a flight that might not work as well for you, but maybe you have those eggs on the plane.

Right. It's totally fine. 

Yeti X-10: So I've got some ideas for after you get back from vacation. I actually wrote a blog post about this a couple of years ago when I went on a three week vacation to Europe and realized on our flight home that I didn't have a meal planning for the, that I didn't have a meal plan for the upcoming week.

And so I went and looked at my plan to eat app and I was like, I don't even know how to meal planning anymore because I've just been in vacation mode for so long. So it was a really good time for me to write a blog post about it. Um, and I was thinking like, Wow. I definitely, other people are having this exact same problem.

So some of the tips I have for you for after you get back from vacation are number one, [00:47:00] uh, if you're making your meal plan before you go on vacation, just add a couple of recipes to your post. Vacation meal plan right then, even if it's just for one or two days, uh, cause it'll give you kind of a springboard to be able to say, okay, we have two nights of dinner planned.

I can go to the grocery store. I can shop for those two recipes. We can get back into the groove of things and it doesn't feel like that big of a deal. So one of the things that I noticed when I was coming back, when I was back from vacation and I was looking at my plan to eat account, I was like, what is meal planning?

My brain is completely blank. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I don't know what we want to eat. I have no idea what's at home in the refrigerator and in the cabinets. So just do yourself a favor and plan a couple of recipes. But if you're like me and realizing on the flight home or on the taxi ride home, that you don't have a meal plan, For some recipe inspiration, just go back and look at the recipes that you were planning before vacation that might help spark some ideas.

And you [00:48:00] can think like, Oh yeah, we were having that Buffalo chicken salad before we left. And so I'm just going to put that on this week's meal plan because it's super easy. Uh, and you know, if you've been on vacation for a week or two, it doesn't feel like you're eating it over and over again because you haven't had it in a while.

Also one thing that my husband and I will often do is if we're either going on a road trip or a trip where we were flying and we know we're going to get home late, I'll just buy a couple of frozen pizzas before we leave. So that way we at least have something to eat when we get home. Because I would rather eat a frozen pizza at home than stop at the McDonald's drive thru or something on our way home.

So that just makes it really easy if you're not going to be home on time to go to the grocery store, or if you're just totally exhausted and don't want to go to the grocery store, I think having something at home that's super easy to heat up and eat the day that you get back is a really good move after vacation.

USBAudio1.0-1: that's a really good idea. I'm notoriously the person who, meal plans on the plane on the way back [00:49:00] or makes a grocery pickup for the way home or then immediately the next morning, And that's, I utilize that time like that, but I like the idea of pre planning before you go so that it's already done.

You don't even have to think about it. And just to piggyback on these like recipes that you like for when you get back, most people, myself included, need a vacation from their vacation when they get back. And the last thing I want to do is like get back into the swing of cooking every meal. And so like low hanging fruit here, people like Roni's idea was a frozen pizza.

That's a great idea. Or just like the simplest. It's like, okay, my family loves this spaghetti. It's really easy and spaghetti. You've got the meat frozen in the freezer. You've got whatever the ingredients are in your pantry and some pasta pre done in your freezer. It's like, you know, package dried pasta in your pantry.

Then when you get home, you actually can just make that. And. You know, it's just there. You didn't have to plan for it. You can get the groceries later when you're not so tired, but I mean just think just just it doesn't have to be complicated. [00:50:00] Yeah, just yeah, I get back from my vacation and I want to nap like I don't want to be cooking.

Yeti X-11: Yeah. I think that's probably the most important post vacation tip is just like make it really easy on yourself. Okay. So Sarah has a second part to this question where she said they went on a vacation to Hawaii and her mother in law packages, bags of spices and certain ingredients to limit the cost of cooking while they're there on vacation, which is a super cool idea.

I think it's a little harder if you're going to someplace like Hawaii now. Granted, food is expensive when you're on the islands of Hawaii, but particularly if I'm driving somewhere, if I'm going on a road trip, I almost always bring food. Like, whatever snacks that I have at home, I just bring for the drive.

Um, even, Not just crackers and things, but even if we have carrots, I'll put some carrots, carrot sticks together and bring those kinds of things. And definitely if you're staying at a homestay or [00:51:00] an Airbnb and you want to have your favorite spices, just bring those spices. I often bring salt with me because I just want to make sure that I have some good salt for my food.

And I have had multiple. experience at homestays where their kitchen is a little lackluster in what they have available. So it can be really nice if you know you're going to be preparing certain types of food that you could bring those spices with you. And I always bring my chef's knife with me, like my sharp chef's knife, because sometimes those basic kitchen essentials are also lacking at homestays.

So obviously that only works if you're driving.

But yeah, I mean, um, this could be, this could be a whole episode.

USBAudio1.0-1: yeah, yeah, this could be a whole, I mean, we really could do a whole episode on this. Often, we will stay at an Airbnb, and if we're driving there, we will have almost done all of our food.

I will have spent the week prior. And everyone doesn't have this kind of time. I mean, honestly, I don't even have this kind of time. Usually, I just [00:52:00] somehow make it happen. But, basically, every meal I just duplicate it, freeze it, so it's pre ready. Then when we get to wherever we are going, I'll just go buy fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, milk, half cream or things, like cream coffee.

But then most of our meals are pre done and I love that because one, it makes my vacation feel more like a vacation because as the primary cook in my home, I'm not going to also cook while on vacation. I already did that work. I've been to Hawaii several times and we have. almost always purchased groceries and usually what we have done is we've just purchased groceries for like two meals a day and then eating out one meal a day or just eating two meals the days, because food is really expensive there.

I've actually never had the idea to fly with spices and things like that, usually because I'm trying to maximize my space in my suitcase. Um, but I, I don't hate the idea. I think it's a really interesting idea, especially if you have very particular seasonings that you want to use. But. Meal planning and grocery shopping while you're on vacation is, I don't know how many people do this, but I think it is [00:53:00] such a money saver.

Prevents you from having to eat out every meal. It's actually, you're eating healthier because you're cooking your own food. Um, and I think it's a great hack for taking a cheaper vacation. 

Yeti X-12: All right. Well, maybe we'll put that on the list for a full episode because I think that, um, we have a lot more that we could say about this. So I think that's going to be it for our little teaser of dinner dilemmas. And like I said, we're going to include a few dinner dilemmas in the second half of our episodes, until we finish them until, we answer all of your guys questions and particularly as we're working through salt, fat, acid, heat, we are going to be answering your guys questions at the second half of those episodes.

So I think that's all we had for our 100 episode. We really appreciate you guys listening. Like Riley said, you're the absolute best. We're really excited to have reached a hundred episodes and we're hoping to get to a hundred more. 

USBAudio1.0-1: Can't wait.

Yeti X-12: As always, you can support the Plan to Eat podcast by sharing episodes with your friends and family.

You can also leave us a review on [00:54:00] Apple podcasts, Spotify, and Audible. Thanks again for listening and we will see you again in two weeks. 


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Roni Vayre

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