#117: Your First 3 Weeks of Meal Planning

We're going back to the basics! In this episode, we're helping overwhelmed listeners get started meal planning and feel successful quickly. Our three themes for today's episode are Foundation, Adjustment, and Personalization. Build the foundation of creating a meal planning habit, learn and adjust future plans, and start to personalize your planning to your life and personality. 

We're here to guide you and encourage you to just get started and let the pieces fall into place as you gain more confidence. Enjoy!

Read about some possible meal planning frameworks that could work for you!

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Transcript

first three weeks of planning
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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. 

Roni: Hello and welcome back to the Plan to Eat Podcast. We are back with another week of our meal plan, like a pro series, and today we are going back to the beginning. We're talking about your first three weeks of meal planning and how that can look and how you can get started meal planning successfully.

RIley: Okay. So if you are an overwhelmed listener and you are doing your very best to get started with meal planning, after listening to this episode, we want you to just feel like you can start and be successful.

Roni: Yeah. Meal planning can definitely feel overwhelming at first, especially if you're not a planner. Personality like Riley and I boast.

RIley: [00:01:00] Well, we are expert planners, but even experienced planners, there are weeks where meal planning feels so daunting.

Roni: Absolutely. Yeah. So I think that you know, in general the one of the main things that we would like you to just take away from this is that taking action is gonna lead to confidence in your meal planning. So just get started and hopefully today we will help give you some tips to feel competent in getting started.

RIley: So to get started, we suggest that you pick a simple framework. So we've talked about several of these kinds of things in the last couple of weeks. Different kind of frameworks for how to get started. So if you wanna go back and listen to those, I highly recommend it. But ultimately keeping it simple is key.

Don't plan every single day. I don't plan every single day and I don't plan every single meal, um, because that is in my world, just not sustainable. And I would consider myself like a solid meal planner.

Roni: Totally. Yeah. I [00:02:00] don't plan every single day or every single meal either. And part of that is because I end up with too much food. If I do that, too much food, that potentially goes to waste It also. Then you feel like you're tied to your meal plan rather than being able to just like live your life. Because if you've planned something every single night of the week, then you think, okay, well we don't have any room for flexibility in here.

I can't move anything around to spontaneously go out to eat, or , go over to a friend's house when they invite us. So. Keeping it simple and yeah, not planning every single day. Super key. We talked about this a few episodes ago of just the idea of maybe planning, starting by planning two or three recipes in a week, and I think that particularly if you knew that's a great place to start.

RIley: I feel like the question for a new meal planner that's listening to this episode is, but what do you do for lunch and dinner if you don't every single meal every day? How do you handle the other meals? What do you do, [00:03:00] Roni 

Roni: I love that question. I for breakfast, breakfast is just basically staple items. I eat a lot of the same things for breakfast. I get in like breakfast ruts, where I only eat one thing for like months and months and months for breakfast. Right now it's just yogurt and gran. For a really long time it was like a savory cottage cheese bowl, so it was like cottage cheese, fresh vegetables, olive oil, and salt.

I still love that. It's super good. For a long time it was like scrambled eggs and toast. So it's just stuff that you can basically keep on hand. And, you know, if I run outta yogurt, I'm fine with eating eggs instead. For me for lunch, I often will eat leftovers of whatever we had for dinner the night before.

If we don't have anything, I'll make like a tuna sandwich or something, or an egg salad sandwich. Maybe my husband will pretty much eat the same thing for lunch on repeat. So like the whole summer, he ate like a buffalo chicken salad for lunch and now he's kind of [00:04:00] transitioned back into. Eating sandwiches for lunch and I don't know, as as winter gets colder, he'll probably switch to something else.

So it's basically like breakfast and lunch are very predictable in our household.

RIley: Do you fix your spouse breakfast?

Roni: No, he usually doesn't eat breakfast. He just drinks a cup of coffee and leaves.

RIley: Okay. Okay. Yeah, so, and I, I think part of my thought process behind asking these questions is like, your meal plan is different than my meal planning life.

Roni: Yeah.

RIley: You're planning and cooking for your spouse for breakfast. Like, like I often don't make my husband breakfast either. He either eats his own thing at whatever time he wants to eat it, which is never when the kids are hungry.

Or he just doesn't eat also. So like, I'm not usually ever making him food. I don't plan in my meal plan for him to have breakfast. Like he'll eat what's here, but he's not like picking it out. The kids on the other hand, like what I'll do is. Sometimes I'll ask [00:05:00] them like, what do you guys wanna have for breakfast this week?

And like, maybe that's an English muffin and like it's an English muffin and scrambled eggs, or it's an English muffin with butter and yogurt or like fruit, but I'll just pick a couple of things and then we'll have that for breakfast until it's gone. And then maybe the next week we'll rotate it out.

I'm not, uh, maybe once a week I'll make like a full blown breakfast, like, you know, full works. Pancakes or waffles and bacon or sausage and eggs and you know, fruit galore and the whole thing. But that's, uh, like once a week.

Roni: Well, and then what do you guys do for lunch?

RIley: I, you know, I talk about on this podcast sometimes that I ask my family what they want to eat for meals. And my daughter literally only ever wants to eat sandwiches for lunch and hamburgers for dinner. Those are her only two suggestions ever. And that's what she has for lunch almost every day. She loves a sandwich, likes it the way she likes it.

I'll usually make a salad for myself with some kind of protein. Very rarely do I eat a sandwich, um, or I [00:06:00] eat leftovers. And so like that's my constant is I am the primary leftover consumer in our home. And so if I have leftovers, like that's just like, okay, well that's my lunch tomorrow. Cool. 'cause nobody else wants it.

Roni: Yeah.

So I was thinking one of the biggest questions that we get related to getting started with meal planning is like, I don't know what recipes to choose for my meal plan. Right. So what do you, how do you decide on what recipes you're gonna put in your meal plan every week?

RIley: Great question. Text you. So I either, um, just kind of go through like what my family likes. Like, okay, I know we like these, these are my family favorites and my recipe book. Or I'll ask the audience, hello family, what do you guys want to eat this week? Or, we have friends coming over for dinner this night.

What do you guys think we should cook for them when they're here? And then we, you know, like we kinda all collaborate, mostly me and my husband, but. I usually give everybody a little bit of a voice, like if there's something that they want to eat, then I'll let them say [00:07:00] like, I want hamburgers and we'll have a variety of types of hamburgers 'cause that is her favorite food.

And then I will honestly, I text a friend because sometimes I just, this week in particular, I. Dried up, I think is the phrase that I said to you in a text message. I was, I just had nothing. I had nothing. I had no excitement, no energy. I didn't even want to eat when I was meal planning, you know, like there's, I had nothing inside of me that was like ready to do it, and so I just asked you.

And that is honestly how I kind of build it out. There are weeks where I do it based on what we have in our house. Like, okay, we have these canned goods, we need to eat these, or we have this protein in the freezer, we need to thaw and cook that. And so sometimes I base it on that. I do it in a variety of ways, but that keeps it really interesting for me.

Roni: Yeah, I, I would say I am fairly similar. I don't have as many people to ask in my household, and usually when I ask my husband what he wants to eat, he's kind of like, eh, I don't know. I don't really care. There's very, there are very few times where he's like, super in the moment, super [00:08:00] opinionated, but then like when dinner comes and I'm like, oh, we're having like bratwurst or whatever, he's like, oh yeah, that's awesome.

Actually the thing that he's really liking right now are those, smash tacos.

RIley: Those are so.

Roni: yeah, we've been eating those like once a week recently. So, yeah, I, I mean, we talked about this in the last episode where I often plan from the recipes that are in my queue because I keep just like a smaller segment of recipes in my queue that are typically more like family favorite recipes.

They're kind of like the go-to fallback on recipes. So I plan at least one recipe from there, and then if I don't have any. Specific inspiration from like Instagram or something. I do find a lot of inspiration from Instagram and like seeing what people are, cooking like this week essentially. Right?

Because I feel like every week has like a different trend. Although we've been in pumpkin mode for like, uh, over a month already.

RIley: So, just so everyone knows, today is September 26th and we've been in pumpkin mode for at least a month.

Roni: yes.

RIley: Yeah. It's not even 60 degrees.

Roni: [00:09:00] Yeah, for real. But other than that, I do, you know, we tend to keep a good amount of stuff in the freezer, and so most of the time the things that I'm like then filling in if I don't have inspiration is just like, all right, we got some like ground meat in the freezer. Like let's figure out what to use with that.

And a lot of that is motivated by keeping my grocery list less expensive. So like meat is like the most expensive thing at the grocery store. And so if I can. Not have to buy meat for like every meal that's on my meal plan. And I know a lot, a lot of people don't eat meat at every dinner that they have, but we usually do.

So if I don't have to buy it for every single recipe, then that's gonna save me a lot of money at the grocery store.

RIley: Absolutely. Basically out of everything you and I just said that we do, I would say picking recipes you already like, is like tops the list, like. Don't make meal planning more complicated.

You know, [00:10:00] we often equate meal planning to any other habit that you start. So let's just pick a habit like you're training for a marathon. Like if you just up and decided to like, go run 20 miles on day one of training, you'd never do it again. And so don't pick recipes that are so off the beaten path for your family, or you'll never meal plan again because you're like, well this was terrible.

Because you picked something like. That took three hours to cook or that nobody in your house liked and you wasted it. So, so kinda equate this to those other habits and start with recipes that you like, that your family likes and honestly, that you know how to make. That's a really great soft, soft entry point, right?

Like it's a gentle entry. Like, I know how to make this, I can make this, I can put on a meal plan. Hey, that's meal planning.

Roni: I 100% agree. Even this week I tried a new recipe. It was actually one of the recipes that I shared with you when you asked for meal planning inspiration. It was these like Thai inspired meatballs and coconut rice, and I thought it was delicious. I liked it so much except [00:11:00] for the fact that it's supposed to be a one pot meal and the rice didn't like cook fully.

I feel like I have that problem every single time. I have a recipe that's like, it's a one pot meal and you just like put all the things and then you put the lid on and then your rice is done in 20 minutes and I'm like. No, that never happens to me. So anyways, the rice didn't cook all the way. I still thought it was delicious.

And my husband was like, this just like wasn't what I was in the mood for tonight, and I could really see that if that was what you were working with on your first week of meal planning, was that somebody in your household was like, yeah, this wasn't for me, and they only ate like a half a serving. You could feel really defeated.

RIley: Yeah. Oh yeah. Mm-hmm.

Roni: And that, like for me, that rarely ever happens. That happens like twice a year that my husband says something like that. And often it is with like maybe flavors that are different than what we would normally be eating. And it's just like, I really like reaching outside of the box and sometimes he's like just probably would've preferred like something less, uh, different.

RIley: So our next [00:12:00] recommendation is just to build simply like. If you're a new cook, if you're new to meal planning, just start simple. You know, I mean, pick recipes you already like, that you already wanna make, but then just remember that it doesn't have to be extravagant. Meal planning doesn't mean that you have a five course dinner every night.

Meal planning means that you put, you knew what you were gonna make and you had the ingredients to buy it. Define meal planning really simply. Like last night I was gone the entire day, got home around five o'clock. And, and this is most people's normal life, right? Like this is not, like, this is a bit more rare in my world.

'cause I work from home. I'm at home with my kids most of the time. Um, but I was gone the entire day yesterday And, we ended up having rice, a salad, and these like air fried chicken wings. The whole dinner was ready in like 30 minutes. It was so simple. It, you know, it like the rice was plain, like it was, it was nothing crazy.

No, you know, [00:13:00] nothing wild. And it was just easy and I just felt like it was just one of those things, like it was an example of something simple. Like I didn't turn on my grill, I put the salad in a bowl. You know, like it was just so easy. So simple, three little building blocks, which is kind of how I make a lot of our meals, like protein carb and veggie.

Uh, and that, you know, and that's kind of how I build a lot of our meals.

Roni: Yeah, that's a great tip. Next up is the adjustment phase. Of meal planning. So you've built your foundation, hopefully like your first week of meal planning. You're trying to, like you just did the thing, right? Like you just started, you created a simple meal plan, and then now we have to look at like what worked and what didn't last week.

And we learn and we adjust. And honestly, this is kind of like what meal planning is forever. It gets a lot easier, right? Like there's, there's less adjusting as time goes on. But I think this is similar to probably all habits, right? Is like you, you're, you don't ever really stop learning and stop adjusting because [00:14:00] you change as a person and your life changes.

And so things just have to change with you.

RIley: I can't think of very many habits that don't stay hard. Like the habit is that you are used to them and it's a rhythm that you live in, but. I'm thinking like the gym, like you want it to stay hard. Like, you know, you wanna keep pushing yourself, uh, budgeting, like, unless you just suddenly make gobs of money, all of a sudden you are, you have to work hard to stay inside of a budget.

So meal planning is the same.

Roni: Yeah.

RIley: Yeah, and I, I just love the, just like learn and adjust. Learn and adjust. And people always say like, you know, I didn't know adulthood was just meal planning every day until I die. And it's like, well, yeah, but I mean, it's true. You do have to figure out what you're gonna eat every day, but like it doesn't have to feel so daunting.

Roni: Totally. Yeah. what would you say are things that somebody should look for to know if their meal plan worked for them or not?

RIley: The first thing that I think of is how stressed [00:15:00] out did your meal plan make you. If it was super stressful, then it probably didn't work. Because it should, you know, you should have to work a little bit to keep it, you know, as soon as you're building that habit, like you have to kinda work at it. But if it was, every meal was super complicated.

You forgot to like thaw your chicken every day. You forgot to marinate something you were gonna throw on the grill. Like, and if every day it was super stressful, it didn't work. So we gotta pivot. And then another thing I thought of is, how many nights did you skip what you planned? And now you and I have talked a lot about swapping things around, switching up what night you have things.

Uh, that is not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking, we skipped the meal plan, we ditched the meal plan, we ordered pizza, you know, or we went out for dinner instead. If you did that, three feels very generous. Like three, like extreme. Let's say even if two, if you did that twice, I don't think [00:16:00] your meal plan worked. It wasn't working for you. At least I.

Roni: I would totally agree. That was one of the things that I thought of and I was thinking like it's really important once you have that realization to then think about like, why did we totally skip those meals? Was it because I planned things that we were unfamiliar with and I felt intimidated by the recipe?

Is it something that we're totally tired of and we didn't feel like eating anymore? Like they took the advice. Of being like, I chose a quote unquote family favorite, but maybe it's like a recipe that we're like done with, you know, everybody's like, we're kind of over this family favorite, let's table it for a couple months.

Or did you not even look at, did you not consider your schedule when you planned those recipes and it was just like a crazy night and you needed one of those, like 15 to 30 minute dinners instead doing the, like, why? Like, yes, we skipped the meals and then why did we do it? That helps you solve the problem for next week so that you don't do the same thing.

RIley: Yep. This is how we learn and adjust, right? We look at them and we're like, everyone loved that. You know what? [00:17:00] Let's have it again next week. Or, I didn't even fool with that because I was so tired at five 30 when I got home. There was no way I was making that hour dinner.

Roni: Yeah.

RIley: Okay, well ditch that one and go for a, something faster.

And just be flexible, you know, like just pivot, learn, adjust. We, these are things we all are doing every week.

Roni: Yep. And then I also think that it's important to look at how much food waste did you have if you ended up throwing away a lot of food. It could be because you skipped some of the meals and stuff like that. But also if you, you know, tried really hard to stick to your meal plan and you still had a bunch of food waste, you know, consider looking at like, what have a serving sizes did your recipes have?

Like, did you just buy too much food overall? Did you plan too many recipes? And then you ended up with a bunch of leftovers that you didn't put in the freezer I personally think that it's important to look at food waste because that's also wasted money when we didn't, when we didn't eat that food, and then it goes, goes into the trash.

Not only is it food waste, but it's like wasted [00:18:00] budget as well.

RIley: Absolute. I mean, this happens to me occasionally. Usually I try to get to it right before it goes to, goes to waste. But that's when suddenly we're having the most random lunch or I am co I. The other night I actually cooked two dinners at the same time and one of them went into the freezer because it was gonna go bad otherwise.

And so I was like, okay, I'm already cooking. I'm just gonna cook this other thing. And to try to just like a little tip to try to like save that food waste is if you can just get it cooked, it can prolong its life a little bit longer.

Roni: For sure. Yeah. And then you can just, like you said, you can put it in the freezer and then you have a meal that's like ready to go on one of these other nights when maybe instead you would get takeout.

RIley: let's look at making your meal plan match your lifestyle. So, Roni already alluded to this just a few minutes ago, um, when you talked about maybe you didn't plan around your family's schedule, this is a really important piece of the puzzle. I, I, I mean, I think this is a really important piece of the puzzle.

Like last night, [00:19:00] my example with my really simple dinner, I knew I wasn't gonna be home until late. I knew I needed it to be fast. And that is how I made my meal plan mine. I looked at my week ahead and, I mean, even today, I have something in the crockpot because I'm not gonna be done with my workday until close to six.

I need the dinner to be made for me. I did the work. I just, you know, that was a long time ago.

Roni: Well, so this is kind of like we talked about, I think it was on last episode, we talked about, you know, like using a meal planning template. I, I, I guess what I'm trying to say is to me, like having meal planning match your lifestyle is figuring out like, what's the, the anchor as we've called it in the past is, we learned from Amy Lee.

Um. What's the thing that's anchoring your meal plan that maybe is unique to your situation? So some people, it might be the budget, for some people it might be a really busy schedule. For other people, it might be children or,

RIley: That they prefer to batch [00:20:00] cook on Sunday. And not do any work with meal planning or, you know, cooking all week.

Roni: Yeah. And so, I mean, I think probably one of the most. Popular ways to meal plan is the idea of like looking at your schedule and making sure that you're planning in accordance of the amount of time that you have. But lots of people also think about like the weather, and that's something that my husband thinks about when dinner comes around is like if it was a hot day, he does not want to eat soup.

He will literally, if I made soup, he will make himself a ham and cheese sandwich instead. so I just think there's like that part of that where it's like, you know, maybe you started out with just this like simple, we're planning two to three meals a day, but. Or two, two to three meals a week. But like as you start to do this like learn and adapt cycle, I think you then start to be like, okay, so what's, what's the thing that's missing or what's the thing that's really influencing me when I'm making my meal plan?

And start to gear it more towards that. 'cause I think that's the thing that's like the lifestyle component. it might also be something that's more related to your type of [00:21:00] personality. So like you said, Riley like you might be something who just wants to batch prep. You don't wanna deal with the cooking during the week.

You just wanna like reheat and mix and match. Um, you might be somebody who just like cooks off the cuff all the time, right? And so your meal planning isn't so much about recipes as it is, like making sure you have the ingredients that you know how to cook with

RIley: and you may not know your meal planning personality. It's like an, it's like an Enneagram. Yeah, you may not know what your personality type is, and you might need to try a few, to see which one works for you. Like for me, I love the, like, I like the batch cooking like I cook. But I make two and I freeze one.

I don't do that every day. I don't do that every week, honestly. But it's, it is a habit that I have where if I'm making something that makes more, I just freeze it. Um, and so like, but you might, that might not work for you. It might not be the right season of your life. Like it's a lot easier in the [00:22:00] winter, you know, when I've got a double batch of soup in the crockpot.

So just kind of trying different things and seeing what works well for you. If Saturday and Sunday are your down days and you wanna try to make a meal prep day, try it. And if you're like, oh, well no, I didn't like it by Friday, it wasn't very good. Just try something different the next time.

Roni: Yeah, very good point.

RIley: pick still that learning and adjusting.

Learning and

Roni: Mm-hmm. I think the last thing to, to add in here that might influence your meal planning is like, how often are you still grocery shopping? Right. So a couple episodes ago we talked about the idea of like plan once, shop once, and so.

Ideally, that's what the goal should be, is that you get all of your shopping done in one grocery trip because that's maximizing, your time. You're only going to a grocery store once. You're also then not randomly spending extra money at the grocery store. You're not buying extra ingredients that go to waste because they're not included in a recipe because.

We all know that we don't go to the grocery store and only buy one thing. We always buy like seven things [00:23:00] because it looks cool. Or we're like, oh wait, we do need mustard, whatever. So I would think also in here is to think about how often you're still going to the grocery store and can you try to continue to reduce that.

So you're just doing the shop once, but plan once, shop one's idea.

RIley: Planning once and shopping once is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle, I think, and I think it kind of is like. It anchors the budget piece because you aren't going back a bunch of times and inevitably buying more than you need. You're not wasting your time because you're going back to the grocery store.

And it can really be the thing that keeps you on track with your meal plan because you know you have what you need to make the food instead of you started and realizing, oh no, I don't have this main ingredient. Uh, okay. I don't know what to do. Yeah.

Roni: So those were our general, uh, three ideas, related to getting started meal planning, creating a foundation, having an adjustment period, and then personalizing it to you. I think that, doing the [00:24:00] idea of like keeping it simple and just getting started, right? I think we burn a lot of mental calories, avoiding things that we know we should do instead of just getting started and taking action on the thing and then realizing like, oh, it wasn't as bad as I built it up in my head to be.

So with that being said, before we move into dinner dilemmas, we just wanna like encourage you to do that, to just get started with your meal plan. Don't quit just because it feels hard, right? Like, there's lots of things in our life that are hard that we still have to do anyways, and we get over the hurdle.

Of it feeling really hard and then, you know, you start on that downward slope of like, okay, it's getting easier, I'm getting more used to it. You're in that learn and adjust period. And hopefully eventually it just becomes something that you do automatically. I, at this point, meal plan super automatically.

I look at my Plan to eat app and I realized like, okay, we only got, you know, maybe one more recipe in this meal plan. Like I need to meal plan. Because otherwise I'm gonna feel very lost in my life [00:25:00] if I have to scramble for what's for dinner tomorrow night.

RIley: If you are listening and you are just, you still haven't planned a single thing, uh, just start today. Start and make your first meal plan today. Plan one dinner, get a shopping list. Go see how it goes. And remember that this is hard for everyone. Um, but the habit of it and doing it weekly. 'cause I would say like, hopefully by the time you get into a routine, you don't do this more than weekly.

The habit and the rhythm, it becomes so much easier over time.

Roni: Yeah. Yep. Good point. It is not easy all the time for anybody. Just like you said, you had started, went to make your meal plan this week, and you were like, what am I doing? I don't wanna do this.

RIley: Yeah. Not having energy for it is not uncommon.

Roni: Right.

All right. Well, let's answer some dinner dilemmas

RIley: All right. Our first dinner dilemma is from Grace, and she says, I [00:26:00] don't feel like cooking what's on my meal plan. I don't expect an answer, but that is sometimes my problem. Well, grace, we're here to give you an answer.

I would like to go ahead and also read Zika h hers, because these are really similar to each other. she said monotony, maybe not specific to planning. I get comfortable with recipes and I don't wanna learn new things, and I get bored of the same things. These feel similar. Maybe they're not exactly the same, but they are similar.

Roni: If they do feel very similar, because Grace's problem could be that she's in monotony and she doesn't wanna cook what's on her plan. 'cause she's in like a, a planning rut. And she's planning the same things over and over again. So, I mean, I think that this is part of that, what we talked about today, that like learn and adjust thing of like looking back at your meal plan and being like, why didn't I wanna cook those recipes?

And is it because you were tired of 'em? Is it 'cause they were too hard? Is it 'cause you were exhausted at the end of the day?

RIley: Is it because they don't taste good?

Roni: yeah,

RIley: you know, the thing with monotony is that they were [00:27:00] really good a month ago, but we eat them every week. They don't taste good. It anymore,

Roni: Absolutely and or yeah, maybe just in general having a little bit more variety. I'm thinking of right now, like I said, we're in the smash taco era right now, like we are loving the smash tacos. But the great thing about something like that is like you can have a smash taco like 27 different ways, and so it's like I can put smash tacos on.

The meal plan and you can basically just change up. Like how did you season your meat? What were the things that you put on as a topping? You know, if, if you're feeling like monotonous, there could be small ways potentially that you could change things up. You know, like maybe part of the monotony is like some people in your household only wanna eat certain things, right?

And like things start to get to feel monotonous. But there's always ways that you could change things up at least slightly.

RIley: I'm thinking of my meal planning, um, schedule that I made this summer and one of my [00:28:00] days was sandwich night. And now that sounds incredibly basic, monotonous and boring. It does, it does sound that way.

Roni: We weren't just eating bologna.

RIley: We were not, no, we were, we didn't have bologna once, although that does kind of sound good. I haven't had that since. We, you know, like you could have a breakfast sandwich, you can have a, like a Philly cheese steak sandwich. You can have a grilled cheese and soup. You can have, you know, like taking that one idea and really expanding on it and seeing it's, it sounds monotonous, but you literally could go an entire year and not have the same kind of sandwich.

Roni: that's so true.

RIley: So I think like when I don't feel like what's cooking on my meal or when I don't feel like cooking what's on my meal plan. This is the, the thing where I say, okay, can I change it? Like, is it something that I can change the flavor of Like maybe you planned smash burger tacos and suddenly you're not feeling it.

Could you turn that into like a breakfast taco? You could very easily, you could throw that meat you were gonna put on those smash burgers into [00:29:00] the freezer and you can make breakfast tacos with some scrambled eggs. So you can completely change it. Or you can just swap your meals around, you know, like tonight, I don't feel like having lasagna tonight.

Okay, what can I have instead? We can have lasagna tomorrow and we can have, you know, like pot roast today. You know, you can do that as long as you plan it earlier in the day or, you know, pivot during the day. Um, or we can have breakfast for dinner tonight instead of what we had planned. We can just swap these nights around not wasting any food, just moving them around.

I feel like when I don't feel like what's cooking on my, when I don't feel like cooking what's on my plan, I just switch the night around.

Roni: Right, and this is part of the reason that we've talked about so many times in the past of having your like on hand meal that you really like and everybody in your household really enjoys that meal. So that way when nights like these do come around, you're like, good thing we have this pantry meal that everybody loves because.

That's gonna prevent us from getting takeout or DoorDash or whatever, and I'm just gonna make that really fast and [00:30:00] we love it and it's gonna be totally fine. The other thought that I had related to monotony in general is I feel like the seas changing of seasons is always a good time to switch up. Like your whole meal plan, like summer to fall, you just switch things up.

Totally. You know? And I, I think just in general, like, I don't know. I think like emotionally and everything, like the rhythms of everything, it just feels really natural to switch things up as the seasons are changing. I know that at fall and winter I often want things that are much richer in flavor, things that are slow cooked,

RIley: Warming spice

Roni: Yeah, things that have more of like buttery ness to 'em, you know? And then like spring and summer, I want like crispy vegetables and things that are like fresh and light. So I think there's just like a natural pivot that you can make there. But also like after about three months of eating similar recipes, I'm done.

I'm ready to move on to something else. Anyways.

RIley: Mm-hmm. [00:31:00] Yeah, I, I would say that very similar to this second one, I get comfortable with recipes and I don't wanna make different things either, but then you get bored of them, and so you kind of have to make an active choice to get out of that rut. Like you and I have talked about ruts so often. I think this is pretty common for meal planners.

Roni: Yeah.

RIley: For home cooks. And you kind of just have to force it. You have to say, okay, we are not having smashburger tacos next week. And maybe, you know, maybe, you know, I've already said this on this episode, I say this a lot, but text a friend, ask what they're eating. Or look back at meal plans in your, in your plan to eat account from like six months ago.

What were you eating six months ago? Um, what are your friends eating now? And kind of just like get some different ideas. And honestly, guys, Instagram, follow some of your favorite, follow some of your favorite recipe authors. They do change with the seasons. And also it just gives you, even if you're just like, oh, I haven't cooked Orzo in a year and a half, like, I'll make something with [00:32:00] that.

It just gives you, even if it's just an ingredient inspiration, it just kind of gets you going in a different direction. So all those ideas would probably help there.

Roni: I love it. K, Nina says, no matter what I make, my husband will say something about how many dishes I used when I think it's, while I think it's a small price to pay for the stellar healthy meals I daily put on the table to meet the needs and tastes of our family of six. Maybe there's more info on how to reduce slash indicates number of pots to use.

I don't know if this is really a dilemma. You may also tell my husband to suck it up. Of course, LOL.

RIley: I feel like I wrote this about.

Roni: LOL. Indeed.

RIley: Oh, this is so good. I think we could be friends with Nina.

Roni: Yeah, I think so.

RIley: Okay. I don't know that I have a solution. My husband likes to cook and clean as he cooks. And I, I would say this is a very different in our personality, like he's very like type A and structured and like, [00:33:00] I'm gonna do the thing. He also doesn't care if food gets cold.

Because he wants dishes to be cleaned and I care if the food is cold. I'm like, put that down. We're eating hot food. But I'm like a little bit more like wild in the kitchen creative and I like have 65 dishes and I'm a little bit more like Nina. I think, like even you, you just made something that was one pot.

Like talk to us about the one pop meal experience. Like did you actually use less dishes?

Roni: Yes. I would say that for a lot of recipes that call for one pot, the experience is that it's generally just like one. And I think the, I think the key to it is for me, like getting a big enough. Pan, you know, like don't just use your regular saute pan for these. I often, even though it doesn't, even though it's like kind of overkill, I pretty much make any one pot meal in my Dutch oven.

Because I want to be able to, I want to like ensure that there's enough room that I can actually like stir the thing instead of like really gently folding so that it doesn't like drip over the edges. In [00:34:00] general, I would say it's a pretty successful experience except for when it comes to this dish with rice.

And I think part of the reason that this, that this dish with rice didn't work well for me is because it was coconut rice. And in general, if you just make coconut rice all by itself, it takes a lot longer for the rice to like soak up the coconut milk compared to soaking up broth or water. And so if I were to make that recipe in the future, I would do the coconut rice separately from the vegetables and the meatballs.

However, I think that if you're doing, I've made lots of recipes where it's like you, you saute your stuff or whatever, and then you put in like pasta and broth and then you like cover it and the pasta will absorb the liquid. Overall, it's like pretty successful. Sometimes it's like a little saucy maybe compared to what I think the recipe author was going for.

That could be a difference in living at different altitudes. I don't know. But I would say in general, one pot meals are pretty successful. We have quite a few one pot meals in Plan to eat. Just so everybody knows. I was not at Plan to Eat when this happened. [00:35:00] Riley did a, a recipe challenge called One Pot October.

And so if you go into the PTE recipes in your account, there's like 30 one pot meals in there. I think there's quite a few of 'em.

RIley: Yeah, there are, I think there's 30. Yeah. Another thought that I had is obviously in the same vein as a one pot meal is a sheet pan dinner or a crock pot meal. You know, definitely for me. When I'm getting into, I have us two sides and a main and a sauce and a, I mean, I think about the night I make fajitas, there's like 65 dishes to do, right?

Roni: Yeah.

RIley: you know, there's the guacamole bowl and the salsa bowl and the cheese bowl and the tortillas have to go somewhere once they're heated and the meat had to be sliced and cooked somewhere. And the sauteed, you know, like everything had a different i, I just do those a little more rarely. Like, I do love fajitas, but I just don't do, you know, like they're just nights, I just don't do it every night.

You know, where I have a hundred dishes. [00:36:00] I like, the thing is, is like, I love the, she said it's a small price to pay for the stellar, stellar healthy meals. I wanna meet this girl

Roni: I love it.

RIley: Healthy meals I daily put on the table to meet the needs and tastes of our family. Of six. Oh yeah. Okay. I like her.

It's really hard. It's really hard. Like I don't have a, it's hard. I get the same thing going on. I'm like, well, I made this sauce, but it required the immersion blender and the cup, and then I needed to put it in something for storage. So that ev you know, it's like,

Roni: Yeah,

RIley: it can be a lot of dishes.

Roni: I agree. One thing that I have been thinking about that I don't know if other people do this or if this is my own like life hack that I have created, but you're talking about your, uh, fajitas and the guacamole and the cheese and all of things going in their different bowls. When I make toppings or sauces or condiments or whatever for a recipe, I just make 'em in a Tupperware, and then when we're done with the meal, I just put the lid on and it goes under the refrigerator.[00:37:00] 

RIley: But you're a family of two. Let's

Roni: that's true.

RIley: pace of a family of six. There is a chance that there are no leftovers.

Roni: very true. That's very true.

RIley: Like I'm just gonna push back on you here because like there could be zero leftovers.

Roni: this is my life hack anyways. Is that you? Is that you make your things in containers. You just make it, when I make ranch dressing, I just make it in a container that can put a lid on and go in the refrigerator.

RIley: Okay. I just thought of something that helps me. If my dishwasher is empty, when I start cooking, it really helps.

Roni: So true.

RIley: Because then I don't have to unload the clean dishes and then load in the dirty ones. That's like more work, right? I mean, it is the same amount of work. It's just the, when you do it right, if it's unloaded, and then as I am making things, all the dishes that I use to cook, you know, I'm not talking about serving, I'm not talking about like the pots and pans.

You have to wash, separate the random bowls and things that you, those can just go straight in the dishwasher.[00:38:00] 

Roni: Very true. I'm also gonna say I really, I really like this dinner dilemma because I feel like we're getting some opinions on this. I'm gonna say, how about Nina? You and your husband swap rolls every once in a while. He cooks and you do the dishes and we'll see how many dishes he makes. 

RIley: Yeah, we actually also don't know, like I'm, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that. If he's complaining about the number of dishes, then he probably does the

Roni: That's what I'm meaning. Yeah,

RIley: She cooks, he cleans. So yeah, they should swap rolls

Roni: yeah. I think they maybe should swap rolls and he might find it's harder than he thought to use fewer dishes.

RIley: the air quote, make a stellar healthy meal

Roni: That's his requirements. Make a stellar, healthy meal. Yeah, I like it.

RIley: like as minimal dishes as possible.

Roni: right. I hope that, I hope that helps, Nina.

RIley: I hope she listens to this episode.

Roni: I hope so [00:39:00] too.

Well, that wraps us up for this week. We have one final episode in our meal planning, like a pro series, and next time we are gonna be talking to our advanced meal planners. So we have spent a couple episodes talking more about beginner strategies. We're gonna talk about some advanced stuff next time. So if you are a lifelong meal planner, hopefully we give you some tips that'll help you or just reinforce your meal planning ideas.

RIley: Don't forget that everyone is a lifelong meal planner.

Roni: is, oh wow, you got me on that one.

RIley: Whether you order takeout or make food at home, your meal planning.

Roni: That's true. All right. If you love the podcast, we would appreciate it if you shared it with a friend or family member that really helps get the word out about the podcast, and thanks again for listening. We'll talk to you again in two weeks. [00:40:00]