#122: What We're Eating This Winter

We are finishing 2025 with lots of recipe inspiration! As we transition into Winter and a New Year, we are encouraging you to add some new recipes to your meal plans. Break out of those ruts and start 2026 with some fresh ideas for your planning. 

Thanks for listening in 2025 and Happy New Year!

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Transcript

What's on the plan for winter
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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. Welcome back to the Plan to Eat Podcast. This is the last podcast of 2025, which is kind of exciting and kind of sad. I don't know exactly how I feel about it.

Riley: Have you seen those memes going around that are like, like a calendar, but it's like, you know, January and there's like an inch February an inch, and then as the year goes by, the space between each month just evaporates and it's like they're all all piled on top of each other. That's how this year has felt for sure.

Oh, we have these months. Oh, they were so slow. And then October, November, December, January, it was like just all so fast.

Roni: a hundred percent. Yeah. I, yesterday was working on the annual recap email for plan to eat, so if you're on our email list, you'll probably be seeing that pretty soon. [00:01:00] And I was like trying to think back to the things that happened earlier in the year, and I was like, what was January and February? I don't even know what happened.

Riley: Wow. 20 January, 2025. Did that month even exist? I don't remember it.

Roni: Yeah, kind of.

Riley: Yeah, it's crazy that we're here, but it is exciting. I think it always feels good to have a little refresh, little start of the year.

Roni: Yeah. Hopefully the, your last couple weeks of 2025 are not very stressful. Hopefully you've got all of your holiday plans figured out. You got your meal plans for your gatherings and your parties and your days and whatever. All figured out and you're just cruising on through to the end of the year. But we want to give you a little bit of recipe inspiration today as we finish out the year.

Because as Riley and I often talk about, we do like to refresh our meal plans as we either go into new seasons, or sometimes it's just about going into the new year, [00:02:00] and you wanna start thinking about what's new and special that you could be putting on your meal plan so that you're out of your ruts and your recipe ruts.

And, um. Have a little bit of motivation to get your meal planning done.

Riley: How are you doing that? How are you preparing? How are you changing your meal plan, Roni?

Roni: Okay. Well, I wasn't thinking that much about changing my meal plan until my husband was like, Hey, we've been eating a lot of noodles lately. Which I didn't realize we had eat, eaten a lot of noodles. But we have had soup that's included noodles. We've had meatballs and noodles. We had like stroganoff and noodles.

So we've had, uh, several things that included noodles that I didn't really realize and we're not normally noodle people. That's kind of a strange thing to say, but like some people really gravitate towards pasta, you know, and like, we've just never really been people who gravitate towards pasta. As like our starchy carb in a, in a recipe.

So probably he [00:03:00] noticed it 'cause it is a little different from usual. But it definitely got me thinking about like, how can I switch things up and make the meal plans a little more interesting in the next couple months?

Riley: Yeah, I don't, we don't eat a ton of noodles either, but I think it's because actually my kids don't really like noodles,

Roni: Oh,

Riley: which is shocking, right? Like what kid does not like a noodle

Roni: Right.

Riley: mine? Yeah, so like I'll make noodles 'cause I like them, but it's like maybe once every eight weeks, like we do not eat very, very many noodles.

My husband's much more like a, his, his starch of choice is probably potato. And then we do rice pretty often. Probably do rice the most often, I would say. But yeah, we don't do a ton of noodles either. But it does feel like the right time for noodles 'cause it's hot or it's baked or it's crock potted, you know, just warm, warm food for the cold outside.

Roni: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I would say my husband gravitates towards potatoes or just putting things in a tortilla.

Riley: Yes.

Roni: Everything is [00:04:00] able to be put into a tortilla.

Riley: Yeah. Yeah. That's really funny. My husband also likes that. The portability, I think is nice. I'm not exactly sure the whole draw,

Roni: well, we've talked about hot sauce. Your husband likes hot sauce. My husband likes hot sauce. I feel like when you put it in a tortilla, you can really lather it in hot sauce.

Riley: And it doesn't drip everywhere. It's good. It's all contained.

Roni: exactly. You get to,

Riley: for the hot sauce.

Roni: exactly. Yep.

Riley: That's awesome.

Roni: So what's on your meal plan right now? Riley that we could take a little inspiration from.

Riley: Well, did you have more to say besides noodles?

Roni: Oh, well, I was trying to say that I'm getting away from the noodles.

Riley: Oh yeah. So what are you getting away from noodles than going to

Roni: Well, so some of the things that I've made recently are I made a shepherd's pie.

Riley: Nice?

Roni: That was actually a meal that I made just from things that we had at home. Like we had some ground meat, we had potatoes. I got potatoes on super sale after Thanksgiving, and so I was just trying to think like, what can I make with potatoes that wasn't just [00:05:00] like mashed potatoes.

We eat all, if we eat potatoes, it's usually like mashed potatoes. So. While Shepherd's Pie is still mashed potatoes, it's a little bit different application, and I think it's the first time I've ever made it, but we really enjoyed it. It was super good,

Riley: Awesome.

Roni: really good. Honestly, I, I feel like a pretty good staple kind of a recipe, like, not like a staple that'll always be on the meal plan, but like a recipe from Staples.

If you're somebody who normally has potatoes.

Riley: totally. Did you find that it, did you make an extraordinary amount of it? Because I feel like when I've made it, suddenly it has become so much more than we could consume.

Roni: I mean, we had a little bit of leftovers, but it wasn't crazy.

Riley: Good. Okay. I just need to do a better job of serving size management.

Roni: Well, it's, it kind of is one of those things where it's like, it calls for like two large recipe potatoes to make your. Mashed potatoes with, but I had golden potatoes that are like smaller, not like the little, not like the little ones, but you know the ones that are like the size of your palm.

And so I was like, I don't know, [00:06:00] five of them like,

Riley: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah,

Roni: but I could see it really easily ending up like, oh, we got a whole pile of mashed potatoes and this is more potato than it is shepherd.

Riley: When I worked at a, I worked at a camp and we would do like one, if we were making mashed potatoes, we would do one potato per person. So if we were serving 30 people, we would, you know, chop and, and boil 30 potatoes. That same concept does not currently work in my life because I think the potatoes I buy are also not very uniform in size.

So then I'm kinda like trying to like adjust and then it's like the same night that one kid is like, Hmm, I'm full. And they had three bites. And so it's like, yeah, I just do, I just feel like potatoes are really hard to judge the amount that, and then I don't know, like if my father-in-law was over, he'd eat the same serving as like eight people.

The guy's a potato consumer.

Roni: Yeah. Yeah. Like, and my husband definitely likes mashed potatoes too. So yeah, if there was [00:07:00] leftover mashed potatoes, he'd be like, well, I'm just gonna eat some extra mashed potatoes. It doesn't even matter if there's things on it, I'll put hot sauce on it.

Riley: Yeah. Hot. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's funny.

Roni: Um, let's see, some other things. I made some sloppy joes.

Riley: Oh yeah. Has been a long time since I've had a sloppy Joe.

Roni: I, okay, so after we had the, the noodle issue, I asked my husband. For his ideas so that he could feel more included in the meal plan and that I wasn't planning a bunch of noodles. And so Sloppy Joe's was one of his recommendations. I didn't realize he liked Sloppy Joe's so much, but it was like the first thing that he said.

Once again, sloppy Joe's is a great like weeknight meal. I made it at with some roasted broccoli on the side, and so like I chopped, chopped up the broccoli and put it in the oven and then made the sloppy joe's in the like 20 minutes that the broccoli was roasting in the oven. So it was like literally a less than 30 minute meal.

So put that on your meal plan if you need something quick. Let's see. This week [00:08:00] we are having a, I'm making some pulled pork and so we're doing a few different things with pulled pork. We're tacos with like a cabbage slaw. We're gonna do loaded baked potatoes. That was also one of my husband's ideas, so gonna bake some potatoes, top it with the pulled pork, and then cheese sour cream.

And then I think we'll probably have some ramen with the leftover pork as well. I know that's in the noodle family, but. I love ramen. I could eat ramen once a week.

Riley: Yeah. I do like ramen too. Similar to your, uh, sloppy Joe. We recently had, uh, well we had some people over for dinner and so I made chili and I don't actually really like chili very much, but it just sounded like something good to make. Also. It sounded very customizable . Because I had, 'cause kids were coming and I'm like, well I don't know if kids will like chili, but I'll do hot dogs.

Hot dogs and chili, chili dog. It's like there were like three different variations of the dinner that anyone could choose, which felt like a good way to have people over. 'cause it was very [00:09:00] minimal effort on my part. But everyone could kind of like do what they wanted.

Roni: that's a really good idea.

Riley: feels like a sloppy Joe friend.

Roni: Exactly. Do you put beans in your chili or not?

Riley: Yes.

Roni: Okay.

Riley: We did this time. You don't?

Roni: No, I do. I didn't realize that people don't put beans in their chili, and maybe it's Texas. It's like sacrilegious to put beans in your chili.

Riley: Okay. Well, I did.

Roni: I always do. That's how my mom makes it. And my mom grew up, well, my, my grandma would always say like, the, the time that you make chili is the first snowstorm of the year.

So my mom has like always stuck to that. So we always had chili on the first snowstorm of the year growing up. I don't necessarily always adhere to that, but cold, snowy weather does often feel nice for chilly.

Riley: Yeah, I'm I, I really like white chili. I really like green chili. Red chili is the chili I make the least often. [00:10:00] But this, this batch that I made recently was like surprisingly good. I've just made chili that I didn't like before. I'm like, I can't even fix this. And that's pretty, I feel like it's pretty hard to like not be able to fix something like chili, but So this one was a good batch.

You are right. It's Texas to traditional Texas Chili, also known as Texas. Red is made with meat chilies and spices only. They, uh, they basically say that it is like, you absolutely cannot add beans.

Roni: So what's the difference then between that chili and just putting it on a hamburger bun and having a sloppy Joe?

Riley: I don't know. Let's find that out

Roni: Maybe that's where Sloppy Joes were invented was Texas. I'm just making that, I'm making that up.

Riley: That's an interesting question. I feel like the seasonings are different. What did you put in your, in your sloppy Joe?

Roni: There's like onion, a bell pepper. Chili powder, a bunch of chili powder [00:11:00] and maybe paprika. And then there was garlic cloves, but I don't think powdered garlic or anything. And then I wanna say there's like a little bit of this one is like, like you make all this stuff yourself, right? Because some people make sloppy jokes with man witch, that's how my grandma made it and, mm-hmm.

But I prefer to just like make it myself. So I think like with the sauce, there was like a little bit of yellow mustard and some apple cider vinegar,

Riley: So this, this is the difference between these chilies is that, um, the sloppy Joe is like not as like thick, and it's sweeter.

Roni: Oh yeah, there was brown sugar in it. Mm-hmm.

Riley: And then the Texas chili is not sweet at all. No beans, no. Sweet, savory, spicy.

Roni: Okay. Interesting.

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: Hmm.

Riley: arguably you could serve that on a bun though if you know, made it pretty

Roni: sounds like you [00:12:00] could, okay, so what else? What else are you having on your meal plan Riley, besides the chili dogs, which is a great idea.

Riley: Well that was, yeah, we, that's not on my upcoming meal plan, but I felt like it was worth noting 'cause it felt so similar. Like a, a neighbor. A neighbor to the sloppy Joe. So this week ahead, is not, I wouldn't say it's very seasonal. It is. I am trying to not go to grocery. I don't want, I mean, I hardly wanna cook, but I'm gonna do that.

But I am like, not going to the grocery store really does eliminate a big task and a big spend, right? Like it's the holidays, you know, Thanksgiving's, anex expensive meal. If you're hosting, like, it's a lot of food to make. I'm just trying to, I'm pulling recipes that I either had on my meal plan and we never made.

So I froze the ingredients. Or I'm just like, what do I have that I can like, like make, that I don't, so I don't have to buy any ingredients for it. So it's not like the most exciting meal plan. But, this week we have some apple sausages in the freezer. We often eat those with apples and cheese, like, kinda like a light [00:13:00] dinner.

Sometimes I make some rice to go with it or something, just like a filler. We're also having charcuterie with just like whatever random things we have. Like I've got some random, like. mozzarella balls left over from our little Thanksgiving charcuterie. I've got, like a bunch of veggies and dip.

So it's gonna be kind of an eclectic charcuterie board, but we will still call it that. Um, I'm actually gonna make those Minnesota Swedish meatballs that the recipe you shared with me, 'cause I had those to make, but like the week just got away from us. So I put all those ingredients in the freezer. So I'll pull that out.

I'll make those. We'll probably serve that with rice too. My daughter loves a hamburger. If I ask her what she wants to eat every single week, she says cheeseburgers or hamburgers. And it's exhausting. But I have, I don't even have buns, but we're, so we're gonna have 'em on. I'm gonna call 'em patty melts, and we're gonna have them just like on toast, you know?

And then when I, we're gonna have breakfast for dinner. So while those are not the most exciting, I'm not, I don't think I'm buying anything at the grocery store.

Roni: That's amazing.[00:14:00] 

Riley: A $0 spend. That's a, that's a great week.

Roni: That's a great week. And it's fun to like get, get a little creative. It's fun that you're like, okay, hamburgers, but we don't have buns, so we'll just call 'em patty melts instead. Like, I like that. I like the workaround there.

Riley: Totally. So some things that are upcoming, I actually have my meal plan made through. We are traveling for the holidays, so I have my meal plan made through the 22nd of the year of December, sorry. Um, and so we also are gonna have baked potatoes and barbecue. We are going to have a pot pie with, I saw it on Instagram and there's a couple of recipes recently that I've actually made from Instagram.

I didn't just save them and then forget, uh, and it was like using like the Red Lobster cheddar biscuit as the top of the pop pie.

Roni: Oh.

Riley: And so I'm gonna try that. We're gonna have a roast. Like I'm trying to do a lot of crockpot things 'cause I've just got, it's just a busy couple of weeks, right? So I'm gonna do a roast, probably with like a [00:15:00] pomegranate and like, um, like pecan salad.

'cause pomegranates are

Roni: Mm-hmm.

Riley: Probably white chicken chili again, another crockpot easy thing. We, because we're traveling for the holidays, we are gonna do our Christmas and Christmas eve, like whenever we want to. And so for Christmas Eve we always have biscuits and gravy. So that's on our meal plan.

And then one other thing that I made recently that I just feel like is worth mentioning is this air fryer salmon with, um, honey Chili Crunch. You make it in the air fryer. I don't know if I said that already. It was crazy good. It was like served with rice and like edamame. But the salmon turned out perfectly and I have pretty high standards for salmon.

I grew up eating a lot of salmon. The salmon was excellent.

Roni: Yeah, you sent me a picture of it and it looks so good.

Riley: yes. That was the other recipe I found on Instagram that I actually made. Uh, and it was awesome. The only thing I had trouble with was like removing the salmon from the skin, like before I cooked

Roni: Mm-hmm. [00:16:00] Mm-hmm.

Riley: I think my knife just wasn't sharp enough.

Roni: Yeah, there's probably some special technique for it.

Riley: Yeah. And I just kind of was fighting through it, but we got it.

Roni: They make those special, like fileting knives, you know.

Riley: Which we do have one of those, I just couldn't find it. So I used our other sharpest knife. My husband uses it when we go fishing and like we, you know, actually cook the fish we catch. So it's like in a very special spot so that it doesn't get used and, um, stays sharp in a secret spot where I can't find

Roni: Ah.

Riley: Yeah. So, you know, on my meal plan, a lot of warm foods, a lot of things that are easy. We have some people coming into town, so like B breakfast casseroles, and like I said, the crockpot like just a little bit of set it and forget it, just because there's gonna be so many other things going on. I'm trying to like do a lot of prep in advance.

Roni: , Okay. So that's what's on your meal plan. Is there anything else you're doing as like a prep for the new year?

Riley: You know, I can hardly think about 2026 just [00:17:00] because like I said, there's so many things to think about, like in the next three weeks, five, four weeks. But things that I am, my goals are like, I'm using things that are in my freezer, in my pantry, because I would love that to be just like cleaned out. And we talked about this on that podcast a couple weeks ago.

But actually just like planning from what I've already got and actually doing that, you know, like I do that. Fairly often, but just like nothing needs to be restocked. Just use what we've got, use it up. Feel like a fresh, almost like, like a spring refresh, kinda like we talked about on that episode. And then I just wanna go into the new year with like, it doesn't have to be difficult.

It can be easy. I'm gonna make, I'm gonna reuse menus, save things that were great, save things just to save them and reuse them so that I don't have to think about it again. And then, like I said, just trying to lower costs. And using what I already have.

Roni: I like that. Yeah, I think I need to take these ideas. That were my husband's meal plan ideas and create a menu out of it. So I have [00:18:00] like a, a favorite menu for him.

Riley: that's a good idea. Yeah, it's a good idea. I mean, I think I shared this EPIs on the epi on an episode recently, but my husband asked me what the highs and lows were when I told him what our meal plan was. And then like that week in particular, there were no lows, which was such a big deal. But like just the idea, like if I made a meal plan that was everything of his favorite and I said, this is what we're having, he'd be like, oh, I love everything on the meal plan. I did it for you.

Roni: Well, the funny part is that I told him. Like, okay, cool. I'll put those things on the meal plan. He didn't realize I was gonna basically make like a whole week meal plan with his ideas, and so then he was like, did you literally just take all of my ideas and make the meal plan from me? I was like, yeah, that was literally what I did because you said you wanted to eat these things.

I offloaded all of that onto you.

Riley: Yep. What did he think? You were gonna just like sprinkle it into the next.

Roni: Maybe. Maybe that's what he thought. I don't know.

Riley: The only reason I wouldn't take one of my husband's ideas is [00:19:00] if, um, it was like really difficult to make and I just didn't have the time, or if it sounded really bad to me. Otherwise, I just take everything that they give me. I'm like, yes, yes. This is why we're having hamburgers this week.

Roni: yeah, exactly.

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: Yeah. I think maybe the only things that I wouldn't take from my husband if he was like, let's just have corn dogs tonight, because he might say that.

Riley: That's, that's awesome. I'm the worst. Like I can't just do something like that. Like if I served my family, something like that, which my husband would also be very excited about. But if I did that, I'd also have to like make a salad, make a veggie, make a fruit salad. Like I could literally just never just like serve them a plate of corn dogs.

Roni: absolutely. I don't think I could either, even though growing up I definitely like just ate hot dogs for lunch or you know, hot dogs or corn dogs for lunch.

Riley: Yeah. Yeah.

Roni: As a kid and it was fine, and I

Riley: this is where, this is how like sloppy Joe's, and this [00:20:00] is why Sloppy Joe's and chili dogs feel like neighbors. Like, because like that's just those like meals from my childhood. Have I eaten them as an adult? I don't think so.

Roni: I don't know if I've ever, I mean, I've eaten a chili dog, like at a, I don't, not necessarily a restaurant, but like from a chili dog cart or something. Right. But. I don't think I've ever, yeah, but I don't think I've ever made chili dogs, which again would be something my husband would probably be pretty excited about, so I'm gonna consider that

Riley: yeah. I mean, honestly, and this is what I love about something like chili, not to like get us like down this weird rabbit hole about chili, but. Like, I made a vat of chili and then I saved a bit for like, me to have for lunch that week. But I froze quite a bit also, and like I, I froze and when I froze it, I wrote on there like, enough for chili dogs.

Like it wasn't enough for everyone to have their whole, a whole bowl of chili, but it was enough to be a topping on hot dogs. And [00:21:00] because we had friends over, like there was less to save, but something like chili just goes so far and it's just a really low cost, usually a pretty low cost meal.

Roni: Totally. And I think it's really fun to realize that there are other ways that you could use it. You know, the, the strategy that I have this week of like putting the meat in the crockpot and then turning it into other things, we've gotten some pushback on that

Riley: we have. Yeah, we

Roni: And so it's fun to think about how you can do that with other stuff.

You know, there are, there are other recipes that you can have that same idea with, and you know, you can turn one meal into three or four different meals for the week.

Riley: Yeah, I mean, and, and I know we've gotten pushback. I think I've, I've made this exact same comment with Green Chili, because we will eat it as a bowl of chili. We will also eat it on smothered burritos. We'll eat it as chili kilis. We'll eat it like, as like a breakfast burrito, like it's on the breakfast burrito.

And it just does become so many different things like ob, but I, I just don't like to waste it, so I'd rather repurpose it 'cause that's the way my husband would prefer to eat it than to just like have it the [00:22:00] same way over and over again.

Roni: For sure. Yep. Alright, should we move on and answer?

Riley: Let's do it.

Roni: All right. Our first one is from Susan. Who says, I want to plan ahead, and I like the idea of rotating menus, but I find I don't implement them because I wanna take advantage of sales. What's in season? What I happen to find at the farmer's market or vegetable stand? How can I be more intentional and organized about planning while still taking advantage of last minute purchases and surprise finds?

Riley: The first thing that comes to mind here is actually a new plan tea feature. It's, ingredient substitutions. So if you have a meal plan and, but you find something on sale or you find something at, like a farm stand or whatever that you wanna use instead. And your recipe calls for something like, I don't know, green onions.

I don't know, that's kinda a bad example. Maybe, uh, maybe just like white onions, but green onions were on sale. Like, can you [00:23:00] repurpose that ingredient and use it the same way? But plan to eat, if you open the recipe, it'll say it'll recommend substitutions.

Um, and it doesn't just recommend like one, it recommends like five. So. That could be a helpful feature for you to utilize so that you're still meal planning, but then you're kind of fitting in like both of these aspects, like you're meal planning, but you're also kinda like working on the fly. Another thing that I think is like if you plan.

Like, like I'm looking at my own min menu right now, like I've got a roast on it, potatoes and green beans. But the green beans are like a, not a necessity for the roast, you know? So like if I went and I found, oh, broccoli is on sale, or Brussels sprouts are on sale, or yellow squash, or you know, you, like you said, those potatoes, I guess potatoes is already on my meal plan, but just I'm thinking like that green veggie doesn't have to be this one thing.

So making your meal plan with a less strictness and saying like, roast. Starchy side and green vegetable, and then that way you get to like fill in those puzzle pieces and it doesn't feel so locked [00:24:00] in to like, oh, it has to be these three things.

Roni: Yeah, I think related to the, what's in season aspect is you, that's actually a really good place I think to use menus is that you can make spring, summer, fall, winter, or even just month dependent. If you live in an area where you have like really good local seasonal produce,

Riley: A hundred percent.

Roni: uh, you could make menus.

That include those seasonal things. In the spring you have strawberries and peas and you know, delicate leafy greens, that kind of stuff. And I'm also thinking related to the farmer's market. That maybe the things that go in your menus are similar to what you're saying, Riley like they're more customizable.

So I'm thinking of like, you could have a frittata planned on your meal plan and then the vegetables that go in your frittata are the things that are in season right now. It doesn't always have to be zucchini or it doesn't always have to be the a spinach or something. It's whatever is in season [00:25:00] right now.

You could, you could add that in there. And I also think that. When I personally use menus, I reuse menus, but I also adjust them. So I add a menu onto my planner, and then I adjust it for the week ahead. So there might be sometimes where there's a recipe planned on Thursday that I.

Don't actually want this week. And so I swap that one out or I delete it and just say that Thursday's gonna be a night for leftovers. So I think there's still a little bit of an adjustment even after you put a menu on your meal plan. So while I wish that there were a way to just like make it super automated, I don't, I don't think that that's exactly how this works, especially when you are somebody who's trying to take advantage of some of these other things like sales and seasonal items.

Riley: Yeah, you've gotta figure out a way to like help them partner, which I think is the, the ideas we've given are pretty good in like the partnership aspect. I love the ideas of just making menus for seasons. Because like you said, you're more [00:26:00] likely to stumble upon those things. It's not gonna be like a surprise, like, oh, well I planned chili, but it's July.

You know, like, um, so when your menu, you can name it, you know, summer, spring, winter, fall. , Or you could, you know, like we've, I named things like my husband's favorite, you know, weekly meal plan or whatever.

Roni: Yeah, and I,

Riley: yeah, go ahead. Yeah,

Roni: I was just gonna say related to, because maybe part of this issue is like summertime in particular, because summer. At least where we live, that's when there's the most variable amount of fresh produce and like every month is kind of different. So it really could be that you make either month dependent menus, or it could be like early summer, summer, mid summer, late summer, you know, and early summer you have different things that are in season compared to late summer when you have eggplants and zucchini and tomatillos and everything.

So I like potentially getting a little more. Again, getting a little more granular with the menus is part of the way to go here,

Riley: Yeah. And taking [00:27:00] advantage of sales. Like, could be that you're using an app before you're, or like in addition to meal planning, you're opening up your store's app and seeing what's on sale because most of them you can view the actual ad, you know, the one we used to get in the newspaper. You can view the actual ad in your app.

And that could be a place, a helpful thing to also kind of partner with your planning process. Um, 'cause you're not gonna also be, again, you're not gonna be surprised at the store. You're gonna know what's on sale before you get there. Our store does a lot of things that are like, buy one, get one free.

And. I sometimes we'll buy them every, every shopping trip until the sale is over. Like if, like for a while they're like, my daughters really like these like seasoned cashews and it was buy one get one free. And they're kind of an expensive little snack, you know, for a kid. And so, I was just like, every time I'm gonna buy two, I wanna buy two, I'm gonna buy two.

And so now we've still got them, you know, but it was buy one getting free. So like I took advantage of the sale. It was something that would last similar, could work for meat products. Potatoes also last for a long [00:28:00] time. Obviously with vegetables and things like that, it's usually a little more urgent, like, you need to go home and use this today.

Roni: Or you could freeze it.

Riley: yeah, you can ab

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: And if you need help freezing things. We reviewed a book by Carol Ann Kates, um, called Grocery Shopping Secrets, and in that book, she, so it's a great book to grab just for your own knowledge. You could also listen to our podcast review of it, but she basically teaches you how to freeze every single ingredient ever.

Roni: Yeah,

Riley: It's shocking. So hopefully those,

Roni: cucumbers if you didn't know. I didn't know that.

Riley: so hopefully those ideas help you, kind of use the idea of menus, but also kinda use your current system and just make 'em work together. Okay. Alright. Next up, is one from Cat. I have to make meals for the adults and a separate meal for the kids. Planning.

Coordination efforts is tough.

Roni: Well, this is a hard one to speak to since we don't know exactly why we're creating a [00:29:00] separate meal for the kids versus the parents. The assumption might be that we have picky eaters and they're not into eating the same things that the adults are into eating. That's the case. As we always mention, Katie Kimball is a great person to look into for resources on picky eating and helping to, uh, get your kids to be interested in more foods.

I would say that this is also something that we've talked about in the past where. Creating buildable meals is a great way to try and keep everybody happy, so you make everything separate and then people come together and they make their own bowl or their own burrito, or their own taco or their own sandwich and put the things on it that they like.

Um, but not knowing a whole lot about this situation, it feels really hard to give a succinct answer.

Riley: Yeah, because if it's a dietary issue, like then you're making two separate meals and planning coordinating efforts is [00:30:00] tough. I feel like we've definitely covered this topic in the past, and so I want to kind of like reference some of those ideas that we've given before. And so like Roni said, like the buildable meals,

I think for someone recently we discussed how there were like three people living in the household and one person liked this and one person couldn't eat this and one person could have everything. And we just talked about how, like finding the common denominator first. Okay, everyone can have this, so that's our base, and then I'm gonna make this for that person and this for this person.

So that at least it kind of can eliminate some of that like unique meal for every person. And then, yeah, I'm, I mean, I referenced earlier that my kids don't like to eat pasta. It doesn't mean that I don't serve pasta, but I do make it more rarely because that kind of meal is less buildable in my, in my, the things I make with pasta.

Pasta is rarely a side, and it's more of the Maine when we have pasta, and so it can be. Tricky to take a pasta dish and like [00:31:00] make it build, you know, like, okay, well they're not gonna eat the pasta, but they're gonna eat the sauce. That'd be kind of weird. Um, it's, that's really not the way that I would handle that.

And so, like Roni said, like choosing meals that are easily buildable and adjustable for each person might be really hugely helpful for you.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: And not choosing something like a casserole, well, I've gotta make a casserole for the adults and a casserole for the kids. 'cause that's two completely separate things.

Roni: Right. All right. Caroline's dilemma is, need more meals that cater to the needs of people living with diabetes, high cholesterol, and obesity.

Riley: First of all, we are not, we are not medical doctors. We are not licensed nutritionist or dieticians. So we probably are not the best people to speak to these specific health concerns. We can certainly, uh, send you. Like towards some people that we've worked with. I think Roni's looking up some people that we've worked with in the past.

And I would say that [00:32:00] Google is gonna be a great resource. Um, just honestly AI is gonna be a great resource for you. Um, put in. I need recipes for people with diabetes, high cholesterol, and obesity. And saying like I, and again, this is a situation where it could be three separate people living in the house.

It could be two separate people with different, uh, concerns. It could be one person with all three of these concerns that, you know, it, we don't know the exact breakdown, but saying, okay, I'm not cooking for three separate people, three separate meals. So like, what kind of recipes cover all three of these?

And asking the internet, asking chat, GPT or ai, whatever AI service you use, and. Like having it curate you some ideas that you can then put into plan to eat, save as menus and reuse, and just getting yourself a really good base of recipes that you can then kind of customize for you.

Roni: Yeah, some of the people that we've worked with before, we've worked with a lady who does a website called 100 Days of Real [00:33:00] Food. So that those recipes could potentially be good options for you. There's somebody who works, he doesn't, we've not worked with him specifically in Plan to Eat, but he is, he refers a lot of people to plant, to eat.

His name is Jim. I'm failing at what his last name is, but his tagline is no longer chunky.

Riley: Okay.

Roni: And so his, his style of eating is called like a bright line eating, which I believe is maybe diabetic friendly. And other than that, yeah, like Ri said, I think the best thing to do is to just do some searching.

If you are consulting with a medical professional related to diabetes and high cholesterol, a lot of times they can help you figure out the things that you're able to eat. And if you are adept at cooking, a lot of times you can just rework the recipes that you currently eat to kind of like fit this new lifestyle.

Riley: absolutely. Hannah Van Arc, she's a nutritionist. We could at least refer people to her also. Um, she doesn't work. I don't know that she works with people with these needs [00:34:00] specifically, but I mean, she's at least a great resource. 'cause you know, she's got people she knows.

Roni: Absolutely. Yeah. Well, and a lot of the stuff that she talks about is like getting fiber in through real foods and vegetables and stuff, and I think that that's a pretty important thing when you have diabetes.

Riley: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Next up we have one from Cindy. Um, getting recipes from cookbooks into plan to eat.

Roni: well, Cindy, since you sent this question in at the beginning of 2025, again, we're so sorry we're finally just getting to you guys, but. In 2025, we added the feature in plan to eat, to be able to take a photo of a recipe and have it imported into the Plan to eat app. So this isn't available on the website, it's available on the app for your phone or a tablet, but you basically, you just hit the add recipe button when you're in the cook.

When you're in your recipe book, and you'll see the option to take a photo, and so you can either upload a photo from your photo library, so if it's a photo that you took a [00:35:00] long time ago from a magazine or a cookbook or whatever, you can upload it. Or if you have a physical cookbook in front of you, you can just take a photo of it and it's going to scan the recipe and import it magically into your Plan to Eat account.

Riley: Magic.

Roni: Next up is dinner Dilemma from Patty. My husband is 78 and I'm 72. He just had his gallbladder removed after an acute infection. We need to modify our diet to reduce his fats. I'm also trying to make our main meal at midday and something lighter but healthy for dinner.

Riley: All right, Patty. Similar answer to the one we just answered for Caroline. We are not medical doctors, so it, we cannot really speak to, you know, like the diet modification. However, like we just said with Caroline, there's some great resources out there, and all the ones we just referenced for her would be great resources for you as well.

And then using a meal planner for both of these people, using a meal planner to plan these meals, save these meals, and have easy access to them. And [00:36:00] then it's just helpful because when you're dealing with diet changes, like you just need to have. A good base of recipes, a good like go-to, okay here we, we, I know where to find them and I know I can buy the ingredients that I need.

And then also for you in particular, Patty, um, making your meal, main meal at midday, it, it, that's, that's great. Uh, I know a lot of people who do that. Getting that on the calendar and then having something light already planned for dinner, that's just, it's meal planning that way is just a really great method.

Roni: Excellent answer. Riley

Riley: Alright, our next dinner dilemma is from someone named Michelle. Um, and it's a little lengthy, so to help us answer it succinctly, I think we're gonna just read it in parts. Okay. I'll jump in. If I was just feeding myself, I don't think I would really have as much of an issue. However, I cook for two no children.

My partner eats all meats except poultry and I'm pescatarian. We both love seafood, which can be very expensive. The quality seafood is usually pretty pricey and I prefer to fill up on vegetables as [00:37:00] much as possible. And he will like that too. But if he's cooking, it tends to be seafood and carbs such as pasta or rice.

I think our issue is largely impulsivity on one hand, randomly, I want this for dinner, and then it's off to the grocery store and a big bill and all the time and energy needed to get the prep going. Okay. Let's stop there and we'll read the next one in just a second.

Roni: Yeah, I mean, to me it sounds like the issue is a lack of a meal plan.

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: If you're making these decisions about dinner impulsively, that kind of tells me that maybe you're not actually creating a meal plan, uh, week to week or even just for the next few days. I know that they're. Is often an issue for some people trying to make a meal plan a week out or two weeks out.

However, you can make a meal plan for the next three days and it doesn't feel so constrictive, but it's gonna definitely save you money [00:38:00] and you're not gonna be going to the grocery store and having a big bill every single night because as we've said before, we all know you don't go to the grocery store and just buy the three things you need for dinner.

You end up with 14 things.

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: So I think starting with a meal plan would be really helpful, and you and your husband both being included in that meal planning process is probably the way that you both are going to be happiest because if there are nights when he's cooking, but he just decides we're gonna have.

You know this meat and then potatoes or noodles or something, and that doesn't really work for you. Well, if you guys have talked about it ahead of time and created a meal plan, then you're able to have your input in there too, and say, well, how about we also have steamed broccoli with that, or whatever your favorite vegetable is,

Riley: And if he's made the meal plan with you, he'll know to also make it instead of just going rogue and making the thing he wanted to

Roni: Yeah, exactly. That's, yeah, that's what I'm meaning for that. Yep.

Riley: I mean, and I think as people who eat a lot of seafood, I think that you [00:39:00] sticking with a three day meal plan like you just suggested, is probably a good idea because you can buy what you need for those three days.

It's not gonna get fishy and weird.

Roni: Right.

Riley: Um, within that timeframe,

Roni: Yeah. 

Riley: So Michelle, um, we read through your entire thing and we agree with you. You came around to the same idea that we had, which is that you should milk the. In for three days. Uh, and just for anyone who's listening, Michelle's injury was about, was several, several paragraphs long.

So just in the interest of time and answering this question in a succinct way, if you're struggling with putting together meals that kind of like flow, using a meal planner is great because you can see that this recipe uses part of a head of cauliflower and that recipe would use the other half. And, planning in three day chunks is gonna help with that like.

Uh, impulsivity because you like three days, you can handle three days. That's not seven. You know, a lot of people, plan on a Monday and by Friday they don't wanna eat what they planned. So if that's you shortening that timeframe and saying, okay, these three [00:40:00] days is what we're gonna have, cool. And then when you get to that third day, change it up, make your next three day meal plan, and you get to make something totally different, to fit whatever like exciting idea you have.

Um, next. And then just planning in those three days and coordinating ingredients, meal planning, and. Just using a meal planner to like court organize those things is gonna be hugely helpful, I think, for you.

Roni: I agree and I, I think one of my recommendations for Michelle and maybe other planners like her is to be okay with less variety.

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: I think that sometimes, and you and I have talked about this often, that we fall into the trap of feeling like we need lots of variety in our meal plans, that somehow everybody else cares that there's a variety in our meal plans.

Whereas, you know, my hu this, my husband bringing up the noodles situation is the first time my husband has ever noticed. That, that I have planned really similar things all in [00:41:00] the same couple of weeks, but otherwise it's not really an issue because most other people are just excited that somebody else is cooking dinner for them and they're eating.

Riley: Ironically, I'm gonna go ahead and read you the next question on our list 'cause it has to do with variety. Aaron says, having enough variety, but also keeping things simple for weeknight dinners. Sticking to the plan is always a dilemma and figuring out when to grocery shop so we have everything to work the plan.

Roni: Well, I think as far as figuring out when to grocery shop. I personally think that if that is the, one of the biggest part of your struggles is like you might have to start scheduling your grocery shopping on the weekends when you have a little more time or one of the days after work. Maybe you can send your spouse to the grocery store if they have a little more flexibility than you do.

But going to the grocery store is pretty dang important to making sure that your meal plan happens. And I think it's often. Easy to put it on the back burner when really it's like, well, maybe we [00:42:00] can't schedule our day back to back, to back to back when we have like chores and things like grocery shopping and meal planning that need to get done.

Riley: Yeah, I know like a personal anecdote here is like I always, I always grocery shop on Mondays. For the longest time I grocery shopped on Mondays, and then that day ended up needing to shift to Thursdays. So there were a couple of weeks in there where I was planning for 10 days at a time because oh, Mondays were normally my day.

Okay, I'm gonna miss Monday, which means I've gotta push it out to Thursday. And shopping for 10 days really wasn't working for. Um, it wasn't working for my meal plan. We were running out of things too fast, or we like suddenly didn't have anything for dinner 'cause I did a bad job or, you know, something like that.

So what works best for me is the one day I I meal plan around like, so Thursdays is now, when I grocery shop, usually I meal plan on Wednesdays so that by Thursday my meal, my grocery list is ready.

I grocery shop every Thursday, so it's just like set, it's like built into my [00:43:00] rhythm and my routine. And then. I know that like if we aren't gonna get to Thursday, like if I, if I'm gonna run out of ingredients before Thursday, or if maybe I, like, maybe we ended up eating at home and we were planned eating out or something like that, like we will scrounge or eat leftovers or pull something from the freezer.

But I'm not gonna make that extra grocery trip because I'm gonna go the next day. Um, and so like I'll hold to that grocery day pretty strictly. And honestly it helps us with food waste too, because like, I'm not going to buy things and then shopping again the next day, spending more money than I needed, and then also wasting what we could have had, like, because it wasn't as exciting or whatever as I wanted it to be.

And sometimes that does make variety not as exciting because like, oh, we had this last night, we're gonna have it again. But that is where I think that what you and I talked about earlier in this episode. It really does come into play, and I know this is an idea you and I reference all the time, and I know people are tired of hearing it, but it is very simple and works really well for both of us, which is those building block kind of meals.

You're making pork in the [00:44:00] crockpot, you're making a different pork dinner for different nights, four different ways. Baked potato, taco Ramen, like those are very different flavors. And so to me that is variety. You're gonna have a different vegetable with each of those things. You're gonna have different sauces and seasonings, spices with each of those things.

So there is variety, even though like the, the simple I made this one time in the crockpot is like that anchor point. So I, I think that is enough variety for me. I don't know what it means when you say that you need more variety or that you need variety. You know, like when somebody else says this.

Roni: Right. Yeah, very true.

Riley: So it's hard to answer that kinda like hard when it's like a, oh, I have to make two different meals.

Like, it's hard to know if it's, you know, a dietary need or a picky thing. And sticking to the plan, being a dilemma. I've said this before, but I'm not pretty, I'm not very rigid with like, okay, it's Monday and I planned spaghetti. We're having spaghetti like it's Monday. Nobody's really feeling the spaghetti.

We'll have Tuesday's dinner on [00:45:00] Monday and Monday's dinner on Tuesday, and that allows us to stick to the plan and the ingredients purchased, but it's not rigid to the actual day that it's on.

Roni: Yeah, I don't think I have anything else to add on that, because that's kind of the way to, that's kinda the way that we go about it, is we just try to be as flexible as possible. Yeah.

Alright. We do have looks like five more dinner dilemmas that we will finish up in the new year. We appreciate everybody tuning in in 2025, and we are really excited to bring you lots more podcast content in 2026. We have some exciting stuff planned for January and February that we are ready to get recorded on.

So as always, thank you so much for listening and we will talk to you again in the new year.

Riley: Happy New Year.