The Plan to Eat Podcast

#124: Big Questions About Meal Planning

Plan to Eat Season 3 Episode 124

We're kicking off the New Year with some questions about meal planning and the podcast! We asked AI to ask us questions about meal planning from our experience of hosting the Plan to Eat Podcast. 

Over the past 120+ episodes, we've reviewed books, had dozens of world-class guests, and shared so many tips and tricks about meal planning. In this first episode of 2026, we're reflecting on what we've learned, how it's changed us, and what advice we have for meal planners. 

This is a unique episode format for us, and we hope you enjoy!

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Contact us: podcast@plantoeat.com

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New year pod 2026
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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 in 2026. Woo. It's a new year

Riley: Woo.

Roni: We thought we would start off the new year with something kind of different and fun. This was actually an idea that I got from a different podcast that I listened to, and it is that we asked AI to ask us questions about the podcast and about meal planning. Now, you may have whatever opinions you have about ai.

I've got my own personal opinions about it too, but this was just a fun way to get some outside of the box questions and maybe discuss some things that we haven't either talked about before or haven't talked about in a long time.

Riley: And I think these questions are going to really challenge us, and I think that's a good thing.

Roni: I think [00:01:00] it's a good thing too.

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: All right. First question, what's one meal planning belief you've completely reversed since starting the podcast? Something you used to swear by that you now think is overrated or wrong?

Riley: Ooh, that's a good one.

Roni: What you got Riley

Riley: I am really struggling to think through, like, we've been doing this podcast since 2022. Right?

Roni: Yeah. Uh, 2021 October, 2021.

Riley: Well, that's a long time.

I, I think that when we started the podcast, I used to care a lot less about, . Making sure my meals like that one ingredient worked with another recipe, so I wasn't wasting anything. Like I, I was a little bit more like, well, I wanna eat this, so we're gonna eat this and I'll use that other ingredient up somehow.

And certainly from like a budget perspective, that does not make the most sense. But the, the more we talk about that on the podcast, so I think I used to be like, ah, I kinda wing it and like. We'll [00:02:00] have cabbage here and I'm gonna have to make a slaw later to like use the rest of it up. But I'll figure it out now.

I'm much more, now, I plan much more. Like this ingredient needs to be used up here and it saves, it really does save a lot of money. Um, so I think I was wrong. I just. Was kind of doing a lot more of like what I wanted with meal planning. Like, well, I don't really want to eat another recipe with cabbage or whatever.

And so now, you know, making sure that my recipe or that my recipes, my meal plan work together like puzzle pieces so that at the end of the week I've used up things. I'm not throwing things away. I've just like grown in that I think a lot over the course of the last four years. And it really does work really well and I hate throwing food away so.

Roni: Yeah, that's a really good point. I think it is really easy to just say it'll figure itself out, and usually that means it's going in the trash can.

Riley: Yes. Well I have had another, like, I've added a kid to the mix since in the four years that we have done this and I feel like I wanna, like I, there is not a lot of winging it going on. Yeah.[00:03:00] 

Roni: Yeah. I think the thing, the meal planning belief that has reversed for me is I kind of used to think that there was only like one real way to meal plan, I just thought most people meal plan around their schedule, you know? And I do think that that's still a really common way to meal plan, and I think it's something that the majority of people probably include as part of their meal planning process.

But I have really come to realize there are so many other things that can be these anchor ideas for your meal planning, it's not just your schedule, it's your budget, it's the weather, it's your family, it's what time of year it is. It is just so many different factors in there that I really hadn't fully considered when thinking about meal planning.

I just kind of was like, you just look at your schedule and you figure out what kind of meals you're going to eat. The end.

Riley: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you and I have, you know, we started this podcast as very experienced meal planners, but we've learned so [00:04:00] much from the customers and the listeners of this podcast and, a little bit of like a precursor to what we're gonna be talking about this year. The dinner dilemma has taught us a lot also, because p, every single person who meal plans is facing a different kind of like life dilemma that affects the way they plan.

Roni: Yeah, agreed.

Riley: And it's one of the coolest things about planned to eat because planned to eat does work for any dilemma. Yeah. All right. The next one is, which guest or book? Um, we reviewed several books, uh, salt Fat, acid, heat, and Grocery Shopping Secrets, uh, which actually changed how you personally cook or meal plan.

What specific habits stuck with you?

Roni: Well, the initial thing is salt fat, acid. Heat definitely changed how I cook. Definitely changed the way that I salt food, the type of salt that I even use. Getting food, particularly meat out of the refrigerator ahead of time so it has time to come to room temperature, uh, [00:05:00] testing, you know, taste testing things and deciding like, does it need some salt or does it need some acid?

Just, there's a lot of, I think, small nuances in my cooking that have changed because of that particular book, and I mean, it just says guest or book, but I have, but I also have like guests, specific guests in mind who have changed the way that I thought about meal planning.

Riley: Before you talk about which guest affected you, 'cause I did have a little bit of a hiatus in there, but, the salt, fat, acid heat, I would just say like ditto all the way.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: Um, acid and salt affected me the most out of that book.

Roni: Mm-hmm.

Riley: Because just like you, I'm considering salting my food or choosing salt first when something doesn't totally taste right.

Unless it's overtly salty, of course. And then acid, like I'm thinking, okay, when I'm making my Thanksgiving, I was thinking I need some acid hits in here so that people's palettes can have this like, more exciting experience. And then with grocery shopping secrets. I just feel like it's really changed the way I shop.

I, I am buying [00:06:00] things and like I know I can freeze almost everything. I am looking for different sales. I am like impressed with just like everything we learned from that book and how you can navigate the grocery store in such a different way. Uh, I think than people realize that book, both of those books, I can't recommend enough.

We loved those.

Roni: I definitely notice there's a difference in how I pick produce

Riley: Yes.

Roni: and I'm, I'm actually more particular about when I pick, pick out my produce. I'm not just like picking the first thing that's on top of the stack.

Riley: Yes. Yep,

Roni: Much more deliberate about things. Um, but one of the guests that really, uh, changed my approach to meal planning was Diana Rice, and she talked about the idea of capsule meal planning.

Now, I haven't fully implemented this in a very strict way. Diana's idea was like, you have 30 recipes in your Plan to Eat account. You use that as your capsule recipes, and you just create meal plans based off of those recipes to eliminate decision fatigue and overwhelm. But I. Have kind of taken that [00:07:00] idea more and just, and just having the idea of like, for each season I kind of have like, these are the 12 recipes that we more or less rotate through.

And every once in a while I add in something different and just kind of like not being afraid of like, oh, there's not enough variety here, you know?

Riley: Yeah. It's funny, uh, Amy Lee, I think affected me the most just because she would shop once at the beginning of the month and by the end of the month if that meant all they were eating was rice and beans, it didn't matter. And so while I don't have to do that, I definitely think about her when I am like, I don't wanna shop this week.

I can make food out of what I have in my pantry, even if it's not the most exciting. It's food. We were fueled and we got to move on. And I just, I utilize her fortitude when I have a week where I like need to spend less or don't want to spend any. And I just think about her like having to get to the end of the month and just like figuring it out.

And I'm like, well, if she can figure it out, so can I.

Roni: [00:08:00] Absolutely. All right. Next question. What's the most surprising thing you've learned about why people struggle with meal planning? Not just the surface level stuff, like I don't have time, but the deeper psychological or emotional blocks.

Riley: That's such a good question and a very thoughtful question. I think that when we went through the dinner dilemmas, I think people are just exhausted. Like it's not that they don't have time, it's just that that cumulatively their lives. They're just exhausted. And so they need to make a new habit.

But making a new habit is also hard. And so like, but like mo, like, like most people, January 1st rolls around meal planning is a huge thing that people tackle. Once you, it gets to be a habit, that exhaustion level goes way down. And so if you can just like pick a day to start and know that like, like going to the gym, you're gonna be sore.

It's not gonna feel good every day. But you don't have to go every day. You can, you can like, you know, we talk a lot about like, don't meal plan for seven days when you're new meal plan for two or three [00:09:00] and like see how it goes and then like a modify and adjust as you go. And as that muscle gets stronger, your meal planning muscle gets stronger.

It does. Not feel as heavy of a burden. But it's just been interesting to like, read through all those di dinner dilemmas and like you just wanna help people feel that way. 'cause we both know that like once you get over the hurdle, it does start to feel so much better and it gets so much easier.

Roni: Right. This is gonna sound maybe kind of silly because it's a little obvious, but I think one of the things that I realized is how much people care. So many of the dinner dilemmas, it was families who are like this, people can't eat these, and these people don't like this other thing. And how do I make it all work?

Like, just the amount of care that people have for like the people in their life and make, and like wanting them to be satisfied and content and well-nourished. It's not necessarily surprising because of course people are like that, but it was just a really big through line that we [00:10:00] saw in so many dinner dilemmas, and it's not just like I'm slapping meals on the planner and people are going to eat and or they're not.

You know, there, there was just so much more care and thoughtfulness that, that our customers were trying to put into their meal plans then. Then I think I realized most people are really trying to put into their meal plans, and maybe that's just because I don't have a very complicated meal planning situation.

But there are so many people who are, who are navigating these complicated meal planning situations, and the thing that they want is they just want their people to be cared for. So

Riley: Yeah, it's really sweet. It's

Roni: is. Yeah.

Riley: I mean, I remember one that we talked about with, um, it was like all three of the members of the household had different preferences and needs, and so figuring out how the person who is the primary cook was going to navigate that in a way that didn't add too much to their load. Yeah, it's a. Next up, when was the last time your own meal plan completely fell apart? What happened and what did that failure teach you about how [00:11:00] meal planning should actually work?

Roni: Let's see. When was the last time my meal plan didn't fall apart? I'm just kidding. I would say there was a very, there was a couple week chunk there. I don't remember if it was right before Thanksgiving or right after Thanksgiving, where I thought I had done more meal planning than I actually had done.

And I think this was just, it was one of those faults of. I had already spent a lot of money at the grocery store because of the holidays, and so I was like, well, I don't need to go to the grocery store again. I just spent $150 at the grocery store two days ago, but like that was for the holidays and not necessarily for our normal meal plan.

So yeah, things started to fall apart a little bit because of that. Because I would open my Plan to Eat app and be like, oh, there's not actually anything on the meal plan for today, or tomorrow or the next day, but I don't. I wanna go back to the grocery store and spend another $150 because

Riley: [00:12:00] yeah, totally.

Roni: So yeah, it was definitely around the holidays and I fell into the trap of like, regular dinner doesn't happen. Only holiday meal happens. Yeah,

Riley: Which is really common. It's why it was a big deal that we talked about so much. Like dinner still happens even though Thanksgiving is on Thursday.

Roni: that's right. We talked about it and I still messed up. So.

Riley: I'm trying to think when my meal plans have fallen apart. I. I think the, the way I feel like it's fallen apart the most is just that I don't wanna do it. I don't wanna cook. I don't wanna like, um, there have been a couple of weeks where I chose not to meal plan, decided I would wing it with what we had, and then it got real sketchy.

I,

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: Certainly that happened in November, December was a lot more scheduled. Just because of house guests and traveling and all those kinds of things. But yeah, there was certainly a week in November where I did not plan anything because I was like, oh, we've got plenty of food. We'll figure it out. And it just like wasn't my favorite.

It was more stressful [00:13:00] because I just didn't like I was having to wing it and figure it out at five o'clock, even though I was trying to use up what we had, you know, it just got a little sketchy. So,

Roni: I fall into that trap too. And I think my pro tip for those kinds of situations where you're like, I'm, this was kind of what I ended up doing where I was like, I'm not grocery shopping again. We're going to eat the food that I have. I went into plan to eat and made notes on the days of like, we're eating hamburgers, right?

Like we're eating the leftover ground beef that we have on this day, and then this next day we're gonna have rice bowls like. Just writing in notes, not necessarily planning recipes, but writing in notes of like, here are the ideas that I have for how we're using up the food.

Riley: Yes. Yeah. Well, and that's exactly how I normally do it. I go through and I say, okay, we've got enough random things to make this, this, and this, but I need to buy three avocados, a pack of taco seasoning, an onion, and a bag of salad. You know, like, so then I go to buy five things or 10 things instead of like 40.

But I'm still [00:14:00] using everything I have, and I just didn't wanna go to the store at all. So I didn't, it was not good.

Roni: it happens. All right. What's the gap between what you teach about meal planning and what you actually do in your own kitchen? Where do you cut corners or break your own rules?

Riley: This is so good. The thing that immediately comes to mind, which I have talked about on this podcast, so I don't feel like I'm like confessing anything, is that I often don't plan with recipes.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: So I put notes on my planner. For what I'm gonna make, I don't cook with a lot of recipes. Now I do sometimes cook with recipes.

I would say at least once a week I'm cooking with the recipe, but a lot of my weeks are built around. I know we want this, we like this, or this is something I love to make, or I already know how to make it. I don't really need a recipe. I do it all the time with side dishes. I put green beans or broccoli or sweet potatoes or whatever as my side dish, and then I just [00:15:00] cook it without a recipe.

And so I would say that's a way that I kinda like don't use plan to eat the way it's designed, it still works really well for me. I still love the recipe book because when I do want a recipe, they're all there. But I plan my meals. My meal plans are planned mostly with notes. What about you?

Roni: I think I have two, and one of them is meal planning related, which is, I, I'd already talked about it a little bit earlier, which is we're constantly talking about like, don't be afraid to, don't not have variety, just get the meals planned, and I am. Like, no, I need variety. There needs to be something different here.

We've just been eating the same things over and over again. I like, I feel that internally I feel some like existential dread when I plan the same recipes over and over again. And then the other one is grocery shopping related, which is that, you know, we talk about the best thing about like having your grocery shopping list is that you go to the store and all the items that you buy have a purpose.

You don't [00:16:00] overbuy. You don't double buy all the things. Okay. That part is true. I love having a shopping list pre-made for me, but I'm also the queen of random purchases. It doesn't matter what's on my Plan to Eat shopping list. I'm like, Ooh, the holiday chocolates are on sale. Let's buy 10 of those.

Riley: totally. I knew you were gonna say that 'cause I know you're gonna walk past something and you're like, I need that.

Roni: Oh, I think I need that actually. Yeah. Wish I had a funny conversation about this on Christmas with my family and my brother was saying that he uses grocery delivery and he was like, it's great because I don't have any like random things that I purchase that saves me a lot of money. And my mom was like, but I like to go to the grocery store and buy random things.

Riley: Oh, we all turn into our parents. That's great. I love it. You probably watched her do that your whole childhood, and you're like, Ooh, now I can do it.

Roni: Ooh. Ooh. Yeah. I do think that I need that extension cord.

That was my recent buy. It was like, oh, I think I need an extension cord for my treadmill. I, I,

Riley: Yeah, while we're [00:17:00] confessing recent buys, I did the exact same thing when I was in the store yesterday. I bought like seasoned black beans. 'cause you know, it was New Year's Day. Like I needed to like have some black beans.

Roni: isn't it Blackeyed Peas?

Riley: Oh, that's what it is. Black eyed peas, not black beans. Black eyed peas. Sorry. My bad. You're right. Okay, next up, what's a popular meal planning trend or hack that you actually think is making things harder for people? What should they stop doing?

Roni: I don't know if this is so much like a popular trend, but the thing that I think that's actually making things harder for people is trying to follow somebody else's meal plan from somebody that they follow on the internet. Somebody who's like, you know, save my meal plans or, you know, get my meal planning template and do the thing that I do.

Like, they're trying to simplify it for other people. And people want that because they think that it's simple. However, this influencer or just content creator's life doesn't look the same [00:18:00] as what your life looks like. So you know, the recipes that they choose might not work for the time that you have to cook them or even.

Your budget or your family's preferences and you know, you could try out their meal plan and be like, that was actually so not helpful.

Riley: Yeah, my controversial take here is, the, like the meal delivery kits.

Roni: Oh, yes.

Riley: I mean, they're advertised all, all you cannot avoid. And like everyone says they're the best and they're great. And I tried them like I can speak from my experience. I wrote a blog post about it on plan to eat. So if anybody wants to take a look at that, my experience was that I was still doing exactly the same amount of cooking and I was doing exactly the same amount of planning.

And I was so like, they, you know, they, they kind of advertised like, it like saves you so much time and money. But I was like, yeah, I, I got these boxes and I could cook them for dinner. But like, what about [00:19:00] lunch and breakfast? Or like, I am only buying four dinners, which means I still have Saturday and Sunday or a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or whatever, that I'm still having to plan for.

So while it helped marginally, it just didn't help enough for me to say, oh yeah, this is life saving. And that was my experience. I know, I know people personally who use them. I see obviously that the internet is utilizing these things. But I think it actually is just a little bit of a stand in. Like, it, it really, it's like, it's like, it's like falsely helpful, like you think it's helpful, but when I was looking critically at it as someone who meal plans and works for a meal planning company.

I was still nearly doing the exact amount of work because when you plan, like I still need to have groceries for breakfast and lunch, and those three other nights of the week or two other nights of the week, it would take me about one to two more minutes to plan those other four dinners. And I could plan them just as simply as some of those boxes make it.

Maybe it's a seasonal thing for you and like, okay, this is a busy season. We need five nights of dinners just delivered to our house. Um, and it maybe like fills [00:20:00] a short term need, but for me it's just a trend that I think it should make a few things harder for people because they're still going to the grocery store and spending money.

They're still having to cook other meals. They're still having to feed their families other meals of the day. So I think they should just meal plan all the time instead of like 50 per 70, you know, 50% of the time.

Roni: I definitely agree. I think that maybe the only population that it's really that helpful for are the people who only eat at like fast food or something. , Like the only dinner that they have is they get takeout or fast food or something like that. And maybe it could help bridge the gap between them starting to actually cook at home.

But I really think that's the only place where I see it being beneficial. Because I remember also when you did that review. You're like, it's not any more cost effective. You know, you can make recipes that similarly cost effective or even more cost effective by going to the grocery store and buying larger portions of [00:21:00] things.

Riley: yeah, yeah. The step-by-step tutorial teaches you how to cook. So there is that like, you know, there is that like encouraging you to see how simple it is to cook at home, and maybe it's just like a little gateway like

Roni: Yeah, maybe you're a college student and you've been eating all your meals on campus, but you have an apartment and you wanna start cooking at home. Maybe that's a situation that it works in, but yeah, I don't know. For, for normal meal planners, I agree with you. I don't see it as a solution.

Riley: Or for people with larger families or, yeah, all those things.

Roni: If you could only give someone three meal planning principles to follow forever and they have to ditch everything else, what would they be and why?

Riley: Okay. One meal plan on your own schedule. So look at your calendar and see when you need dinners and plan dinners and plan accordingly. So like, if you have 15 minutes, plan a 15 minute dinner. If you have two hours and want to cook for two hours, by all means you, you, you get to do what you wanna do. [00:22:00] So plan around your own schedule.

I would say plan planning four to five nights a week is the max that I would tell anyone to do because either you go to the store again or like you have leftovers or you have breakfast for dinner, or you go out like, but don't over plan. So plan around your own schedule. Don't over plan. And lastly, shop in your own kitchen before you shop at the store.

So take your shopping list and say, oh, I've already got paprika. Oh, great, I've already got an onion. And take all those things off and then have a new list, a curated list of things you actually need to buy that will actually be used in recipes. And there you go.

Roni: All right. Well, I don't wanna say the exact same things as you, even though I agree with all three of those things. So I'm gonna just be controversial and say different things.

Riley: Okay, go ahead. Good.

Roni: I'm gonna say one, delegate meal planning responsibilities to the other people in your household. Whether that's just crowdsourcing information, delegating cooking [00:23:00] responsibilities, like view yourself as the manager of your meal plan and you're, you know, delegating to other

Riley: Like that.

Roni: This is hard.

Riley: I know.

Roni: Number two, plan specifically for leftovers. So double or triple serving sizes on your recipes to eliminate, either reduce the amount that you're cooking during this current week, or you could freeze those things and eliminate cook time in the future, but. But specifically plan for recipes, specifically plan for leftovers.

And number three, use grocery delivery so that you don't buy random things at the grocery store.

Riley: Hot Take roni's never suggested this ever

Roni: No, I know. Well, I'm trying to be controversial. You have to ditch the other method of, of shopping and you only do grocery pickup or delivery.

Riley: interesting. I mean, I support the pickup. It does save me money.

Roni: I think yours was a little more cohesive. I was [00:24:00] just pulling things out, but

Riley: In case you can't tell, we're answering these questions on the fly. We did not pre-plan.

Roni: that was a really hard one to not just say the exact same things that you said because you said the fundamentals,

Riley: Oh yeah,

Roni: you know, it's okay.

Riley: The benefits are going first. \ Alright. Final question. After 120 episodes, dang. What episode number is this? Roni.

Roni: Um, Lemme look. This is 124.

Riley: Wow, that's so exciting. Okay, after 124 episodes, what is the one meal planning problem that you still don't have a great answer for?

Roni: Wow.

Riley: Which we should know this, because of the dinner dilemmas,

Roni: I'm trying to think, because there was one or two dinner dilemmas that kind of stumped us, and we were just, we were like, Ooh,

Riley: we were really spinning our wheels to try to, like we talked ourselves into answers.

Roni: Yeah, I think one of them was this situation of everybody having different food preferences, and specifically it was that one person was like a [00:25:00] meat and potatoes and the other person was a vegetarian. That feels like a really hard situation to work around so that you, I mean you, the work, the workaround for it is that you make two separate meals, but nobody wants to do that.

Nobody wants to be a short order chef, you know, there's such a connection point with food, and so like sharing the same food I think is part of that connection. Like you're eating the same food. You're both able to like make commentary on like, wow, these mashed potatoes are extra good tonight, or something like that, rather than, how's your hamburger?

Oh, it's good. How's your vegetarian lasagna? You know?

Riley: Well, even the idea of crowdsourcing, you can't crowdsource that. So like the whole process gets more difficult and yet like that coming together, like sharing like the, I really wanted to eat this and you cooked this for me. I'm so thank you so much. Or, or, yeah, this is so good. Or, Hey, can you come help me in the kitchen and saute this while I chop that, like they'll like, they're really like intimate and like communal parts of the process, get totally thrown out the window in those [00:26:00] circumstances.

Roni: Yeah, it really does. 

Riley: I don't know that I have a great answer for people who don't like leftovers or meal prep, but then like, don't want to cook every night. That we ran into a couple of those in the di dinner dilemmas is like the two ways I would suggest to solve this. Yeah, it's just really not, is not working for that person.

Like they don't wanna cook every night, but then they don't like leftovers. Yeah, so that one's tricky.

Roni: Yeah, I

Riley: Sounds a pretty tricky answer, but I think, I think yours was another one that I thought of too, is just like planning for three different preferences of three different adults who live under the same roof.

Who, who want to cook one meal?

Roni: Yep.

I also remember there was one where somebody was kind of lamenting that the rest of their family wasn't really on board with their meal planning or maybe the meal plans that they had made, and they were feeling pretty discouraged. And I think that that's. That's not one that I have a really great answer for either because I don't know enough enough about like human psychology or something.

I guess maybe [00:27:00] to really give them a solid answer of how do you get your family on board if they're really not excited about this thing that you're excited about. But that feels really tricky to me. 

Riley: It is pretty, it is very tricky and I, I don't think I have a great answer for it.

Roni: Yeah, I have a hard time not giving like tough love answers to questions like that. I think you know, of just being like, tell your family buck up buttercup. We're doing it, you know?

Riley: Well, and there's also the idea of like expectations. if you are having unmet expectations, but nobody knows what your expectations are, just sitting down and saying, Hey, like this is something we need to do, or, I really want to do this, or Our budget is bleeding. We have to do this. Like, and saying, Hey, I really need you guys to get on board with me because.

Either this is my expectation and like y'all are kinda like bumming me out. But just like making sure that people know what you're trying to do instead of just expecting that they know what you're trying to do. Just like getting it out there on the [00:28:00] table. Like, then if they continue to fail you, that's one thing.

But like, but a lot of time there's just like, people aren't all, 'cause they're not all focused on the same thing. I think a lot of like, I think a lot of like primary cooks run into this, right? Or like, uh, because they're like, no, we're gung-ho and I'm cooking. Like I have no choice. Like this is my role here.

And everyone else is like me. Like I don't have to cook, so I don't have to care, you know? And so, but if, if you say out loud, Hey, this is something I do for our family every day, can you guys get on board with me? And like, could you guys help me a little bit? Like, I'd love to like make stuff you like, can y'all help me make the meal plan?

And, or can you guys be a part of the cooking process to like give me just a little bit of support? Yeah. But just getting those expectations out there and. On the table instead of just in your own mind.

Roni: That's honestly such good advice. I, uh, often I think problems arise from like miscommunication or lack of

Riley: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. Yep.

Roni: All right. Well, these [00:29:00] questions have been really fun to answer. I've definitely felt challenged by a few

Riley: Yeah. Same. Same.

Roni: Just to give everybody a sneak peek at what's to come in 2026.

In the next few episodes, Riley and I are gonna be tackling the biggest meal planning hurdles and giving you all of our idea, all of our ideas around specific struggles that you might be having when it comes to meal planning. So we're really excited to develop some of these episodes for you and give you as much information about how to overcome your problems as possible.

And if you have any suggestions for things you would like to hear on the podcast, if you would like us to do um, more book reviews or have any guests on the podcast, we would love to hear from you. You can always email us at podcast@plantoeat.com. I think that wraps it up for today.

Riley: Happy New Year everyone.

Roni: Happy New Year. Thank you so much for tuning in in another year, and we will talk to you again in two [00:30:00] weeks.