#129: How to Beat Dinner Decision Fatigue

When life is busy, mental bandwidth to decide what's for dinner disappears. It's easy to get stuck in a rut and feel completely uninspired to meal plan. Even strong planners have periods where ideas dry up, and planning feels like a chore. 

In this episode, we're combating a lack of creativity and recipe ideas with so many great tips to help you create this week's meal plan. From finding new recipes online, to phoning a trusted friend, to capsule meal planning. We hope you feel inspired and ready to start planning at the end of this episode! Enjoy!

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Transcript

run out of ideas
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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. We are excited to be here with you today. We are finishing up our series on getting you started on the right track for meal planning in 2026. We are finishing out this series talking about creativity and actually more along the lines of running outta creativity.

Riley: I don't know about you, but I feel like life gets busy. Or honestly, I just sit down to meal plan and I feel blank. My brain feels blank sometimes. And so this episode is all about how to combat that because I hate that feeling of just not knowing what to plan or feeling dried up in ideas, uh, especially when this is something that you do every week or month depending on how you like to meal plan.

Roni: I find it, I [00:01:00] most often run out of ideas when I feel, when I'm like stuck in a rut. You know, we've been planning the same. 10 ish recipes like over and over again, like right now is a good time to be talking about this because we're changing seasons. I'm like ready to change up my meal plan and sometimes it's hard when you're changing seasons to be like, what it be like last year at the spring?

I don't even know what we were eating last year.

Riley: Yep. Even meal planning experts like Roni and I, we hit periods where we just don't know what to plan. So if you're feeling like this is a weak area for you, just know you're not alone. And we both feel this way often. And I talk to friends all the time who are like, what are you guys eating for dinner?

Oh, that sounds good. I'm gonna write it down right now because everyone does this.

Roni: Yeah, I would say this is one of maybe the most common meal planning struggles that we have heard over the course of my time working at Plan to Eat is struggling with getting started. [00:02:00] Basically, and part of the getting started is I don't even know what recipes to put on my meal plan.

Riley: Mm-hmm. So with that, we've got lots of ideas for you. A lot of ideas, a lot of, uh, new creative ideas. Not necessarily new, but just a, like a, what am I trying to say? A long list of ideas. So when one doesn't work anymore for you, you can go to the next one.

Roni: Yeah, I like that. Yeah. I think first and foremost. If you're on social media, that's a great place to find new recipes. That could be Pinterest, that could be Instagram, that could be TikTok, that could be Facebook. Scrolling through social media. As long as you're not doing the brain rot thing is great for finding new recipes because they look really pretty and they look delicious, and people who are creating recipe content are super good at it.

Riley: They are. I have, I have a couple of thing reasons why I think this is super important. We're recording this episode in March, early March, and I have seen such a shift in our feed. [00:03:00] The Plante Instagram feed from winter recipes to spring recipes. It's like March 1st hit. And all the recipe authors they're paying attention to, you know, like they are up on what's in season.

They are up on the new seasons, that we're, you know, moving into like spring and that's the recipes that they are posting. And so this is a really helpful thing for staying, if you, if you like to eat seasonally or if you like to mix up your meal plan seasonally. Scrolling social media or like following recipe authors that you know you like their recipes, uh, is it is awesome because they're keeping up with that for you.

It's their job.

Roni: Yeah, it's so true. There's so many colorful. So many colorful recipes coming out right now with like yummy spring vegetables and just like bright, I'm thinking like everything's like bright green, you know, you got like peas and asparagus and like delicate vegetables. Uh, there's also Easter, a lot of Easter themed things.

Those are often more like desserts, but still just, I feel like so many colorful [00:04:00] things, brightly colored things are coming on the feed recently.

Riley: Yeah, ironically, I feel like I've seen a lot of, I say ironic 'cause I eat deviled eggs at Easter. I feel like you, everybody eats deviled eggs at Easter. Easter lunch, Easter dinner, whatever you do. And I feel like I've seen so many creative. Deviled egg recipes and they're so vibrantly colored. Some of them I saw, they were like soaking the eggs in like beet juice so that they were red in it, like the actual egg was red.

Not just like the outside, you weren't just dying the egg. It's just so pretty. It makes you wanna make it, it makes you wanna eat something different. So fun.

Roni: I saw one the other day, the, they were doing this with the outside of the egg. I don't know if they had already hard boiled the eggs. Maybe they hard boiled eggs in the video. I don't remember. But she had like little plants and little like fern leaves and little like clovers and stuff that she put on the outside of the egg and then put it in a, like a pantyhose.

So that the, so

Riley: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Roni: tight to the outside of the egg and then I think [00:05:00] she did boil it and she boiled it with onion skins.

Riley: Yeah. Red onions. Yeah.

Roni: Yeah. So that they, it got this like pretty like orangey red color. And then when she took it out, the egg was dyed this like pretty orangey red color, but then there was like the silhouette of the plant.

It was so pretty.

Riley: awesome.

Roni: I don't really know what the application is for that other than having like pretty hard boiled eggs on your counter.

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: Maybe it's just to bring joy to your life.

Riley: You know what that is. Okay. That's acceptable. I did this because it made me happy, period. Yeah.

Roni: It made a great video. I watched the whole thing, so

Riley: Nice. That's awesome.

Scrolling. Social media is probably top of the list, I think, for running out of ideas or creativity. The next one is, if you're okay with using it, you can ask ai. You can ask AI for spring recipes.

You can ask AI for whatever season you're in recipes with and without ingredients. You can do [00:06:00] this for new recipe ideas. I recently did it. I have a friend who's coming to visit me and she eats a low histamine diet, and I recently just did it to like, make that process easier. Hey, what can I cook for her?

And it was awesome. Super helpful. With social media and with ai, make sure you're importing these recipes into plan to eat because you don't wanna lose them. I am notorious for saving recipes in Instagram and then never really, never going back to them. And so using now that plan to eat has the import from social media feature.

Do not sit on that, like use it, save them to your account. You're gonna start eating more delicious recipes because you started saving them to plan to eat and actually meal planning them. Same thing goes for ai. Import them into plan to eat, save them. That way you can access them again and anytime you want them.

Roni: Yeah, and I think an important thing to mention here too is after you've imported the recipe, just immediately put it on your meal plan. This is something you of I, you and I have mentioned before that we do when we [00:07:00] find a recipe that looks great. I know you have mentioned Riley, that you've become a little more particular about the recipes that you're importing into your Plantee account because you have a lot of recipes and so when you import something, you know it's something you wanna put on your meal planner, so you just immediately put it on the meal planner, which I think is a really great idea because also our plantee accounts can become an abyss like mine is sort of right now.

And so you can import these recipes that look delicious and then they get lost in the abyss and you never actually make them. So if you find something you like. It into Plan to Eat and then put it on your meal planner.

Riley: Yeah, I do this because it allow, I usually do this when I find a recipe. If I've already planned this week that we're on, and the next week ahead, I'll literally add it to three weeks from now. Because it reminds me my meal plan this week is actually half from somebody else that I got it from and half from things I imported from social media that I added last week.

And then they're already there. I just go shopping for the ingredients. Like it, it's [00:08:00] mindless meal planning.

Roni: Yeah. Well, and you bring up a great, great point. If you are struggling with some meal ideas, phone a friend, you can just send a quick text message and say, Hey, what are you guys enjoying right now? Do you have any good recipes that you tried?

Riley: Mm-hmm.

Roni: Any of those things. I know you have a group of friends that you guys talk about recipes with, which is amazing because then you're getting more than one opinion on different things.

You're usually my go-to for.

Riley: You are too. I do. I text you a lot. My group text is called Food Friends.

Roni: I love it. That's so

Riley: Um, and just last night one of the girls text and said, Hey, I'm taking dinner to a family. What do I take them? What do you guys take families when they need, have a reason to need a meal, a baby, a surgery, whatever.

And everyone pitched in some ideas and she had more ideas than she needed, but it was like immediate results, you know, for this person. And it's real life results Sometimes, sometimes when you go to Google or even ai. It's not real life results. It's [00:09:00] not everybody can take somebody lasagna and I'm not knocking lasagna.

I do like it, but when you get seven lasagnas, you're, that's a lot. And so kind of trying to think outside the box and take something a little more unique to someone, those real life ideas can come in just so helpful. And also. If you have a friend whose palate you trust, uh, you know they eat good food at their house, you trust their recipe ideas.

This is where texting a friend is so helpful because you say, okay, you're gonna text a very specific person. Hey, what are you eating this week? I need some ideas. Because you trust them. You know that they maybe that they just eat. They eat food, you like to eat, your family likes to eat. So they're a good resource.

But a lot of families like yours. And I don't mean you, Roni, I mean the people who are listening, like you get into ruts, I get into ruts. It's like you can steal their rut and it'd be new for your family.

Roni: For sure. And I'm thinking too, this idea of you trust your friend and their [00:10:00] palate, you also trust that your friend has made the recipe. They know it's a simple recipe to make. They know that. Or they can give you the thing, the tip of like, okay, I love this recipe, but only add half of the broth that it says 'cause otherwise it's like a soup instead of a skillet or something like that.

So, yeah, you also can get really good cooking tips related to things because yeah, I like this idea of asking for advice on what you should bring somebody if you're bringing them a meal. Because I made some freezer meals just for myself a few weeks ago, and I've been, you know, sporadically inputting them into the meal plan and.

They honestly, I got them just from a blog post that was like amazing freezer meals or whatever. That's not the best recipe I've ever had, and it actually is after it's been in the crockpot all day, it turns out to be like a soup instead of like, here's this, you know, just like a scoopable dinner, you know?

Riley: Yeah, that actually, that exact thing happened to me last night. I turned something that wasn't [00:11:00] really a crock pot meal into a crock pot meal, and it was very soupy. It was delicious, but it was very soupy instead of skillet-y.

Roni: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Riley: But this is the kind of feedback that you need from your real life friends, which I feel like people who listen to this podcast, hopefully they feel like we're their friends and like, I think we feel like this about our listeners too.

Right. The ideas and things like that, that we're giving, like we, I wish that we could text all of our listeners to say, Hey, here's what you should eat. You know? But it's the same feeling, right? Like, okay, you trust them, they tell you this stuff. You've used their advice before. It's, this is just another way to do it.

Roni: If you don't have anybody to text, we do have a Facebook group. It's called Plan to Eat Kitchen. Plan to Eat Kitchen, and you can join that group. And you know, every week, every two weeks I'm in there, you know, posting little prompts, encouraging people to share recipes, but you can also just go in there and ask for recipe suggestions for people if you're feeling like you're in a rut or you don't have any ideas.

All right. Next thing that you can [00:12:00] try, it's particularly, this is great, great, great, great. If you're a plan to eat customer, because Plan to Eat saves all of the meal plans that you've ever made. So one of the best things you can do is you can go and look and go back in your meal planner and look at past meal plans.

So I'm talking about, it's turning into spring. I have no idea what we were enjoying last year during spring. Guess what? I can really easily go back to last March and see what we were eating. Or I can go back to March of 2022 and see what we were eating if last year we're eating the same thing that we're eating right now, which I think is the case. I just think this is really, yeah, I'm a creature of habit, but I just think this is a really awesome aspect of using a meal planning software that keeps all of your information is you've already done all of this work. I've used Plan to Eat for almost eight years now. I've done eight years worth of meal planning.

Why not go back and just, I already, I did my future [00:13:00] self a favor eight years ago. You know?

Riley: Yes. I actually wanna tag on to this and to the friends, but if you're friends with people inside of Plan to Eat, if they have saved menus, you can access their saved menus.

Roni: Yep. Yep.

Riley: And, um, if you save your own menus, you can access your own menus. And now, so like Roni said, like you can literally scroll back endlessly inside of the calendar, inside of Plan to Eat.

But a really simple way to save meal plans is to use the menus feature. I mean, we ha we've told people, Hey, if you want to eat this meal together and it's five different recipes, save it as a menu. Boom, boom. You just drag it onto your meal plan and it all comes together at the same time.

Um, this could be for one day, one meal for a month. And if you liked last March's meal plan, copy the entire thing. Or not copy it, but save the entire thing as a menu and then put it on your meal plan for this march.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: You could, you [00:14:00] could literally meal plan one time a month and then next year, not meal plan at all, because your menus are saved.

Roni: That's a genius idea. I love it.

Riley: Is both Phone a friend and look at past, past meal plans.

Roni: This is both tips in one,

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: and I'm gonna be so happy if somebody takes us up on that idea because they're gonna save themselves so much time. I love it. Okay what's next? Okay.

So we're gonna talk about capsule meal planning. 'cause I, I think this is a great idea if you're running low on ideas.

Now I got some feedback that we're a little confused about the capsule meal planning. So I wanna do a better job of explaining it. And if you're even still confused after I explain it right now, I encourage you to go back and listen to episode 86. Is with Diana Rice. She's, a nutrition coach. She's the one who originally sparked this idea of capsule meal planning for us, so she does a great job of explaining it.

She's also a plan to eat user, [00:15:00] so she explains it from the concept of plan to eat. Okay, so capsule meal planning. The, the reason why it's called capsule is because we are likening it to a capsule wardrobe. So if you're familiar with the capsule wardrobe, capsule wardrobe is like you only own 20 items in your closet.

You own 10 tops and 10 bottoms, and you mix and match those to make all of your outfits. You don't own 75 random things and you only wear half of them. You own a very small number of clothing and they all work with each other, and it creates all of your outfits. Is that a good job of explaining that Riley.

Riley: I love it. Yes.

Roni: so in plan to eat a capsule meal plan would be, would be not like what I have in my Plan to eat account, which is 1500 recipes. Instead, you would start a plan to eat account and only import 30 of your favorite recipes. And then when it goes to meal planning, you're only choosing between 30 [00:16:00] recipes, which on the surface you're thinking 30 recipes Doesn't sound like very much, but I'm gonna guess that most of us only plan the same like 11 recipes anyways until we insert something new.

So. The idea is just to like shrink the number of recipes that you're deciding in between. So it's like helping to eliminate some of that decision fatigue, that brain drain of looking at 1500 recipes and thinking, wow, there are so many of the recipes that I've never made before. Oh, well I'm gonna just eat the same enchiladas that we eat every week.

So shrinking the number of recipes that you're choosing between, and. Then like mixing and matching every week between your 30 recipes, the same way that you would mix and match your wardrobe. How do we, how did I do?

Riley: I think you did great. I was trying to take your picture

For the gram. I interrupted you because I did that. Um, yeah, I think it's a great way of explaining it. I think a very particular group of people are going to meal plan this way. I.[00:17:00] 

Roni: Yeah, it's definitely not for everybody, but if, if you're somebody who feels like you're always overwhelmed by the number of recipes you're looking at, it could be a really good thing to try because instead of feeling like you need creativity, you just create a meal plan with what's there.

Riley: Yes, and you said this, you know when you have so many recipes, it's decision fatigue, but I think sometimes recipe, because of places like Instagram, importing recipes can feel like hungry. Hungry Hippo. You're like, more, more, more. I need more. And you, you don't,

Roni: metaphor,

Riley: and you really don't need more.

Roni: right? It's so

Riley: don't, you don't have to have more. I love that recipe. Authors exist. I am, I, I love recipe authors. I think it's good to find a few that you really like, you really connect with their seasoning style, flavor profile, et cetera. But it can feel, it can just become very overwhelming if you have 40 recipe [00:18:00] books or a meal plan a, you know, an account like Plant Eat and has 3000 recipes in it, and then.

What do you do then? You can't plan anything because you're like stuck. So having something like the capsule, it's like literally like exactly like capsule wardrobe. You stare at your closet of 35 shirts and you're like, I have nothing to wear. But if you only have three shirts to wear, you definitely have something to wear somehow.

That mentally makes sense. Same, same concept here. I think it's um, I think it's really smart meal planning.

Roni: Yeah, it is. Yeah, and I'm gonna piggyback on this idea with another, uh, thing that I have written down here in our notes, which is, if you're in a rut or you need, or you feel like you're dry, run out of I ideas. What's wrong with your family? Favorites. You know, like maybe just go back to the tried and true.

And, and maybe what's wrong with your family favorites is that's all you've been planning for the last two months. Right? I can understand that that's a situation, but also particularly during weeks where you're just feeling low energy, low motivation, [00:19:00] I don't really wanna do this. Well just fall back on the things that, you know, because sometimes that's why we run out of ideas is it's not really because we don't have ideas.

It's just 'cause we're like, I am not feeling the meal plan right now.

Riley: Yeah, I often, I often resort to family favorites and then everyone's tired of them.

Roni: Sure.

Riley: But then I try a new recipe and I'm like, why did I not make this sooner? I literally text you today a recipe for like an a chopped Italian grinder salad sandwich situation. I have been wanting to make that forever. But I just go back to old faithful, old faithful staples.

And I made, finally made it today every ever made for lunch. I made it for lunch. Everybody loved it. It was so easy. It was way simpler than making everyone a sandwich, like, uh, you know, like their own unique sandwich. It was, and it was really different. And so I understand that like, fa I just fall back on family favorites.

Instead of sprinkling them in, which is what I should [00:20:00] do. But I, you're right, nothing's wrong with them. It's just they've gotta be used appropriately instead of all the time.

Roni: Yeah, no, I get it. Yeah. I am very guilty of feeling like I constantly need variety in the meal plan, and then when I ask my husband what he wants to eat, it's like always the same things,

Riley: Yeah. My family always wants to eat the same things, and I think that, I don't think that that's okay for some reason.

Roni: Yeah. What's, what's going on in our heads? Why, why are we, why do we do this to ourselves?

Riley: don't know. I think from a parent perspective, I like feel like I want my kids to have really diverse,

Roni: Oh sure.

Riley: I want them to eat a lot of different things. You know, I want them to try different foods and um, like I don't want them, you know, I just don't want them to only like one thing, you know, I want them to like.

Have a lot of different flavors and seasonings and spices and, um, you know, cuisine types and cultural experiences in their palette. And I, so I think I have almost like, made [00:21:00] it more complicated for myself because I'm like, it has to be different. Every night we're making homemade pho from scratch. Like 36 hours later we made it.

It's like, okay.

Roni: Well, I mean, that's a good explanation though, right? Like it's good to know the reasons why we feel the way that we do. I just feel the way that I do because I'm neurotic or something. I dunno.

Riley: Well, you're still feeding somebody else who has preferences and you're like, you want to give them the best meal planning, exper or eating experience, you know?

Roni: It's true. And I also personally like a variety of foods. And so I, yeah, I like to change things up in the meal plan for that reason too.

Riley: Totally. I, I honestly sometimes feel guilty when I do the same things over and over again, which is probably guilt. I should just let go of you were fed, right?

Roni: you were fed?

Riley: Everyone's happy.

Roni: Which some, some weeks you need that, you know, and [00:22:00] I, and I think that a, a good way to combat that is if. Is if you're feeling like, okay, it's just fam favorites again for another week. Maybe you could look into like, how can you change up the recipe just a little bit? Do you always serve this chicken gnochi recipe with a side salad and you could serve it with like some roasted broccoli or some sweet potato fries, or you know, something different.

Like switch up what you serve a recipe with. And or if the recipe calls for rice or quinoa or something like that, like you could switch it up for a different grain. We've been really loving orzo in our house right now. My husband is like, whatever this rice thing is that you're making, I really like it.

And I'm like, it's not rice, it's wheat. And he's like, okay, well this wheat rice.

Riley: Pasta. It's pasta,

Roni: I know. I'm like, it's a pasta. But it's the same thing as like how, how? Like you get like a cc. acini de pepe. Like, that doesn't feel like pasta either so just like, you know, you could, you can just [00:23:00] switch things up that way too and like eat it with potatoes instead of rice or something like that.

Just to like give it a little, a little .

Riley: I like that idea. We often have smashburger tacos. That's a big family favorite over here, and I recently saw that you could do the same thing with like chicken Caesar wraps. Basically, you just take the tortilla, you put ground chicken on it instead of beef, and then you cook it flat on the flat top, you know, and then put a Caesar salad in the middle.

Roni: I can't believe I've never shared that recipe with you. That's the only way I make smash burgers.

Riley: What as a Caesar salad taco.

Roni: yes.

Riley: Oh, we make it like with like the Big Mac sauce, like the homemade like ketchup, mayonnaise, pickle, onion sauce, and like, you know, like with beef and cheese, like, it's like literally a hamburger and a taco. Now it's a, like, honestly, my entire extended family also really likes this recipe.

They ask me to make it when I come, when they [00:24:00] come. Uh, but I like the idea of just mixing it up a little bit, just every once in a while, just do it a little different.

Roni: Yeah. You're reminding me that I wanna put the smash burgers on my meal plan, so I'm gonna

do that right now.

Riley: forget. Roni is actively meal planning in the middle of this podcast.

Roni: Oh, that's funny. Except I don't know how to spell Cesar apparently.

Okay.

Riley: I feel like I can't tell you how to spell it because I'll get it wrong on Almost said live tv.

Roni: On live. It's okay. I figured it out. I Googled it. Uh, but that's embarrassing. Okay. Alright. Back to the podcast.

Riley: What else could you change up? What else are you thinking you could change up? Like if you, I guess you could do, if you would normally do like a red sauce, like, uh, like enchiladas with green sauce, you could do enchiladas with red sauce.

If you normally do spaghetti and meatballs like with like a red marinara sauce, you could switch it up and do an Alfredo sauce and chicken. Your family [00:25:00] still probably likes that type of meal. Just switch up the flavor flavor altogether.

Another way that I really liked meal plan, which All the Plan to Eat listeners, I'm sure you're sitting here thinking, yeah, we know this dude, the freezer. What do you have in your freezer? I, I freeze so much. So many like leftovers, I freeze them because it's then dinner another night.

Like last night's recipe weigh made way more than I was expecting. Sometimes, you know, when you're putting the ingredients in, you don't, it doesn't look like it's gonna be enough and then it's way more than enough, I dunno if you ever have that happen to you.

Roni: Yep.

Riley: And then, so last night I decided to freeze what was leftover because it was an entire dinner for our family.

And so I'm like, well dude, that's done. I go to look in my freezer because those meals are already cooked,

Roni: Right.

Riley: or it inspires me to use up what I already have. Like I know for a fact right now, but I have, some like frozen cauliflower gnochi. [00:26:00] I'm like, I need, I need to use that for something. So it could literally become part of a meal for next week's meal plan.

And it can just be little pieces of inspiration and it helps you use up what you've got in your freezer because sometimes those live there for too long.

Roni: It's true they can live there for a little too long and, but it's, it's also the most low effort that you could have is to just pull something out of the freezer and reheat it. Or if you did like a dumped dinner situation, you pull it outta the freezer and you put it in your crockpot.

Riley: A hundred percent. Yeah.

Roni: I, I, I like the idea also of going into your, either your freezer or your pantry or even your refrigerator and just using what you already have as inspiration and maybe even picking three items and being like, what, what recipe can we make with these three items?

And of course you can do this in Plan to Eat. There is a with ingredients filter where you could type in those ingredients and it'll come up with some recipes for you. But, you know, maybe it's just an opportunity to get some of those creative juices flowing and think like, okay, we've got some rotisserie chicken and some rice and some bell peppers.

Like [00:27:00] let's make a chicken fried rice or something tonight, you know?

Riley: Yes, I currently have this problem because I, I do grocery pickup quite often. You guys know that. And I accidentally bought a container of chopped mushrooms.

Roni: Ah,

Riley: That was, uh, what, what would it be? As big as, I don't know, three boxes of cereal stacked together. Not quite that big. Huge. I, I told my husband, I was like, uh, this is what I get for just like, like very quickly grocery shopping,

Roni: Is it like the 30, it's like the 32 ounce container of mushrooms.

Riley: yes, it's,

Roni: They come in like eight, 16 and 32. And the 32 is like humongous.

Riley: Yes, I never have a need for that many mushrooms. But I have a lot of ingredients for a stir fry. I could make a beef stroganoff like I bought them for beef stroganoff, but I could make it again. Because now I'm stuck with all these mushrooms and it was an accidental purchase. It wasn't just like I just bought it and didn't wanna use it, you [00:28:00] know?

And so using them for a recipe, I'm gonna take those ingredients and go find something. I don't wanna waste them. I, you know, mushrooms go bad kind of fast, so you gotta gotta work quick there.

Roni: Yeah, that I shared you, that crockpot yest recipe yesterday with mushrooms. It turned out really good. It does have orzo, which I know you can't have unless they make gluten-free orzo,

Riley: do make gluten-free orzo.

Roni: but I guess you could also use rice

Riley: Yeah, I uh, I did pin that one in my mind for later.

Roni: Yeah, it was really good. It turned out. Really good and it was fast 'cause it was crockpot.

Riley: Love a crock pot meal.

Roni: I love it too.

Riley: I.

Roni: so let's wrap up some of these ideas with how you can organize your recipes in plan to eat for the easiest searchability. Just so you can like find recipes when you are feeling dry. On your recipe ideas. So we're always gonna lean on tags and courses. Riley has talked about, she has a course that's just family favorite recipes.

It doesn't matter if it's a dessert, an [00:29:00] appetizer, or a dinner, a side dish, that's where all the family favorites go. I actually implemented this too recently because I was tired of looking at appetizers at the top of my list, at the top of my plant, um, whatever it's called.

Riley: The

Roni: I work for this company. Um,

Riley: We're real people.

Roni: yeah, we're real people over here.

Okay. I was tired of looking at appetizers at the top of my recipe book.

Riley: You almost did it again.

Roni: I almost did it again. Okay. I was tired of looking at appetizers at the top of my recipe book, and so I just labeled it a fam favorites.

Riley: Oh,

Roni: So that the A was up at the top. So and I, yeah, I just put in all of our, all of our favorite, uh, they're pretty much dinner recipes. There are a couple like breakfast recipes in there, but pretty much all of our dinner recipes.

So I've been using that to a meal plan the last couple weeks, and that's been really helpful to just [00:30:00] have 'em all visible and like right at the top of the recipe book.

Riley: I really like that. I really like that folder. I'm pretty, I'm pretty specific with what goes in it. It's not just like everything my family kind of liked. It's things that all four members of my family said, yes, this is great too.

Roni: Yeah. Right.

Riley: And they just kind of like winners, you know, they just, I love it when everyone likes it and just feel you, you know, okay, this is a real winner.

Um, that course really works well for me. Another thing that's super helpful inside of Plan to Eat is the random recipe button. This is a button that you use to, it literally just generates a random recipe. Now you're gonna end up with beverages, you're gonna end up with desserts, you're gonna end up with appetizers.

And if you have. Other recipes inside of your plan to eat account, like cleaning products, gardening things home. I know people who use this for homeschooling. You're gonna have those things pop up too. There's not, I mean, what

Roni: Except you can use it with your search and filtering

Riley: I was just about, I was just about to say that. Go ahead. [00:31:00] Take it, take it away.

Roni: Except you can put in your search and filtering options, and then it'll populate a recipe based off of what you actually want to see. So if you're looking for dinner recipes or you're looking for breakfast recipes, you put those in, or you're looking for a dinner recipe specifically with mushrooms in it, you could do that and populate a random recipe.

Riley: Next up, uh, you should probably talk about this one, but the queue, you know, if, if I didn't go ahead and plan things that I found on social media, like I do, we already talked about this earlier in the episode. I think the queue is a great place to put these, because then you just kind of end up with like a, it's almost like you're hoarding them, right?

Like, okay, I found 10 really good ones, I'm gonna put 'em in my queue and then I'm gonna go plan them on the days. That make sense? You, you know, you could do that in a little more batch batch style planning. Right? Like you, I just do it whenever I find something I like, oh cool, I'll add that to next Thursday.

But you could do this, build up a, build up a group of them [00:32:00] and then go in and plan them.

Roni: Yeah, so I was using the queue for the longest time as basically my family favorite. Spot for favorite recipes. Now it's still the spot for my like favorite recipes or tried and true recipes for everything other than dinner. And now I've started to use it more the way that you're talking about like when I import a recipe and I don't immediately think to put it on my meal plan, or I'm just like, okay, well I'm gonna get to meal planning tomorrow, so I just wanna have this here.

I'm putting those new recipes in my queue for dinner. Recipes more, but like my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe also still lives in my queue, just so that I can find it easily. Finally you, we talked about this a little earlier. Using menus, using menus as Plan to Eat is a great way to make meal planning super fast. 'cause if you already created those meal plans, it's really simple to just add them onto this week's meal plan and you can literally get your meal planning done in about three seconds.

I think the part that I [00:33:00] struggle with personally with menus is I look at the menu and I say, Hmm, not all those recipes are the ones that I want. But really the best thing about menus is that you can put the menu on your meal planner and then you can adjust it as needed.

You can delete the ones that don't really work for your week and add in new recipes, but maybe 80% of your meal plan has been made with the menu, and you just need to fill in those last little 20% bits.

Riley: Yep. That's great. I love that. It, it, I mean, 'cause I feel like my menus end up being mains, so like, I need to go in and add sides, or I need to go in and add breakfast, you know, like I, yeah. It, I mean, but you're 80% there.

Roni: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, and some, sometimes you made a menu and you're like, this was a banger of a meal plan. I'm gonna save it as a menu. And then two months later, when maybe you go to use that menu, your schedule has changed. Your kids after school activities are different on different days or something. So maybe the way that the original, the way that the menu was originally doesn't work for you as well [00:34:00] anymore.

But it doesn't mean the concept of what's on that menu is all bad. You just go in and rearrange some things.

Riley: I know we already talked about this, but I kinda like scrolling back through my recipe book be or not my recipe book through my meal planner because I, I'm like, oh, I remember when we ate that all the time. Oh, I remember when we had those house guests in town and it, it's kind of fun

Roni: it is a nice little trip down memory lane.

Riley: down memory lane.

Roni: Okay, Riley, why don't you tell us how you're meal planning right now? What's, what's your meal plan this week look like?

Riley: Okay, my meal plan this week, like I said, I based this off of, half off of a friend's meal plan and half off of just things I found on social media. And I guess one or two that were we family favorites? Um, so we are having tostadas with steak.

Roni: Hmm.

Riley: Really excited about those. Um, we had beef stroganoff already this week.

Um, we had creamy chicken thighs and potatoes in the crockpot. We [00:35:00] are having these, the, the, the title of the recipe is a. Avocado mojo bowls with sweet potatoes. The sauce is the mo, it's like a mojo sauce with cilantro and, apple or not apple juice. Orange juice and avocados. That's, I'm really excited about that one.

We also have a bang banging inspired rice noodle salad with grilled chicken thighs. And then we had the grinder, Italian grinder salad for lunch. And lastly, for lunch, we're also going to have this avocado, blueberry, quinoa salad and chicken. I think it was kind of a nice balance of meal, plan of like, kind of a variety.

Not too much chicken, not too much beef.

Roni: Yeah, I like it.

Riley: and then the grinder salad has like Turkey and salami and ham and stuff all chopped inside of it.

Roni: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Riley: What about you, Roni?

Roni: I liked it when that grinder salad was viral on the internet. 'cause it always, it, I, I've made it a few times and every time I'd see it, I'd be like, oh yeah, I should add that to my meal plan 'cause it's [00:36:00] so good.

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: So simple, although do you chop it all up together on a cutting board.

Riley: Oh, no,

Roni: Okay. Me neither.

I don't really like that. I, that was the thing that I didn't like about the social media trend was like people were just like slapping things on the cutting board, and then they were like slapping the mayo and slapping the Italian dressing and everything, and then they would chop it all up together on the cutting board.

I didn't. I don't like that method. I tried that method. It was so messy. Maybe I don't have a large enough cutting board, but I made a total mess of a kitchen.

Riley: I did. I did it once. Everybody who follows us on social media remembers that I made the bagel with

Roni: Yeah. Oh

Riley: cream cheese situation. I guess I get why. It, it happens. I think I would rather use my like KitchenAid, like dump it all in the KitchenAid and mix it together. But with like cream cheese, it, you, you know, that makes a little more sense.

I [00:37:00] just chopped everything individually and put it in a bowl and tossed it.

Roni: Yeah. And that's the right way to do it.

Riley: It, I mean, look, things are viral and we don't know why.

Roni: I think they just have maybe a larger cutting board than what I have. Maybe I need to commission my husband to make me a larger cutting board.

Riley: Well, if anybody could, it would be him. But I, I make my entire counter cutting board so when I make this messy, messy dinner, it doesn't make a mess. Um, now, you know, sometimes you don't have to do things the way people do it on the internet because there's like a. Surprise factor. Everybody watching it is watching longer.

'cause they're like, wait, why are they doing that?

Roni: That's true. Yeah. They're going for the shock and awe a little bit. Mm-hmm. Of like, is that really gonna turn out if they even chop it with the mayonnaise? All right.

Riley: I just like a cleaner kitchen. I like a, and I know my husband's listening. He's like, you, do you like what? I don't like to, I don't like, I don't like to be that messy while cooking.

Roni: agree. [00:38:00] I.

Riley: I just feel like it's gonna get over your hands while you're trying to chop it all up.

Roni: Uh huh Uhhuh.

Riley: that.

Roni: Well, I've been really leaning on the crockpot this week. This week was two things. It was crockpot, which I've used the crockpot for three out of the last four meals I've made. So it's just been perpetually on the counter. And so this week was crockpot week and a low spend week. I decided let's do some crockpot meals, which also, which involved some of those dump dinners that I made.

And, but also like I don't wanna spend a whole bunch of money at the grocery store. We have food at home. Let's eat the food we have at home. So. It was one of those times where I was like, okay, I need to start thinking about the meal plan. I need to like, I don't wanna go to the grocery store. I was like on strike from the grocery store in my mind.

And then, but then I was like, okay, but we still need a meal plan. You still gotta come up with ideas. And I took a shower. And in the shower I came up with like seven different recipe ideas with

Riley: Oh, so that should have been a tip on our

Roni: that should have [00:39:00] been a tip on our list. You're right. a shower. It's where you have all your best ideas. It's so true though. So, yeah, so, uh, I went to the grocery store and just basically bought some fresh vegetables. And then I also bought some corned beef because at the time of this recording, we are coming up on St. Patrick's Day. So, that was like what I spent, that was the only thing that I spent money on this week, was some fresh vegetables and a corned beef.

Roast. So yeah, that's kinda was what my meal plan was like. Crockpot, dumped dinner, corn, beef, and cabbage. We're gonna do ramen. And the ramen is gonna use whatever leftover vegetables we have plus, um, like some leftover chicken that's in the freezer. We're gonna do, Korean ground beef and rice bowls. And then we've already done fajitas. We had some bell peppers that needed to get used, so we did fajitas with steak and black beans.

Riley: That sounds great.

Roni: Yeah. And then also [00:40:00] crockpot lasagna was one of our other crockpot meals, which is my husband's fave.

Riley: See, this is the thing is anybody listening and me like, take this inspiration and don't waste it. Go write it down. You know, like, I'm thinking like, oh, ramen iss a great idea for my leftover mushrooms. Like, don't, don't, don't forget. Go write it down right now.

Roni: can meal plan in the podcast like I've already done

Riley: Yeah. I love it. Driving down the car, down, driving down the road is the only reason I would say, don't do it.

Roni: funny.

Riley: I.

Roni: All right, before we wrap up, oh, oh, I have two things before we wrap up today. I have a listener email to share. We love it when you guys write into us. Thank you so much. If you've written into us. And then I al but I also have a thing to share with everybody. And Riley I haven't shared this with Riley yet.

Riley: What.

Roni: It's not that exciting. I got overly excited about this, but I tested out, I tried making. Hard boiled eggs in my air fryer, and it was [00:41:00] awesome.

Riley: Oh, cool.

Roni: Okay, so everybody, if you have an air fryer, you need to start making hard boiled eggs in your air fryer I looked up a recipe online, set it for two 50, uh, 12 minutes is soft boiled, 14 minutes is medium boiled.

16 minutes is hard boiled. So I put it 2 50, 14 minutes, set it and forget it situation, which is. So awesome because I always heart boiled eggs is one of those really easy things that kind of stresses me out because I feel like you gotta really monitor the water. You like gotta get it up to a boil and then you gotta turn it down.

But you can't turn it down too much because it's not boiling anymore. But it needs to be like a low rolling boil. 'cause if it's too much of a boil, then your eggs crack open and then you got the goobers coming outta the eggs and

Riley: Boiled eggs are really stressful for you.

Roni: they are. I feel like they require babysitting. That's unnecessary and maybe it is unnecessary.

Riley: I just let 'em do their thing.

Roni: I always crack a hard boil. I always crack an egg when I hard boil them in water.

Riley: Interesting.

Roni: Yeah. So maybe I'm just [00:42:00] going too aggressive boiled eggs. Anyways, I tried 'em in the air fryer. It's amazing. Everybody needs to dry it. It changed. It changed my day today.

Riley: Changed my life.

Roni: I was gonna say that, but I don't know if it actually changed my life, but it changed my morning.

So

Riley: that's great. I'm, that's really cool. I'm excited of That is a new little hack for you to share with everybody.

Roni: yeah, air fryer, just doing more things than you ever thought possible.

Riley: We do love the air fryer.

Roni: I do like it a lot. I was resistant to it at first, but now I understand why everybody loves it.

Riley: And just as you know, it's just not just for frozen foods.

Roni: It's true.

Riley: We use ac, we use ours a lot actually. To reheat food.

Roni: yeah, definitely. Yeah. When you don't want something to be like soggy or like a weird rubbery texture from the microwave.

Riley: just the microwave's kind of ick. You

Roni: Mm-hmm. Air Fryer is where

Riley: what you got? What you, what's the, what's our letter? What's

Roni: Okay. So Catherine wrote into us, she wrote in some really wonderful things about the podcast and that was so nice of her to share with [00:43:00] us, but she has a, like a plan to eat tip here that I wanna share with everybody.

So, uh, this is gonna make the most sense if you use plan to eat, just so everybody knows. Okay. She says We're fortunate enough that we have a summer and winter home. I'm a big food prepper and really like the freezer feature. I wanna be able to use the freezer at both locations where she lives, right?

Summer, winter, home. Her solution is to create duplicate recipes, um, such as AZ spaghetti sauce and id spaghetti sauce. So

Riley: Oh yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah.

Roni: And then I'm able to keep track of what I have where, and I don't have to mess with the manual version of using the Staples list or the grocery store. My goal is to use up most of the prepped food before I leave for the summer, and this is really helping me keep track of what I have in the freezer.

I know this is a very specialized way of using plan to eat, but it just shows how flexible it can be.

I thought that was a great tip.

Riley: Yeah, I love that.

Roni: I think this can work really well too. If you're somebody who has multiple freezers [00:44:00] at your house, is like, you can have like, you know, duplicate recipes of like upstairs freezer, downstairs, freezer, and then when you put them in the freezer feature, you're able to keep track of them a little bit better.

Riley: Yeah, I like that she'd probably use a cor. Did she say how she kept them separate in different courses?

Roni: She doesn't say how she keeps 'em separate. She just says that she has duplicate recipes and one says AZ and one says id.

Riley: Okay. It's just a thought, like a secondary level thought, right? Like

Roni: oh, yeah,

Riley: you have a, have a course called AZ, and then everything goes in there, and then you can kind of keep 'em separate instead of all like duplicates next to each other.

Roni: yeah. That's a really good idea. I like that. All right. That wraps us up for this week. As always, we really appreciate you listening and hanging out with us. And our goofy selves

Riley: Today was definitely a hangout.

Roni: today was a hang,

Riley: Everything's hanging with us today.

Roni: So thanks again for listening and we'll talk to you in two weeks.

[00:45:00]