#140: You Need a Meal Planning System (Not Just a Meal Plan)

This week we're talking about building a meal system, which goes beyond the weekly task of picking recipes and making a grocery list. A meal plan is the action. A meal system is the infrastructure behind it, and having one makes everything work so much better.

We walk through all the pieces that make up a meal planning system:

• Your planning routine
• Recipe organization
• Your grocery shopping strategy
• Fallback meals
• Your household reality
• Cooking habits
• Your planning tools

The goal is to help you figure out what your system can look like based on your real life. We hope you enjoy!

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Transcript

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meal plan system
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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. 

Hello, and welcome to the Plan to Eat podcast. We are so glad you're here. We love recording this podcast. We love talking about meal planning, and we hope you love listening. Today, Roni and I are talking about building a meal system. If you listen to our podcast with Hannah Van Ark, she talks about meal systems, and I thought it was brilliant.

We both were very hooked into this idea of meal planning system. So meal planning is the action, and a meal system is like the infrastructure behind the action. And we'll break this down more. But we just really love this idea. We kind of like breaking it into these two categories. And I think it'll really help you create an, an infrastructure for your planning.

Well, let's [00:01:00] see. It'll help you create an infrastructure that makes your meal planning go so much better

Yeah. I don't know if, I had heard the concept of a meal system before Hannah mentioned it, and that feels kinda weird to say because all we do is talk about food and meal planning, but maybe that's just something that, like, she's a registered dietician, and so maybe that's something that registered dieticians use as part of their methods with their clients, and I just don't know about it because I'm not an RD.

But I, yeah, I really liked the idea of, of this meal system versus just meal planning, as, which is, as we've learned, part of the entire system. So I'm excited to break this down today and talk a little bit more about it because, yeah, it's kind of new to me, and I'm a- assuming it might be new to other people, too.

Yeah. A meal system can include things like cooking habits, grocery shopping, food prepping, um, it would be like freezer meals, [00:02:00] family routines, and just in general it can also include meal planning.

Yeah.

So with that system, I feel like we can kind of break it down into maybe, like, kind of th- there's multiple things that we have talked about before related to meal planning. Like, we talk about meal planning, which is, like, the weekly task of picking your recipes, getting your grocery list made, going to the grocery store.

We've also talked about planning frameworks to make your meal planning easier, which is the structure in which you meal plan, right? Like, we talk about this with having your theme nights, like you got your taco Tuesday and your pasta on Thursday, or maybe you plan around a different type of protein each night of the week.

You plan around your schedule. You plan around leftovers, right? Like, we have all these different frameworks that we've talked about in the past. Um, and the framework basically helps you decide, like, what meals am I gonna choose for my meal plan this week? But it's still not even the system, right? Like, these are still two things that are kind of, like, nestled within a meal system because the, the meal planning system is, like, [00:03:00] the entire ecosystem of all of the things that you think about when you're c- creating your meal plan and, you know, going through this framework of how you're choosing recipes for the week.

Yeah, I kind of look at it like that umbrella graphic that we did that one time. Yeah, like the, the umbrella itself is made up of all these different like, you know, colorful segments. The entire umbrella is the ecosystem, and kind of everything within it is, is the structure. Um, maybe it's your theme nights.

It's, it's how you pick recipes. Maybe it's that you have to have freezer meals for breakfast every day because there's no time. Your kids eat dinner on the go. You gotta have easy meals. Like, whatever it looks like. Your cook once, eat all week kind of thing, rotating every two weeks. Like we talked about last week with Rebecca Zip.

She doesn't like to meal plan, so she meal plans for one month at a time. Like, that's part of her entire ecosystem. That's how, you know, that... Like, then, then within that ecosy- then within that structure, she's having to do a little bit of maintenance every [00:04:00] week. Like, it all kind of falls underneath this one big umbrella of the ecosystem of meal planning systems.

Right. Yeah, so I think, I mean, I think the goal of this podcast today is kind of help you discover what your meal planning, what your ideal meal planning system would be, because we don't have a proprietary system that we're gonna teach you today. We're gonna help you figure out your own. So I think to start, you wanna think about what your planning routine is.

When do you like to meal plan? When do you like to grocery shop? How often do you need to do that reassessment of your meal plan every week? Do you need to look at your meal plan every morning to make sure you take stuff out of the freezer? Do you need to just check in on Monday and say, "Yeah, the meals that I have are good to go for the week.

Let's just, you know, execute and move on"?

Tell us what your meal planning routine is, and I'll tell them what mine is so we can kind of give them an idea of what it looks

Yeah. I don't have a set-in-stone meal planning routine. I don't [00:05:00] specifically meal plan on one day of the week and then grocery shop on another day of the week. I, as we've talked about many times before, just meal plan where I add four to five dinner recipes on the, on the meal planner, and then basically when I'm finished with that meal plan is when I will create a new meal plan and go grocery shopping.

So sometimes I've made a meal plan that's, you know, uh, it's a Monday through Sunday and I planned five dinners, but it actually maybe lasted us nine days instead of seven days because we went out to eat one night, uh, or friends invited us over to their house, or maybe we have two different nights where we had leftovers.

So while I might have meal planned originally on Sunday and grocery shopped on Monday, maybe the next time I'm meal planning on Tuesday and grocery shopping on a Wednesday. It's pretty fluid and flexible. And then, uh, but sometimes when it's that longer chunk in between, there will be an extra short grocery trip in there to get, like, [00:06:00] yogurt or milk or eggs or, like, some staples items that maybe we've run out of

Mm-hmm. And you have a lot of flexibility within that.

Yeah

Yeah.

My meal planning routine I would classify, I would classify myself in general as pretty routine.

That's kind of a funny way to say that, but I like my weeks to have certain rhythms, my days to have certain rhythms. So typically I do plan... My favorite way to do it is plan Sunday night, shop on Monday. Sunday night is like my weekly reset. I like the house to be clean, I like the fridge to be empty, and the, everything just like kind of like it's like a we're starting over for the week.

Uh, so I typically will grocery shop on Mondays. Uh, it kind of varies depending on what my kids' schedule is, if I'm gonna be near a grocery store, if I have time to pick stuff up. I do kind of change it if I have to, but my preferred method is to do Sunday night, shop on Monday. Uh, and then, I reassess.

I honestly don't do a ton of reassessment. The thing that [00:07:00] I do is that I look at it every day and make sure that the meat is thawed or that something didn't come up where, um, like, oh, somebody invited us to dinner on Thursday. I had plans to have something for dinner. Like, do I need to throw that in the freezer instead?

Do I need, can we move it any earlier? Um, my assessment is kind of like a morning thing where I think through like, okay, what has changed since I made this meal plan? And it just kind of happens on the fly

So then I think the next thing to consider after your meal planning routine is how do you like your recipes organized? If we're gonna, if we're gonna make a meal plan, it's, it's best to have your recipes organized in some sort of a way so they're easy to find. So where do they live? Maybe they live in Plan to Eat, maybe they live in a binder.

Hopefully they don't live scattered all over every which way, in your phone and in cookbooks and

If you're listening to this podcast, I hope you know that we, uh, promote an app called Plan to Eat.

Yeah.

We think a digital recipe book is the way to go.

Yes.

And not digital in [00:08:00] that they're in 500 open tabs, but digital they're in one recipe book.

Yeah, because you need to think about, like, we all have favorites, and favorites are often, like, your backup meals or, you know, like, what you plan if you're low on energy. So, like, how do you save favorites and notify yourself that, like, these are our favorite recipes for the week? How do you avoid forgetting recipes that you liked or forgetting recipes that you found online that you really wanted to try?

I think that's like the abyss of Pinterest and Instagram, right, is like you save these recipes. How often are you ever actually going back to them? So recipe organization is another thing to think about. And then we have our grocery shopping strategy. So we kind of went through this a little bit with the planning, with the, um, your planning routine, but do you like to do, like, one bulk grocery trip where, you know, like, maybe you go to a, a, a bulk store like Costco and you get all of your non-perishable items and then you just do little grocery trips throughout the month?

Do you like to do grocery pickup rather than going actually into the grocery store? Do [00:09:00] you, like I mentioned, need to do kind of that midweek refill situation where you've run out of some things before you'll do your next big grocery trip? Just, like, be thinking about, like, how grocery shopping usually, like, works into your schedule naturally

One of the things about Plan to Eat that I wanna plug right here is that our shopping list can be broken down into different stores, which is my pref- like, I shop at multiple stores for different things, which can make, It can kinda add some complication, make it take more time, but I also will kind of strategize with this on, like, when I'm near that store, I'll pop in for those things that I need if they're not urgent.

But I kinda do a combination between grocery pickup and bulk buying. Um, I very rarely do a midweek refill or a monthly trip. I admire people who can do a monthly trip. That is impressive work

'cause it means you also have a monthly meal plan

Yeah. Okay, and then you also wanna think about what are your potential fallback meals. We've called these [00:10:00] staples meals, recovery meals, pantry staple meals. I probably already said that. Uh, what happens when your meal plan doesn't go to plan during the week? And, like, what are you using to supplement the, the meals that are on your meal plan?

Are these things in the freezer? Are these, yeah, just, like, non-perishable items that you have in your cupboards or pantry? And how are you then going about, like, reviewing your meal plan and adjusting it based off of, like, when you needed these recovery meals

You and I are big proponents of the fallback meal. And I know that we... Like, at our house, we have several that we'll, that, like, kinda we rotate through. And I think it's every family very specific, because I'm thinking, like, your beans on toast, like, I don't think... Uh, sorry, if you, if you've been listening for a long time, this is Roni's go-to fallback meal.

Ours is kind of breakfast for dinner or white chicken chili, depending on the season. But it kinda has to be family-dependent, you know? And I think some of it comes from, like, what you maybe, like, grew up doing as a fallback meal or what you grew [00:11:00] up really liking. Something that is just overall the easy button,

Yeah

and something that you can keep on hand really simply.

It's not complicated. It's not gonna go bad. I, I like hearing what people's fallback meals are, because I think it kinda is telling to, like, I don't know, just, like, how they grew up or, like, what their fallback meal was as a kid or that kind of a thing.

Yeah. I actually think that, uh, a fallback meal that I would like to implement more is, like, a casserole. Like, having ca- like, you know, I'm thinking, like, a casserole that has, like, frozen potatoes and, like, stuff that can be frozen and then, you know, like, you quickly make a casserole out of it because in my house with only two of us, like, a casserole lasts for days.

So it's like, if I got a fallback meal that's gonna last us multiple dinners, that sounds pretty awesome.

That does sound awesome. That's a good, um, option for, like, lunches too. Like, making a big casserole, it keeps well for lunches. So the next part, to consider is your [00:12:00] household reality. You know, I mentioned earlier when Roni told us about her life, just how flexible that is. Just there's a lot of flexibility with then being able to pop into the grocery store or, or fluidly make a meal plan as you go.

I like that. But a lot of people don't have the same flexibility, um, and so they have to consider a lot of things like scheduling their kids. Maybe they have a really busy job themselves, and they work early to late. That means if you do that, that means you're gonna probably, and you still wanna eat at home, y- that means you still gotta have things either that are in the Crockpot or you've gotta have things that are easy grab and go or you do a lot of meal prep.

That's how these household realities are gonna affect your meal planning ecosystem. Another thing to consider is gonna be budget. I- like, uh, we interviewed somebody who meal planned for the entire month based on budget. Her husband got paid once a month, right? And so she planned for the entire month, and they...

She stretched it all the way, and it was highly budget dependent. Um, she stretched it all the way to the end of the month, and [00:13:00] she said sometimes they were eating rice and beans at the end, but that is how they had to operate in their world. Again, this is, like, highly impacting her meal planning ecosystem.

Uh, energy level is another thing. If you get home every single night from work and you just have nothing in the tank and you call DoorDash or you, call up for a pizza, like, that's something to consider too. How can you implement that or, or how can you implement a different system to help with your energy levels?

And then lastly is gonna be cooking skill because if you have, if you're a novice cook, then the meals you're planning are gonna just be different. And it's important to lean into that because you don't wanna make yourself more stressed out or push yourself too hard when you really don't have the ability to do that.

There's, as you were talking about this, there's an element that makes me feel like being on social media and looking at social media recipes makes planning around your household reality really hard.

Yeah

Because if you're, if you have a super busy [00:14:00] schedule and at the end of the day you have really low energy level to be able to put into cooking food or maybe you don't have very many cooking skills or, you know, like very basic cooking skills, there are so many recipes on the internet that are going to look and sound delicious and just not be part of your meal plan

Or Roni, like we've talked about, they will say they are easy, and they are not easy. They're easy for the person who created them, but they may not be easy for you because you're having to read their every step, and you're gonna have to, "Oh, wait, I didn't do that right. Oh, hold on a second. Wait, I didn't... I...

Wait, what do I start first?" So this is already the same time. Like, sometimes there's an assumption made by recipe authors that everyone has the same skill level. And I think that can be misleading, especially on the internet when everything does look like, oh, they just did it. Well, yeah, but they've been doing it over and over again.

Right, they've been testing this recipe for the last week, so yeah, of course they make it look easy.

Yeah, exactly. [00:15:00] You're right that the internet, it also creates, I'm, I'm not sure exactly what it creates. Let me, let me backtrack. Uh, you look at what other people are meal planning and think, it's like a keeping up with the Joneses idea, right? Like, well, that's what they're meal planning every week?

That's what they're meal planning every week, but their meal planning reality is different than yours. And it can kind of feel like, oh, I'm not doing enough, or I'm not cooking in, I'm not cooking at home enough, or I'm using some semi-homemade things to make my meals come together, and it can kind of make you feel guilty, bad about yourself, that mom guilt idea. And you don't have to eat overly complicated food.

Right.

It's okay. It, it is okay to not

Yeah. The internet can sometimes set you up for, like, unrealistic expectations, I think.

Yeah. Yeah, I, I try to plan a balance of very easy meals and a few more complicated ones because I just know that that's the life that I'm living. I can't make an hour-long recipe every night.

Yeah, I think that... Well, you know, Riley and I have [00:16:00] been talking about our meal plans g- you know, kinda giving a rundown of our meal plans for the last couple months, and probably if you went back and listened, you would find 75% of the recipes are, like, the same recipes maybe if you looked at like a three-week period, you're like, "There's a lot of similar recipes like every three weeks."

W- yeah, and I think you'd probably also go hear how many of them are pretty simple.

Yeah. Oh, yeah

Yeah. You and I, I think you and I do practice what we preach in so many ways. Like, we've got a couple complicated ones, we've got a couple simple ones, and we plan four to five dinners a week and work through them, and we don't overcomplicate it

And a lot of the times when I plan a new recipe on my meal plan, it's because, like, you recommended it to me, and I know you're not gonna send me a recipe that took you two hours to make, you know? So it's like while for me it's still a new recipe and it might take me... If it says it's a 20-minute recipe, it might take me 30 minutes to make it the first time.

We've talked about before, that trustworthiness of getting a recommendation from a friend where I know, like, [00:17:00] Riley's not gonna do me dirty and be like, "This recipe was amazing," and not tell me that it took you an hour to make, right? Like, we have shared recipes before, and I've been like, "This recipe was so good, but it took me a really long time,"

Yes. Yeah. Or you'll say something like, "This recipe was so good, it needs more salt."

Yeah.

Or, or, "Hey, just be aware, when you make this, you're only gonna use a fourth of that entire jar of marinara sauce that you had to open

Yeah, exactly. So have another plan for marinara. Yeah, exactly

Yeah, exactly. And that is so helpful. I know we always... I feel like this is, you know, not the podcast necessarily to plug the, like, friends thing, but meal planning with friends is way better.

That

that could be part of your meal plan system is having a friend, so

yeah, there you go. That's my meal planning system. Roni, what are we eating this week?

Yeah.

We, collectively. Yeah.

Okay, next

yeah, go

next thing to think about, uh, in your meal plan system are your cooking habits. So not just your cooking skills, [00:18:00] but your habits around cooking, like what's the best time during the week for you to do meal prep if that's something you need to do?

Are you a from scratch person, or do you like the semi-homemade cooking? Uh, how involved is your family in the cooking process? Is it just you take over the kitchen for the night and doing a recipe by yourself, or do you like to involve the other people in your household? And also how much time do you have available to cook?

The other one I thought of for this is do you perpetually forget to pull meat out of the freezer?

Yeah, that's so true

Like, if you literally never remember, then you know your cooking habit needs to be from fresh.

So true, yes. Or you need to just at the beginning of the week take all of the meat out of the freezer, right? I've seen people do this online where it's like they have all of their... Maybe they're somebody who got, like, a half a beef or something, and so they just have a bunch of meat in their freezer, and at the beginning of the week they just take all of the meat out and they put it in a bowl in the refrigerator.

[00:19:00] And ideally, I think you put the, the stuff you're gonna use later in the week at the bottom, so, like, all the other frozen stuff on top of it. It's gonna stay frozen for longer, right? Maybe not that much longer, but, but you can have meat in your f- you know, that was frozen, and then it takes overnight maybe to thaw, and if you don't use it for four days, there's no problem in that.

It's staying in your refrigerator. So, like, you can think ahead a little bit on that, too, if you perpetually forget to take things out of the freezer

Yeah. The next thing to consider is your tools. Are you using an app? Uh, where do you get your recipes from? Paper planner, paper and pen? Do you use a whiteboard? Uh, a lot of people I know have whiteboards in their kitchen with everything written on it. Do you have a shared grocery list with your spouse, partner, roommate, et cetera?

Um, or do you do that by yourself? What do you need to make this happen every week?

Yeah, and the, I mean, I think that maybe some people will think that when we're, when we're talking about the tool, [00:20:00] not necessarily in this episode, but, like, in other episodes if we're talking about meal planning and we talk about Plan to Eat, and we talk about, like, Plan to Eat is a tool for meal planning.

It's just the tool. It's not the entire system itself. Like, it's something that supports the rest of the system, right? You don't need Plan to Eat in order to have a meal planning system. We just think your life will be easier if you do.

For sure. I think it's a main part of my meal planning ecosystem, and I'm somebody who actually takes the meals that I put in my meal planning, like, on my planner, and I will write them into my, like, paper journal, not bec- not because I don't reference Plan to Eat, 'cause I do, for the recipes, for the grocery list, for everything.

But that's that piece for me that helps me, like, do that morning check-in, and I can do that without my phone. I can just, like, check in, "Oh, what did I write down? Oh, we're having hamburgers, which means I need to thaw the meat." Like, okay, that helps me. So m- I have dual tools, right? I have, like, the app, and I have a, a paper, like, [00:21:00] weekly planner that I kind of use in conjunction with one another

I think a lot of people do this with Plan to Eat and a whiteboard. So, yeah, you could print your meal plan out from Plan to Eat so that your family can see it, but some people like the aesthetic of having a whiteboard instead. And so I, I think it's really common to then write the meal plan on the, on your whiteboard that's on your refrigerator so that everybody else is aware of what the plans are for dinner for the week

It's not... It might feel redundant or like why do you need one or why do you need both? Like, why do you need Plan to Eat if you use this? Well, like for me, it's like, well, I need the recipe to populate my shopping list. I need the shopping list to be on my phone. I need my shopping list to have everything else I need on it.

You know, like occasionally I'll jot down something that I need to buy at the store, but it always ends up on my Plan to Eat list, you know? And so either it ends up on my Plan to Eat list that's on my phone, if I'm r- running into a store, I've got it. So they do work really well together. It's not as redundant as it sounds.

Just writing, [00:22:00] Parmesan chicken and ravioli like on my whiteboard does not solve all the problems. Um, great, there's an idea, but until I have those ingredients purchased, it's really just kind of, it's just kind of there, so

I feel like I just had a good idea, and I'm sure lots of people utilize this, but it could also be a really good... Like, using that in conjunction could also be a really good way to help teach your kids about meal planning, right? Like, maybe you've actually done the work to meal plan, but having them help write it on the whiteboard once they can write well, kind- I feel like it'd be like a teaching tool to show them like, look, here's like we planned these recipes kind of intentionally, you know?

Like, it could like be a lead in to like you could plan next week or something.

I mean, we have talked about this with, uh, Tovah. We've talked about this with Katie Kimball. But the kitchen teaches so much more than just dinner, you know? 'Cause when I take my kids to the grocery store, one of my kids can read, the other one [00:23:00] obviously... Well, not obviously, the other one can't. And so I'll tell her, "Hey, find eggs on the list and cross it off."

Um, and so then she'll just, like, find it and tap it. It kinda gives her a job, but also it's im- like, helping her with reading. At least that's how I look at it. And yeah, and budget, and organization, and all sorts, and all, and the list goes, honestly, nearly endlessly.

Yeah. So all of these things that we've talked about could feel like a lot to be able to create this, meal system, but it really is... When you have a system, it's actually the thing that helps you adapt better when you have, like, a change in plan or, something doesn't go the way that you thought it would in the week with your meal plan.

Like, having this overall system and basically, like, knowing yourself and your family and your schedule, just, like, thinking again of the whole ecosystem then makes it easier to be somebody who can pivot and [00:24:00] have flexibility when you're trying to get the most out of your meal plan

Mm-hmm. All right, so build your own system So what is your current process breakdown? Think through that. Think through all the different way, different, areas we talked through. Um, what would make meal planning easier to repeat weekly? If it's helpful, do something like establish a planning day.

Uh, find some meals that you know you can repeat and enjoy repeating, um, however many that looks like for you. Find a recovery meal and build on that. Build, add a couple recovery meals, and then create a grocery routine that allows you to stick to your budget and get everything you need

Yeah. Yeah, even though it seem- like we went through a lot of different things and potentially questions to think through, I re- I really do think that there's just kind of a simple, a simple way here to, you know, you could just sit down for a half an hour and think through a lot of these things, and maybe a [00:25:00] lot of it is already thought through, so it's just going through actually reali- realizing that you already know the information.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, you, you know I've talked to- you and I have talked a lot about this on the podcast this year, but one thing I might add to this is what is your pain point when it comes to meal planning? And put that, add this into your system. Okay, my pain point is, that three nights a week I am not even home until 6:00.

Okay, so what can we do about that? We can either make a Crockpot meal, we can have freezer meals, we can have 10-minute dinners. You know, like, but like work- kind of adding that pain point, your household reality is kind of a pain point sometimes. Pain point sounds negative when it comes to household reality, but it does kind of...

It's like the roadblock, right, that sometimes makes meal planning hard. But I would add that into the system, too, and see how you can build in a resolution so that it's less frustrating.

I like that a lot

Yeah.[00:26:00] 

All right, I think that wraps us up for this week, and we are actually gonna take a little bit of a summer break next month. I'm going to, be posting replays of some of our most popular ex- episodes next month. So we will still be in your podcast feed, it's just gonna be, an older episode and maybe one that we think deserves a re-listen.

So we won't be talking to you in two weeks, we will be talking to you in about four to six weeks. Thanks as always for listening.