475 Meal Planning for Mere Mortals EAT AT HOME COOKS

475 Meal Planning for Mere Mortals EAT AT HOME COOKS

475: Meal Planning for Mere Mortals:

EAT AT HOME COOKS

Join Kathi and one of her very favorite podcast co-hosts, Tonya Kubo, in this discussion of one of the most common struggles: meal planning. We all have to eat. So, why is meal planning so challenging sometimes? And doesn’t it just seem like it should be easier? For those of us who struggle with clutter, meal planning is often a companion struggle and compounds the decision fatigue. Something that has really helped me is having meal plans from Eat at Home Cooks. They come straight to my inbox, complete with a coordinating grocery list, and relieve me of so many decisions every month. One of the best parts is that Eat at Home Cooks has thought of everyone and has a variety of plans including:

 

  • Instant Pot and Slow Cooker meal plans
  • No Flour, No Sugar meal plans
  • Plant-Based meal plans

 

EAT AT HOME and Save Money, Time, and Energy:

 

If you struggle with making dinnertime happen, you’ll LOVE these easy meal plans that do all the hard work for you! Color-coded shopping lists and printable tried and true family recipes make dinnertime a breeze! Use EAT to claim yours here.

 

Eat at Home meal plans takes care of all the “thinking” part of dinner by giving you the meals, recipes, grocery lists, and more! This is huge because it relieves us from decision fatigue in the area of meal planning. Say yes to making dinner easy (and save 30% through August 31 with code EAT!).

 

 

Yes, you CAN have dinner on the table in JUST 15 MINUTES! This meal from this month’s Eat at Home Meal plan is faster than waiting in the drive-through window most nights. P.S. Curious about the Eat At Home Meal plans? Check this out! EAT AT HOME COOKS

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Meet Our Guest 

 

Tonya Kubo

Tonya Kubo is the illustrious and fearless leader of Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook group and the Clutter Free for Life membership program. A speaker and writer, Tonya makes her home in the heart of California with her husband, Brian, their two spirited daughters, and one very tolerant cat.

Visit her at www.tonyakubo.com

 

More Posts 

#654 Declutter Your Life: 100 Spaces, 15 Minutes Each

#654 Declutter Your Life: 100 Spaces, 15 Minutes Each

Hey there, friend! In this episode of Clutter-Free Academy, Kathi Lipp and Tonya Kubo help listeners kick off 2025 with a practical plan for a clutter-free home. Kathi shares her personal goal of decluttering 100 spaces in her house this year and how she’s breaking it...

# 426 The Episode Where Kathi Says She Wanted to Punch Roger in the Face – PLUS Getting Dinner on the Table with Eat at Home Cooks’ Tiffany King

# 426 The Episode Where Kathi Says She Wanted to Punch Roger in the Face – PLUS Getting Dinner on the Table with Eat at Home Cooks’ Tiffany King

Do you sometimes wish that someone else would do your meal planning? Kathi and Tiffany King are here to make your wish come true. We all know that successful meal planning lessens decisions and chaos in this busy life, but finding the time to consistently devote to it can be challenging. Tiffany King has developed Meals at Home to help relieve decision fatigue and help us save time and money. Join in the discussion to find out:

  • Why it’s so helpful to have a consistent meal plan
  • How meal planning will help you save time and money
  • How meal planning will help to alleviate decision fatigue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get your meal plans here for 30% off with code EASY.

Links

Eat at Home Cooks: 30% Discount with Code: EASY

TIffany King

 

Eat At Home Tonight Cookbook

 

 

 

 

Learn more about Clutter Free for Life.

Order your copy of Ready For Anything today.

 

We would love to stay connected.

To share your thoughts:

Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.

Subscribe on iTunes or subscribe to our newsletter now.

Meet Our Guest

Tiffany King

Tiffany King

Tiffany King has cooked more than ten thousand meals for her husband and four kids. Over the years, Tiffany has learned what works and what doesn’t work for getting dinner on the table fast. Her recipes have been developed in a real kitchen for her busy family and tested by the millions of readers of Eat at Home. Connect with Tiffany at Eat at Home.

Transcript

Read along with the podcast!

 

 

 

Get Yourself Organized for Christmas Project 19: Meal Planning At Christmas Time

Get Yourself Organized for Christmas Project 19: Meal Planning At Christmas Time

meal planning at Christmas

Meal Planning at Christmas

Meal planning at Christmas can make the whole season so much easier! Take some time today to meal plan every day up until Christmas as well as Christmas dinner. (I promise, you will thank me later.) Spend time in the kitchen today taking stock of what you have, what you need, and what meals you will make your family each night for dinner.

Be sure to look at your calendar for any nights you have plans. If you need to take a dish to an event, mark that on the meal plan, so you know how to prep and shop.

If you have dinner at another home or event, revel in a night off! Either way, it goes on the meal plan. Make life easier by utilizing LOOP (Leftovers On Purpose) meals and frozen meals whether they are yours or store bought. Once you are all planned out, make a list of ingredients you need to buy as well as perishable items you need to buy at the last minute.

Make Your Life Easier, Dinner Prep Ideas

Another great dinner prep idea to make your life even easier is to have a frozen meal swap with friends. You can implement this one of two ways. The first way, invite friends to your home. Everyone brings ingredients to make a meal of their choice that is freezer friendly (enough to share with however many friends are joining in on the fun). Then you all help with the cooking, family portions are placed into gallon zip-lock bags ready to freeze, and everyone goes home with a variety of meals to freeze and enjoy throughout the month.

Another way is for everyone to make something at home (enough to share family portions with anyone participating), freeze them, and swap them with friends. This way, you might have made a huge batch of soup, but you might end up with soup, enchiladas, lasagna, and a chicken casserole.

Assignment: Spend some time in the kitchen

  1. Create your meal plan for the rest of the month.
  2. Plan your baking list so you know what you need to bake and when you’re going to do it.
  3. Plan out your Christmas dinner.
  4. Make a shopping list of all necessary ingredients. Divide list into non-perishables and perishables.
  5. Shop for non-perishables and the next few days’ meals.
  6. Make a list of things you will need to buy at the last minute.

Plan on making at least two LOOP meals a week.

For More Details: Get Yourself Organized For Christmas – Page 102

Supplies:

1) Calendar
2) Meal plan
3) Paper for lists

Share Your Thoughts:

How did you feel about planning out all the meals? Did this make shopping easier? Any great LOOP recipes to share?

Avoiding Overwhelm:

Be brave and realize that most people need help. Try trading chores – you pick up my stuff at Costco and I’ll look for a scarf for your Aunt Trudy when I go to the mall.

And join us over on the Clutter Free Academy Facebook group where we encourage one another and stay accountable as we become Clutter Free!

“What’s For Dinner?” – Meal Planning Made Easy

“What’s For Dinner?” – Meal Planning Made Easy

What's-for-DinnerMeal time can be one of the most hectic times in a mama’s day.  With today’s busy schedules, it is easier to drive through than dive in to your kitchen.

These easy steps will help you make meal planning easy so that you can get to the fun part of connecting with your family and not just the food!

Step 1:

Create a master list of meals for the month.  Click here for a list of FREEBIES where you can find a  shopping/inventory sheet to make your meal planning easy!  Keep in mind your family schedule as you create meals for each day. Tuesdays and Thursdays tend to be less chaotic in our home, so I can plan a little more elaborate meal for those days.  Now, some days, elaborate may mean that I just put a pat of butter on the green beans before serving, but usually it means that I can make something that might take a bit more time or preparation. The “What’s For Dinner?” Solution is a wonderful resource to create quick, easy, affordable meals.

Step 2:

Put each of the meals into categories for easy planning.  A few that I use are Freezer meals – ones that I have on the freezer already, Slow Cooker meals – ones that I will need my crock pot for and create ahead of time, or LOOP meals – Left Over On Purpose. This might mean a turkey pot pie from the leftover turkey from the dinner the night before. Once you have the meals, you can organize what you need for each meal.

Step 3:

Create the calendar and make copies of it for the next couple months.  Some things might change, but when you have a template to work from, it makes life a whole lot easier. After you use it, you can evaluate if the system is working.

Planning your meals ahead of time will help you feel more in control and less frazzled at dinner hour.  Thinking ahead gives you the freedom to enjoy your day. To help you start planning right away, just subscribe to my blog right over there in the purple little post-it and get a free copy of The Ultimate Guide to Man Food. Easy Peasy!


What’s for dinner? Planning a month’s worth of meals.

What’s for dinner? Planning a month’s worth of meals.

Plan Your Meals for a Month (well, almost a month…)

Each month we will be planning a month’s worth of meals for the next month. Well – I got a late start this month, but we are going to plan for the rest of the month – join us and get a jump on your meal planning!

OK – let’s all take a deep breath. I know that for some of you, planning your meals out for four weeks if going to feel a little overwhelming. For some women, deciding what pair of jeans they are going to wear for running errands can feel a like a huge decision (not for me… I pick whichever ones are clean….and fit.) Some of you may be thinking, “I don’t even know what my life will be like in  two weeks, how can I plan for it now?!?” Exactly. If you are like almost every other woman I know, life is super busy. Nobody I know is doing just one thing – If she is a stay-at-home mom, she’s also leading her local MOPS group. If she is managing a house-full of teens, she is also managing her own mobile accounting business on the side. If she’s working full-time, she’s also the head of the committee to raise funds for a well in a village in Africa. And that’s why I want you to have a plan. I want what you and your tribe (family, roommate, friends,) are having for dinner to be the least stressful decision of your day. I want you to take a look at your calendar and your family’s calendar, figure out what nights you can cook, when you can prep meals for later in the week, and what nights you need to have dinner waiting for you to get home. And then, I want you to sit down with your calendar and plan accordingly.

The Secret to Planning 31 Meals

For years, I have been taking a catch as catch can approach to planning meals. I would sit down with a blank calendar and fill in the spots with meals I knew my family would like. I would make a shopping list based off of those ingredients, go to the store and buy what I needed. I would go home with a plan in hand and the groceries to make it happen. And that is when my plan would bump up against the reality of my life. I would plan a stir fry for Monday night. The problem? No one was going to be home on Monday night – or at least not at the same time. My husband, Roger, had to eat early – he has a phone call to India every Monday night for work. My son, Justen, would be eating late – he works at the library until after 6 o’clock. My daughter, Kimber, had drama rehearsal and didn’t know when she would be home, and Jeremy, my step-son, was doing a drop in at 4:45 after school to change clothes for work. Perhaps not the best night to be doing stir fry? Unless I wanted to be a short-order stir-fry cook, (and let’s be clear, I have no desire to do that,) most of my people were not going to be able to eat dinner (or at least not one that they would want to eat.) It took me a while to figure out that Monday nights in the Lipp-Hunter house were the perfect night for a big pot of soup and a yummy salad; something that was ready to serve at any of the o’clocks that my family members would be eating at. So now instead of planning what was for dinner, I was planning how I was going to cook dinner each night. Taking all schedules into account (most importantly, the schedule of whoever was going to be cooking that day – and surprise – it’s not always me!) I figured out what was going to be the best type of meal for me to fix. Here are the meals I have to choose from: Freezer Meals – These are meals I have prepared weeks, or even months in advance and stick in the freezer to pull out at just the right time. Freezer meals are great for nights when I will get getting home late – I can have someone else in my family stick the meal into the oven so it will be ready to go that evening. Or, when I’m extra organized, I can set the frozen meal into the oven in the morning and set the timer on the oven to turn on 30-45 minutes before we want to eat. (I have to tell you that I feel extra-efficient when I do this. Kind of like Judy Jetson without the severe hairdo.)

Slow Cooker Meals – Love my slow cooker – especially when I’m smart enough to pull all the ingredients together the night before. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to know that while I’m running around town doing errand or off working, my slow cooker is at home, slaving away to have dinner ready for us when we get there. Plus, I will show you how to make freezer meals that get dumped directly in to the slow cooker so that you can save yourself even more time and energy.

Left Overs On Purpose – I love this category because it feels like cheating – you had a balsamic pork roast on Tuesday for dinner, but your crew only ate half – and you’re glad. You planned on cooking twice as much as you needed because those leftovers on purpose are now being mixed together with bok choy onions and mushroom to make an Asian stir-fry for Thursday night. (Key note here – if you are making leftovers on purpose, be sure to label your leftovers accordingly. Especially if you have teenage boys in your home.)

Pantry Meals – The meat didn’t defrost in time or you are at the day before your grocery run and there is “no food in this house”. Have no fear, pantry meals are here. These are meals made primarily from ingredients you have on hand- adding in random ingredients you may have hanging around and what to use up. Leftover chicken or ground beef you hadn’t planned on? Make a great chili from your pantry and throw in the meat – yum without waste. I usually plan one pantry meal at the end of the week – a great way to make sure that nothing goes to waste. Fast Food at Home – These are the meals that you actually cook that night. We all have our family favorites that we couldn’t live without. This is when I pull together a super-simple bowl of pasta with marinara, basil and Parmesan cheese, with a bagged salad and a couple of warmed up croissants, or an Asian Stir Fry. Each of us has our favorite go to meals in this category. Every Man for Himself – We have this kind of nights about once a week. Usually on nights when I’m working, everyone has to forage for themselves. This is an excellent way to use up leftovers, but I do make sure that I have sandwich fixings around for lunches and the EVFH nights.

The goal is to match the cooking method with your life – no stir-frys on soccer night, no freezer meals the night after you get home from the farmer’s market, not pantry meals when you have tomatoes in your garden that you either need to use or lose. I want you to plan what you are going to eat around your life so that dinner is less mess and less stress.

So here are the steps to getting your meal plan together:

1. Calendar: Grab a blank calendar page (I have a great one over on my Facebook Author page.

2. Schedule: Look at the activities and schedules for those you are cooking for. Most households develop a weekly rhythm over time. Tuesdays and Thursdays tend to be less chaotic around our house, while Mondays everyone seems to work and Wednesdays have always been a church night. Since we have teens and young adults at our house, Fridays are usually just me and Roger for dinner, and our big family dinners (when even the kids who don’t live at home come back) are on Sunday evenings. While this schedule can vary wildly (especially when I’m traveling) it does have a basic flow that helps me plan my meals. Once you have an idea of the schedule, write down the kind of meal you need to have that night – if you need to have dinner ready when you get there (and not worry about it burning in the oven,) then a slow-cooker recipe could be the ticket for you.

So, following the above schedule, this is one way that I could think of planning: Sunday: Left Overs on Purpose – Round 1 Mondays: Slow Cooker Tuesdays: Left Overs On Purpose Round 2 Wednesday: Freezer Meal Thursday: Fast Food at Home Friday: Every Man For Himself Saturday: Freezer Meal

3. Recipes Now that you know how you should cook that night, it’s time to figure out what you should be cooking. Don’t get overwhelmed! Start simple and small. Mix in one or two recipes from this book with your family’s favorite recipes. Besides your schedule, here are some other things to consider when making up your menus.

• Time of year – I like to eat seasonally as much as possible. If my garden is bursting with squash, or the last time I went to the market the strawberries looks anemic (and were from a foreign country) those are things that can influence my meal planning.

• What I already have on hand – when I hit a great sale on chicken, I stock up. And my veggies from the Farmer’s Market? Those babies have an expiration date. I want to be thoughtful with the food I purchase and use it before I lose it, whenever possible. There have been so many times I have bought what I already had on hand because I didn’t check before making my meal plan and heading to the store.

• The Weather – OK – this may not be the biggest consideration, but last year I put together a month’s worth of meals for June without thinking once about BBQing.  Why have beef stew in the summer or Asian chicken salad in the dead of winter? Celebrate the seasons with delicious food.

So if I were going to add some recipes in, here is an idea of what one week of meals would look like:

Sunday: Left Overs on Purpose – Round 1 Spice-Rubbed Pork Roast with Potatoes and Ratatouille

Monday: Slow Cooker Chili and Bread Machine French bread with a Blue Cheese Spring Mix Salad

Tuesdays: Left Overs on Purpose Round 2 Left-over sliced Pork with Homemade Mac-n-Cheese and Asparagus

Wednesday: Freezer Meal Poppyseed Chicken, Bagged Salad, and baked cinnamon apples

Thursday: Fast Food at Home Veggie Pita Pizzas with Turkey Pepperoni

Friday: Every Man For Himself Leftovers

Saturday: Freezer Meal Teriyaki Chicken with rice and grilled veggie kabobs

Try this at Home: Give yourself some space to plan – don’t try to do the planning, shopping and cooking all in the same day. I would say give yourself a week to plan and shop and do a little advance cooking (for the freezer meals, etc.)

You may be one of those lucky people who share the meal planning with someone else. If that’s the case, I suggest for your first time planning that you set aside a good hour or so to go through the exercise. It actually is a lot of fun to do this with another person.

I would love to hear what you are most excited about implementing into your schedule. If you have other tips and tricks for planning meals for a month share them with me. I am sure everyone will love to hear them too!