In this episode we’re bringing you something new – our guest expert is none other than the Unapologetic Mother herself, Jannine Mackinnon! You may know Jannine more from the interview side, but today she’s sharing her knowledge as a meal planning master, and is teaching us a bunch of easy hacks to help make mealtime a little easier in our homes.
Dinner time can be a tough one for many of us – trying to figure out 3 meals a day for every day of the week plus the 35471876 snacks can be a huge mental load, and honestly very hard to come up with. Meal prepping, and learning some great food prep techniques, can really help to make mealtimes a point of connection in our family rather than a point of stress.
Today we’re covering the different ways you can meal prep, how to reduce food waste, and how to work with our picky eaters. It was such a fun opportunity to hear from Jannine herself and listen to her great tips, so if you’d like to hear more episodes like this let us know in the Facebook group!
Interested in the UM Club and all the great stuff it has to offer? Start living your best mom life and join now! We share new episodes every week featuring so many talented guest speakers, so sign up today to gain access to all our previous content and everything we’re sharing next!
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Guest Expert
This week’s guest expert is our very own Jannine Mackinnon! Fearless leader of the Unapologetic Moms club and mother of two, Jannine has spoken with some amazing experts about a huge range of topics. Jannine’s background (before she became the founder of the UM Club that we all love so much) is in meal prep. Join us in this special episode where she shares her knowledge and expertise!
In This Episode We Talk About
01:27 – Meal planning.
13:59 – Food prep.
28:15 – Reducing food waste.
36:36 – Picky eaters.
43:35 – Everything Unapologetic Moms Club and where to find us!
Listen to the Audio
Resource Links
Join the UM Club!
UM Club Facebook page
Instagram: @UnapologeticMotherhood_
The Flipp app
UM Club Exclusives Mentioned in this Episode
Reclaiming Your Hormone Health with Laura Martire
Menstrual Cycle 101: How to Tune in to Your Cycle For A More Aligned Life with Period Coach Sarah Starrs
Read the Full Conversation
Hello, and welcome to another episode inside the Unapologetic Moms Club. I’m throwing a bit of a curveball at you guys today. And we’re going to try something a little bit different. And I am actually going to chat with you about meal planning.
So meal planning has been requested by a few of our UM Club members. And I’ve struggled to really connect with the right person to bring in and come and chat with you guys about it. And then the other week, I had a bit of an aha moment. And I realized, hey, I used to teach meal planning. I’ve actually had a course on it, I’ve run through different challenges, and so I can share about meal planning with you guys. So this is actually my first episode not with a guest where it is just me speaking. So we’re gonna see how things go, step outside of our comfort zone a little bit, do something a bit different and see how it goes.
Hopefully you guys are interested and find it helpful, let me know in our group chat or Facebook group if you’re into these kind of solo episodes, maybe it’ll be something we play with, or maybe it’ll be something I will never do again. So without further ado, we can just roll right into it.
Meal Planning
So meal planning, I feel like it’s something we all know we should be doing, the idea that it will make life easier. But it’s hard to actually get that ball rolling, it can feel really clunky, it can feel really time intensive. And there can be like a bunch of stop starting, we might have these lofty salad and meal goals. And we you create this amazing plan and do our grocery shopping. And then by the end of the week, we haven’t done a bunch of it, we go into next week, a bunch of that food that we bought is going bad and it’s just not working out. And so we kind of revert to bad or old habits.
Because you know what, on that Thursday, or whatever it is that I said we were going to make risotto with chicken in a salad, I don’t want to fucking do that. So I’m going to bring to you a practical meal planning system that I found – we’ve been doing it since Logan was born. So it’s been almost five years now. And I was a big meal planner before. And there’s definitely been a big shift for family meal planning. And that’s one thing that, again, I kind of struggled to find the right person, because I think a lot of meal planners will use the kind of fitness food prep kind of thing, the mass batches. And then having kind of those repeat meals for simplification. And that definitely has its applications and can work great for some people. But for me, like doing that massive big batch cook, don’t really feel like doing that, not really practical with my family. Nor do I want to eat the same meals over and over again.
And then that kind of plays into the other kind of meal planning that I see is really popular. And it’s like, make 30 freezer meals in one day. And again, that can be really awesome. It can be super cost effective doing that kind of thing. But personally I’m not going to spend an entire day in the kitchen, like there’s no part of me that wants to do it. And the thought of doing it just makes me super resistant to the whole process.
So today, I’m going to bring to you my meal plan like a boss system, back from something I used to be promoting a few years ago. And so it is really practical for busy mom life. And so we can just dive into it in terms of the meal planning. And so the biggest thing with this is to be realistic. And that kind of plays into those lofty meal planning goals. Take a step back, look at your schedule. What do you have going on? What days are extra crazy? What days have you had some time to recharge and maybe you will want to cook more? Do you have things going on that you’re going to be out of the house? Is their transition days with the kids at an exes or grandparents or whatever it may be. There’s so many kinds of things that come into play here. And when we’re doing meal planning, we really should be aware of this to actually make it easy on ourselves.
And another part of that and really making it easy for ourselves is to create super simple, repetitive days. So we do our family pizza movie night every single Friday. And what I love about that, there’s a few things. I know, I do not have to think about it whatsoever. I know Friday, we’re having pizza. And we often opt for frozen pizza. So the biggest mental labor I have to do is to make sure we have some frozen pizza in the freezer. And you know what if we don’t, we’re gonna order pizza, no thinking, there’s not this huge mental load that is draining and stressful. It’s just super simple.
And it’s also come to be something we all look forward to. And it’s like a weekly event, the kids love it, they ask for it almost every single night of the week. They think it’s this big, amazing thing, where for me, it’s just this super easy thing. And so not only has it helped manage stress levels and things like that, it’s actually become like something that brings the family together, and we bond over and it’s whole kind of event in itself. So that is a great option for you to do.
And that can come in many different forms, like it doesn’t have to be pizza movie night. It could be Taco Tuesdays, or maybe it’s like soup and sandwich Thursdays. Whatever it may be, I do encourage you to pick at least one night a week where it’s just super simple and repetitive every single week.
And you can do variations to that – I actually touched on this in our menstrual cycle workshop, is when I’m around kind of my ovulating phase in my menstrual cycle, I have a bit more oomph that I want to put into things. And maybe I’ll add a charcuterie board to our pizza. Or if I feel like we’ve been kind of eating a little bit crummy, and I don’t want to just have the pizza, I’ll get a big salad and spruce it up and put with it. But it’s still just that consistency. And it really helps ease that mental load that comes with things.
And so another thing that really helps in that initial planning stage is to have a big list of meals that you’d like to eat. So I have like, of course, it’s like this nice big printable that I created for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. To be completely honest, it’s mainly the dinner one, you probably don’t need to do a breakfast one. I do find it helpful for kind of a lunch snack combo. So it helps kind of break you out of those basic go-to’s of like cheese and cracker, yogurt and fruit. It’s just nice to have, say, a collection of 10 options that you can pick and choose from.
And so that’s the whole purpose of creating this list. And so, yes, you can go onto a spreadsheet if you want. Or you can just take a handy notebook, brainstorm for like a half hour, one night when you are a little bit motivated. Or maybe the kids are going to be playing in the pool, it’s summertime right now at recording. And you can just sit back for a bit and brainstorm a bunch of the meals and snacks your family enjoys making.
And so the whole purpose of this is to streamline things, and again, take the thinking out of it. So when it comes time to create your meal plan, instead of sitting there, oh, what should we do, scrolling on Pinterest for ideas, looking at flyers, bouncing around, asking everyone around you what they would want to eat. You just have this easy list that you can pick and choose from. So you’re not having to think and guess, it’s just more choices. And as we know with our kids, right? They do a lot better when you just give options. It helps streamline the decision making process. It’s the exact same thing for us. Just give yourself this big list of options. And then you can pick and choose depending on how you feel, what you have going on in your schedule, and all of that.
So just to kind of recap, when you are at that initial planning, putting pen to paper stage, you need to be realistic. Look at your schedule. What do you have going on? Where do you need to make sure you have super simple things because you’re super busy? And maybe if you have nights where – Sunday for me tends to be that night – where I’m kind of restored from the weekend. That’s when I do our bigger dinners because I have a bit more energy and desire to create those for our family.
So you’re gonna look at your schedule. Pick those easy days whether it’s a pizza Friday, taco Tuesday, or whatever variation you want to do. Or maybe it’s going to your inlaws for dinner every single Thursday or something like that. But pick something that’s one day a week, every week, it has the same core base to it. So you don’t have to think and it just takes the whole of thinking out of it. And it’s a super simple meal to make.
And then getting your list of ideas, having the brainstorm. And then when you’re putting pen to paper, you can just pick and choose from things. And so as you’re creating your list, I do find it really helpful to use the Flipp app. I’m sure many of you guys are familiar with it. It works, I believe, across Canada and the States, I’m sure there’s pockets where it might not work as well. But it definitely works here on the West Coast. And I know it works in the States as well. And so you can look up the flyers for the regular stores you’d go to or maybe you just want to take a peek at what some other stores have. And so you can go through and kind of see what’s on sale.
And so I kind of make that the basis jumping off point when I’m creating the meal plan, while keeping our schedule in mind. And so say for instance, I noticed that steak is on sale. I don’t know, I never cook steak. I don’t know why I’m using that as an example. But say I noticed that that’s on sale, then okay, what meal do I have in our list that can make sense to do that? Alright, let’s jot that down. And kind of going through the flyer and seeing what sales we want to take advantage of, and how that can be incorporated into the meals.
Another thing to be mindful of, is again, like take it slow, don’t get too excited with too much variation. Like we’re realistically living very busy lives, managing our family and everything like that. And going through all of those constant ingredients like you’re not going to use them all for the one meal. And you know your toddler is not going to be grabbing the on sale asparagus out to snack on.
So just be mindful of okay, we’re getting this asparagus, for instance, we’re going to make this one main meal that’s come to mind, maybe it’s the asparagus and steak, whatever it happens to be. And then okay, we’re going to need to use up the rest of it. So what’s another meal we can make with it. And maybe that is asparagus with salmon and rice or something like that. Hopefully these things are on sale. These are not very affordable examples, but for whatever reason they are what’s coming to mind.
And so that’s basically the structure for creating your actual meal plan list. Now, I definitely recommend creating your grocery list at the same time as your meal plan. So that way, say you can jot down Monday, we’re going to do soup and sandwiches. And right away on your shopping list, you’re writing down what you need for that meal, in tandem. And again, it’s just going to streamline it compared to doing your brainstorming and the meal, then shifting to grocery list mode and you’re trying to remember all the ingredients you have thought of. And it just it makes it a bit more clunky.
So if you can do them in tandem, and again, on your meal planning list, like list out the ingredients you’re planning on using, you want to make it super straightforward, super easy for yourself. So you can just go look at what to make. And you know exactly what ingredients you are going to use. And that’s going to help reduce food waste, and we will get into food waste in a bit.
So that’s essentially it. You’ve created your plan. You’re being realistic, created super easy things like tuna melts or quesadillas, you have your weekly recurring theme, like your family pizza movie nights, and then maybe you’ve picked two nights where you’re going to make a more full meal.
Food Prep
Now we’ve done our grocery shopping, maybe you’ve taken advantage of Instacart or grocery delivery or pickup, or maybe you’re like us, do the big Costco shop. But once you have your groceries back at home, we’re kind of going into the food prep stage. So I kind of have different levels for this, again, it’s really going to depend on what’s going on for your family, and even what phase of your menstrual cycle you’re in because that’s going to really vary for your motivation to actually cook. And your schedule, like if you’re coming back from vacation, or even preparing for vacation, it’s going to vary how much energy you have to put into this.
So I would say my main basic thing I tried to do is wash all of the produce at once. And so it can be a lot simpler than that sounds, oh, you got to wash it all at once. But all you do is you toss it in your sinks, and fill up your sinks with cold water, and either Thieves veggie soak or white vinegar.
And so like white vinegar and Thieves, it’s acidic, right? So you don’t want it to stay in there for 45 minutes, I remember having some person raise concerns because their strawberries had been eaten at. And so you do need to take a step back and think, Okay, we are using vinegar. It’s not meant to soak for long periods of time. So I recommend no more than 20 minutes, I generally do around the 15 minute mark, I find kind of between 15 to 20 is where the like degrading with the vinegar can start to happen for more delicate produce, like strawberries, and things like that.
And I’m sure your house is likely similar to ours where strawberries reign supreme. And you want to make sure those are in top quality. So around 15 minutes, water and white vinegar, or if you’re a Thieves household, that’s a great option as well. And you just plop them in, fill the sink, set the timer, go do whatever you want to do. When the timer runs out, drain the sinks, rinse off the produce and like holy shit, is it disgusting, the amount of stuff that comes off of your produce is so gross. We have a black sink, so I don’t see it as much anymore. But I’ve seen a lot of people sending me their screenshots after they start implementing this stuff. And everything on the bottom of those silver stainless steel sinks. Like it takes a lot of gunk off of the fruit and veggies.
And so from a health standpoint, I think it’s really important to be doing that, to make sure our family is not consuming that. And so basically, the idea of doing this ahead of time is that it just makes things really readily available for both kids to grab snacks, whatever they want. And for you to make food, you don’t have to spend that time cleaning it.
So we’ll actually take a step back and finish the process for that. So you put it in the sink, have you do the soak, timer goes up, drain the sink, rinse it, and then lay out dishcloths on your counter, and just have it sit and dry. And so I’ve kind of been asked how long should you let it sit and dry. I don’t really have a great hard and fast rule for the time limit on that one. Because personally, I’m going around and doing things, I’m not really concerned with it sitting on the counter there. So I generally come back around two-ish hours later.
So I set it out on the counter. Maybe I’ll put the hood fan on if I have some raspberries because I really want to make sure we are drying up that moisture. But then I just go do something. So to be honest, it’s like five minutes of hands on time at this point, maybe a teeny bit more. But it’s very hands off. It’s not labor intensive to wash everything at once. So leave it to sit, go play with your kids in the yard. Go do whatever you want to do. And then come back and just use another dish towel and kind of tap off any visible water that is still left on them.
And then you’re going to pack everything into your fridge. And so moisture can be a big concern. Again, with berries, I kind of lightly touched on that. And so the main key to this is to use paper towel to your advantage to manage the moisture levels. And so I take a piece of paper towel, I fold it, I put it in the bottom of the strawberry container that the strawberries were purchased in. There’s no need to go fancy with containers for this, like you’re more than welcome to if you want to. That’s what you like doing. But I just reuse the same thing, right?
And so put the paper towel down, put the strawberries back in. I’ve tap dried them off. And then I do another piece of paper towel on top. That totally manages any moisture on there. So it will last. We do Costco bulk purchases so like two of the big strawberry containers. And so my kids do burn through strawberries. But when we have the two, the second one is lasting long after a week. Say at around a week maybe we’ll crack into it. Maybe the kids have gone away for something, haven’t been eating much. And it’s a week and a half later, the strawberries hold up totally fine when you’re really making sure to tap dry them off and use that paper towel.
And so I also, to manage moisture levels and reduce waste, use paper towel in the bottom of the produce bands of the fridge, it just really helps absorb the moisture, keep it off of the produce, and avoids that like slimy gunkyness that happens. And we don’t want that, especially if we want to try and encourage our kids to eat fruits and vegetables, we don’t want them turned off by slimy gross things.
And again, with a paper towel, any leafy greens. So say you’re getting a head of romaine lettuce, I wrapped the paper towel around it and put it in the bag. Or if we’re getting kind of those plastic containers of spinach, I’ll put paper towel on top of that as well. And it really helps our produce last much, much longer when you’re going through and doing this process. So that’s kind of my first step to food prep.
Sometimes that’s all that’s going to happen. And I’ll be completely honest, there are some weeks that it doesn’t happen, like recently, and I’m getting super annoyed whenever I have to grab stuff, and I have to wash it. And it’s just that extra step, that extra bit of an annoyance, that extra mental labor. And if we can kind of do things ahead and minimize it, all of these little habits we’re creating here within UM Club add up to help relieve our mental stress, help us feel better, help us be more present with our family. That’s what all of this is about.
So the next kind of food prep stuff that is going to require basically no extra time at all is to chop extra veggies. So again, if you are feeling motivated, it’s ovulating week and you want to spend half hour or an hour pre-chopping your veggies into containers, that is going to be amazing for you. If you know you have a busy week ahead and want to put in that extra time, that will make a huge difference. Because when you cook, you basically have no prep, you just grab, toss in the pan, cook that shit up, you’re good to go.
But realistically, a lot of us aren’t gonna have motivation to do that. And so what I do is just when I’m making a meal, say I only need half an onion, I’m going to cut the whole onion and put the other half in the fridge. Maybe I need one pepper, but I know tomorrow, we’re also going to use peppers, I’ll just cut two right there, put the other one in the fridge. And so it barely takes any extra time at the moment, like cutting a whole onion compared to half an onion, really doesn’t take that much longer. But you’re getting ahead, you’re preparing yourself for the next meal so it’s not easier on yourself.
Now the other thing that can be really helpful to prep is protein. And my kind of recommendation if you’re feeling up to it, or if you have a busy week and you need to, is to just batch cook some form of protein.
So I have a few go-to’s for this. We do kind of pulled chicken in the slow cooker. And so I just dump a bunch of chicken in the crock pot. That’s the word I was looking for. With a bunch of barbecue sauce. Leave it for I believe it is four hours on high, maybe it’s three hours on high. Anyway, it’s kind of like that small end of the cooking time that’s often recommended. And why you want to go towards that small end is it just makes it a lot easier to pull apart, keeps nice and juicy. If you do like a six hour slow cook and leave it in the slow cooker for a few hours before you get home, I do find it gets a bit more tough.
And so if it’s like a weekend day, or maybe you’re going to do it at lunch and preparation for dinner, you can just batch cook this massive batch super easily, basically totally hands free. And so once you cook it you just grab two forks and pull it apart, toss it in a container. And now that pulled chicken is going to be good for, say, chicken fajitas, sandwiches, on salads, in wraps. You can do so many things with it.
And say a different kind of chicken – we do tend to eat more white meat. That’s why that tends to be my example for this particular thing. But you can do chicken, say, toss in Italian salad dressing, maybe you’re going to cut it into strips, maybe not, cook it, bake it in the oven. And you have a bunch of that chicken to add to salads, wraps, put on the side of a meal, maybe it’ll go with like rice and a little bit of veg or something like that.
But it’s just really handy to make sure you are getting that protein in your diet for when you’re really busy. Because as we touched on in our healthy hormones episode, and in that workshop, is it’s really important for us to get enough protein in our diet to manage our energy levels, balance our hormones, all that good stuff. And it’s been a key part for me for really transforming my health over the last seven, eight months, because I was not eating enough protein before at all. So definitely encourage you to consider batch prepping the protein.
And it works on the vegetarian side as well. Take your chickpeas and your lentils and your beans and pre-rinse them out with a strainer. I do this too, because it has kind of the viscosity type stuff on it. I don’t know the right word for it. But just rinse that off. Again, put some paper towel on the bottom of the container and put it on top. And then it’s really easy to toss into whatever meal you’re going to make. And the easier it is, the more likely you’re going to do it, then you’re going to eat healthier, feel better, all those good stuff.
So food prep. So I think that covers the main thing. Oh, another one. And this is actually a tip from Sarah Stars, our menstrual cycle workshop presenter and guest on our Menstrual Cycle 101 episode. And that is – oh, how does she phrase it, this is definitely her tip. But it’s something like cook once, eat twice. That’s what it is, cook once, eat twice.
And so when you are doing larger meals, I personally find like pastas and casseroles to be the easiest for this kind of method. And that is just double batch it, cook a double batch, put one in some form of container and put that one in the freezer, and you eat the one. So it barely takes any additional time on your part. You’re already cooking. But then you have that freezer meal for that lazy night when you don’t feel like it or like you’re writing out your meal plan. You know things are going to be hectic, you have that freezer meal to lean back on. And it’s just super helpful and again, doesn’t take much additional resources to do that.
So I’d say that’s kind of the main thing for the food prep section. Wash your produce. Think about protein. Cook once eat twice. Jeez, I feel like there’s one other thing on there that I’m missing. But hopefully you’re listening along and you got that other thing, so I will move into reducing food waste.
Reducing Food Waste
And so as families with kids, I’m sure your food waste has gone off quite considerably compared to your pre-kid days. That has definitely been the thing with us. Yeah, kids waste a lot of food and it’s extremely frustrating, especially in this time right now, inflation, cost of groceries is going right up. We really want to be managing that food waste as best as we can. And using up the food that we are spending money on and investing in, especially if you are buying more produce, more quality ingredients for you to fuel your bodies, you really want to make sure you’re taking advantage of it the best you can.
And so again, that paper towel trick, I know I’ve touched on it a lot, it is so, so helpful for managing your food waste. Another small tip that there’s always someone listening when I say this tip that is like surprised and super happy I mentioned it, so I always keep mentioning it, and that is did you know it’s better to store potatoes and onions separately? So I noticed, I’m like what the hell, my onions are sprouting, the potatoes are getting like those things growing out of them, I guess it’s the roots growing. This is happening so fast, I know this stuff is supposed to have a long shelf life, what’s going on?
So there’s something in it. I don’t remember the scientific part of it. I think it has to do with like the off gassing or something like that. You can Google it if you’re interested in finding that out. But the way to combat it is to actually use paper bags. So a lot of grocery stores don’t even have plastic bags anymore and only have paper ones available if you’re not purchasing a reusable. And so you can just grab them there and use one paper bag for potatoes, one paper bag for onions, and that way you are keeping it separately, and it will make them last longer and reduce your food waste that way.
Now, in terms of kids stuff. Cheese is one that I find can get wasted quite a bit. And it is a pricier item that I don’t necessarily want to be throwing out all these slices of cheese all the time. So I actually take whatever’s left off their plates when they’ve had cheese and crackers, whatever it might be, I put that in a container. And I know that like that’s their container. I’m not necessarily going to go into the fridge and start snacking that cheese. If you want to, you’re more than welcome to, I just, yeah, kids hands are gross. I definitely do sometimes, but I know my husband Matt would never touch their cheese and eat it. So I know it’s in it’s own special container.
And so you can reuse that cheese for their, say, grilled cheese sandwiches. And different things like that. Or maybe hit nachos or quesadillas or different things like that. So generally kind of repurpose it for something that you’re gonna do melty cheese with. And it just helps it last that much longer, you’re not throwing as much away.
And then fruit is another one, it is quite perishable. I find kids kind of come and go with the phases, or even myself, it’s not just kids, who are we kidding. I also go through phases where I’m like, really into mandarin oranges. And we’re going to eat all of these and I go through, I get another bag at Costco, we eat it all, it’s great. And then maybe it’s the third or fourth big where it’s like, yeah, I’m not really into this anymore, I don’t really want to eat it.
And so if you have any kind of produce that is getting close to being bad and throwing out, obviously you need to do this before it’s really starting to get bad, but you freeze it. And then that way you can use that for smoothies. And so you can just put it in one of those like freezer Ziploc bags, lay it flat, you don’t want it to clump in a big salt clump and be a pain in the fucking ass to have to deal with. Lay it flat. You can use a pan and parchment paper if you want to. But it really isn’t that necessary. If you’re laying it flat in that ziplock bag, you can kind of crack it and break it if you need to.
But that is a great way to really get the most out of that produce and use it in smoothies. Because smoothies are a great thing we should be eating anyway, helps reduce buying more frozen fruit and stuff like that, you can just take advantage, put in the freezer, and then you are good to go to use that up.
And then the other thing is really repurposing leftovers in a kind of creative way. So I think a big part of why leftovers get a bad rap is because people don’t necessarily want to eat the same thing over and over again. I know personally, I don’t want to eat the same thing over and over again, like I touched on before. And so you can get creative with your leftovers. And this is something that is great to actually build into your meal plan again. So you’re kind of doing all that meal thinking at the same time. You’re using up all your food, you’re not doing like all these meals, you’re going to have a bunch of leftovers that you also need to figure out how to eat. Work lunches can be great for that, but that’s not always the case.
And so it’s really thinking about different ways you can do that. So say you are having spaghetti with spaghetti squash or zucchini noodles. That sauce is like really good in a sandwich. Like it’s super yummy and it’s totally different than having that pasta meal. If you’re making with spaghetti noodles, it’s also really really good, but super carbo loaded so you might not want to do that on the regular. But if you’re having a comfort food night, I recommend trying that with the melty cheese. Super good.
Say you have stir fry leftovers. That’s one I kind of struggled with for a bit is like how am I going to reuse these veggies. So a few things we’ve gotten to using is making a fried rice with it. Adding a different protein perhaps, using a different sauce but it’s just a little bit different. Or you can also chop things up and mix it with eggs in the morning with your breakfast and have like a neat kind of hash thing or just mix it into the scrambled eggs is what I normally do. And it’s just that nutrition boost, iy’s that different kind of food that you’re incorporating into your diet at different times of the day. And so that can be a good tip.
And so I just encourage you, especially if you’re finding a certain kind of leftover is constantly getting thrown out, take a step back, get your creative head on, maybe smoke a doob. And think about the fun ways that you can reuse it that makes you actually want to eat it, makes your family actually want to eat those leftovers to reduce that food waste.
So I think that covers the main stuff in terms of food waste, I apologize if you can hear my dog’s nails on the floor. But just to recap, it is using paper towel to use up that moisture, keep your produce lasting longer. Store onions and potatoes in separate paper bags or in totally separate areas, if you have the space for that. That’s another great option. Things like cheese put in that other container for your kids leftover cheese, repurpose it, quesadillas, grilled cheese, that sort of thing. Fruit that is getting close to going bad, stick them in a freezer bag, freeze it, use it for smoothies. And again, kids’ leftover fruit, do the same thing. And then finally repurposing leftovers in new creative ways that makes you want to eat them.
Working with Picky Eaters
So that’s kind of it for the main meal planning book. But I did just want to touch on picky eaters a little bit because I know that is a challenge. A lot of us deal with it, definitely myself included, our son is quite picky. And I gotta say, there is a massive relief after having our daughter and seeing how she’ll just eat like anything under the sun and like, it’s not my fault. They’re just different. I’m not doing something wrong, like some kids just are pickier. Sure there’s ways we can perpetuate this. But honestly, like, some kids just are that way.
And I’ve taken a step back and looked at the peers and adults in my life. And for the most part, most people do kind of grow out of that. And they learn to eat more of an assortment of food. And you know what, there are some that still have different pickiness, I know I have a friend who has funny things with tomatoes, and she won’t eat tomatoes, but she’ll eat ketchup in certain instances and things like that, like some people just are weird with things like that. And honestly, it’s kind of their little personal quirk.
So I just want to say, I encourage you to take a bit of pressure off of yourself. And in scrolling Instagram, I know personally, and looking at different food nutritionists. I’ve noticed – I don’t know if it’s a shift in the narrative, or perhaps me just being really intentional about who I am allowing to be on my social media feeds, because I really like to protect that space as it really affects my energy.
And so these different therapists, nutritionists, and food experts have also said like, take some pressure off of yourself. Yes, try, offer a variety of foods, keep offering a variety of foods, give them exposure to things, get them involved in cooking, or gardening, all those sorts of things have books, like it’s great and important to do all of those things. But when it comes to like, going at it another level, having it consume so much stress for you, having all of these arguments over the dinner table and all of this pressure and negative emotion and all of this. It’s not really worth it, to be honest.
Think about the amount of pressure it puts on you and your family, and the arguments and the stress and all of that, just to have them eat a little bit extra, right? Is it really worth it? And then going through that process too in that stress, like, what kind of relationship could that potentially be making for your kid and their food choices. And then also the amount of stress you’re putting on yourself for all of that, and how that can have as ripple effects out to you and your family.
And I wish I remembered the one particular therapist I have in mind for this because I would share her name. I’ll definitely share it in the Facebook group if I ever do come across her or that particular piece of content again, but it’s just Sure. And this is her speaking, she’s like, “sure, yeah, you can pay me hundreds, if not 1000s of dollars, we can go through make this multi-week, multi-month program, and your kid is going to lick a certain new food, or try a certain thing. And it’s going to be this big regimen and process, we can do it, we’ll work through things, they will eventually have the small wins, but it’s not worth it. It really isn’t for the time, energy and money.”
I think just take a step back. I know all of you guys are moms who try so hard, and love so hard. You’re doing the right things when it comes to exposing your kids to different foods. I’m not saying don’t do that at all, I think it’s very important to offer those different things. But my message to you is to, it’s okay to take some pressure off, it’s okay if they just want to eat yogi’s and strawberries and crackers. Do your part by offering a variety of foods. Do your part by setting boundaries at the dinner table or the meal table and what that looks like for your family. Perhaps it’s you have to sit until the full meal is finished, whatever it might be. Yes, do those little things. But ultimately, it’s up to our kids what they choose to eat, and just let them eat what they want to. Tastebuds change.
A really important piece of it all is that you are modeling the right healthy eating behavior, the healthy relationships with food and things like that. I even think about myself growing up. My mom was always on different diets growing up, had these different ideas for how we’re going to eat, had a very healthy food initiative for how she was trying to bring food into our household. And she was trying very hard to establish those good healthy eating habits.
And now I think back at the time, as a kid, I hated it. I was super annoyed with a lot of things. Honestly, some of it was kind of out there, which I’ve chatted with her about and she’s probably listening to this laughing. But a lot of it was kind of that good foundation that I could absorb through watching her. And then say I was in high school, wasn’t necessarily living with her, living off Kraft dinner, sidekicks, Pepsi, fast food. And then eventually, in my late teens, early 20s, I knew for myself and my health, I wanted to make a shift. And I reverted back to that knowledge from my mom.
And so when you think about that, it’s really about the role model that you are being, that you are showing your kids what this looks like, having those conversations, having those chances. They might not get it right now. But even if they don’t right now, they will eventually. So I just want to say please take some pressure off yourself. I know it can be so stressful. I’ve gone through it all with our son. And so I just wanted to touch on and say that
But I think that recaps it. Or that includes everything we’ve gone through, the meal planning, being realistic. The food prep, again, a realistic food prep and the reducing food waste. I gotta say I’m kind of amazed with myself that I kept chatting for like 45 minutes long. Let me know, please give me feedback on what you think about this kind of episode. Maybe I’ll do them again. Maybe I won’t. But I think that covers everything for now.
If you have any questions, as always, I am here for you, we have the Facebook group, group chat, reply to my emails, reach out to me individually. I’m more than happy to help and we can get the conversation going, perhaps swap some tips, swap some recipes, I know at the time of recording this in our group chat we are swapping snack bar recipes and talking about how to help get our kids to poop. So maybe we can dig into this a little bit there on that. So I will sign off now. You know where to find me that’s normally how I end these. So until next time, take care.
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