Quick Guide To Meal Planning 101

1. Intro: Hi, I'm Laurie Rogers, also known as Chef Loria's. Thank you so much for being here today. This is an exciting class. This is a class on meal planning. You may be first wondering, Why should I take a class on meal planning? And who are you to teach me about while tell you I'm a wife? I'm a mom. I'm everything else in between. I'm a friend of sister. All those good things. I have three kids and just like every busy person figuring out what to get on the table every day for dinner can sometimes be a challenge. This course is designed to help you understand the basics of meal planning. This is not a chopping and prepping course. This is to understand the nuts and bolts of what makes a successful meal plan some of the common mistakes and how you can get over the hump. Okay, now this class has four objectives to the 1st 1 is understanding and reinforcing why meal planning is so important? We will also discuss keys to successful meal planning. We'll explore common mistakes and meal planning will set realistic expectations. Those are objectives in this class and at the end of the class, we will have a wonderful project, a hands on project that you can do to get started to meal planning every week. And you know the first thing you may be asking yourself again. Why do you believe? You know, maybe you think Oh, I know what I'm gonna cook. This is why you have a meal. Plan number one you gotta eat. Everybody has to eat every day. So you might as well Planning number two. You want to be healthy and you want your family to be healthy. Nothing happens by chance. These things have to be done on purpose. Three meal planning reduces your stress level. You don't have to have the friction of the worrying. Each day of what you're gonna do. Your stress level comes down as well, that of your family and for real planning to save you money. You know, sometimes our while it starts to feel it, because when we don't meal plan, what we do is we go out, we take out, we order out, and it just gets really, really expensive. So that's what we're gonna do today. I hope you will roll in this class. I'm excited to talk about meal planning the nets and boats of how to get it done. 2. Keys to Success and Common Mistakes: Let's dig right into meal planning. Let's first talk about keys to success and common mistakes. Like I said, this is not gonna be a chopping your prepping course. We can do all of that later. But let's first, you still with some nuts and bolts. If you want to have a successful meal plan, the first thing you need to do is cook what your family likes. That is utterly important. If your family doesn't like a dish, don't try to cook it to force the issue, because it's going to disappoint you and anger them. Most likely the other thing you want to do is plan ahead as much as possible. Now that's where the chopping and prepping comes in handy because he has necessary to do some of those things but plan ahead and cook with your family. Likes, have a go to plan and go to backup plan. This is vital to meal planning as a Model three. There are times when, despite the best plans, it just doesn't happen. We have backup plans in our house. We keep a box or a bag of pasta from cost oh into the Fraser, and that's our backup plan. The kids love it and it gets dinner on the table quickly. Sometimes the backup plans Chick fil A. It's okay. Whatever your backup plan is, just have one. So meal plan, it could be successful. Finally, don't take it personally if your family doesn't really get on board when you start doing these things and meal planning, because sometimes kids get used to you know how they like to push mom around to get what they want. Thank you used to that. And that's something that we first introduced meal planning there. Push back a little bit, but that's OK. Keep going. Push past that. You can do it. And I want to tell you another teeth in a very key thing, And meal planning is set realistic expectations of yourself. Don't try to do everything at once. Start simple and work your way up from there. If you try to do everything all at once, it will overwhelm you, and it just doesn't always happen. That's one of the common mistakes in meal planning is trying to do too much too soon, also trying to cook every day. I only try to cook four days a week at best, and that makes it manageable for me. We know there's a pizza day, and we know there's a fun food day, and it takes the pressure off of trying to figure out how to do it every day. Another common mistake is not taking into account really what your family schedule is like understanding if you have extra curricular activities, or if your Children have extracurricular activities and things you're doing, you've gotta understand it. Accept what your family's lifestyle is and incorporate that into your meal. Planning another common mistake and this is the last one we just talking about the big ones today is to not plan a complete meal. Sometimes you'll think I'm gonna make cheese today and that's great. You started. You're gonna make chicken, but what do you make with the chicken? If you don't have in mind, I'm going to some taste of asparagus with it or met mashed potatoes. You'll have chicken but no sides. So again, you want to be thoroughly in your meal planning, but be patient with yourself as well. So those are some of our key successes and our common mistakes in meal planning. I hope you're taking knows there won't be a quiz at the end, but there will be a project 3. Understanding Your Family: Welcome back, So excited. You're still with me. We're almost there. We're doing it. We're making progress. Let's talk about understanding your family. You know, I mentioned this in the previous segment is really important to know your family's lifestyle when your meal planning, Because if your family does not like certain things or if they don't eat certain things, say you have vegetarians in your family. If you don't take those things into account, you will really find yourself meal planning and being disappointed because you're not cooking the things that they like. Another thing you have to be very realistic about an understanding your family and yourself is whether or not you like to cook. If you don't like to cook, you might find it hard to meal plan. Now. That doesn't mean that you guys don't eat, but you have to find a way to accommodate the fact that you're not a fan of being in the kitchen all the time. But they still need to eat now. If you love to cook like me, I have the opposite problem. I love to cook these elaborate meals that just are not practical on a Tuesday night, so whatever is your personality, incorporate that into your meal planning, and that's okay. That's understanding you and your family as well as understanding what your family schedule is like. If you have your other caretaker account caregiver that travels a lot, you travel a lot. You may have to work together with them to understand how things will were when one person is unavailable. If you have a sitter or grandma we have Grandmother comes and helps us. I have to understand what Grandma's liking, what Grandma was able to do and have to incorporate that with my kids. I'll give you a personal example. My Children love grilled cheese sandwiches. I do, too, and I wanted to a class on that, Um, it's a perfect grilled cheese sandwich, but my kids could eat it every day. I don't want them to get it every day, but when grandma comes over and grandma's baby sitting for an evening grandma mixed grilled cheese sandwiches. So then it's not this big argument about what are we gonna do in grounds cooking or when Grandma's here because grandma makes grilled cheese sandwiches? That's meal planning. Meal planning is not always chicken Monday, Taco Tuesday beef on Wednesday, it's What are we going to do? Well, when grandma comes over, we're gonna have grilled cheese sandwiches on Fridays. We have Pizza Day on Saturdays. Fun Food day. Those are the ways that you work out, that an understanding your family, understanding their schedules and what works for them. These sound like very basic things. But I tell you from experience, I have found that these basic keys are the things that have stood in the way of meat doing proper meal planning. And when I've talked to other families, these are the things that come up and that you just you don't think about and you're so busy trying to chop and prep that you from packs of same. Does anybody like carrots? Does anybody like peas? And you've been shopping in prepping and nobody wants to eat, and then we sit there like this is terrible, you know? So that's why I'm encouraging you with these things to just, you know, really have a moment to stop and talk to yourself. No, your family. And be flexible, being willing to change, willing to adjust. Know yourself except yourself. No, your family except your family. You'll be on your way to good meal planning 4. Class Project and Some Extras!: Well, we've made it to the final segment of our meal planning chat. It's a class, but we're gonna call it a check so it doesn't feel so instructional. We're gonna talk about our project, and you're thinking, What's the project? If we're not jumping and pregnant, there's a project. What I want you to dio is first of all, talk to your family or talk to who are the key people that are part of your meal planning process. If you have little, many kids, you know, like I have a four year old. I'm not gonna talk meal planning with my four year old, but I also have a nine year old and a 22 year old. Yes, I have a 22 year old. It's another story. I'm older than I look, but I talked to my nine year old in my 22 year old about meal planning to see what things they like. I find out what my husband likes. You have to get there by in in order for it to be successful. Once the whole family bought into Taco Tuesday, Tuesday's became a much better day of the week, so talk to your family get their buying and Okay, that's number one. You can't post that necessarily. But posting comments Number two is I want you to make a list of the foods that your family likes and dislikes. I have some attachments at the bottom of this class for the project, and I want you to fill that out. What does your family like? What don't they like? Okay, did I want you to also put down some backup plans and those back up plans again? Like I said, chick fil A order pizza, frozen ravioli, whatever it ISS had those back up plans written down. Okay. And then also, this is not a big project. This is just mind work. And then, finally, I want you to write up a cooking schedule. Just an idea of what days will work best for you. Okay, So what days are good for your Fridays? Like for me? We don't cook on fries in my house. That's just pizza day. Right off the bat. Tuesday is taco Tuesday. I make tacos every Tuesday. Tuesday's air. Good day to cook. So what is your schedule? Maybe Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Works for you. Maybe Monday and Friday, I don't know, but just put some thought to What what day is You could cook so that we could start to deal with what you can do. Be realistic, post these things below. I'm so excited to see them and share with you. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at chef laureus at gmail dot com. The contact information will be in the information as well, and I'm looking forward to many more things to come. Thank you so much Way three way.