The Secret Recipe for Stress-Free Family Meals

Ever felt like mealtime with the kids is like navigating a tempest in a teapot? It was exactly like that for me, Sheila, your go-to gal on Zero Waste Imperfectly, until I cracked the code to harmonious family dinners. I'm dishing out the secrets to my meal planning success, which include a love affair with certain cookbooks, a life-changing Trello board, and the sorcery of Instacart shopping. Swap the chaos for calm as I reveal how to save time, money, and your sanity, all while getting your kids involved in the kitchen.

In our latest heart-to-heart, I'll walk you through the transformation of my evening routine, peppered with anecdotes from my own whirlwind life as a mom and entrepreneur. Discover how assigning themed dinner days and smartly leveraging leftovers can turn your meal prep from frantic to fabulous. There's no need to brave the grocery aisles; I'll show you how to shop from the comfort of your home. Pour yourself a cuppa and join me for a candid conversation filled with practical tips to make your family's dinner time a zero waste, delightfully imperfect adventure.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Hello , lovely listeners , and welcome to Zero Waste Imperfectly , the show that talks about all things zero waste with kids . I'm your host , sheila . I'm the owner of Life Essentials Refillery and the mother of three girls , so dinner time it could be an absolute disaster , and with as busy as our lives are , especially now towards the end of the school year , I have come to a point where I said you know what , whatever we're doing for dinner , it's just not working . And I always talk about meal planning , how important it is , but the reality is is that I was not successful with it , and so I think I finally found out a system that works for me and I want to share it with you . And the reason I want to meal plan well plan my meals is for one . It saves so much time . If you know what you're cooking , you can grocery shop ahead of time . You know what you're cooking , you can grocery shop ahead of time . You know exactly what you're going to eat . You know exactly how much time you need to prep for it . It saves money because you're not just buying random stuff . My husband went to the grocery store one day . He came home with $500 . I'm like so what are we having for dinner . It was a bunch of random things , but nothing cohesive to make a meal . So you avoid that . Three . The kids can start cooking . So with this new system that I have , the kids can definitely start because everything's arranged for them . They know exactly what to look for , where the recipe is , the ingredients , it's all there , and it avoids the craziness of the evenings . It's so much more peaceful in the house now that we have this all worked out .

Speaker 1 1:20

So let me tell you what I do . So I have a couple cookbooks that I absolutely love . You don't need to use cookbooks , but you can . Maybe you have your favorite recipes that you already have , or you know , every Tuesday is Taco Tuesday , meatless Monday , whatever it is you do . So I created a Trello board and on this Trello board I need coffee . On this Trello board I have it set up with five cards . No , I do four cards now because we realize we have leftovers , so we don't need to cook five days a week and the weekend we typically do something else . So four meal cards and on this meal card I put the day of the week . It is along with the meal that we're cooking , so whether it's Taco Tuesday , underneath , if I'm using a recipe . I take a picture of the recipe . It actually goes into the header , not underneath , so that the kids can easily see what it is . And then they can go into the cookbook if they want to . Or they can cook straight from the recipe cart or I can . That's on Trello , but I prefer the cookbook and then I , after I have my meal planned out , my meals planned out , I'm an instacart shopper .

Speaker 1 2:18

I don't have time to go to the grocery store . It's not my favorite thing to do , so I am a a totally Instacart person and I love price comparison shopping on Instacart . So what I do then is I take my recipes , go to Instacart , order whatever it is that I need if I don't have it in the store , and so that part's done . And I do it per day . So I say Monday I need this , and then I try to plan so beans I'm having , maybe I'm having something with beans and rice . So Monday , beans and rice , taco Tuesday . So I know I can use the leftover beans and leftover rice for the next meal , and so I plan it that way and also that way I have , with everything being in Trello , I can look ahead and say I need to sprout my beans on Monday for Wednesday's meal , so it helps keep everything organized . I love that , and so I highly recommend checking out Trello . It's free to use .

Speaker 1 3:02

Create a meal plan on there . Do your grocery shopping ? I do my grocery shopping on Saturday . I shouldn't say I do my Instacart shopper does it for me on Saturday . And that way you're ready and you don't have to worry about it over the weekend , and Monday comes the kids have everything they need for their school snacks , because you already planned for that . Everything was taken care of when you were replacing your Instacart order or your grocery list , however you plan on doing it , but meal planning makes such a big difference . It saves a lot of money , there's no waste , it's just awesome . So take the time . If everything else has failed for you , try Trello and see if you can get that to work for you . I'd love to hear how you meal plan . If you batch cook , you freeze cook , whatever you do , I'd love to hear from you . See , you can find us on all platforms .