The Secret Recipe for Stress-Free Family Meals

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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.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, lovely listeners, and welcome to Zero
Waste Imperfectly, the show thattalks about all things zero
waste with kids.
I'm your host, sheila.
I'm the owner of LifeEssentials Refillery and the
mother of three girls, so dinnertime it could be an absolute
disaster, and with as busy asour lives are, especially now
towards the end of the schoolyear, I have come to a point

(00:20):
where I said you know what,whatever we're doing for dinner,
it's just not working.
And I always talk about mealplanning, how important it is,
but the reality is is that I wasnot successful with it, and so
I think I finally found out asystem that works for me and I
want to share it with you.
And the reason I want to mealplan well plan my meals is for
one.
It saves so much time.

(00:41):
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'regoing to eat.
You know exactly how much timeyou need to prep for it.
It saves money because you'renot just buying random stuff.
My husband went to the grocerystore one day.
He came home with $500.
I'm like so what are we havingfor dinner.
It was a bunch of random things, but nothing cohesive to make a
meal.
So you avoid that.

(01:01):
Three.
The kids can start cooking.
So with this new system that Ihave, the kids can definitely
start because everything'sarranged for them.
They know exactly what to lookfor, where the recipe is, the
ingredients, it's all there, andit avoids the craziness of the
evenings.
It's so much more peaceful inthe house now that we have this
all worked out.
So let me tell you what I do.

(01:21):
So I have a couple cookbooksthat I absolutely love.
You don't need to use cookbooks, but you can.
Maybe you have your favoriterecipes that you already have,
or you know, every Tuesday isTaco Tuesday, meatless Monday,
whatever it is you do.
So I created a Trello board andon this Trello board I need
coffee.
On this Trello board I have itset up with five cards.

(01:43):
No, I do four cards now becausewe realize we have leftovers,
so we don't need to cook fivedays a week and the weekend we
typically do something else.
So four meal cards and on thismeal card I put the day of the
week.
It is along with the meal thatwe're cooking, so whether it's
Taco Tuesday, underneath, if I'musing a recipe.
I take a picture of the recipe.
It actually goes into theheader, not underneath, so that

(02:08):
the kids can easily see what itis.
And then they can go into thecookbook if they want to.
Or they can cook straight fromthe recipe cart or I can.
That's on Trello, but I preferthe cookbook and then I, after I
have my meal planned out, mymeals planned out, I'm an
instacart shopper.
I don't have time to go to thegrocery store.
It's not my favorite thing todo, so I am a a totally
Instacart person and I loveprice comparison shopping on
Instacart.
So what I do then is I take myrecipes, go to Instacart, order

(02:30):
whatever it is that I need if Idon'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 havingsomething with beans and rice.
So Monday, beans and rice, tacoTuesday.
So I know I can use theleftover beans and leftover rice
for the next meal, and so Iplan it that way and also that
way I have, with everythingbeing in Trello, I can look

(02:52):
ahead and say I need to sproutmy beans on Monday for
Wednesday's meal, so it helpskeep everything organized.
I love that, and so I highlyrecommend checking out Trello.
It's free to use.
Create a meal plan on there.
Do your grocery shopping?
I do my grocery shopping onSaturday.
I shouldn't say I do myInstacart shopper does it for me
on Saturday.
And that way you're ready andyou don't have to worry about it

(03:14):
over the weekend, and Mondaycomes the kids have everything
they need for their schoolsnacks, because you already
planned for that.
Everything was taken care ofwhen you were replacing your
Instacart order or your grocerylist, however you plan on doing
it, but meal planning makes sucha big difference.
It saves a lot of money,there's no waste, it's just
awesome.

(03:34):
So take the time.
If everything else has failedfor you, try Trello and see if
you can get that to work for you.
I'd love to hear how you mealplan.
If you batch cook, you freezecook, whatever you do, I'd love
to hear from you.
See, you can find us on allplatforms.