Meal Planning

Meal Planning!

I am writing this from my Whole30 perspective for this month, but the concept is absolutely something that can be used without W30 and I use a looser version of this plan in every day life.

(For one W30’er, one spouse who will W30 dinners, and one toddler who will still eat what we put in front of her)

Step 1: What does your week look like? 

At most, you’ll have 3 meals per day to plan. But do you have any:

·      Early Appointments so you need to prep a grab-n-go meal?

·      Late meetings so you need to prep extra “lunch” portions?

·      Events so you need to buy/pack extra snacks?

The first thing I do for meal planning is look at my week. I identify anything that would prevent/limit the standard kitchen or leftovers stance.

Step 2: The Meals! What looks good?

I don’t plan every day (Monday = Meatloaf, Tuesday = Taco salad, etc) because in general that just doesn’t work for me. I need some flexibility.

For Week 1, I need 6 dinners, 7 lunches, 4 breakfasts and 3 grab-n-go style breakfasts.

I usually start with dinners and I try to have a mix of prepped ahead, one pan meals, and a little more involved. Thanks to my W30 cookbooks and my past experience (and a little Pinterest) I came up with the following (in no particular order):

1.     Butternut Squash Soup with Poached Salmon (new recipe for us!)

2.     Sausage and Kale Soup (I have used nutpods in this, but unsweetened almond milk would also work)

3.     Sausage and veggie sheet pan

4.     Chicken and veggie sheet pan

5.     Taco Salad

6.     Cod with a citrus/avocado salad

I also try to pick dishes that can reused similar ingredients.

Once I have the meals picked, I figure out what will make good leftovers for lunches.

Both soups will make at least one extra serving and each of the sheet pan meals will make one extra serving. So that’s 4 lunches. For the remaining lunches, I will have the same thing: lettuce wrapped turkey burgers with mayo and pickles.

Breakfasts are harder for me, but I plan the following:

·      Breakfast bowl:

o   Mixed veggie roast

o   Fresh sautéed zucchini or spinach (pick one)

o   Egg or sausage (pick one)

·      Monkey bowl with a side of bacon

Step 3: The Prep

Once I have the meals for the week, I look at all the meals and figure out what I can and have to prep ahead. I commute at least 45 minutes each way so dinner has to be fast and easy. That only happens if I can dedicate part of Sunday to meal prep. My meal prep day has been the defining success or failure of my rounds.

For this week, I figured I can make the following on Sunday to simplify:

·      Chicken Broth

·      Butternut Squash Soup

·      Sausage and Kale Soup

·      Compliant Mayo

·      Grill the turkey burgers

·      Roast veggies for breakfast (sweet potatoes, Yukon potatoes, carrots, onions, beets)

·      Chop veggies for salads

The broth I can set up in the slow cooker in the morning (10 minutes of effort?). Each of the soups will take probably an hour. Cutting veggies for roasting and salads, maybe 30 minutes. The mayo takes longer to clean than to make. But it’s still a big part of my day. Hubs can run errands or have some one-on-one time with our toddler.

The meal planning itself is an evolving process. If something works really well, I will keep it in rotation (if these soups are great, I’ll make one Week 2 and another Week 3). And with Week 1, I keep it simple on purpose. Lots of repeats and lots of prep ahead because I need the successful moment to keep me through Week 2 (which is where I have flunked out). I keep notes on what sounds good during the week, and I use sticky notes in my compliant cookbooks. Most of my planning is on paper and I have a grocery app to use in the store.

In Case Of Emergencies: Even this simple meal plan may not go according to plan. So at the start of my Whole 30, I stock up on frozen cauliflower rice, compliant Aidell's sausage (not all flavors are okay), and frozen veggies. I can make a meal from just cauli rice and sausage in about 10 minutes. I always have RX Bars and Epic bars on hand too (in case of traffic, long meetings, spilled lunch, etc) to limit temptation to go off plan. Again - check the flavors, just like Larabars - not all flavors are compliant.

A note about Pinterest. For starters, I love Pinterest. I have found some wonderful Paleo bloggers on the site who post compliant meals or recipes that can be easily modified to be W30 compliant. But. Many recipes are marked Paleo or Whole 30 but are obviously not compliant. Be cautious and be knowledgeable. Just because someone else has called Paleo Pancakes “Whole 30 compliant” doesn’t mean that you don’t know the rules enough to know that it’s super SWYPO and off limits. Or people who, through good intentions, aren’t even aware of what Whole 30 really is and will post something with dairy or honey or quinoa. Don’t assume that the bloggers know better. You do.

I use Pinterest a lot – for parenting ideas, funnies, and recipes. I have a bunch of boards, and one just for Whole 30. Do you know about private boards? Well I have a private weekly board. And when I am going through W30 pins that I already have, I will simply pin again to my private board for the week. Then all my recipes are in one place, I don’t have to remember or search. Then at the end of the week, I just delete and start fresh.