The Type A+ Podcast Episode 6: Type A+ Meal Planning & Prep - Links & Show Notes
Episode Description:
Though Beth is a true lover of summer (especially in the Northeast), the Fall is on the horizon, and with that comes a cultural shift toward getting "back into the routine." For her, that means meal prepping with the windows open--slow cooker meals, one-pot pastas, sheet pan dinners and more--all while making sure to track inventory in her "Notes" app (wait, what?).
Learn about Beth's Type A+ approach to organizing her kitchen & grocery lists so that meal planning and grocery shopping are something to look forward to, not dread.
Links mentioned in the episode:
Beth's Meal Prep Meals Pinterest Board
TRANSCRIPT:
https://share.descript.com/view/yaLQqZZIeJF
Podcast:
The Type A Plus Podcast Instagram
Host:
Beth Lawrence & Company Instagram
Beth will be back each week, delivering bite-sized tips (15 minute episodes or less) on how to optimize your life and work.
Episode Transcript can be found below:
Hello. Welcome back to The Type A+ podcast. Unbeknownst to you, I have been on vacation for the past few weeks, celebrating my birthday, spending time with family, and getting a suntan. All of the things that happen in the Northeast in the summer; it's my favorite time of year. And though my birthday is still in the summer, it obviously has me looking toward the fall. And one of my favorite things about the fall is meal prepping. So today we are going to be talking about my Type A+ approach to meal prepping. Now, I will give you a little bit of a context that we're not gonna go into anything about weight loss. You will not hear anything on my podcast about weight loss, or weight management tips to manage your weight or lose weight.
That is not what I am focused on. And that is not something that I would like to advise anyone. I believe that everyone is beautiful, the way that they are. And that is not the type of tip that you are going to hear on this podcast. With that being said, we are gonna get right into it. Picture this, I am a person that absolutely cannot stand football.
So every single Sunday, from September my husband, situated on the couch with his red zone, windows are open. And I am usually in the kitchen meal prepping, and this is something that I love to do for myself. My husband is not much of a meal prepper never has been, but I love a good slow cooker meal. I love a good sheet pan dinner. I love anything where you can essentially take ingredients that you already have in your pantry and refrigerator and create something amazing from them. Especially if you can do it on a budget.
The first thing that I would recommend is if you are a Pinterest person like I am, I love a good Pinterest board.
I loved a good scrapbook when I was younger. So Pinterest is, I guess, the next logical. I have a board on my Pinterest specifically for meal prep meals. Obviously, there are some meals that you make and you wanna eat them right away. They don't really hold up, especially two or three days later, right? So you wanna make sure that you have a meal prep meals board on your Pinterest. I can share the link to mine. Not only that, but you wanna have subcategories to that. So what I do is I have my meal, prep meals board. I save all of my pins that could be meal prep meals to that board. And then for each week that I'm meal prepping, I actually pick two or three of those recipes and create a subcategory or a board underneath that board of that week.
So. My Pinterest looks like: meal prep meals. And then underneath that meal, prep meals week of say Monday, August 22nd, that way I know what ingredients I need to buy and I have it all in one area.
So that's step one.. Step two, I will say started during the pandemic when I had a little bit more time on my hands, but it is something that has really changed my approach, to grocery shopping and actually changed my approach to meal prepping. For those of you who have apple iPhones, this will be easy for you. You can open up a shared file in your notes. App in your apple, iPhone in your iPad.
What have you, if you have Android, you can also do this on any live document. So in this shared file in your notes or in your Google Doc, you will wanna make a checklist. And first, you wanna take an inventory of what locations you have in your kitchen. So if you have a pantry, if you have a refrigerator, a freezer, if you have a basement storage area or even a second refrigerator, you will want to.
Take notice of all of the different areas where food is kept in your kitchen, and in your household. Then, you are going to take inventory of every single thing you have in your kitchen by location. Stay with me.
For example, let's go into the refrigerator. So I would have a category that says fridge. And then underneath that, I might have things like a deli drawer or fruit drawer, or vegetable drawer. But I take inventory of say, do I have, two apples? Do I have an entire container of mayonnaise? What do I have in my refrigerator, in my freezer, and in my pantry at this point? It really is a good jumping-off point to see what you have, because then you can also get creative with, well, what am I looking for in terms of recipes?
If I have, you know, three cans of chickpeas, maybe I'm looking for a really good hummus recipe on Pinterest, and then I can pin it to that meal prep board for that week; but until I know for sure what I have in my house, it's really difficult to go into the grocery store, fully knowledgeable about what it is you need.
If you don't know what you already have, you know, that you've done that thing where, Every time you go to the grocery store, you buy a box, let's say of this favorite cereal and you keep buying a box just in case you run out. And then you wind up having either too much in your storage space or so much that the people in your household don't want to eat it anymore because it doesn't look exciting.
Now, when you have that inventory, you will want, to have a checkbox next to absolutely everything that you have because obviously the check. Yes, I have that right now. When you throw something away or when your spouse or partner or roommate throws something away, uncheck the check mark. No matter where it is in the list and it will uncheck, it will go automatically back up to the top of the section. And that's how, you know, what you need when you go to the grocery store and how, you know, what you still have so that you can meal prep consciously. When I started doing this, it really made it easier also to know where to go in the grocery store. If I have a ton of things in my pantry, I don't necessarily need to go to the canned fruits and vegetable section. I don't need to necessarily go to the pasta section. If I know that I already have one pasta sauce jar in the fridge, for example, and one backup in the pantry. It takes a little bit of time and it takes a little bit of practice to get used to admittedly, I have fallen out of it but it is something that really helps to just make you feel more focused in the grocery store. I, I know that I cannot stand it, especially if I have to go to a grocery store, I'm not familiar with trying to go in and see where everything is and what I need.
These little tweaks can really help you feel more focused in your week. And honestly, bring more joy back into the process of grocery shopping, because it feels like such a fun project. At least to me to know, Ooh, I have that 28-ounce can of diced tomatoes in the pantry. Maybe I'll make these really good spicy meatballs in the slow cooker this week because I already have one of those ingredients and I don't have to buy so much.
So it also really helps when you're looking at budgeting. Being very cognizant of everything that you have in your home and everything that you already have access to makes it that much easier to make smart purchasing decisions when it comes to the food in your household.
All right. That is my type a plus meal prep for you. I will leave links in the show notes for my meal, prep meals, Pinterest board, as well as one of the subboards. You can kind of see how I organize it. Tell me, how do you like to meal prep? Do you still meal prep? Have you found yourself falling off of it or are you like me in that you try to do your best and you find that the fall is for some reason, like your grand new year when it comes to meal prepping? Thank you all so much for listening. I did wanna take a quick second to thank you all. I've had a lot of people message me over the last couple of weeks saying they love the podcast and they are seeing themselves in a lot of the material. And even some folks said that they are taking notes and it means the world to me, this podcast is a labor of love and it's something that I'm having a lot of fun doing.
And I'm really glad to know that you're having a lot of fun listening. So. Please type a plus community. Keep the comments coming. Topics. Suggestions for topics would love to talk about that as well and stay tuned for a new episode of The Type A+ Podcast coming out next Monday.
Thanks so much again for listening. Have a great day.