Okay, so chances are you've been struggling
with your weeknight meals. You might be tired of eating the same dinners week after week, or
you're feeling overwhelmed by having to cook a healthy meal with your busy schedule. Maybe you've
just been ordering takeout more often than you'd like. I've been there. But there is one method
that's helped me overcome all of these obstacles, and that is meal planning. Meal planning has
honestly changed my life. It's enabled me to eat plant forward dinners every week, that are
truly delicious and never get boring. Better yet, my weeknights are streamlined and low stress, and
I'm saving so much money by not ordering takeout. To show you what the magic of meal planning
looks like in practice, I thought I would walk you through a week in my life. And we'll cover all
four phases. Selecting the recipes, building up the grocery list, meal prepping a few ingredients
and components, and of course, actually cooking the meals during the week. I'll also share how
you can put meal planning on autopilot in your own life, but more on that later in the video.
So when I'm selecting meals for the week, I have a small but meaningful checklist they
have to satisfy. First, the meals have to be nourishing. I am not strict about what I eat,
and I definitely do not believe in diet culture, but I do want to eat feel good, nutrient dense
dinners. For me, this typically means meals that are vegetable forward, that have a nice balance of
healthy fats, protein, and fiber to help fuel my busy days. I also always include a side salad
in my weekly plan because it's just an easy, fun way to make sure that I eat some leafy greens.
Next, I try to pick meals that have overlapping ingredients or better yet, shared components.
When your meals have overlapping ingredients, your grocery shopping is quicker, it's often cheaper,
and you will definitely reduce your food waste. And when your meals have shared components, you
can drastically cut down the amount of cooking you do during the week. If it's not clear what I mean
by shared components just yet, don't worry because I will explain that during the meal prep phase.
Next, the meals need to be satisfying. This one should be pretty obvious, but for some folks,
I'm afraid that it's not. If you want to make cooking a habit and rely less on takeout and
frozen dinners, the food you cook at home has to actually taste great. I'm sure you can stomach
a simple meal of rice and canned beans for one or two nights, but by night three, you are absolutely
going to be ready for pizza or Pad Thai. If on the other hand, the stuff you're cooking at home is
genuinely delicious, it's going to be so much easier to stick with cooking on a weeknight.
The final criteria for my meals is novelty. James Clear, the author of the bestselling book,
Atomic Habits, says that boredom is the single greatest threat to sustaining any habit. And
I've definitely noticed this in my own life. When I stick to the same few meals week after
week, I fall into a rut and it's so easy to just call for delivery instead. But when I mix
up my weeknight meals, it completely changes my mindset. Cooking is no longer a chore, it's a fun
little adventure that I actually look forward to. For this week's menu, I've decided on three
main dishes. First, a super hearty lentil and mushroom stew that is absolutely packed
with layers of umami. It is cozy and perfect for the cold weather we've been having this
week. Next up is a basil ricotta pasta with broccoli. This one feels really indulgent, but is
protein packed thanks to the tofu ricotta cream sauce. Our third dish is a garlicy lentils and
quinoa bowl. Grain bowls can be a little boring, so I'm packing a lot of fun flavors and textures
into this one. Finally, I'm also making an arugula fennel side salad with a homemade red wine
vinegarette. It is going to pair so well with this week's dinners. In general, I find that three
hearty dinners plus a side salad is the perfect amount of food for me and my partner, during
the week. We have lots of leftovers for lunch, but we still have some flexibility in our
schedule if we want to have a date night or an impromptu dinner with family or friends.
After doing the recipe selection, it's time to build out the grocery list. And my main
piece of advice here is to write out a single consolidated list inclusive of all the
recipes you want to make, and then categorize it by the section of the grocery store. Produce,
refrigerated and frozen, pantry, spices, bakery, et cetera. Navigating the grocery store is so
much easier and quicker when you don't have to constantly comb back and forth between individual
recipes to see what you're missing. Honestly, this is one of the more time-consuming parts of
the process, especially when you have to add up varying amounts of ingredients from three or four
different recipes. But that is not something you need to worry about today, because I have created
A PDF that contains a complete grocery list for this week's meal plan. The PDF also contains
everything else you need to make this meal plan, including grocery swaps for allergens and
preferences, meal prep steps that you can take to streamline your weeknight cooking, and of course
the recipes themselves. I'll share more about how you can access the PDF, later in the video.
The next step in the process is meal prep, and my approach is pretty different than what you'll
typically see. I have tried the standard meal prep method. I have spent five hours in my kitchen
on a Sunday, prepping every meal in advance. But that method almost never works. The food doesn't
stay fresh after a couple of days, and it's so boring to eat the same meal every single day.
Plus spending your precious weekends hold up in your kitchen, kind of sucks. What I do instead is
a mini meal prep. I focus on prepping components rather than complete meals. Things like condiments
and sauces or big batches of lentils and grains. If I have extra time, I'll also chop up some
vegetables to streamline my weeknight cooking even more. But I'll only prep those ingredients
or components that will stay fresh in my fridge or pantry for at least three to four days.
By doing this work upfront, I save so much time, energy, and stress during my weeknights, which
are a lot busier than my Sundays. This mini meal prep takes about 60 to 90 minutes, and I pretty
much always pair it with my favorite podcast or audiobook, so it flies by super quickly. Plus, it
feels amazing to know that I'm making life easier for my future self. This week, I started my prep
off by cooking a large batch of lentils with some herbs, and that's one of those shared components
I mentioned earlier. I'll use the lentils in both the mushroom lentil stew and in the quinoa bowl.
While the lentils were cooking, I made some quick pickled shallots and chili peppers. I love having
something pickled on hand because it adds this lovely tangy fresh pop to all kinds of dishes.
I blist up a batch of my tofu ricotta, which could not be simpler. You just add a block of tofu and
a handful of seasonings to your food processor and blend until creamy and whipped. Like the lentils,
this is another shared component that will get split up between two meals. I also whipped up my
favorite red wine vinegarette, which is so good, I could literally drink it by the spoon. And that
will stay good in the fridge for almost two weeks. Next, I moved on to vegetable prep. This mostly
consisted of chopping or dicing some vegetables and storing them appropriately so they'd be ready
and fresh when I started cooking during the week. The whole process went by pretty quickly,
leaving me plenty of time to get on with the rest of my Sunday. So in a minute, I'm going to
share the one thing that holds most people back from meal planning on a regular basis. But before
we get to that, let's talk about the last phase, cooking dinner during the week because that is
where meal planning has truly transformed my life. The first big change I noticed once I started
meal planning was that I actually looked forward to cooking dinner on weeknights even if
I had a really busy day. Having already decided what I'm making and having done a lot of the
prep, I no longer experience that dreadful, stressful 6:30 PM realization that I'm going to
have to order takeout because I have nothing in my fridge. And instead of being overwhelmed
by a mountain of prep tasks in front of me, I'm able to get to the heart of cooking pretty
much as soon as I take the ingredients out of my fridge and pantry. It's like a little sous-chef
has done all of the prep work for me, except that sous-chef was just me a couple of days ago.
For instance, with the mushroom and lentil stew, because I already cooked my lentils and chopped my
veggies, the stew was already cooking within a few minutes of setting foot in the kitchen. And for
the garlicy lentils and quinoa bowl, I'd already prepped so many components, so all I had to do was
cook a pot of quinoa and then saute some garlic and pepitas. It's kind of hard to describe, but
getting started almost felt effortless. I walked into the kitchen and the food was just asking to
be cooked. Each recipe came together so much more quickly than if I hadn't done any meal prep. The
lentil stew and ricotta pasta, for instance, took half of the time, and the quinoa bowl took a third
of the time. And because the quality of the food was so much better than what I would ordinarily
whip up on a weeknight, dinner became a truly enjoyable experience. I turned on some sexy tunes,
poured a glass of wine, and we even lit some candles. Is this what it's like to be European?
With all of these life-changing benefits, it's crazy that more people don't meal plan. But if
you think about it, it's not all that surprising. We all have busy lives and sifting through a sea
of cookbooks and food blogs to find the perfect combination of healthy, yet delicious recipes that
also contain shared ingredients, all of that takes time and energy, especially when you try to do it
week after week. And I haven't even mentioned the time it takes to build your grocery list or figure
out which ingredients you can prep ahead of time. Which is why for the last year, I have been
working on a new weekly meal planning service that does the work for you. These meal plans eliminate
all of the friction points that make weeknight meals a chore. Instead of feeling overwhelmed
or defeated, you'll feel in control and excited about cooking. No more last minute scrambles or
fallbacks to uninspired dinners. You'll be serving up diverse, mouthwatering dishes that satisfy
your taste buds and nourish your body. Inside each weekly plan, you'll find four flavor packed
plant-based recipes developed by yours truly. The recipes of course, contain shared ingredients
and components to minimize your grocery list and prep time, and to reduce your food waste. And
of course, there is a comprehensive grocery list organized by the sections of the grocery store,
complete with substitutions for allergens and ingredient availability. My favorite part of
the plans are the meal prep instructions. You spend just 60 to 90 minutes on a Sunday doing
a mini meal prep, and you will set yourself up for quick yet truly gourmet weeknight meals. We
soft launched this meal planning service a few months ago, and the feedback has been incredible. [upbeat music begins] After months and months of hard work and testing, our meal plan service is officially live.
So if you are ready to eat delicious plant forward meals every single week instead of the
same tired dinners and greasy takeout, you can sign up for a free seven-day trial using the
link in the description box below, or by going to rainbowplantlife.com/mealplans. When you sign
up, you'll get to try today's meal plan so you can see the power of meal planning for yourself.
And for a limited time when you become a member, you'll also get access to six bonus eBooks
that will help you become a more resourceful and more confident home cook. I truly believe
these meal plans will transform your weeknights and I cannot wait for you to try them out in your
own kitchen. As always, thanks for watching. Bye.
