Old Fashioned On Purpose

Why Meal Planning Doesn't Work for You (and what to do instead!)

• Jill Winger • Season 14 • Episode 21

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I love to cook... I love to plan... but I've never been able to stick with a consistent meal planning system.
And it bugged me for YEARS.
However, when I realized our unconventional life requires an unconventional meal plan, everything changed.
In today's episode, I'm sharing my best tips for getting from-scratch food on the table without rigid recipes or confining plans. If you prefer a more laid-back approach to meal planning, listen in!

Podcast Episode Highlights

  • Feeling guilt & shame about meal planning
  • Learning an important realization about conventional meal plans
  • How our ancestors cooked
  • Struggle #1: different ingredient priorities
  • Struggle #2: grocery list struggles
  • Strategy #1: buy in bulk
  • Strategy #2: use appliances
  • Strategy #3: no obsessing over breakfast and lunch
  • Strategy #4: using frameworks instead of recipes
  • What I've been working on behind the scenes
  • Final thoughts and encouragement


Resources Mentioned in This Podcast Episode:

Join the Meal Craft Waitlist here: https://meet.theprairiehomestead.com/waitlist-7649

Check out Azure Standard for bulk foods: https://www.azurestandard.com/?a_aid=ANnu0O8ySU

My Prairie Homestead Cookbook: http://homesteadcookbook.com/

OTHER HELPFUL RESOURCES FOR YOUR HOMESTEAD:


Did you enjoy listening to this episode? Please drop a comment below or leave a review to let us know. This can help other folks learn about this podcast and we also really appreciate the feedback!

Speaker 1:

Hello there, friends. So it is the last episode of this season season 14, which ended up being a bit longer than normal, but we were just on a roll. I had good topics, I had good guests, so we just went with it. But I'm going to be taking a quick break here on the podcast to regroup, get ready for summer, which feels like is already upon us. Here in Wyoming, the craziness has picked up and I'm ending season 14 with a bang today because I want to talk about a topic that is a huge sticking point for not only me, but many, many of you as well. So I've been playing around with this topic a bit on social media lately. You may have seen me asking questions about it or mentioning it on Instagram, but for many, many years I felt this weird element of guilt and shame around meal planning. Bizarrely enough, I just had this belief like I should meal plan better, I should meal plan more, I should just meal plan at all, and I've tried so many different styles of that and it just didn't work, which is super aggravating because I know I've written a cookbook, I have cooking courses, I'm known for my food and I would just beat myself up and go like why can't I meal plan? And I know many, many of you also are in that same boat. So I've been doing some thinking on this. I have some pretty cool strategies and something really exciting in this realm that I get to share with you today. So grab a note, pen and paper, if you have one. If you're not driving, because we're going to get super strategic and have some fun updates so here we go. If you're not driving, because we're going to get super strategic and have some fun updates, so here we go.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Old Fashioned On Purpose podcast. This is a show where we explore what we have left behind as we have raced towards progress and how we can get the good stuff back and live a more un-industrial life. So I'm your host, jill Winger. I've been homesteading way before. It was cool. We live out here on the wide open Wyoming Prairie with my husband. We live out here. So my husband and I live out here with three kids and a whole bunch of farm animals, a lot of businesses, and we have a pretty unorthodox and unconventional life, and I get to share it with many of you. So let's just dive right into today's topic.

Speaker 1:

As many of you know, if you followed me for any length of time. I am a planner. I like to plan. I like to plan so much that I even made my own planner, the old-fashioned non-purpose planner, which is coming back for 2025, by the way, and you're going to love it because there's a bunch of stuff we finally figured out how to add in that you've been asking for. But I digress. Anyway, I love to plan. I use my planner multiple times per day. I feel out of whack if I don't check it first thing in the morning. I check it again at night. I just need it right. So if I don't plan, my life falls apart. And that's why it was so confusing to me why I couldn't make the meal planning idea work.

Speaker 1:

And I've tried a lot of different methods over the years. I've done the apps. I've done the meal plans especially geared for people who eat whole foods. I've looked at the systems. I've got the cookbooks that are supposed to kind of set you up for success. I even tried the whole freezer meal thing where I made something like 27 freezer meals in four and a half hours, which felt really good when I got it done and I loved that. Dopamine hit. But then in practice, the meals were kind of not delicious. We're kind of not great because it's hard to freeze things in mass and have them taste good. Anyway, that's another topic. But needless to say, I've tried a lot of things. I haven't had success and so I'm still cooking, I'm still putting food on the table most nights, right five to six nights a week we're eating homemade, often homegrown from scratch food.

Speaker 1:

But I just couldn't get into this routine of having it planned out ahead of time and I couldn't help but think, you know, like that was a little bit of a failure on my part, like I'm like I just got to try harder. I just had to be more disciplined. But after many, many, many false starts, kind of just given up. So after wrestling with that for a while and kind of sitting with that tension, I had a little bit of a revelation a while back and it was kind of a duh moment.

Speaker 1:

Maybe you guys have already come to this conclusion, but I started to realize that you know people like you and I. We're living a pretty unconventional life and even if you're not full-fledged homesteading, odds are you're different. Otherwise you wouldn't be listening to this podcast and you would just find me annoying. So you're probably thinking about food in a different way. You're trying to be a producer instead of a consumer. You may have a garden, you may have farm animals, you may be sourcing food from a farmer's market. You're just trying to lean into that unindustrial life, a lifestyle that looks different than people around you, and so it makes sense that people like you and I struggle with conventional meal plans, because, even though I've tried a lot of plans or systems that are geared towards whole food or real food diets, they're still kind of set up in that paradigm where we go to the grocery store very regularly, we have some processed foods that we lean on, we have some packaged foods that we use a lot, and that just is not how I cook, it's not how I eat and it's not how I think about food. So I realized that in order to have a plan that fit with our unconventional life, the plan itself had to be a little bit more flexible and unconventional itself.

Speaker 1:

Now, when we look at the past which is one of my favorite things to do here on this show you know our great grandmothers, or our ancestors, if you have. You know great grandmothers who didn't cook, and that is true for some of us. You know our ancestors didn't have set in stone recipes. That wasn't a thing. If you pull out a heritage cookbook or an antique cookbook, they're always entertaining because they don't have oven temperatures. You know, a lot of people were using wood cook stoves. They don't have exact measurements. They say take a little bit of this, a little bit of that, it's a dash and it's a pinch. And a lot of our ancestors if you watched them, if you had the privilege of watching them in the kitchen, that's how they cooked. They cook by heart, if you will. They go by, feel they're adding what they have, they're substituting things they're missing.

Speaker 1:

That would have been just the way it was, because you couldn't go to the grocery store, you couldn't order groceries through Instacart or Amazon or wherever, and so you got really creative and I realized that, of course, duh right, I'm much more closely aligned with that philosophy in the kitchen than I am someone who is going to the grocery store two to three times a week, and that's not knocking on people who do that. That's just not how it works for me. You know, we live far from town. It's 40 minutes to get to town and then by the time I get to the grocery store. It's half a day for me to run errands so I avoid it as much as possible. It eats up way too much time and so, if I can help it, I only go to the grocery store once or twice a month. Now my garden and my homestead helps to add in those foods that are If I need fresh lettuce or I need fresh vegetables, so I have some of those options. But in the winter I'm just kind of dealing with what I have in my pantry and my larder and my freezers and we just go from there. So I realized again maybe not the most earth-shattering revelation, but for me it was very reassuring to realize.

Speaker 1:

I'm old-fashioned in my ingredients, so I'm gonna have to be old fashioned in my meal prep as well. The problems that I've really run into when it comes to systematizing our eating and I am talking to many of you. You're also running into these same problems would be number one. People like you and I have different ingredient priorities. Now, you know I'm not a purist. You know I eat some. You know industrial food. Sometimes I have packaged tortillas in my refrigerator. Right now I had a handful of potato chips for lunch. So I'm not purist, but my goal is to feed my family and put the food on my table that is primarily from scratch, primarily homemade and is homegrown as possible for me in that season, and that means I'm not going to jive with plans that are using a lot of boxed, processed, canned foods.

Speaker 1:

The other issue I came across when I was looking at meal plan meal systems is a lot of them lead with the fact that they give you grocery lists, and for some people I think that's probably a huge selling point is that you get grocery lists. When I see a grocery list, it stresses me out because that means I have to go to the grocery store, which I don't like. So you know I'm a huge fan of having a foundational pantry we're going to talk about that more in a second and so I don't want to have to grocery shop. Also, like saying every Monday is a grocery day again doesn't work. Our life has way too many variables, and so I don't have a set day at a grocery shop, and so those weekly lists ended up being more work to try to piece them into our life than they were worth. Again, we have that.

Speaker 1:

The other issue that I think a lot of us are running into is our lives are not the same week to week. Week to week. I mean, maybe yours is, mine is not. I have some things that reoccur and then lots of other variables that just you know come in and out on a monthly basis or just explode, and I have to go deal with them. So I need a lot more flexibility. And then the other frustration I had with like set in stone meal planning was that it would feel like you know, I'd had a lot of leftovers in the fridge that if I wanted to stay on track with the meal plan, I needed to go be buying other food or using other food, and we ended up like throwing food away which makes me embarrassed, to admit, because it goes bad right, and I oh, I forgot the rice was in there. Oh, I forgot the green beans were in there, whereas I much prefer, when I can, keep that stuff in rotation and use those leftovers in creative ways. So those have been my biggest struggles, I have been the biggest roadblocks that have kept me from creating that consistency in my meal planning, or lack thereof, and so I've been thinking about this a lot.

Speaker 1:

I've been working on this a lot. I'm not going to ever become a rigid, super formulaic, organized meal planner, but I've been working on some things that help me stay more organized, because I just don't like that feeling of getting to 3 pm in the afternoon and not knowing what's for supper. Like I hate that feeling, especially since people like you and I we have what you call an ingredient house. We don't have a lot of just add water, ready-made things, which is awesome. I love it, I'm committed to that. But then at 3 pm I'm like dang it. I wish I had a frozen pizza right now because I don't have ideas. And so if we're committed to that real food lifestyle not as in a purist sense, but just we're committed to that idea I know I need to have at least some catchalls that help me stay on track. So I want to share with you four strategies that I've been using, and then I'm going to share something really exciting at the end that I have been working on that I think you'll find super helpful if you're in this same boat.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so my first strategy for getting meals on the table as a non-meal planner is bulk Buy in bulk, and we've talked about this before. I have blog posts on this topic. We've done episodes on this. If I didn't buy in bulk, I would be sunk when I am in town at like a Costco or a Sam's Club type of store. You would think I have 19 children because I am buying in quantity. The same goes for anything I order from Azure, standard or online. Like I buy in quantity, as long as it's not going to go bad, I'm going to waste it. If it's shelf stable at all or preservable at all, I'm going to get it in quantity Now. Obviously, it saves money. Often when you buy in bulk, there are exceptions, but for the most part, you're going to get a discount.

Speaker 1:

The biggest thing for me, though, is decision fatigue, and that's where our brains can sometimes just get exhausted. It's just like it sounds. We get exhausted from all the decisions we have to make in a given day, and the famous example of that would be Steve Jobs was known for wearing the same shirt and same pants every single day. Different sets of them, but they were the same style of shirt, same style of pants, so he would never have to think about what he was wearing in the morning, because he made so many other decisions during his workday, and so he was just trying to eliminate those decisions. That's why some people eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch. Sometimes I do that. But the more we can preserve that brain power, it frees up our brain for other things. And so it might seem like a simple thing. But if I don't have to think about buying a certain food super regularly and I just know I have 25 pounds of popcorn, I have a five gallon bucket of coconut oil, I have a whole bunch of rice, a whole bunch of beans, a whole bunch of beef that reduces that decision fatigue.

Speaker 1:

So buy in bulk as much as you can and keep that foundational pantry. You know some people call it a stockpile. Sometimes it gets into that prepper movement which we've talked about on other episodes. Honestly, if it benefits me in the case of an emergency situation, that's awesome. But I truly honestly focus on my stockpile of food just for our day-to-day use, to save me money and to prevent me from having to think about it any more than I have to. So I kind of have different areas in my home where I'm going to keep my foundational pantry, because I don't have that perfect all-encompassing walk-in pantry, and so I would encourage you to get creative.

Speaker 1:

I know a lot of folks are dealing with smaller houses. You don't have a big larder. You don't have a big larder. You don't have a classic pantry. It doesn't mean you can't keep a good foundation of food in stock at all times, and so I like to have plenty of protein on hand. That means I buy meat in bulk. Actually, I don't really buy meat that much anymore. We raise it in bulk, so I'm raising a quantity of meat chickens at a time. I don't buy chicken breasts very often, but I have a lot of whole chickens in my freezer. We, you know, have plenty of beef, not only because we sell it but also when we butcher them for our personal use. That's a lot of meat and we'll do an animal once a year or sometimes even more, and just make sure I have all those cuts ready to go. I only raise pigs about once every other year, but when we do we'll raise two to three, and that keeps us in pork for as long as we need. So again, it saves money. I always know I have some sort of protein out in the freezer that I don't have to think about sourcing.

Speaker 1:

My other kind of stockpile would be in my kitchen area. I have pantry areas there where I keep my baked baking supplies, so flour, the sugars, the baking powder and sodas, salts, herbs, etc. So I keep a good quantity of those there and then overflow because sometimes I'm buying those items in 25 pound quantities or 50 pound quantities. I have food safe buckets with gamma seal lids and I keep those down in an unfinished portion of my basement. If you don't have a basement you could keep them in an extra closet. You can keep stuff under a bed in a guest room. If your garage doesn't freeze or get super hot or humid, you could keep things there in a corner. The biggest key if you're going to be storing quantity like that is make sure it's safe from moisture and pests. Right, the mice will chew through things, like you wouldn't believe. So food safe five gallon buckets are my favorite. I don't use mylar bags or oxygen absorbers because I'm not planning on keeping those for decades. I'm just keeping them until I use it up and I try to keep that supply rotating. But it makes a huge difference.

Speaker 1:

Like I know that with my foundational ingredients I can cook, I would venture to say, hundreds of meals without having to go to the grocery store. You know if I am going to the grocery store once or twice a month. We're just kind of getting the same old things. I may get bananas which I know they're not local, but we do eat bananas sometimes and avocados Same goes for there, I'm not a purist. We may get some lettuce or spinach if I don't have some in the garden, but right now my greenhouse has been supplying us with lettuce salad stuff.

Speaker 1:

If my milk cow is not in season, which actually right now I don't have a cow, I'm milking and I didn't breed my cows back in time, so I'm probably not going to have raw milk for a little while, which is a bummer, but it is what it is. So we have been buying some dairy products, some sour cream and some milk at the store. Actually I get my sour cream and yogurt from Azure Standard, but I have been buying some milk at the store. So whenever I do go and actually I send my husband often because he has things to do in town more than I do I just have kind of the same list of five to six things that he gets once or twice a month and that's it. It's the most easy, simple, hands-off grocery shopping you can imagine, and that's just because we've found bulk and some different sources that keep that simplified.

Speaker 1:

I do want to give a shout out to Azure Standard. They're not sponsoring this episode but I will put their link in the show notes because if you can get on a drop, they come once a month. You have to meet up with local people in your area and a truck will deliver your food. It saves money, they have way good selections and it takes again a lot of that guesswork out. So if you can get on a drop, it'll kind of force you to get into that rhythm of buying in bulk and buying once a month and it helps a ton. Okay, so that was my first step Buy in bulk and keep that foundational pantry.

Speaker 1:

My second trick for meal planning without a meal plan is to use appliances, which you may be surprised to hear me say that since we're old fashioned on purpose. But you guys know I'm all about mixing the best of the old with the best of the new, that alchemy that creates that functionality in our modern lives but also allows us to get the best of the old ways. And so I'm not ashamed to lean on my slow cooker, lean on my food processor. I've been leaning on my instant pot a lot lately. I still have my same old instant pot that I bought like probably 10 years ago whenever they came out. Initially it looks like not great but it works like a charm and I lean on it a ton.

Speaker 1:

I've stated before I don't like to make like whole meals as much in the instant pot. I find like where it's like dump all the things in, put the lid on and make a soup. I just like the layers of flavor that come from sauteing and deglazing the pan and adding seasoning as we go. I'm not above doing it all at once if I need it, but for the most part I'd rather do that stuff on the stovetop. But I cannot live without my Instant Pot. For components Broth Beans are magical. If you were to buy your Instant Pot and only use it to cook dry beans, I think it would be worth it.

Speaker 1:

And another big one I did this yesterday in fact rice or grains. So you can make quinoa. You can make rice on the stovetop, not a problem. I always either boil it over or boil it dry. Almost every time I put the lid on it I try to adjust the burner. I forget and there we go. So I have like burned caked on rice or quinoa on the bottom of the pan. If you put those things in your instant pot and cook it, that way you don't have to worry about that. It's push the button and off you go.

Speaker 1:

And so, like yesterday for example maybe this is a day that you would relate to in some way I did a bunch of stuff here in the morning. I had to run to the soda fountain and work on deposits and payroll, so I was there for a couple hours. Then I had to run home and water the greenhouse and pick up a kid that needed to go to the school for an event. So I dropped her off at the school for an hour and then I went back to the soda fountain and helped them do their closing duties. So it was like you know, you know, you know, um. And when I got home it was like four, 30 and I had some meat defrosting. So I'm like, okay, I got that handled.

Speaker 1:

But I'm like I need a side. I don't have a side. I don't really have time to deal with potatoes. They take a little longer to cook. So I'm like rice. I have a 25 pound bag of rice in the basement. Let's use it.

Speaker 1:

So I put rice, broth, herbs and butter in the instant pot, pushed the rice button and then went out to work out for a half an hour and when I came back in it was done, it was ready to go. I didn't have to worry about it boiling dry, et cetera. So we ended up having a home cooked meal with hanger steak and rice and a frozen vegetable that I boiled up. I didn't really plan ahead on that Great, but we had it to eat just because of, um, the step of defrosting, which is another one of my secret weapons. Always have something defrosting, even if you don't know how you're going to use it, because you'll figure it out eventually Just have it ready to roll and then using those appliances and I do the same thing with my slow cooker a ton. If I know we're going to be gone most of the day in the morning, I'll stick a pork roast or a beef roast or a chicken or some soup stuff in a slow cooker and let it go for the day, and it makes a big difference.

Speaker 1:

And there's something that I so enjoy about the feeling of like being in town helping at the soda fountain, being busy and knowing that I have food available for me at home, it's like a gift to my future self. When I prep that slow cooker or that instant pot in the mornings, it's uh, you can, you know, you can pretend, like I've talked about on some of my business podcasts, like you're the employer and you're the employee, so you kind of put on the different hats and so it's almost like I have a little maid who's making me supper when I get home, but it was myself doing it that morning. So, anyway, that's a weird analogy, but that's how I think of it and it just feels good. Okay. So, number one buy in bulk so you have a foundational pantry. Number two don't be afraid to use those appliances creatively. Number three I do not obsess over breakfast or lunches, and it's kind of gets awkward sometimes when we've had like photographers come to do a day in the life photo shoots or things like that.

Speaker 1:

We've had video crews here and they're like let's do a session of your breakfast, because they imagine that we have these super elaborate home style five course breakfast every morning like farm style breakfast, and I'm like we don't do that, like I have a very simple breakfast routine. Don't do that Like I have a very simple breakfast routine and it's not super exciting and sometimes my kids get tired of it, but it works. So what I really do when I am focused on getting food on the table, I'm really primarily focused on supper. That's where I put the most of my brain power and thinking ahead. If I am thinking ahead with breakfast, I kind of have what I call like the breakfast skeleton if you will the breakfast blueprint would probably be a better way to say it where I know that we have, you know, five to six different breakfast food items that we're going to have on hand at all times and we just rotate through those.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes I assign a day to each item and sometimes it's kind of more of a free for all, to be perfectly honest. So some of the items on my breakfast skeleton would be, of course, eggs, because we more often than not have an abundance of eggs. So you can scramble your eggs, you can fry your eggs. My kids are doing this on their own right, like it's. It's more often than not that you know if I'm making something and they're like I don't really feel like eggs this morning. I'm like, okay, it's, you're on your own to go make the oatmeal or the yogurt. I give them a little more autonomy in that because all of these breakfast items are usually kind of kid-friendly that they can make on their own. So eggs are a big one. If I have some leftover bread we'll have a piece of sourdough with it or some whole wheat toast, but sometimes it's just eggs and breakfast can be simple.

Speaker 1:

Smoothies are big. The kids really do like the smoothie so I try to have frozen spinach or frozen berries and some bananas on hand for that. We try to put some yogurt. My big thing is with smoothies is making sure they have protein in them because otherwise, you know, if the kids are completely left unsupervised with the smoothie, it turns into more like just, you know, a lot of sugary, high carb things that aren't going to fill them up and then they're going to be hungry in an hour and a half. So smoothies are one Yogurt's big. We add in chia seeds or you can add flax. You could add berries, bananas, nuts into the yogurt to beef it up a little bit and make it a little more protein rich Oatmeal it could be stovetop oatmeal, it can be overnight oats. There's different recipes where you do overnight oats in a bowl or in a little jar with chia seeds to add more protein. So that's a category.

Speaker 1:

Pancakes would be at one Like. If I have a lot of sourdough, I'm just trying to keep that starter fresh and I have discard, we'll make sourdough pancakes. There's a really easy recipe for those in my Hurry Homestead cookbook. But the thing I don't like about pancakes is it just takes a while to cook them. It doesn't take long to mix them, but someone has to stand in the stove and flip them, which makes them better for a weekday or, sorry, a weekend morning where we're not trying to get to school, get out the door, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure there's a few more, but those are kind of my breakfast rotations, that I keep those categories and we just rotate through. Sometimes I'll go really exotic and make muffins or coffee cake with eggs or something, but more often than not it's pretty boring and the kids sometimes don't love it. You know they want something a little more exciting, but we just talk about. You know, breakfast in our house is really one of those meals. It's more of a start your day off. This is a nourishment meal versus like a really exciting taste extravaganza. We're just trying to nourish our bodies and get some fuel in them for the day. So that helps that I'm primarily again focused on supper.

Speaker 1:

Breakfast is the same routine and lunches are usually just leftovers of some sort From the night before. If we don't have leftovers, sometimes I keep some organic-y lunch meat on hand Not always, but if I don't have leftovers it'll be lunch meat wraps or, honestly, I use beans a lot and my kids don't mind that. Where I'll have pressure canned beans or just a bowl of beans cooked up in the fridge and they turn them into refried beans, they make quesadillas, they make bean burritos, bean bowls, just kind of that quick protein. If we don't have meat but more often than not we have some sort of meat in the fridge they can turn into something for lunch. So I realize I'm saying the kids are doing a lot of this on their own. My kids are a little bit older now. You may have younger kids, so the onus is more on you if that's the case, but still the same principles apply. We're just trying to keep it as simple as possible for breakfast and lunch.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and my fourth strategy for meal planning without meal planning and this one kind of addresses, I'd say, the bulk of the problems that we talked about earlier. People like you and I keep running into these roadblocks would be to use frameworks to prepare your meals instead of rigid recipes. And this is the concept that I've really been chewing on lately and kind of developing, because it's just an interesting dynamic. When we talk about, you know, our great grandmothers, a lot of them didn't have set in stone recipes. That really wasn't as much of a thing. They were much more fluid. But you fast forward to today and people, it's almost like they need to have a really detailed recipe in order to feel confident. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm not knocking on that at all. In fact, I'd much rather see someone you know learn how to cook with a detailed recipe than not try at all.

Speaker 1:

But what happens sometimes is I think we can get stuck into that rut, that recipe rut, where we feel like we have to have permission to make the food a certain way. And I've been there before when I was learning how to cook. I would think, okay, if I'm going to substitute this, I need to go and like look it up to see if it's been done before and figure out how to do it. And I would really get stuck in that mindset versus trusting my own instincts, and I see it a lot. You know, as someone who writes recipes and shares recipes online or in cookbooks, I have so many emails and I'll get so many comments anytime I publish a recipe from people asking for permission. You know, can I substitute this? Can I do this? Can I try this? Can I change the temperature? Can I change the time? And more often than not, my answer is yes or I don't know. Let's try it, give it a try, let me know how it goes right.

Speaker 1:

There's no all-knowing authority who's going to crack down on you if you do something different or you do it the wrong way. And it's just really this process of learning to trust our gut and learning to trust our intuition and I think that's something our great grandmothers and our ancestors really had dialed in and we often miss that in our modern world because food has become this thing that's kind of behind the curtain, right Things to industrialization and factory food. You know, a lot of us have lost that intuition, we've lost that connection, so some things feel so mysterious and they're really not. We just have to get back to our roots and start to develop that level of knowledge in the kitchen and that's a process, and it's a process I'm still on. But I know that when I lean into that and I allow myself to be a little more curious and a little more creative and just live on the edge in the kitchen, my food gets better. We're saving money because I'm not wasting food that's going in the trash because I didn't know what to do with it and it just is way more enjoyable to cook. So I've been leaning into these frameworks more than anything, and by a framework I mean it's an idea, it's a skeleton with a lot of plug and play, options, and so you can kind of pick and choose and any recipe can or not any recipe, but a lot of recipes can be turned in to a framework if you're willing to be a little bit more adventurous in the kitchen. And so I've just been playing around a lot with if I find a recipe that is interesting to me, you know, not waiting to try it until I have the perfect set of ingredients that are listed in the recipe. Obviously there's exceptions, sometimes you can't substitute, but I find that the more I learn how to substitute, it's pretty exciting and I learn how to really expand my culinary skills. And so that brings me to what I have been working on for you guys.

Speaker 1:

I have been scheming behind the scenes on how we can create more of this cooking by feel dynamic. And how can we, how can I help people learn some of that instinctual cooking versus feeling like they have to be tied to recipes and cookbooks, because I think it's so funny? You know, we have an abundance of cookbooks. Most of us have dozens on our shelves. Our libraries are full of them, Roof stores are full of them. Yet when I ask people what their number one struggle is in the kitchen, they always say I don't know what to cook. So I know that more recipes are not the answer. I think rather it's learning how to properly use what we already have in the kitchen. So I've been, anyway.

Speaker 1:

I've been creating these frameworks. I'm nerding out over them, you guys, because I've never quite seen anything like it. But each framework allows you to choose from groups of ingredients. So, for example, today I was working on a homemade hot pocket framework, and so we have a protein group, we have a cheese, we have a veggie, we have the dough, and you get to pick and choose. It's like choose your own adventure, and then it comes together and I give those basic instructions of how to assemble it. But the possibilities are endless. Like, this, one framework could be turned into dozens and dozens of different recipes, depending on what's in your kitchen, what's in your pantry, your garden, your fridge, your freezer using it up, which saves you money and it's just a really fun way to cook.

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So I'm calling this thing it's going to be a subscription, I'm calling it Meal Craft, and the catch is it's not entirely ready yet. I don't know exactly the date it will launch. It'll be sometime in June of 2024. But I'm really excited for it. So I do have a waitlist and I'm going to drop the link to the waitlist below. Just type in your email and then you'll be the first to be notified when it is open and ready. We're keeping the cost super low. You'll get four frameworks a month and again, these are robust, like each framework you're looking at. I'd say 10 to 20 different combos or more for each framework. So it's gonna help your meal planning, it's gonna help you use food you have, it's gonna help you build that foundational pantry and I'm just excited to use them for myself. To be perfectly honest, it's what I've kind of already been doing, but to have it written down and in a binder ready to roll is going to be awesome, so join the wait list if that sounds interesting to you.

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I'll be sending out more information on that in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, I just want you to know that if you've struggled with meal plans, know that you're not broken. You're not a failure. In the meantime, I just want you to know that if you've struggled with meal plans, know that you're not broken. You're not a failure in the kitchen. It doesn't mean you're not organized enough. I just think that the majority of plans don't fit for people like you and I, and that's okay. And it's okay if meal plans do work for you, that's awesome.

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Every time I say anything online, people always assume I'm shaming the opposite side. I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not Like if you love your meal plan app, that's fabulous. If you love your meal plan calendar, sweet. But I know a lot of us just struggle. So if you're in the struggle bus on the struggle bus, like I have been, I think there is hope and there's a way to create a little more flow and a little less chaos in your kitchen every day and every night at suppertime. So I hope that was encouraging, for you know that. You know it's not about perfection and there's still days where you know I roll up on three or 4pm and I'm like, oh, I just didn't plan ahead. But I'm a lot less panicky if I do get to that point because I just know my options. I know what I have, I know what I can throw together. I have those rough ideas, those rough frameworks, and that goes a really long way. So that's all I have for you today, a little bit of a shorter episode.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to be taking a break for about two weeks. We'll resume mid-June with our first episode of season 15. I've got some really awesome guests coming. We're doing some more deep dive on sourdough. We're doing a discussion with Erin Lochner of the Opt Out family. It's a fantastic book. It'll be launching in June and I'm going to have her on. We're going to talk about working dogs all kinds of good stuff. So I can't wait. Enjoy the break or go back and listen to some past episodes. If you need to catch up on some, join me on my newsletter. I will be continuing to send that out for the next couple of weeks. It comes out every Wednesday and that's the prairiehomesteadcom slash letter to sign up for that. It's free, of course, but that's something I really enjoy sending out to all of you every week. So thanks for listening, friends. Here's to an awesome kickoff to the summer, and we'll talk again on the next episode of the Old Fashioned On Purpose podcast. Music, music, music Music.