Easy Meal Planning for Busy Mums with Whole Foods

Easy Meal Planning for Busy Mums with Whole Foods | Inspired Home

Meal planning can be overwhelming and time consuming! In today's episode im taking you through my top hacks that help me mela planand meal prep for a family of 5. I know it can be tricky when youre a busy Mum, but trust me, these really help.

1. Planning your dinners out for the week.
2. Setting up a weekly grocery list through your grocery store app to quickly add to cart.
3. Using direct to boot or delivery options.
4. Using a weekend to batch cook OR cooking double batches whwrre you can.
5. Sheet pan or one pot meals - I share my sheet pan creamy chicken pasta recipe!
6. Getting the kids involved with meal times so as they grow up they can start to help.

Let me know of any other meal planning tips or hacks that help you out as a busy Mum. 

Transcript

Hello friends. You might have noticed that I have a new intro and I have decided to change inspired to be to inspired home. And this came about because I had so much feedback from you all recently when I did my home audit mini series. And I definitely find that the home related content that I share in terms of like organization, productivity, home hacks, meals, things like that, healthy food, everything that's really home related is what you guys love the most. So I've decided to focus the podcast on that genre. It's going to be all about home and lifestyle and all little short episodes that will bring you tips and hacks that you can implement in your home to make it that sanctuary, that beautiful, positive, uplifting space for you and your family. I hope you love it as much as I do. So this is actually going to be the start of a new season. Just to kind of signify that new genre and that new focus. It's going to be really cool. I have some great episodes coming up. This one's all about easy meal planning. I've got more decluttering tips, self care for busy mums, budget friendly decor, organizing for kids activities, and just mum life. I've got easy fitness tips, time management tips, living, eco friendly living tips, DIY hacks, mindful parenting. You get the gist. So I've got lots of those types of episodes coming, and as I said, they're going to be the shortest ten to 15 minutes episodes. Some of them will have guests involved who can come on and give you more knowledge and tips in that specific area. But I know you're gonna love it. Please, please do share this with anyone who you think is going to find it helpful. It just means the world to me. It gets the word out there and it just really helps the podcast grow. So for this episode, we are focusing on easy meal planning tips with Whole foods. So you know, I love Whole Foods. I always talk about the benefit of Whole foods. I'm still studying functional nutrition halfway through my course. I've got one year to go and I'm slowly getting through it. I just love it. I find it so interesting, but it's just finding the time anyway, so that's where I'm coming from when I'm talking about Whole Foods. Whole food nutrition. But in this episode, I wanted to just give you some practical takeaways that you can go and implement this week to help bring in Whole foods easy meal planning and organization for you and your family. We're going to explore the benefits of Whole foods as usual. And I'm going to be sharing some simple and practical hacks for all of you busy mummers out there, because I know we all are. Doesn't even matter whether you're working mum or stay at home mum, how many kids you've got. We are all busy. We're all in it together. And I think you take on what's relevant for your own life. So take with you what works. And I'd love to hear if you have any other tips, so please come on over and let me know. But right now, let's jump into it. Now. You know the benefits of Whole foods. I've spoken about this before, but Whole Foods, in a nutshell, pardon the pun, are basically so rich in essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals that they really do support your overall health. If you have any specific foods that you want me to talk more to, then I can. But I've done episodes before on leaky Gut. I've done episodes on specific foods for specific things, like, in my case, for Hashimoto's, so inflammatory things that can ignite that inflammatory response and how to move away from that. You also want to focus on reducing your processed foods. So minimizing processed foods can really lead to you having better energy, definitely improve digestion, and just an overall sense of feeling better in yourself. I also spoke on Emma's podcast, and I think she, it's called, it's a mindset, and she will be launching that episode soon. And in that podcast, I said that I know sometimes it can get overwhelming buying whole foods over packaged foods, and sometimes it feels more expensive. But I guarantee you, if you try and focus and shift to those like whole foods over time, you will start to see a difference and it will save you money from buying the packaged foods. Your body will stop to crave those packaged foods. You will start to actually crave the whole foods. A really interesting fact about our gut health is that the more whole foods you eat, the more foods that you crave. So, for example, if you're eating heaps of sugar or processed carbohydrates, that is going to make your gut bacteria be rich in bacteria from those foods. So your body is going to crave those foods. If you start eating more whole foods, more fresh fruit, vegetables, proteins, healthy fats, your gut bacteria is going to be rich from those foods and they're the foods that you're going to crave more. So that's really cool. So we are just going to try and focus on whole foods instead of processed foods. I know it can be really hard trying to get your family to eat nutritious meals and a whole range of whole foods. Like, seriously, my first two kids, Zara and Adrian, are great at this. They will pretty much eat whatever is on their plate, within reason. Like, Adrian will still go through times where he's like, I don't like tomatoes this week. Oh, no, I do like tomatoes. You get what I mean? But Chloe is super picky. But one thing we do is that we just keep putting it on her plate. And when I say that every single night is a battle with Chloe, I mean it like every single night is exhausting. It's a battle. But I just believe that over time it's going to get better. And one day she will eat all of those foods. And I'm happy to go through the battle now if it means that further down the track, she's not a picky eater. And more importantly, she's eating a rainbow of foods which will help her gut health flourish. So really try to just get that rainbow of foods on your plate. A big tip here is that for whatever reason, I find my younger kids not so much zara, now that she's eleven, she's happy to eat like a. A proper adult meal where everything's mixed together. But the younger kids really prefer it to be more like a snack plate, if you like. So for their specific meals, I try and keep everything separate. If it was like a chicken stir fry and I would mix our chicken and veggies all together with rice, whereas for the kids, I would put the plain rice and I would just pick out the chicken, put that separately, put the broccoli separately, and put the carrots separately for them on their plates. Still mixed in with the sauce. It's still cooked all the same, I'm just putting it in separate little plates, places on their plate, and for whatever reason, they eat that more hack. Number one here is batch cooking and freezing, if you have the time. Sometimes I do have the time on a Sunday to batch cook a few meals, but a lot of the time I don't. However, I have heard that this is helpful for a lot of people. So I wanted to put that in there. If you can spend a few hours on one of the days a week just cooking large batches of meals that can be frozen and reheated, it is a huge help. I have also in the past done like a double batch. So if I'm doing a slow cooker chicken or even a bolognese that I like to pack full of veggies, I'll do a double batch and then I'll freeze half of it that we can use for another dinner in the week when we're really busy choosing versatile recipes for things like this is like slow cookers, bolognese sauce, and try and think out of the box for this. So if you can make a bolognese sauce and then just freeze it in batches, what can you use this for? Yes, you could use it with pasta as bolognese. You could also use it on top of nachos. Or you could do like, stuffed potatoes with the Bolognese sauce on top of it. You can be really creative here. You could also use it in burritos, you know? So just try and make it more of a plain, versatile protein base that you can then use to add to your recipes throughout the week. If you're doing this, make sure you label your meals with the dates that you've made it and the ingredients just so you remember, because if you're like me, you chuck it all in. You kind of do it without thinking, and then later on, you go there and think, oh, what was that? Will the kids love that? Will that work with this? I'm not sure. So don't forget to label your meals with the dates and ingredients. Hack number two is simplifying your grocery shopping. So if you're on the Woolworths app. I am. I don't know about Kohl's. I'm assuming it would be similar. You can actually create lists. So streamlining your grocery list based on the whole foods, like the, the stars of your meals, if you like, make sure you're getting those every single week. So for me, let's talk about the proteins as an example. I know each week I use chicken thighs, the grass fed beef sausages. I use turkey mince. So those things I'm going to add to my list, and then they will automatically, if I click on that list, and you might name it my weekly shop, then when I add that to my list on a Sunday, because I pick up my groceries on a Monday afternoon, I haven't even had to go in and add things. And you might also have a list in your phone of the things that kind of run out through the week. But you know that every week you're going to get your basic order of your meats, your eggs. You might be getting milk, bread, whatever it is. And it just really helps make that grocery shopping a faster chore if you like. I like to update this list sort of every few weeks as well so that we're getting a different variety of foods. So at one point I might be using like broccoli and corn as a really regular vegetable that's coming in. And then I might switch it up to like carrots and zucchinis or, I don't know, carrots and peas. I don't know, off the top of my head, but you know what I mean. You can switch this up or maybe I'm getting a lot of baby spinach and then I decide to switch it up for rocket. So just kind of switching that up but keeping it in your weekly list so that then when you go into your app, you can say, add my weekly list and then you can choose whether you're going to pick it up, do your direct to boot or pick it up from the store, or if you're going to get it delivered. That is another huge time saving hack. If you have the opportunity in your area to do the director boot, it is so, so helpful. I schedule my window from like three to 04:00 so I know that sometime on my way home from school pickup, I can just pull in on a Monday afternoon. They chuck all the groceries in the car and I come home and it's done. It also helps with your grocery shopping and your list to have a meal plan. So I literally just write it in the notes section of my phone. I write Monday to Sunday and I write the meals just to make sure that I know I've got the ingredients there because there's nothing worse than having to duck in to Woolies or the grocery store when you've got all three kids in tow. Everyone's tired after a busy day of school and activities and you've got to get home and cook dinner. And I don't know about you, but I just can't handle the stress. So being organized, even if it's sitting down on a Sunday night, I sit down, I do my meal plan, I add my grocery shopping list to my Woolies app and set that up to pick up on a Monday. And then I'll add in anything that I've written down that I needed to add in that we've run out of a well organized grocery list guys will really help you shop efficiently, and it's going to reduce the temptation of you buying those packaged, processed foods, and it actually will save you money as well. You're going to feel better. You're going to feel more on top of things. So try and simplify your grocery shopping and get organized with your grocery shopping. Hack number three is making some one pot and sheet pan meals. So basically, this is a concept that I like to use, which means that there's minimal prep and cleanup required. So, like, think of just chucking everything in. One of my faves that I'm doing lately is get one of the bulk packs of chicken thighs because there is five of us in the family, so I think there is maybe like eight or nine chicken thighs in there. I literally put olive oil in a baking tray. I chuck the chicken thighs in, I cook them in the oven for about half an hour. Then I flip them over. I add a whole punnet of cherry tomatoes in there. I put a big block of feta in the middle. I'll add some herbs depending on what, I don't know what your kids like. I add like, basil, garlic, thyme, oregano, and then I put it back in the oven and cook it for another half an hour. So it all goes crispy. The feta goat, like, bakes and kind of melts through everything. I get it out, I add heaps of baby spinach, and sometimes I even add in some green baby peas for more protein. Mix it all together in there. It all goes, like, super creamy, delicious, like saucy. Pull the chicken all apart and then you can just have it like that with rice, or you can mix pasta through it and it's all been done in one pot. I haven't had to chop anything. I've literally just chucked things in and then I serve it up. It is just the best meal. It's so easy and it just helps. So that is a good one to do. And any other one pot meals or sheet pan type meals that you can do are just so helpful. Try and find recipes that do incorporate a variety of foods and vegetables, lean proteins and grains. So you can just search these up on pinterest. Maybe make a pinterest board that you can just go to when you're feeling in a bit of a rut with your meals. Again, if there's not heaps of you, if there's, you know, only a few of you in your family, you could make a big portion and then split things like this up and put it in the fridge for the next night or freeze some of it for later in the week. What I like to do, if we have leftovers is I always put the leftovers for lunch the next day. So doing these type of meals, these like one pot meals, they really do save time in cooking, they save time in cleaning up, and it just makes it more enjoyable and more manageable. As a busy mum, hack number four is kind of the opposite. And this is if you have enough patience that day and you're not stressed, which is very rare for me when it comes to meal time. I don't know, it just feels like Groundhog Day sometimes. But if you're in a good place, making meal planning and preparation a family activity can be really fun. So on a Sunday night when we're all having dinner, I will say to them, what does everyone want for dinner this week? I'm going to be doing the grocery shopping list tonight. Let me know if there's anything that you would like to have this week. And they'll quite often say things that I've already cooked that past week. And then I know that I can make it again sometimes if I'm feeling very calm, I also get the older kids to help me do dinner. And that would be things like washing the vegetables. I definitely get them to set the table every night. So putting the plates out, putting the cutlery out, it just helps. It's helping teach them that they're part of a family and it's also helping them be involved in the meal. And I think when they're helping you cook these whole food meals, it's a chance to educate them on the ingredients that you're using. And I definitely find that Chloe will be more open to eating the meal if she's helped me cook it, because it's almost like she's seen what's gone in. She's proud of herself. And I'm not really sure what happens, but she's much more open to eating it. Getting the family involved not only lightens your load if they're a little bit older and they can help, it really does. And on this note, I actually have. Zara is eleven, as I mentioned. I actually have started to. For example, I'll put the turkey mince, I'll put the pasta, I'll put the Bolognese sauce there and I'll. And the carrot and zucchini because they're kind of my go to veggies that I. Great to throw into the Bolognese sauce. So I feel like the kids are getting more veggies in and I will say to Zara, you can cook dinner. Would you like to cook dinner? And she loves it and it's hard for me to not get involved. I'll kind of be pottering around doing other things and I'll sort of just look and check that she's okay. But I really just give her the responsibility of cooking the dinner. And that wasn't just all of a sudden, I obviously had her helping me a little bit as she was growing up, so she sort of knew. But I think that she loves it. I think that if you've got older kids finding meals that they can start to cook on their own is not only helpful for you, it's great for their learning and it's just a great experience. I think it really fosters a healthy relationship with food for your children and it creates this enjoyment and memories around mealtime, which for me is really special. So let's recap. Whole foods are so essential for a healthy lifestyle and meal planning can actually be really simple if you put these strategies into place. I hope that they help you just start really small by implementing one or two hacks and gradually building up in your routine. So maybe this week, just pick a few days we're going to get your kids to help. Or maybe this week you're going to be really organized and do your meal plan and grocery shopping ahead of time. I would love you to subscribe to the inspired home podcast for more tips and inspiration on living healthier, happier, and just a more fulfilling life. I hope that you love this new kind of direction, this new focus. Please, please share with your friends and family. I'd love to have them on board too. And make sure you tune in next week for some more awesome tips. Thank you so much for tuning into inspired home. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, rate and leave me a review. Don't forget to follow me on inspiredhome podcast over on Instagram for more tips and inspiration. If you've got a question or topic you'd love me to chat about, please send me a DM or a voiceie. I just love hearing from you guys. Until next week, keep your home happy and your life inspired.