In this episode of Mealtime Magic & Mayhem, Tricia Clark tackles the misconceptions surrounding meal planning and provides practical solutions for successful meal planning. From debunking common myths to sharing personal experiences, Tricia guides listeners on a journey to simplify their mealtime routines. Join us as we explore the importance of being realistic, setting achievable goals, and curating a collection of trusted recipes.

Key Takeaways:

- 📅 Be realistic about what can be accomplished each night

- 📝 Start with a manageable goal and build small habits over time

- 🍽️ Take stock of existing ingredients to save money and avoid waste

- ⚙️ Utilize meal planning tools to customize recipes for small households

- 💡 Discover trusted sources for recipes and create your own collection

- 🌟 Approach meal planning with a sense of fun and creativity

- ⏰ Consider cooking time and choose recipes accordingly

- 💫 Make meal planning a powerful tool to simplify life and save time

Recommended Resources:

- 🍳 Cooking Light (CookingLight.com): A trusted source for easy weeknight recipes

- 💪 fedandfit.com : Offers a variety of recipes, indexed by cooking technique, time, and dietary preferences

- 🌾 Halfbaked Harvest (halfbakedharvest.com): Provides delicious and vibrant recipes

- 🍽️ Pinch of Yum (pinchofyum.com): Offers both a blog and a captivating Instagram feed with mouth-watering recipes

- 🌿 Spruce Eats (spruceeats.com): An essential resource for cooking and mixology inspiration

Join the Conversation:- 💬 Join our Facebook group to access discussions and additional recipes, including the recent fluffernutters recipe.

As always, Tricia emphasizes the power of meal planning in simplifying life, saving time and money, and fostering deeper connections at the dinner table. So grab a notepad, prepare for some mealtime magic, and let's debunk those meal planning myths together!✨ Stay tuned for more Mealtime Magic & Mayhem episodes to ignite your culinary creativity and streamline your meal planning routine. ✨

Facebook Profile: https://www.facebook.com/tricia.clark.161

Tired to Inspired Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/tiredtoinspiredcooking

This is the Mealtime, Magic and Mayhem podcast. I'm Tricia Clark, your host, cooking coach, and kitchen mentor. We're here to talk about all things food, wine, travel, cocktails, and mealtime memories. So many memories are made around the table. We all know mealtime can be stress, full of chaos and mayhem. But it's also the universal connector, a catalyst for communication and connection and a time to create magic and memories. So many of our memories are tied to food, and I can't wait to share some of those stories with you here. I'm here to share ideas, inspiration, and stories to help you experience mealtime.

With a dash of magic and just a sprinkle of mayhem, you can expect new episodes weekly, including a mixture of interviews, personal stories, and some fun conversations about our adventures and misadventures in the kitchen and around the table. I hope you walk away feeling inspired to try something new in your kitchen or around your table to create more connection with your friends, family, and beyond. Thanks for being here. Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Mealtime, Magic and Mayhem. Today we're going to talk all about meal planning, and I know that might be making some of you cringe and all of a sudden it brings up these feelings of, ugh, that's so constricting, it takes too much time. I don't want to plan every meal. Well, that's exactly why we're going to talk about it.

We're going to tackle some common meal planning myths that may be holding you back from enjoying, I don't know, a stress free and organized approach to mealtime. I really want to help you bust these myths and talk about some simple meal planning strategies and really what meal planning is and what meal planning isn't. There's so many preconceived notions, so many emotions tied to the idea of meal planning. So we're going to address those and then I'm going to talk to you a little bit about my meal planning process and how I get it done in just 15 minutes a week. And you're going to hear some things throughout about how in my programs. I can help you tackle some of these if you find that you need some additional help in mastering the Mealtime mayhem, if you will. So let's get started. So myth number one is that meal planning takes way too much time.

That's the first one that we're going to abuse is this idea that meal planning is super time consuming and that it just seems really overwhelming. And yeah, that's true. It really can seem overwhelming at first. But if you invest just a little bit of time up front, it can actually save you time throughout the week. Not only time, but stress, energy, all of those things can really, really help kind of crush timelines, to be honest with you. So planning your meals ahead of time also really allows you to streamline your grocery shopping, which saves you some money it reduces decision fatigue and really minimizes those last minute panic moments about meal preparation. You get to the end of the day, you're off work and you're like, shit, I don't have anything planned for tonight. I don't know what we're eating.

Let's just order takeout. Now, don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with takeout. I love takeout, and there's a time and a place for it. But I also know that it's super easy to get in the habit of eating out more than eating in. Not something just because you want to, but it's just too hard to think about how to start doing it any other way. And that's where I come in. So in my programs, we work together to figure out what that meal planning process, what that time needs to look like for you.

And that's really specific to your schedule, your family, your lifestyle. And the truth is, there's no one size fits all. And I think that's where so many of these preconceived notions come into play about meal planning is it brings on these visions and these thoughts of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Sunday through Saturday. Here's what I'm having. And it feels very restrictive, right? It feels very constrained, and it feels like a lot of work and a lot of thought. So I want to help you break that down. But in my programs, we really help you nail that down and figure out what works for you in only 15 minutes a week. That's the goal.

So, myth number one busted. It takes too much time. I really think what we prioritize, what we spend our time on, is all about how we set our priorities. So I want to challenge you to make starting small in your meal planning a priority and just set aside 15 minutes a week. Let's start there, and let's see what we can get done in that 15 minutes. It doesn't require you to set aside 30 minutes or an hour, and it doesn't have to take a lot of time. We can make it very, very simple. All right, myth two.

Another myth is that it really restricts spontaneity and really stifles your creativity. If you're someone who loves to cook, you may get all excited at the idea of going in the kitchen and just whipping something up, and that's great. You can still totally do that with a plan. And so, in reality, meal planning really just provides a framework. I mean, a plan is just that. It's a plan. Whether that plan is to cook one night a week or five nights a week, it's a plan. It's just about being aware of your schedule and again, what's going to work best for your personality and your lifestyle.

So again, it really just provides a framework. It really, in some ways, gives you more freedom to explore new recipes and ingredients. You can still leave room for flexibility and leave room for improvisation. One of my favorite ways to do that is through designated theme nights. Now, I don't mean fancy themes. You can totally do a Meatless Monday and a Taco Tuesday and a Wacky Wednesday. You can try all of those themed nights, see if it works for you. I personally have not found that they work for me.

What I find works for me is I have a couple of themed nights a week and here's how they go. I have a theme night each week called Fend Night, which means fend for yourself, every man for himself. You're on your own writing that in knowing that you've got a really busy evening one night of the week that is still creating a plan. We have another one we call Encore nights, and that's a night where we get all the leftovers out of the fridge and it's kind of like a leftover smorgasbord whether we want to repurpose them into something else or eat them as is. It's another way to get through, waste less, get through what you have around the house. And guess what? It's still a plan. Making a plan is not about you cooking seven nights a week or limiting yourself in any way. When I make a meal plan, I make a list of here are the three recipes or four recipes I'm going to cook this week.

That's my plan. I don't assign a certain day to those foods unless I know that I've allowed myself like a certain night works best. But the truth is I like to have options. I like to walk in the kitchen and look at that list of options and think to myself, what really sounds good to me tonight. Now, if you're into human design, and I am, I love the woo and I love to bring the woo into everything I do and every part of who I am. And human design is one of those. And not to go off on a tangent, but if you're familiar with human design, I'm a manifesting generator and we respond well to yes or no questions. And so I love to see a list where I can go down it and say, does that sound good to me today? No, it does not.

Yes, it does. That's how I lean in. That's how I make my decisions. So that may work for you. You might try that, but really think about if your personality is more blueprint, maybe you're better knowing exactly what you're going to cook every night of the week. If you like to be a little more spontaneous, maybe you could just have a list. Maybe you have a list and you know that on Tuesday nights you want to go on date night with your spouse. That is part of your plan.

Still leaves room for spontaneity and creativity. If you love to cook but it's too overwhelming to play with new recipes and experiments during the week, then save the weekends for that experimenting with different cuisines or cooking techniques or new recipes that you haven't tried. Leave your tried and trues during the week and then experiment on the weekends. You really can make this fit for every personality, every unique family. All right, let's talk about myth number three, and that is meal planning requires complicated recipes. Yes, some people believe that meal planning means preparing complex and time consuming recipes every single day. And if there's anything, I don't think I hear anything more than I just need a list of quick and easy recipes. But the truth is, meal planning can be as simple or you can make it as elaborate as you want.

But where your focus needs to be is finding a balance that works for you and your schedule, your family, your tastes, your dietary restrictions. It's really about knowing and discovering what works for you and then creating this collection of recipes that you know you can trust and go to at any given moment. That's one of my biggest pieces of advice. We have so many options now with food bloggers and websites and Pinterest and TikToks and Instagram and cookbooks and websites, and there's just so much out there, so much noise, that it can become really overwhelming looking for the right recipe and knowing how to find exactly what you're looking for. And so I really recommend finding just a few trusted sources that you can go to day in and day out, because most of them are always adding new recipes. Choose recipes that are really easy to prepare. Maybe you focus on five ingredient recipes or 15 minutes recipes, or one of my favorites is Fedandfit.com. And she has a slew of recipes and a really amazing index on her website for you to search by cooking technique, time, ingredient, so many different things, and even some low carb or gluten free.

She has a ton of different ways to filter on her website, but you really can easily get to a small selection. And that's one of the websites I recommend. But again, choose recipes that are easy to prepare, use common ingredients, and even if it works for you, it can be batch, cooked, or ahead of time so that you're saving yourself time throughout the week and then really for repurposing leftovers. There are so many ways to make it simple. And while it may sound overwhelming with all the options I just threw out at you, it's really just to show you that there are ways to make it simple. It does not require complicated recipes. Meal planning does not require you to be in your kitchen for hours on end on a daily basis. So I recommend picking one source of recipes to start with per week to avoid that google and Pinterest rabbit hole of searching.

Now. I love Google, I love pinterest, and I have more pinterest boards of recipes than I can count. But here's the truth. There's a time and a place to get lost in that rabbit hole. And that's when you want to play. You want to look for something new. When you sit down to meal plan is not the time to go down that rabbit hole. So here's what I challenge you to do when you create your next meal plan is pick one source of recipes for the week.

Maybe it's one blog or it's one website or one cookbook. Maybe it's just even one article that focuses on five ingredient recipes to start, because then you've got five ingredient recipes which are likely not going to take more than 30 minutes. And if you're only going to cook two or three nights a week, then you can pick two or three recipes out of the list. That's probably going to be like 25, and you have a great starting point. And then you've got another 20 recipes to choose from the next few weeks, right? So I hope you can visualize what I'm talking about and how this simplifies things. If you decide you need some help with this and you're still finding all of this to be too much, you're not really sure where to start. In my Conquer the Meal Ten Chaos program, I work with you to create a really curated collection of about 30 recipes that you can use to mix and match for many weeks and months to come in your meal plan and give you access to a drag and drop meal planning software that is super easy to use. You can drag and drop into the meal plan, and then it creates your grocery list.

But I find often what gets in the way is just knowing what to cook and deciding what to cook from an overwhelming plethora of options. So let's narrow the options down and let's start there. All right, myth number four meal planning is only for families or large groups. And Trish, I'm only cooking for one, or it's really hard to cook for two. And yes, it can be. But it can also be a common misconception. Meal planning is not only beneficial for families and large groups, it's a really great tool for individuals and couples as well, because it helps you stay organized. It helps you avoid food waste.

And I am not a health coach nutritionist. You guys have heard me say I love carbs and cocktails. But it can also be a great way to help you maintain a balance and healthy diet. Even if you're cooking for one, meal planning can save you time, money, and unnecessary stress. So maybe you plan to prep a couple of recipes ahead of time and eat them throughout the week. But if you get tired of eating the same thing over and over, maybe you cook a recipe that feeds four and you freeze half of it. Another option is to use a meal planning software like Plantoeat.com. And what that one allows you to do is pull in your favorite recipes from the you can import the URL, and then you can say, yes, this recipe is meant to serve four, but I only want to serve two.

It will cut the recipe in half for you before it generates your grocery list. So you can take all those recipes that you love that are meant to feed larger families and really scale it back without having to do the math yourself. That's one of the things I really recommend for smaller families, couples and singles is to really do something like that, because if you like to cook and you just don't want all the food waste or eat the same thing every day, that's one simple solution. All right, we've got one more meal planning myth before we dive into the process. I use weekly for meal planning. Now, I said there's no one size fits all, and we'll come back to this, and there's not. I do believe that the process can be one size fits all, but that doesn't mean that the meal plan is going to be the same or come out the same for every person or family. Meal planning myth number five meal planning is boring and monotonous.

This one's one of my favorites because I love to read. I mean, I can read cookbooks like a normal book. I don't ever find looking at food and recipes to be boring, but I know a lot of people do. And if cooking is really not your thing, you might even be thinking like, this is the last thing in the world that I want to do, and I just don't want to spend a lot of time on it. I'm bored with the same old recipes. I think that meal planning leads to repetitive and boring meals. I don't want the same things on rotation every week. That's okay.

You don't have to. Actually. Meal planning opens up a world of possibilities and flavors because you can incorporate variety by exploring many different cuisines, seasonal ingredients. If you want some ideas there, go listen to episode five of the Mealtime Magic and Mayhem podcast, where I talk about summer produce. You can really lean into those seasonal ingredients and new cooking techniques. This is where you can take your standbys and you can really experiment with different herbs, spices, sauces to add depth and flavor to your meals. With a little creativity, you can make it exciting. You can make it enjoyable.

You can make it maybe an adventure that you share with your kids and ask them what flavors they want to add. Worst case scenario, you end up with a meal that you don't like ordering takeout anyway, which is probably what you were going to do before you made the meal plan, right? Approach it with a sense of fun and discovery, and I think you'll find the energy around it will feel completely different. So with a little creativity, you can take your meal planning to be really adventurous you can swap out ingredients for what's in season. Switch out seasonings. One of my favorite examples is taking something like a stir fry. And when we think of stir fry with chicken and vegetables, we automatically think Asian and maybe a hoisin sauce or a stir fry sauce. But I want you to think about taking something simple like your favorite stir fry recipe. And I want you to think about mixing in something like Taco seasoning or Greek seasoning.

The preparation can be the same. All you're changing out is maybe the type of oil that you're using, the sauce and or the seasonings, everything else and the method can stay the same so it doesn't have to be boring or monotonous. And I really feel like those tried and true rotation recipes can often be a great place to start to really amp up your creativity and prove to yourself that it can be fun and that you can trust your own intuition. In the kitchen. There really is an element of that and then tasting as you're cooking to know what you need to add. All of that can become a fun part of the process if you lean into it with the right energy. So yes, it does take a little time on the front end to figure out what works for you and I recognize that 100%. But I encourage you to start small and then just build on it.

If you've ever read the book Atomic Habits, it's really one of my favorites. But it's not about trying to go from not meal planning to meal planning seven days a week, three meals a day. Atomic Habits and Building Habits is really about making one small change, taking action, making one small change, and adding a small habit to a habit you already have in place. So I encourage you to pick one thing, one thing you're already good at in the kitchen and tack on one small thing you're going to do differently. Start small, build on it. From there. I recommend starting with spending a little bit of time identifying the blogs, the websites, the cookbooks that you trust and that you've had good results with. Because the truth is, not all recipes are created equal.

I shared a recipe in my Facebook group the other day and I was so excited about it because everybody's been talking about fluffer nutters in my Facebook group and it's the tired to inspired cooking Facebook group if you're curious. We were talking about fluffer nutters and I found a recipe for a fluffer nutter pie and I was so excited to share it with the group because there'd been all this conversation and so I shared it and one of the members of my community decided to cook it last week. Decided to make it last week. And at the end she turned around and discovered that she still had a block of cream cheese sitting on the counter and so she posted in the group and said, hey, does anybody else see where it said to use cream cheese? And sure enough, the ingredient list had cream cheese in the ingredient list, but nowhere in the recipe did it mention where to incorporate it. I tell you this story to remind you that not all recipes are created equal. And this was a cookbook, you guys, that I found. I found a cookbook. And so it had to go through writers, editors, publishers, and it still got missed.

So find the sources that you know, like and trust like with any other purchase or decision that we make, and then take a little time to curate your own arsenal of ten to 15 recipes. Or maybe it's just a list of your top five blogs. If you need some ideas on where to start, you can find my top five in the show notes and I'll just quickly list them off for you. My five favorite go to places for easy weeknight recipes, and that's really where most of my jam is. I save all my experimentation for the weekends, but my top five places are Cooking Lightfedandfit.com Halfbaked Harvest, which is halfbakedharvest.com, or you can find it on Instagram and also the blog Pinch of Yum. You can never go wrong. She has this amazing summer salad, this like, Asian crunch salad that just looks fabulous and healthy and just full of the rainbow colors that make me so happy. And then the fifth one is Spruce Eats.

Spruce Eats does a fabulous job of numerous recipes, cocktails, I mean, they do a fantastic job of pulling together some really interesting recipes that are really quite simple to pull off in your own kitchen. So those are my five meal planning myths, right? So we've really flipped the script on meal planning takes too much time. We've talked about some time saving ideas and how you can get it down to 15 minutes. We've busted the idea that meal planning limits spontaneity and creativity and really framed it up to show you where it can create spontaneity and encourage creativity just by providing a framework to work within. Some of us just need guardrails. We've proven that recipes don't have to be complicated. In your meal plan, you can focus on five ingredient recipes. You can even focus on including some convenience foods in your meal plan.

Not everything in a meal plan has to be cooked from scratch or even cooked reminder. Your meal plan can include easy recipes, convenience frozen foods. It can include a leftovers night. Your meal plan is anything you want it to be. We also talked about ways that meal planning can work for not only families, but also for couples and singles. And we talked about how meal planning doesn't have to be boring and monotonous and how you can use it to mix up and switch out and really encourage creativity with flavors and ingredients that you already have and that you already use on a regular basis. So I hope you've seen a little bit of a light bulb here and I hope I've changed your mind a little bit on what meal planning is and what it isn't and what it can be. So now I want to take you through the five steps that I use every week to get my meal plan ready in 15 minutes a week.

Now, y'all, I have this down between meal planning and grocery shopping. I have this down to 30 minutes a week every Sunday. Super easy, super simple. And here it goes. So I want you to grab a pen and paper and take some notes. Step number one is to review your calendar. I really want you to think about keeping this realistic and we're going back to that. Creating and building small habits one at a time.

We want to keep it realistic. Again, we don't want to go from not meal planning to trying to plan to cook seven nights a week, three meals a day. I don't think it's realistic for most families. And quite honestly, when you start from that perspective, it's kind of like starting a diet, right? And you're going to drink more water and you're going to eat healthy and you're going to do, and you're going to exercise every day and this mentality that I'm going to do it all, I'm going to go from doing nothing to doing it all tomorrow and be consistent just sets us up for failure. So review your calendar, look at it. What do you have going on each night? How many meals are you realistically planning to cook? Now, I even like to take that a step further sometimes and say these are the nights I'm going to cook from scratch and these are the nights when it's going to be total chaos and I just need my husband to be able to throw in a stover's, frozen lasagna in the oven. It's still cooking, y'all, it's still part of your meal plan. So be realistic about what you can accomplish each night of the week and just pencil that in, what does that look like for you? And then think about, is that really where I want to start? Do I want to start with cooking three nights this week or do I just want to start with one? There's no wrong answer.

Step number two is really take a peek at what you have on hand in the house. And I'm not talking about a full fledged inventory, I'm talking about noting the key categories. So what proteins do you have in the fridge or in the freezer? I know a lot of us have a tendency sometimes to accidentally buy duplicate, duplicates of things because we didn't realize we already had it. So we throw it in the freezer or throw it in the pantry. I'm guilty. So take a quick peek at what you have on hand when it comes to the main proteins, the veggies, the starches, because quite often you have the bones of a meal already there. And you can save money by really leaning into these ingredients to pick what you're going to cook for the week, rather than starting from scratch and creating a new menu every week, which I have gotten in the habit. Of doing before and wasted so much food and then felt so frustrated that I felt like a failure all over again.

And I just kept restarting this vicious cycle. Step three is to pick the resource you're going to use for the week. We all have a collection of pinned recipes, cookbooks, Internet, BOOKMARKS, saved reels, TikToks. Pick one place to start and only one. Listen to me on this one and trust me for this first time out, pick one. Maybe it's one pinterest board. Maybe it's an article about sheet pan meals. Maybe it is a collection of five ingredient recipes like we talked about before.

Pick one resource to start for this week, only one. Now, step four, I want you to think about how much time you have to cook on the nights that you want to cook. And this might sound like a no brainer, but the truth is I've done it more times than I can count, and I've seen numerous other people do it more times than I can count. Where you picked a recipe that looks really good, you picked it based on the picture, right? And you looked at the ingredients and thought, that's awesome. I'm going to cook that tomorrow night. Tomorrow night comes, right? Okay. So you get off work, you go in the kitchen, you get out all the ingredients. You start cooking.

You're all excited, and you look down, you realize you have 30 minutes till you have to have the kids somewhere, maybe an hour. And the recipe takes an hour and a half. And all of a sudden, you're like, crap, I can't even cook this. I don't have time. I've already started. I've been chopping things. I've wasted food. And guess what? You're right back in that vicious cycle.

So I want to help you get out of that cycle. I want you to look over the recipes when you pick them, and I want you to think about, do I have look for that total, that prep time and total cook time in that recipe. And just take a couple of seconds to think about how much time you have to cook. If you have a 30 minutes window, make sure you're picking a 15 to 30 minutes recipe. Now, I find that most successful recipes are in that 20 to 30 minutes window. And so I try to leave myself 45 minutes for prepping, cooking, sitting down, and any of the craziness that gets in the way in between. Now, that's my methodology of what works for me. You have to figure out what works for you.

Bottom line is, think about how. Much time you have to cook and pick your recipes from your one resource based on that. Don't just make the decision based on the picture of good looking food unless you have all the time in the world. All right, number five, pick the recipes you're going to cook and fill in the rest of the week with some of those frozen convenience foods, like a frozen lasagna or I forget what that bird's eye or Green Giant thing is. Or like they're freezer they're meals in a bag in the freezer that you can throw in the microwave or in a skillet. They're great to have around in a pinch. For the nights that go haywire, do I want to eat them every night of the week? No, I do not. But do they work for me when life gets crazy? Would I rather have that and a steamable bag of vegetables than spend the money on takeout on food that isn't going to nourish my body? Would I rather have the time with my family that one night of the week.

Those are your decisions to make. None of them are right or wrong, but I want to encourage you to really think about what would make your life easier to have around. If eating more together as a family is a priority that you're ready to set now, again, that doesn't mean every night of the week we don't eat together every night of the week. We probably all sit down together a couple of nights a week. But if you're not doing it all now, what if you just started with one night a week? All right, so I'm going to give you one bonus tip, because I still find a lot of people that don't take advantage of this service. And to me, it is the ultimate time saver and money saver, and that is, once I've picked my recipes, I go straight into grocery shopping mode. And whether you use Instacart, Walmart, pickup and Delivery, I don't care what it is like. Embrace pickup and delivery.

They really do a great job 95% of the time of getting it right. And it will save you so much time. It will save you stress of going to the store and shopping with children. It will save you money because you're not doing all the impulse purchases of either shopping with kids or walking around the store hungry. So there it is, my friends. That's my simple step by step plan process for meal planning. And I do it once a week in 15 minutes, 30 minutes total with the grocery shopping. I know you can do this, too, and I know that you can make it simple and discover exactly what works for you.

Why is this so important? Because when you figure out what works for you and you simplify this process, the truth is you can shift all and this is where my woo, a little bit of my woo, comes in. But we all know that energy is energy and it's contagious, whether it's positive or negative. And you can't destroy or create energy. We can only amplify what's there and spread it. So when you get rid of all of these things, the time constraints around, the frustration around what's for dinner, save yourself the time by having kind of a framework, by having these simple processes in place. The truth is, it helps you shift that energy and create time and space. To shift that energy from I have to feed these people, to I get to connect, I have the opportunity to connect with my people and the intention behind creating these processes and approaching your cooking from that standpoint, I promise you, is life changing. Life changing for you, the relationships that you have and the communication at your table.

I can't wait to hear what parts of the meal planning process were AHA's for you to help you shift your energy and really think about what energy are you bringing to the food that you're cooking and to the table that you're eating at? Does it need to change? It may not, but if it does, are you ready to take action and make that change so that you can really change the dynamic and experience and strengthen the connections you have with your loved ones, your friends, your family, your children? I've seen the power of what it can do and I'm really on this earth to help people create deeper connections. And I really, really believe that we can do that one meal at a time, but only if we're able to show up as our best selves. So let's keep busting these meal planning myths once and for all. It doesn't have to be overwhelming, time consuming, stressful, restrictive, or boring. It can really be a powerful tool to simplify your life, save you time, money, spark your own creativity in the kitchen, as well as create a spark of energy that creates more connection with your family and friends. So take the first step by setting aside some dedicated time each week to start your meal planning process, create that shopping list and prepare some basic ingredients in advance. You'll soon discover the joy and convenience of having delicious meals at your fingertips and really sense of control that you're looking for over your mealtime experience. Join us again for more episodes of Mealtime Magic and Mayhem, where I'll continue to debunk myths, share practical tips, have really interesting interviews with interesting people to talk about all the good, bad and ugly about food, and hope to continue to inspire you to create magical moments around your table.

Thanks for listening. Remember to get all the links to my top five websites in the Show Notes. And again, if you're ready to take action and you need help changing your mealtime experience, you can contact me at the link in the Show Notes and I'll let you know all about the programs that I offer. Thanks again. Thanks so much for listening. And if you enjoyed this episode, please go hit that follow button. Subscribe. Leave us a review.

And if you're ready to change what mealtime looks like for you, breaking that cycle of chaos and having more fun in the kitchen, build some confidence and discover your love of cooking. Schedule your free dish with trish. Call at the link in the show notes. We'll chat a few minutes and you'll walk away with personalized strategy. Take your mealtime routine from tired to inspired. See you next time.