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