- [Chyna] And I'm loving it, I love meal planning.
- [Craig] You love meal planning?
- I love it, I love it so much.
- [Craig] Why?
- Because, like...
(upbeat music)
- We've talked about this many times before.
I feel like it's one of those things,
you're like, "Oh I should start working out,
I should start eating better,
I should start meal planning."
- [Both] I should start working out
I should start eating better,
I should start meal planning.
- Yeah, like that.
- Historically, we have put off deciding
what we're gonna have for dinner until
we're hungry for dinner.
You've been working, I've been taking care of the kid
and then we'll just order out or go out to eat.
We just need to plan more, is the thing.
Great. - Great.
- Let's do it. - Let's do it.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
(upbeat music)
- [Craig] I narrowed it down to five benefits
we thought we would get from meal planning.
One, less stress.
Sounds nice to not have to think about
what the food's gonna be.
Must be getting old.
- It's amazing how having a kid
will make you crave stability and routine.
- And tied to reducing stress is number two, saving time.
- We do end up going to the grocery store almost every day.
My ultimate goal is to not have to sacrifice
my free time during Ada's naps and I don't want to
have to spend that hour and a half chopping vegetables.
- Wouldn't it be beautiful?
This challenge is mainly for you.
But you having more free time is nice for me too.
- Yeah.
- Three, saving money.
You can buy in bulk which saves money.
You can buy things when they're on sale
ahead of time and if it's something
like meat you can freeze it.
Not going out to eat all the time will probably
save you money depending on where you eat and drink
and what you eat and drink.
Four, less waste.
- We'll go to the grocery store and, I'm gonna
grab some broccoli and some brussels sprouts,
'cause later in the week I'll cook that with something.
But then later in the week comes and the things that we
want to make don't involve those ingredients
and they end up going bad and we end up throwing them away.
- Plus when you don't have the problem
of if you go to Subway and they wrap your sandwich
in the thing and they put it in a bag and then
they put eight napkins in there, and straws,
and throw away the little box that the meat was in,
and the gloves that they were wearing
to prepare your sandwich and
I'm gonna want a bag of chips and
a bag with a cookie in it.
And five, less not good meals.
Of course, eating at home
you're in control of the food you're eating
so you can make it healthier.
- I get bored much easier than you do.
You are fine eating the same stuff all the time.
I would love to have 30 recipes to pick from each week.
- I like that idea.
- I like it too, I'm very smart.
- You're very smart.
- There are some obstacles along the way.
- I'm a little nervous.
You're going out of town for a week this month.
Solo parenting and prepping all the meals,
that'll be kinda the true test.
- Alright, let's get to it, let's meal plan,
in a day or two.
- Yeah.
- [Craig] So is the plan a different recipe every night?
- We will repeat recipes but week to week.
- [Chyna] Chipotle tahini.
- [Craig] Tahini.
- [Chyna] So what do you think
you're hungry for in three days?
- Sandwich.
- No.
- Oh, feeling a soup.
- Tuesday soup.
- Soup-y Tuesday.
♪ Goodbye soup-y Tuesday. ♪
That's what we'll say on Wednesday.
- We have Tacos, Taco Tuesday?
- Actually, yes.
- [Chyna] We've never made this before,
but we're about to but how about
I use some chicken that we have in the freezer?
It's here.
- We just don't use it because we never plan ahead.
But now, we can use the things we have, beautiful.
- Use the things we have.
- Doopy doopy doo.
- Neerpy neerpy nuu.
- And scene.
- And we've had this jar of tahini
in our fridge for a little while.
It's not that old.
- [Chyna] Right to the recipe
in my meal planning list, boom.
At the grocery store, there were things that I would
have just impulse bought before, but I didn't
because I knew what we were having for dinner every night.
- This did save us money today.
And Ada's eating the pulp.
- Eat the sweet lemon pulp.
Dada's gonna eat some pulp.
- You want me to eat some?
- [Ada] Oopsie.
- [Chyna] Oopsie whompsie.
- [Ada] Oopsie.
- I'm C and D and now please allow me to
dinner-ject with a brief message.
Lettuce thank today's spons-sear
Blinkist.
- While concurrently figuring out the
number of food puns that can be cooked up or where.
Here's the prob-plum, you seed,
I love reading but I often doughnut have thyme.
To date, I've bean corn-cerning my shelf with
self-im-prune-mint videos
as well as a grape deal of knowledge baste
res-urchin for up-cumin videos.
Here's the salt-lution, Blinkist.
They take the key-lime ideas from
best-selling non-fiction and
it's boiled down by experts into text and audio.
Peach section is called a Blink.
At the endive the day be-fork getting in the covers
and laying down in bread, I can read a comp-leek
section of Blinks in just fifteen min-nuts.
Pizza cake or when I inevita-brie
wake up in griddle of the night
and listen to one lentil I turnover back to my slum-burger.
Or do that whi-chive done mos-toffee-n,
listen while on a soup-er long run or wok.
Here's a brunch of titles I've read
and I'm gonna stop doing puns right now
while I talk about these 'cause I just, okay.
- [Craig] This was a good one about different
people's morning routines.
Salt.
It's just a really interesting history of salt
and how it effects everything in the world.
I read this one about cats for
"Why Do People Like Cats" video.
I plan to read this one about Chernobyl because
I'm doing a video about nuclear power in a month or two.
- The first one hundred people to go to
Blinkist.com/wheezywaiter, link in the des-crepe-tion,
will get un-lemon-ited access to Blinkist's over
3000 titles for a week.
And 25% off a full membership.
That's a free seven day trial so beet sure to click
the sausage link down be-loaf of bread.
Okay buns over, back to day one.
- [Chyna] You ready for it to make a loud sound?
- [Ada] Yeah. - Okay.
(blender whirring)
(tapping)
- It's spicy but it's good.
- Is this what you call Kim Waah?
- [Craig] Kim Waah?
- Meal planning's the best.
- It's delicious.
It is.
- [Craig] But you said it like it was a commercial.
- I was playing my character.
- [Craig] Oh, mom, say it's terrible.
- I'm not gonna say that.
- [Craig] Taco Tuesday.
Look at that.
- [Ada] Look at that.
- [Craig] Look at that.
- [Ada] Look at that.
- [Craig] Can you say Taco Tuesday?
- [Ada] No, no.
- [Craig] Okay, yeah.
- Meal planning is the best.
- [Craig] Lentil soup.
How was the cooking experience?
- [Chyna] It was fine, it's not super involved or anything
but it is a pretty decent amount of chopping and stuff
and I kinda wish that I had done some of that
while she was asleep.
- [Chyna] Last night we were supposed to make
salmon and broccoli.
- [Craig] Yeah.
- And we didn't.
We also had a lot of leftovers from earlier in the week
so we just ate those instead.
- [Craig] What're we having now?
Are we having plastic dough rolls?
- [Chyna] Yup, pizza night.
Homemade pizza dough.
I reread the recipe just a second ago.
It has to sit for another hour or two.
- [Craig] But we're having pizza anyway, homemade.
- We're cooking them at home.
- [Craig] Ada's making her own pizza crust.
Homemade peanut butter.
Something we were inspired to do after our zero waste video.
- [Chyna] Quinoa bowls, roasted sweet potato,
roasted broccoli, kale that was left over
and a spicy peanut sauce.
♪ Jowline ♪
Lovin' it, I love meal planning.
- [Craig] You love meal planning?
- I love it, I love it so much.
Because I know what we're going to be having
I can do little things earlier in the week.
Even if that little thing is just going to the grocery store
and having all the ingredients already here.
- [Craig] I don't really want to eat cat, though.
- Okay, you don't have to eat that day.
Probably more than any other challenge that we've done,
I think that this one might have the most
lasting impact for me.
I wanna divorce you and marry meal planning.
The heart wants what it wants.
- [Craig] Attempting again, homemade pizza.
- Cautiously optimistic that we will actually
get to eat dinner tonight.
- [Craig] What do you call this pizza?
- Ready to eat-za.
It's really good.
- Then another week of great meals happened
and it was going really well.
And then...
- Craig just left on his work trip to New York
and I was hoping to really
have it together by this week
so that my life is less stressful
while I'm solo parenting.
But actually, while Craig is out of town,
update renovation remodel of his office space and bathroom.
So tonight for dinner my mother-in-law blessedly
made some soup and brought it over,
so that I could do all of this.
Okay so my meal plan, we had pizza,
or rather, I had pizza,
nobody else was here.
This room, it was kind of a yellow before.
This closet, I painted it black,
I think it looks awesome.
Saved this bookcase.
Fixed the top and I painted it black.
Craig's bathroom is painted.
New light fixtures.
And I'm just getting really excited for him
to come home and see his new office.
Day 19, 20?
And we had dinner, Chain restaurant.
But we all ate broccoli so it's okay, right?
I am almost done with Craig's office.
Got a new desk, plants.
Got these cabinets built.
This thing over the toilet.
- What?
What?
Wow, the bathroom looks different.
And, oh my God.
This whole place is, this is like a home show.
New desk?
Holy crap.
Shelf.
Closet.
There's so much.
Will be presented to WheezyWaiter for passing one million.
Although that one will probably be bigger,
so, we'll have to put it somewhere else.
- [Chyna] Oh.
- So now it's been several, we're like, it's been several.
- It's been a little.
- A couple weeks since the end of the meal planning month.
- Yes.
- First of all, this office is amazing.
You're an amazing wife for putting
this whole thing together.
It's beautiful.
You have a great design sense.
I love you.
- Is that it?
- But the meal planning stopped after a couple weeks.
- Yeah, I had a lot going on.
- Here's the thing,
I boiled it down to why I think planning stuff is hard.
One, you actually have to sit down and do it.
- Yeah that's a problem.
- Not planning causes stress in your life 'cause
you have to worry about doing things in the moment.
But planning is also stressful.
It's just taking all that stress and putting it
at one time and writing it down.
- Makes it seem like a real big task.
- Yes.
- In my mind.
Number two, for me it feels like it eliminates freedom.
There's time allocated for everything and
you know exactly what to expect and not being spontaneous.
- You know someone texts and
"Hey we're gonna be in town, do you wanna go get dinner?"
Well, I have a pot roast that's thawed out,
that I gotta cook sometime.
- There's probably a balance you can find, though,
you can probably. - I'm sure.
- Plan for free days to do whatever
but it does eliminate a little bit of that spontaneity.
- Spontaneity.
Three, you actually have to follow through with it
and if you don't you feel miserable.
- Yeah, that's the thing that I don't like.
- And fourth's kinda tied with that.
(coughing)
- That wasn't very, that wasn't planned.
I did not plan for you to cough right now.
- I was being spontaneous.
- That's, see that's the problem.
- Yeah.
- And four, life happens.
Put together the office and then you felt bad
about not doing the planning, probably.
- I did a little bit.
- For if there was no plan, you wouldn't have felt bad.
- Right, I might have, yeah, no yeah.
(chuckling)
- So, meal planning, just kidding.
But...
- But, day eight.
Let me show you, lemme show you.
- Loving it, I love meal planning.
- [Craig] You love meal planning?
- I love it, I love it so much.
Probably more than any other challenge that we've done,
I think that this one might have
the most lasting impact for me.
- [Chyna] I wanna divorce you.
Yeah.
- Do you think it will?
- I think it probably will if I can do it long enough
so that that is the new habit.
I planned out the rest of this week's meals.
- That's true but what do you like about it?
Why did you like it so much?
- Knowing exactly what I'm gonna make,
having all the things here in the fridge,
is very nice because then
there's not that barrier to being able to make dinner.
I want to make bla-di-bla but I need an onion, a banana,
- But is... - for my onion banana soup.
- We need to work on what we're planning.
So is the suckery of sitting down and
having to do the plan worth all of that?
- Yeah, probably.
- So, final verdict on meal planning?
- Two gigantic thumbs up.
- And will we keep doing it?
- I want to.
- So I think we should have a plan and try to do it often.
But when we don't do it no big deal.
- I like that, I do really love it.
And I do remember the first two weeks,
a stark difference in the way that I felt
going in to the second half of each day.
- Well, let's plan more then.
- I'll plan to plan.
- Let's set up a meeting to figure out
the meeting we should set up to have a meeting to plan.
- Okay.
- Meals.
- I'll have my people plan to call your people.
- I have them call my people's people.
- They'll schedule a time.
- Yeah.
- To have your people call my people,
- In the meantime, we will watch TV.
- I love it.
And order pizza.
- Yeah, that's about it I guess.
- I guess so.
- Thanks for watching the video.
- Hey, thanks for watching.
- I already shot the other end screen part.
Let's cut to that.
- Click on this.
- No, no, I already shot that.
- Click on this one. - No, no wait.
- And this too.
- We're gonna cut to just me doing it later, right now.
And I guess we're just gonna keep trying.
And if you'd like to keep trying to watch my videos,
you can subscribe, there's a subscribe button.
And hit the bell.
And if you want them to keep happening you can
support me on Patreon where I do a week-daily vlog.
Video, every single weekday.
Previous video, Chyna and I asked and answered
each other questions.
It was adorable.
And here's a list of all the challenges we've done.
You have a lot of watching to do.
Maybe plan out what you're going to eat while you do it
or grab a Cinnabon or don't.
You do you.