tips | Fork In The Road

Like all other changes, meal planning can be derailed, so here are a few tips to stay on track:

When you do your planning, make sure to schedule in the times you plan to actually do the prep and cooking (not necessarily at the same time). Then if things go awry, make a note of why it happened to help you in future planning. For instance, I now know that my weekly energy is limited. The times I strayed from my meal plan were times I planned to make meals from scratch later in the week. So now I prep and make the first few dinners of the week on a weekend, and prep the later weekday meals as if I was buying them from one of those ready-made meal services. Then I just have to throw the pre-measured ingredients together to cook while I do my other after work chores.
Whenever possible, batch cook. If you are going to the trouble of creating a recipe, it’s just as easy to double it. Then you can decide if you’d rather eat it twice in a row or freeze the pre-portioned second meal. Rotate the frozen meals into later weekly meal plans, but also remember they are there for “emergency” days- when you just don’t have the time or energy to make anything else at all. This one is a great way to save you from the dreaded pizza run on the way home from work.
Speaking of pizza runs, make sure you cook and plan a few “junky” meals, even meals based on pre-packaged foods. At least once a month I make a pizza or beyond burger or Gardein chick’n meal. I sometimes buy frozen vegan pizzas on sale to keep in my freezer, rather than going to the trouble of making my own crust. It feels more like a pizza shop pizza when I add extra (fresh) toppings on it.
Send your own signals to yourself. My sister doesn’t follow strict plans, and she keeps very busy, so she used to forget to cook before she got “hangry” and wanted to eat immediately. Now when she knows she has a busy day and a plan for dinner, she will set out some of her recipe ingredients on the counter. Then as she walks by she gets a visual reminder of her plan, and she will remember to start dinner well before she wants to eat. You could do a similar thing with alarm reminders on your phone or watch.
Plan to cook and freeze meals with like-minded people (fellow vegans/keto/omnivores, etc). You can create a cooking club, where you rotate through each others’ kitchens for a batch cooking session of several recipes. Or, you could do something like a meal co-op, where each member creates one recipe (at their own home) with enough servings for everyone in the co-op. Then they package it with instructions and give it to each of the other members. For instance, if there are seven members in the co-op, you could prep your meal for one night in a week, and for the rest of the week, you are off the hook as you eat the meals provided by the other six members.