Melanie Wilson (00:00)
Allison, thank you so much for joining me here on the Homeschool Sanity Show. I love talking about meal planning because I think it is such a key skill, task, whatever you want to call it for homeschool sanity. If you don't know what's for dinner, everything feels chaotic. At least it does for me. So I'm excited to have you tell us more about that. But before we dive into the topic,

I would love to have you tell us more about you and your family.

Allison (00:31)
Oh gosh, yes. I started out as a personal chef and dietician cooking in people's homes, but this was back before I was married or had kids. And as I was doing that, I realized, I'm gonna get to the family part, but when I was a personal chef...

I loved it, but I also realized that people were just lacking in the skills of like figuring out how to plan their meals, how to get themselves set up for success. So I was doing that one-on-one, but I realized I had this process and system that I could bring to more people. And so that's what I did with creating PrepDish and these meal plans. Now, fast forward, gosh, almost 15 years later, I'm now married with four kids. We're embarking on homeschooling next year with the older two.

And I have to use my meal plans or dinner just like flat out is like so chaotic. So it's really cool that I created something like my past self created something that my future self now really needs.

Melanie Wilson (01:34)
Well, that is wonderful. Now, if you don't mind me asking, what prompted you to choose homeschooling?

Allison (01:45)
Goodness, so it's always been something that we assumed we would do someday. My oldest is six and There was an amazing school that opened up nearby so that we sent them there But we've always wanted I guess we've always wanted to travel more and so that's why we've always known that at some point we would homeschool and There were a few things that came up. I was like, you know, I think I should do it now like this is the time to Find my footing figure out the curriculums figure out their learning style

and like let's do it all now when it feels lower risk for me than to wait a few more years. And you know, we'd already been doing a few things at home and it just felt like the right time. So, yeah.

Melanie Wilson (02:28)
All right, well

wonderful. Travel is definitely a wonderful ⁓ blessing of choosing a homeschool lifestyle. Even if it's not a lot of travel, I just know that our family loved being able to take family vacations at non-peak times. That was wonderful in terms of just saving money and the crowds.

Allison (02:57)
Yes, yes, my husband and I are both entrepreneurs, so having the flexibility, like we both have flexibility and we want to make sure our kids have that as well.

Melanie Wilson (03:06)
Excellent,

excellent. Okay, so I want to know because you were a dietitian and a chef, was meal planning something that just came easily for you? Was it just kind of like part of your DNA?

Allison (03:24)
You know, honestly, think I think yes It was but I will say once I had kids

I had a lot more empathy for those personal chef clients that I had and even you know the the clients at prepdish all of our subscribers and you know hearing I'm such a busy mom or this and that and like now I get it in a way that I didn't pre-kid I mean you know it's always important to meal plan and it can be difficult no matter what stage of life you are but I think those early years with kids running around it can just make it you get so much added to your plate all of a sudden and so it's really easy to kind of let it

but then like you said, if you don't have your meals planned, it's really hard for the rest of the week to go smoothly. And then if you keep that up, you're not eating, you're not nourishing your body with healthy food, so then it's kind of this like downward cycle of chaos.

Melanie Wilson (04:19)
Mm-hmm. Yes,

I mean, I found and I noticed in a lot of other moms I knew who weren't meal planning that it meant that there was a mad dash either to the grocery store at five o'clock or thereabouts or you were trying to decide which restaurant to go to, what kind of takeout to get. And it was so much more

expensive and time consuming as well as being not necessarily as healthy ⁓ if you had taken the time to meal plan. So if we have a listener right now and I bet we do who hasn't done much meal planning, where is the best place for them to start this very sanity saving habit?

Allison (05:15)
Yeah, well I say, and I don't mean to be redundant here, but the best way to start with meal planning is to start with having a plan, but that doesn't have to be extensive, right? Like just jotting down, here's what I'm going to have each night this week, that is where you start. Like, okay, Monday night, we're not gonna be here. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I need to figure out dinners. Write it down, then the grocery list, and then it kind of all falls into place. You can make it a little more, you know, add more or whatever, but the simplicity, simple plan.

place

to start is write it down, go into the week having a plan and that alone, that like one to two hours up front of coming up with that plan as you mentioned throughout the week it's gonna save you hours of time of scrambling and and just that feeling of being hectic and my goodness what are we gonna eat and let me throw some you know this frozen thing of hamburger in the sink and hope it defrosts in time. You know we've all been there but the more you can just have a plan up front you're gonna set yourself up for a much smoother week.

Melanie Wilson (06:15)
Yes.

So I am very curious to know your opinion on this. Do you think that beginning meal planners should plan all new recipes?

Allison (06:29)
my goodness, no. So definitely start with familiar. Keep it easy. It can be as simple as like, okay, like sometimes I'll just, some weeks, okay, a protein, a vegetable and a starch. Like let's have rice and green beans and chicken, you know? And then maybe add a sauce or maybe not that first week, depending on the week you have and the kids that you have and you know, that sort of thing. But know what works for you. yeah, simple is better a lot of times. And even, even when it comes to taste, my goodness, we have a recipe

Melanie Wilson (06:31)
Good.

Allison (06:59)
at PrepDish that's called Salt and Pepper Drumsticks. It's literally chicken drumsticks with salt and pepper and you put it in a hot oven so it gets crispy. It's delicious. My kids love it. Salt and pepper. two, you know, I guess three ingredients. Chicken, salt and pepper.

Melanie Wilson (07:15)
Yes, we can tend to make it more complicated. ⁓ I wrote an ebook many years ago about what happens when we try to plan all new recipes. Number one, we can be wasting time at the grocery store looking for ingredients that we've never purchased before, trying to find them or having to, know, God forbid run to.

another store, a specialty store to get those ingredients. And then we run out of time because making new recipes takes so much longer because you don't know what you're doing. You have to keep looking at it and figuring out, maybe there's a different cooking technique that you haven't used before. And then it just seems like for me, most of the time,

all those fresh ingredients that I bought to make these new recipes would just go bad in the fridge while I was making my old favorites.

Allison (08:18)
You know, that's funny. That's a promise that we have at Broke Dishes. We always say we promise we give you a grocery list and we're not gonna leave any lettuce like wilting in the back of the fridge. We make sure if we have like a bunch of basil, if you use half in one recipe, use the other half in another recipe. Because we just, I know it's so, it's so demotivating to buy all these groceries and have them go to waste. So we're really big on anything that's, you produce that's gonna wilt at the end of the week. We make sure.

Melanie Wilson (08:40)
Okay.

Allison (08:48)
you're using the entire thing. Even as simple as like, okay, you need half the bunch of celery while you're chopping it, chop the rest for snacks and use that as a snack so that it doesn't go to waste.

Melanie Wilson (08:58)
Right,

I love that. Okay, so when it comes to meal planning, I know the biggest challenge is for many families having family members who have special dietary needs. So ⁓ can you talk about what that looks like when it comes to meal planning?

Allison (09:21)
Yeah, well, first of all, think when it comes to special dietary needs, I mean, there can be a whole range, but I would say the first key is to focus on all of the food you still can eat. I find that there's a tendency, especially if it's like a new thing, like, ⁓ you need to remove ⁓ gluten or dairy or nuts, and it's like, ⁓ well, I need to find a gluten-free bread and a gluten-free pasta. I need to find a dairy-free cheese. And yes, there may be times when you need to do that just to still give yourself

something

that you're craving or enjoying, but there's so many foods that are naturally gluten-free, naturally dairy-free, and no one's gonna be like, this is a gluten-free recipe. No, it's just a really healthy whole foods recipe that happens to not have gluten naturally. So really focus on that first, and then over time, yeah, find a few subs that you can use, but yeah, focusing on all the foods that are still out there, not the one food you can't have.

Melanie Wilson (10:17)
is excellent advice. I love it. So good. I mean, just psychologically speaking, I think it's ⁓ very ⁓ motivating to focus on what you can eat, what you can prepare rather than what you can't. ⁓ excellent, excellent advice. Okay, so we have our meal plan and we've even made

Allison (10:36)
Mm-hmm.

Melanie Wilson (10:44)
a grocery list, the things that we need to purchase to handle our meal plan. Do you have any tips for busy families when it comes to actually grocery shopping?

Allison (10:58)
Yes, so a few things. One, if you're going into the store, make sure your list is organized by the order that the store is in. That might be different, but I know at my store, I first go through the produce. So produce is first on my list and then proteins. know then it's like the meat section. So I organize that list and that's something I was doing back as a personal chef. I was always organizing my list and different grocery stores were different, but I would do it that order. ⁓ Now, the next key is you don't have to go into a grocery store anymore. ⁓

of other options. So exploring options like curbside pickup, delivery, all of those different options can save a lot of time. You'll just want to compare and see, know, okay, what's the price difference and what fits into your budget. But my goodness, the convenience of just picking it up at the curbside or even better, having it delivered to your house is for me most weeks worth it.

Melanie Wilson (11:53)
Yes, I have to agree. I've done ⁓ both the pickup that was available to us first. So we did that and now I pay for delivery. And what I really love is when I'm in a pinch, I can have groceries delivered within a couple of hours. And the price is not what you would expect for that kind of service.

Allison (11:56)
Thank

Melanie Wilson (12:23)
And even to the point where when I'm having a very quick turnaround delivery, I have the shopper communicating with me in real time saying, okay, well, they don't have Honeycrisp apples. Would you take some pink ladies? ⁓ And so it's really wonderful. you have that service available to you, I really encourage you to take advantage of it. It is worth it.

Allison (12:38)
⁓

Melanie Wilson (12:52)
in my opinion.

Allison (12:52)
Thank you.

I agree.

Melanie Wilson (12:55)
Yes. Okay,

so that is something that can really save you time. Are there other cooking tasks? You know, as a personal chef, I'm sure you had to be batching some tasks. So what are some of those that families can use to save meal planning and meal prep time?

Allison (13:19)
Yeah, well so back when I was personal chef days I was I was visiting my clients once a week So I would see multiple clients versus like going for every meal So yes, I learned how to get based, you know get ready for the week and just one to three hours And so that's still what I'm doing and that is things like so chopping vegetables Just chop them all at the beginning of the week buy some pre-chopped that can save time, too And then you know mixing up marinades and salad dressings that sort of thing and the beauty of doing it up front being more

intentional like we were talking about earlier like having the plan is you can figure out ways to

save yourself even more time. So for example, I would make a balsamic marinade, use it with my salmon, and then also use it as my salad dressing a few days later. You know, make a pesto and put it on my flank steak, but then use it in like a quinoa dish a few days later. So you can kind of double it up. It doesn't take that much longer to make double of something. You can even freeze some of it. So for like a pesto or chimichurri, something like that, make it, double it, and then, you know, a month later you can just pull it out and you don't

even have to make a sauce that week on a week that you're really low on time. So the more you can kind of start thinking about these things upfront, being a little more intentional, setting yourself up, then when it comes to dinner time, it's just kind of like throwing together the pieces that you've already prepared.

Melanie Wilson (14:40)
Right. it's,

boy, if you get a head start on anything, but especially meal planning, just is so much easier to talk yourself into making a homemade meal.

Allison (14:46)
Mm-hmm.

⁓

you're not gonna order takeout. It's like, I already spent time, you know, dicing the onion and chopping the carrots. I don't wanna call it takeout. I wanna, you know, use my hard earned vegetables. And if you have the kids involved, they're gonna wanna eat the food too. That's what I've learned with mine is, you know, the other day we made a curry, sometimes, you know, I'm pretty adventurous eater. Sometimes they'll turn their nose up when there's a lot of new flavors. But because they helped with the chopping, they really wanted to try it. So it really helps to make it a family.

especially with homeschooling, you know, can get everyone involved. There's so many lessons to be learned in a kitchen.

Melanie Wilson (15:30)
Yes,

and I have also had the blessing of having kids who enjoy cooking and who now as adults when they come home they offer to cook for me and my answer is always yes.

Allison (15:45)
No, even my

six year old has started telling me he wants to cook all the meals now. So we've been picking and choosing, but you know, when they see you, you know, demonstrating it and you taking joy in it, they copy that. So that's, you know, they're just little emulators.

Melanie Wilson (15:51)
Aww, that's...

Yes,

that is just fantastic. It's really an added bonus of the homeschooling lifestyle. Okay, so I've heard you reference prep dish, but would you tell us more about what it is and how it benefits families?

Allison (16:23)
Yeah, so PrepDish is that system that I created back, you know, based on my years of cooking for families of.

putting together all of the resources that you need to get your meals on the table each week. It's creating a meal plan for you. So, kind like we talked about, know, spending an hour or two at the beginning of the week. Well, now that hour or two of like finding recipes, we have tried into recipes, we've put it together to where, again, like half the onion is used in one recipe, half in the other. I have a small team of people, these are the foods we're feeding our families, we're feeding our kids. ⁓ But what you're actually getting when you sign up

for PrepDish is access to meal plans that are a grocery list. ⁓ They also have links to pre-filled Instacart shopping lists. So you click one link, you're taken to the Instacart cart, and it's filled with all the groceries. So that takes shopping down from one hour to 30 minutes if you do it yourself, but if you just do the button, it's like five minutes. And then we have those meal prep instructions written out. So okay, if you want to spend a few hours batch cooking, this is awesome when you're

in

the middle of homeschooling because you can, you know, set aside, OK, on this day, this time, we're going to do all of the chopping and marinades and make just one big mess versus lots of messes throughout the week. So that's I really love the meal prep for homeschoolers. And that can be a great way to like get all of the kids in. And there's a lot of different tasks to take place. And then, you know, there's just a set of instructions of what to do at meal time. And again, you're not going to want to order takeouts. It's like, OK, I've already put in the work. I bought the groceries. I've chopped the

Melanie Wilson (17:40)
Thank you.

Allison (18:00)
I've mixed the sauces. Dinner's just quick and easy. It's enjoyable. You know, there's instructions there so you can kind of delegate amongst family members. But yeah, that's, and we have, talked food allergies earlier. There's different plans. One, ⁓ most of them are gluten-free. I'm personally gluten-free. ⁓ And then we have a low carb one. We have super fast. It's just family friendly. And then a paleo one that's like grain-free, gluten-free, dairy-free.

Melanie Wilson (18:30)
Wow, excellent, excellent. Well, you were telling me before we began our chat that you have a special offer for our listeners.

Allison (18:31)
Yeah.

Yes, so I have a two week free trial set up at prepdish.com slash sanity. That's the best way, just give it a try. I always say after listening to me talk about this, if nothing else, just try it for two weeks. Take some tips, you know, see how we do it. ⁓ And then that might even help you get on, you know, your own meal planning journey. So prepdish.com slash sanity. You can check out all the plans for two weeks and see how it works for your family.

Melanie Wilson (19:09)
That is a very generous offer. And I mean, I love that you're basically framing it as it's a great learning experience of nothing else. ⁓ You you can begin to ⁓ practice using the batching and, you know, using ingredients in multiple recipes, getting used to recipes that are.

suited to your family's dietary needs and preferences and getting the kids involved. Just a wonderful resource that you have put together. So we go to prepdish.com slash sanity. Are you also on social media anywhere that people could connect with you?

Allison (19:55)
Yes, at prepdish on Instagram. We do have a private Facebook group, but anyone's welcome to join. And then I have a podcast called Meal Prep Monday, where I talk a lot about kitchen hacks, getting things, but then also just time management. And I've had it for a few years, so I go on tangents as well. I'm sure you can understand.

Melanie Wilson (20:14)
Well, wonderful. do too.

I can, I can. Well, I will put all of those links in the show notes for this episode. Alison, this has really been fun for me. I have to be honest though and say that I wish you were still a private chef who lived in my neighborhood because I would probably hire you.

Allison (20:37)
Yes.

Melanie Wilson (20:42)
I would love to have you come and cook for me for a week. ⁓ But prep dish is the next best thing.

Allison (20:49)
I agree.

Melanie Wilson (20:51)
You probably wouldn't want to do it.

Allison (20:54)
I Yeah, I mean, there's weeks where I would love to. So I actually had chefs that worked for me for a while. And when we had, I think, two babies, I actually had one of the chefs come in and cook for us. I'm like, OK, I get it. I was like, this is nice. Oh, yes.

Melanie Wilson (21:08)
Yes, I bet you did.

What a gift. Well, thank

you so very much for sharing with us today.

Allison (21:17)
Thank you.