This week, Avram and Rachel take their love of systems and apply it to meal planning. As a couple that loved cooking together before they had a kid, things sure got turned upside-down after having him. So, a meal plan for the month helped the Gonzales’ recenter something that is extremely valuable to them—a family dinner. Learn how they did it on this week’s pod.

Show notes:

1:56 Intro to why meal planning, decision fatigue around cooking

5:10 How R&A started meal planning for an entire month

6:48 But what if I don’t want tacos on Tuesday?

8:02 How categories of meals helped us structure our month

10:08 What about breakfasts and lunches?

12:42 Rachel shares more ideas on how to make meal planning your own

16:44 Avram brings it all back to how they used this technique to help a client

Mentions & Resources

Martha Stewart One Pot Recipe Book

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

Below, you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!

Avram Gonzales: Hey friends. Welcome back to the Babies and Business Podcast. It’s Avram Gonzales here with Rachel Gonzales. You might also hear Zuna our French Bulldog snoring in the background. It’s a beautiful Friday here, batching a bunch of podcasts, and we wanted to talk to you today about A Month of Meal Planning in 30 Minutes.

This is like Rachel’s love language.

We had some serious problems here at the house for a while, and it’s like, as we know, building a business while raising a family is a constant juggle, especially with newborns, little ones that don’t have independence yet, sometimes your diet really takes a backseat.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. Well, and for me I have found that over my life I grew up with 10 siblings and I actually have a track record of consuming far less food than I probably should because I’ve always felt like I needed to save from some for others. So that’s kind of a side note, but I’ve found that to be true for myself. So I find that I have a big issue with decision fatigue. If I’m hungry, I just can’t make the decision on what to make. I don’t eat, we’re not cooking together. We were finding these to be real big reasons for doing this meal planning.

Avram Gonzales: And I gotta say, as somebody who’s not really that organized, like I can say that I can safely say that I’m not that organized. The idea of a meal plan firstly felt like too much of a box to live in.

Rachel Gonzales: Right?

Avram Gonzales: But then what occurred was the necessity for us to try to get out ahead of something that we were having to do all the time, which was like Rachel mentioned, what are we going to eat for dinner tonight?

Rachel Gonzales: Yes. Well, and it’s funny that you say that that was your weakness or is your weakness that planning feels like you’re boxing yourself in but you were the one historically planning the weeks menu.

Avram Gonzales: That’s true.

Rachel Gonzales: You would actually spur that forward, and I was kind of in the background. I actually spurred the, I mentioned, let’s plan a month and you looked at me with glazed eyes. You’re like, what?

Avram Gonzales: There’s no way planning a month. It sounds like this is gonna be the most horrible two hours of my life.

Rachel Gonzales: And that was the best way to spur me on cuz he is like, it can’t be done. I’m like yes it can. So I sat down and I took some time to get it done and I thought I came up with a brilliant way to just simply come along with what we’re already doing, but support it a little bit with variety, but also stability.

Avram Gonzales: Flexibility.

Rachel Gonzales: Yep.

Avram Gonzales: We would have grand plans in the past without too much actual plan. We’re gonna share with you what we did today. Also by the way, we’re gonna apply this to business at the end. We took this exact system that we made for meal planning and actually helped a client of ours blow out an entire year’s promotional calendar in like 15 minutes.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: Which is pretty wild. So lots of implications here for today’s episode. I just remember how much stuff we would throw in the garbage at the end of a couple weeks because we never got to the recipe.

Rachel Gonzales: Or something happened that week. There was a stressful thing. We had more meetings than anticipated or planned. Then we weren’t here eating together.

Avram Gonzales: We just realized that it wasn’t happening because we didn’t have any real idea or sense of what was gonna be cooked.

Rachel Gonzales: Right! Someone might have planned a meal, but the other person didn’t know about it. So if it was, if you planned it and I didn’t know about it, then when I went to cook something, I didn’t know that we had these things to cook. So that was sometimes the problem too.

Avram Gonzales: And before our son Lincoln was born, we used to cook together all the time. So this is like one of those things that is really important to us, but we just didn’t have a way of making it happen. And doing it consistently.

Rachel Gonzales: So the first, before we get into how we did it, it just, we felt an instant impact that first week.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah.

Rachel Gonzales: We were able to cook together. We felt great about the time that we were spending and what we were eating. And it wasn’t boring, but also Lincoln benefit. He loves eating everything that we eat.

Avram Gonzales: Whatever we eat, he wants to.

Rachel Gonzales: So he’s been very happy with the new changes in the menu.

Avram Gonzales: So Rachel suggested let’s do a month of it. In my mind I thought a week is enough. That is 21 meals, that seems like a lot already. We’d flirted with the idea of two weeks. Because you can go to the grocery store and get two weeks worth of stuff. It’s not all gonna go bad like it should be good.

Rachel Gonzales: Well, and my thought was we need to plan enough so that like we are gonna be talking in episodes as well, that we want to be ahead of things. If you’re behind on stuff, you’re never gonna be able to really make choices because you’re actually bound to—okay, well we don’t have anything tonight. You’re going to the store, or whatever that might be.

Avram Gonzales: Take a look at episode number 11 on batching. This was like that on steroids.

Rachel Gonzales: Right, exactly. So what happened? We’ll get into how we did it, but it was really neat planning out this whole month. It allowed us to take one week and build up a shopping list for that week and not have anything go bad because it would be used within that week. And then we would prep for the next week in this week. So that coming up, we had that prepped.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. When we came up for the next shopping list, we didn’t have to figure out what the menu was.

Rachel Gonzales: Exactly. We didn’t have to do that step first, right. It was like we batched it. We batched what we were going to eat in the month, and then we were able to create that shopping list, spur of moment, and then go out.

So if we were going to chiro or we were, we had an appointment, we could get stuff on the way back and it wasn’t a special trip.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, man. That’s the whole topic. No special trips. So let’s talk a little bit about how we did it. There’s a couple things I think that are important about how we planned a whole month of meals in 30 minutes.

One of them has to do with flexibility.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: Because what if you don’t want to eat what you say you’re gonna eat on Tuesday night?

Well, the beauty of what we did is we didn’t actually plan per day. We planned with categories and we planned for flexibility because I am not a person, oh God. I mean, if you’re cooking, great, you can tell me what I’m gonna eat every day. But if I’m going to be cooking I might push back. So the beauty of what we did is keeping flexibility in mind and how we actually function because having a little baby, flexibility is king. We’ve got to be able to be flexible. What I did is I took the reins with this and I just went bam. I created categories, so we have, so there are seven days in a week. I wanted to make sure that we had four things that were just simply staples, things that we really enjoy. We are willing to eat on a regular basis, don’t get tired of, but we can also just filter them through. So the staples, we always keep the ingredients on hand for those staples.

So that is already given. No thought about it.

Avram Gonzales: Those are also recipes that we don’t have to look up the recipe to do it.

Rachel Gonzales: Right. We don’t actually have a recipe for them. We, we have the recipe that we know, we like the ingredients that go into it. Take zero thought. No prep in our minds.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. That’s one category.

Rachel Gonzales: So very quick. Yep. So that’s one category that takes up four days in the week. Then we have other categories like maybe we wanna try something new. We’ll try something new. Maybe twice a month, and then something favorite twice a month. So we’re not overanalyzing this. We love soups.

So soup is a category, right? So we categorize things and then I have recipes, like recipes that we like new recipes. I have different ways. So the way we categorized. On the schedule or on the plan. I also have notes that support that category system. So if I have soups, I have recipes that fall in there.

If I have our favorites, that’s a favorite main dish. We are not planning breakfasts and lunches. We are just planning dinner because that was our pain point. Yeah, good point. And that’s where we come together as a family. So categories made the creation of this very, very simple.

Avram Gonzales: We would basically have the same breakfast for an entire week.

Rachel Gonzales: Yep.

Avram Gonzales: And we would have more or less the same lunch for an entire week. The other thing that we realized after doing this the first time is—this is like the third month running this now. The other thing we realized is how many leftovers we have as a family of two plus one. So what would happen is we would make some of our favorites, and we would have leftovers the next day. Well, what do you think we had for lunch?

Rachel Gonzales: Right? So it made things easy. So we also talked about being flexible and staples. So the things that we do for breakfast, those are the category of staples. We keep in mind that we need to prepare for breakfast and lunches. And so we have those groceries shopped for, but we don’t need to plan for them because we already know what we’re eating for breakfast. We might have two options. For lunch, we might have two options. It might be a sandwich and soup or something like that, but whatever it is, it’s something that works for us and we don’t need to change what’s not broken?

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, we don’t, you’re right though. Breakfast and lunch have been so easy, we don’t have to think about them ever.

Rachel Gonzales: Correct.

Avram Gonzales: And then lunch dinner is the big event.

Rachel Gonzales: Right! And then it’s more thought comes into place normally if we don’t have stuff in the refrigerator. So lunch becomes an issue if you don’t have the groceries that you need to provide for that or breakfast.

So keeping on top of it. So what this has done also is making sure that we have those staples for lunch and dinners and breakfasts already in the refrigerator or the pantry and we don’t have to think about it. And it can just be super simple to put together.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, it’s crazy. So if you saw our whiteboard in the kitchen, essentially what it looks like for each week is there’s two to three quote major items that are dinners. And then that’s it. That’s what week one is. That’s, that’s the plan that goes into it because we also know we’re gonna fill the breakfast and the lunch with all these staples, and there will be leftovers. . And it’s just, week one is done.

Rachel Gonzales: Right. And then it really scratches the itch of, oh, I don’t want to eat the same thing over and over and over.

Well, if you plan in some new things or favorite things, then you don’t get that fatigue. And everybody’s still really engaged with food and that’s really important. We really meet around food.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, we do. Is there anything else you would add about this? I mean, I just wanna stress how simple it’s been and stress free. Once you have the categories and you have you can put it on note cards, you kind of file it electronically. There’s a bunch of apps that you can use, like whisk and things. There is, once you have the recipes and things that you want, the only thing that you’re really making a decision about, is what is the new thing you’re gonna add?

Some of the stuff that is just kind of important as you’re looking at it for me is, are there recipes that require prep? Like we have a recipe this week that requires pinto beans. I don’t want to get canned pinto beans. I actually want to do those in the instant pot. So that takes prior thinking. Also, we have a recipe that takes chicken that is coming from the freezer, so we need to remember to thaw those things. So it’s simple stuff like that. But it’s also like when you’re thinking of batching something and prepping, it depends on how much prep help you need in your family. Maybe you need to go so far as to cook the meat for the week.

Avram Gonzales: Sure.

Rachel Gonzales: So that you, maybe for the week, you are going to use ground beef, and you need to just cook all of the ground beef and have it in the freezer, ready, already cooked. Because oftentimes, meat is the thing that takes the longest to cook.

So some prep like that so you can really make this your own. Knowing what your family loves, what works for you, what you need to plan for, and how much prep you need. How much time do you have? Do you like to cook? We do.

Avram Gonzales: We do.

Rachel Gonzales: Do you just want simplicity? That may mean more prep for you.

Avram Gonzales: Sure. I think those are some great considerations.

Yeah. And who’s gonna be really the one that pushes this forward, like whose responsibility is it? I think establishing that has also been great. Rachel likes to do this. I helped her with the system and now she just, runs it and then I support it.

Rachel Gonzales: It could also be just in general, in the day-to-day, who’s gonna cook. That doesn’t need to be assigned. It’s more the visibility of your plan. So we have a little whiteboard that sticks to our refrigerator and we just keep our meal plans there for the week. But I had it there for the month. You can choose how it works for you. But visibility like, okay, these are the things that are going to happen. These are the staples. Just a reminder of this, we have all the things for something we love is taco salad. Then the person that is hungry or can make dinner or whatever it is, can step in and make those things that we have already, everything for work.

Avram Gonzales: Great tip on visibility. If you can’t see it and the rest of the family can’t see it, good luck executing the plan.

Rachel Gonzales: Right? Well, and it’s always kind of been a joke for me and my family different partners that I’ve had, is how do you hide something from your husband? Put it behind the vegetables. So Avram is the exception.

Avram Gonzales: I resent this comment.

Rachel Gonzales: But when I just think of it like my dad would open the refrigerator and he didn’t see anything to eat because it’s all elements of something that needs to be made. So if we have that visibility on the refrigerator, Avram, you’re really good at

Avram Gonzales: I like to cook. I have no problem when I know what I’m doing. And then what to look for and bring together. It’s easy.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. So you’re the one that will go in and on the recipe or on the menu that we have that’s visible for the family.

I have it marked. We have this favorite cookbook that we use and I have it marked. The which recipe book it is? Actually, because we use this so exclusively.

Avram Gonzales: Let’s tell you that it’s the Martha Stewart one pot recipe book. It’s amazing. Like everything in there, maybe two recipes we’ve tried. We didn’t love the recipe. Just fantastic.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, it’s helped us to get better at cooking and then we’re like, oh, let’s change it this way, but we will put the page number on there and that makes it so that other people can participate instead of having to, it reduces the friction of people participating. So you don’t have to tell them what it is. They don’t have to look at the book or the index. They know the page. They can go right to it. They can see what’s there, and they can determine what they’re gonna make. Because it’s gonna happen sometime this week.

Avram Gonzales: Mm-hmm. Well, I can’t believe we’ve been talking about this for like 15 minutes already.

Do want to wrap up with how this relates to the business? Cause I think it’s kind of neat that we made this process and then it became so obvious we could apply this to a client campaign. So I’ll make this really quick and brief. We took the idea of categories into this client’s yearly promotional plan.

What they were struggling with was every single month trying to cope with what is the promotion for the month, but I helped them.

Rachel Gonzales: But also, wouldn’t you agree that each year it’s kind of the same?

Avram Gonzales: That’s what I was gonna say next. I was gonna say, it doesn’t really change that much from year to year.

The stuff that you do in spring is the same stuff that your customers need. Same things in fall, same things in winter, it doesn’t really change. It’s like, why don’t we create the schedule that you can reuse again next year? That’s a brilliant idea, Avram. Thank you. This is what I get paid to do.

So what we did though is we attacked it by the seasons, and I just asked them, what are things people are calling you about during this time of year? What’s happening in March, April, May? And they just started telling me about it. What I realized pretty quickly is that some of the things that were happening in spring also happened in fall.

Guess what? We didn’t have to do? We didn’t have to have two different promotions. April versus September. It was the same promotion April and September.

Rachel Gonzales: That’s awesome.

Avram Gonzales: Okay. So we just looked at it in terms of categories and figured out what are the problems that their customers are facing during those times.

And I said, so when you get to that point, if it’s this particular problem versus this one, it’s still the same theme, just follow the exact same theme, plug in whatever it is for that month. Now you don’t have to really think about it.

Rachel Gonzales: Right. I wanted to add something too. A lot of people just overthink stuff.

They’re it’s like, okay, so what’s the code that should go along with this? And really, it is so simple. It’s just like it’s categories. Just keep it simple. You do not have to overthink anything. Meal planning, marketing, planning. Simplicity is really where it’s at.

Avram Gonzales: Your friend. Simplicity is your friend.

That’s it for today’s episode. We’ve really enjoyed sharing with you our meal planning tips. Hey, if you’ve got others, we’d certainly love to hear them. I’m sure others that are listening to the podcast would like to hear them as well. Love your feedback. Connect with us on social media @BabiesandBizPod.

That’s Instagram, Facebook, that’s, shoot, I think we even have a TikTok account now.

Rachel Gonzales: We do.

Avram Gonzales: We would just, man, love to connect with you there and we’ll catch you on the next one.

Rachel Gonzales: Bye for now.