 I'm Chef Robin. Welcome to Hands in the Kitchen Workshop. Today we're going to be talking about menu planning. Menu planning is an idea that's challenging to some people and pointless to other people. They know what they want to eat. They feel like they don't need to write it down on paper, but we're going to take a few minutes to make menu planning not so challenging, a little bit more simple to address, and also why it's not pointless. Why it actually does have some reason behind it. So first we're going to discuss why menu plan, then we're going to discuss the components of a healthy plate so that when you plan out your menu you're actually getting all the nutrition and healthy food on that plate that you're planning on, and then we're going to get started, grab a pencil, some sticky notes, and go to it. So here we go. Why would you make a meal plan? And a meal plan being taking that meal of the day that's most important to you, and actually figuring out what the components are and doing it for Monday through Sunday, or as many days as you feel like you can do. Why would you go ahead and want to spend your time doing that? And the first reason of course what is near and dear to us next to food is the dollar, and we like to save our food dollars. We don't want to go to the grocery store and just splurge unnecessarily on the pretty packaged item because that's what strikes our fancy. We actually want to have a plan as to what we're going to need to have in our kitchen for that week in order to execute those meals that we decided on being healthy and nutrition, nutritional, sorry, for us, and have all the things that we need to put them together. So if you go to the grocery store with that detailed critical list, you're not going to be over buying and then wasting food. You're also not going to be making more trips to the grocery store because you forgot to get something that you needed. Possibly you are going to the grocery store one day a week with a caretaker or a youngster or in a van with other people. You want to go and get what you need and come home with what you need so that you actually can make those healthy meals through the week. You also get to take control. When you make a meal plan, even if you're going by the dash diet, even if you're taking into consideration doctor's advice, you can take control of what you're going to eat day to day as well as taking control of your food dollar. You can take control of how much time you're going to be spending in the kitchen, whether it's a totally raw meal, whether everything goes in the oven, but it's up to you. So you can choose healthier foods if you feel like you've not been eating quite as healthy. When you see them down on paper and you see that you have potato chips five times a week, maybe not so healthy. You might want to trade that out. Or you can put your favorite foods in along with healthy foods and you can try a brand new food or a brand new cooking technique that you haven't done before. Obviously at our age we have cooked thousands of meals and we think maybe everything is done and we are over it, but if you allow yourself a little bit of a challenge then the grocery store is full of products that possibly you've never brought home before. It's full of things that just need a little attention to them in a different way and you could find a brand new favorite food that you never were aware of. The next reason that kind of ties in with the first is that if you make a meal plan, it allows you to repurpose food. So you can set up your prep time and your menu that if you're making food for one meal translates easily and creatively into another meal. Therefore you're repurposing food in a creative way and not wasting it. And the last one is reducing the waste. No one wants to see food being thrown away. No one wants to buy food and just throw away those food dollars. So if you have an idea of how you're going to be using that food when you bring it home even before you bring it home more than likely you're going to be able to cut down on the waste that occurs in your kitchen because you're going to be using it for that healthy meal that you plan and also repurposing it for another meal that you plan. So let's get into the basics and remember what a healthy plate is formed of so that when we do make our meal plan our plates are exciting and nutritional and have all the components that we need to make it healthy for us to enjoy. Looking at our plate we all remember the food pyramid from when we were in grade school. It's changed a little bit now whereas the American Cancer Association, the American Heart Association, the National Institutes of Health all those powers that be that do a lot more scientific study than us now recommend that half of our plate a generous half of our plate be fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables colorful fruits and vegetables half of our plate. Then a small quarter is going to be our protein serving. Our protein serving is four ounces for people our age four ounces translates to the palm of my hand or a fist you're going what small amount of protein and that's true. Our bodies really only need at that meals sitting four ounces of protein so if you buy a pound of fish that can translate into three meals with that as its protein even though that pound of fish may seem exorbitantly expensive at the front if you're getting three proteins for three meals out of that fish it's really an inexpensive buy. So your protein is four ounces a small quarter of your plate another small quarter of your plate you would want to as often as you can to be a carbohydrate in the form of a whole grain. Most of the grains we eat have been refined and refining grains into bread and pastas does take away from their nutritional value and the fiber content that we get when we eat a whole grain. So whole grains are in the form of brown rice millet, teff, ferro, quinoa, white rice goes on and on and on. There's lots of varieties of whole grains and a kitchen tip is the night before you have a whole grain on your menu if you pour boiling water over it let it sit overnight on your counter your cook time is dramatically decreased. So it's very easy to incorporate whole grains into your diet you just need to know how to go about doing it. So that was our healthy plate hopefully you guys remember half of your healthy plate a bountiful selection of fruits and vegetables a quarter small quarter whole grains small quarter that four ounce serving of protein and then a little bit of fats and oils all right let's get started how to make your weekly meal plan the very first thing you need to do is to consider your weekly schedule maybe you do the same thing every single day with no change whatsoever so that you have the same amount of time every day you could do dinner from one to four o'clock if you wanted to prepping for three hours having a lovely dinner but most people's lives are not like that most people's lives are filled up with other things coming and goings so if I look at a calendar and I realized that Sunday I'm going to be a church Wednesday or Sunday I'm going to be a church Monday I'm having company Thursday I have a doctor's appointment Saturday I'm going to the farmers market all of those things are going to influence the amount of time and the amount of energy I have to do my meal plan for that night so you really want to give it some thought if the going to the doctor makes you a very anxious and stressed person I would prepare a very simple meal or maybe that's my takeout night to get dinner so keep that in mind your weekly schedule is going to influence what you might want to have for dinner that evening then create some theme meals and that may sound really goofy to you but more than likely you are already doing that and I did some two suggestions for each day of the week and I just want to really quickly go through Sunday like we said maybe if you go to church maybe Sunday is your soup and salad meal for dinner or maybe it's your stir fry day Monday maybe that's the day is a meatless day for you or you make Mexican make Mexican food on that Monday Tuesday could be your talk takeout day or taco day uh Wednesday hump of the week maybe you are rather tired from whatever's been going on at the beginning of the week maybe Wednesday is when you just have a slam and sandwich for dinner or a burger uh Thursday you could have breakfast for dinner or Italian night Friday a lot of people religiously have fish on Friday or maybe Friday is that day you clean out your freezer and your freezer becomes the basis of your meal plan for that Friday night on Saturday maybe you just put something in the slow cooker walk away and let that be your evening meal or you make it a quick and easy sheet pan meal where your proteins and your vegetables go on a sheet pan go into the oven and then you're just responsible for the grain and the fruit of that meal so take into consideration what you're doing that day of take into consideration the day of the week and if you have a theme for that day the theme just kind of actually narrows down your ideas for dinner it kind of gives you a framework to work within so that you're not always going oh god what's for dinner so you kind of have some kind of fun orientation to kind of guide you through that meal planning start simple okay if you are already being advised by your doctor to cut back or to increase on something let that be a guide for you as well maybe you're following the dash diet which makes meal plans maybe you're following the keto diet which makes meal plans get the help from outside sources that you can rely on and use that as the basis for some of your day's meals also you don't have to do three meals a day for 30 days you don't have to sit down and do an entire month of meal planning you can center in on that one meal that you eat that is your solid go-to meal for the day for a week and see how it works out for you see if it was beneficial for you to take the time see if it was interesting for you to try and work within a meal plan start simple don't overwhelm yourself with having to come up with 90 different dishes for a month so just start simple and go with that one meal for your week also grocery flyers are great as far as kind of giving you some guidance for your meal plan I am a sucker for two for ones I am a sucker for buy one get one free I like religiously read these thumb through these circle these take them with me cup coupons and actually rely on grocery flyers quite a bit to make my grocery trip economical and also to build my meals around so grocery flyers are helpful again respect the prep time that you need to put together that meal plan that you've made if you love being in the kitchen then for sure start a meal from nuts to soup to salad to entree to dessert go for it and just experience loving being in the kitchen and making a lot of fun food and repurposing a lot of that but if you don't if you find cooking a chore if you find preparing food a chore then be respectful of that and incorporate some prepackaged food or pre-made meals that you can rely on that are healthy and nutritional but that still provides you with a nice meal to enjoy when you're putting together your meal plan you also want to consider variety like I was saying before there's so many products out there in the grocery store in the farmers market that we just need to jump out of our little regular boxes and take a big challenging culinary leap and check it out um sometimes they're presented in the flyers or also almost all grocery stores now are doing a publication that if you buy 20 dollars worth of groceries and who goes into a grocery store and doesn't spend 20 dollars but they have these publications that are using products in the store in a creative way that you can leap through in this one they all they even have some two-for-one dinners that you can make that translate into one solid meal that can be repurposed into another solid meal so use those uh this is one that was centered on pizza I don't do a lot of pizza but this has a great overnight focaccia recipe so it focaccia is a really really easy standard uh or standard mixer you can make it in a standard mixer if you like if you don't need to need the dough by yourself and it rests overnight the next day you pull it out you press it out on a sheet tray put it in the oven and you can freeze some of it you can use some of it as a base for toppings uh or croutons on salads very versatile and those publications were free except for the $20 bill from the grocery store but they are in every grocery store and you can make use of them and they're very helpful to kind of get your creative juices going so um after we've looked through our flyers and our cookbooks or thinking seasonally thinking how much we want to be in the kitchen thinking of all of those things that we have taken into consideration before we make a meal plan then we want to make a very precise list when we go to the grocery store but we also want to shop at home first okay so we want to see what's at home this is a very short list of some things in my cupboard and pantry but because I am aware that they are there and I know that they need to be used I can incorporate them with foodstuffs that I get from the grocery store can so that I have all of those components of the healthy plate that we wanted so really make use of what you have at home and then mostly your grocery store purchases should be from those perimeter walls of the grocery store the produce the fruits and vegetables the meat products or eggs and cheese and dairy um so when we went to the grocery store all of these items that are on here were on sale the pasta gorilla pasta four boxes for five dollars really good price uh cherry tomatoes were two dollars for a little container pretty good price the chicken thighs were on sale the cod was on sale everything that I have on this side coming from the grocery store I made sure was on sale and was in season and therefore in on sale um so very available product uh when you make your meal plan you don't really want to necessarily be thinking outside of the box too much in terms of I'm not going to be serving a venison steak this week because no one is hunting for deer in this season I'm not necessarily going to be serving a lot of um citrus this week I do have orange slices but citrus is generally more prolific and more on sale in the winter and fall times of the year and right now right now we have the great fresh greens corn on the cob berries are everywhere so we really want to make use of that stuff that's in season excuse me and have it be colorful and exciting on our plate and nutritious for us to use we're going to stand back out of the way and I have put together some items for a meal plan for this week we're going to talk about them a little bit and then when we look critically at them how we can translate them into lunches or dinners so on our stir fry day chicken thighs were on sale I usually buy chicken thighs because they're more flavorful than the regular chicken breast uh these were boneless and skinless which is great for you guys not having to deal with bones or skin if you buy a package of six I would cook them all at the same time and then you have that cooked chicken product to use for the rest of the week either in a salad or we're going to throw some in tacos or into a soup so I'm doing some stir fry veggies another time saver it's a little bit pricier but they grocery stores now are offering vegetables that are already shredded for you uh in this uh grocery store flyer um green giant had broccoli and cauliflower for sale in bags that was already cut and washed for you um so it was very easy to go ahead and just add a little stir fry oil to marinate and make stir fry vegetables if the vegetables are already prepped and then brown rice Saturday night I put hot water over my rice so it's going to cook really quickly and then I'm going to have some grace so texturally I have things that give me some resistance to my teeth and our fun I have juicy stuff I have my grain um and I have a lot of color and I have a lot of nutrition if you don't do chicken you might want to consider doing tofu or tempeh or even a poached egg so some kind of protein could be added to that meal you could do a fried egg and put it on top of your vegetables or rice or you could add beans to your rice and have your protein that way uh we're going to take some of our rice and on Monday make a veggie bootable there's a posted sorry this is a poster about a bootable building a brainier bootable bootables have proteins in them with all different varieties you can add a creamy nature to your bootable a crunchiness to your bootable and then a lot of greens and vegetables to your bootable so start with a grain from the day before we cook enough so that we can transfer some over I'm going to roast some chickpeas in the oven which is just taking canned chickpeas rinsing them off under cold water tossing them with a little oil and spice putting them into the oven to kind of dehydrate them and give them a little crunch and while they're in the oven I'm also going to throw in some sweet potatoes and at the very end in the last 10 minutes of cooking the sweet potato salt I'm going to throw some shredded kale so it wilts it and we can have in our bootable some brown rice nice some roasted chickpeas that gives us our protein some nice curried sweet potatoes some shredded kale and then avocado which is a nice fat component on top and then some really refreshing applesauce for our fruit so of these items the rice was already made for you you're just the chickpeas are coming from a can just need a little bit of attention really all you're doing is tearing some kale tossing it in the oven cutting a few potatoes tossing it in the oven cutting an avocado and maybe getting some applesauce from a product that you respect so that's a pretty easy meal so if you have a hard monday if monday is a hard day for you starting your week you might want to look at something easy to put together on Tuesday we're going to take out tacos or we're going to make tacos I'm going to use some corn tortillas that I bought from the store I'm going to have some shredded chicken from the chicken thighs I'm going to use shredded product from the store and put together a carrot apple and cabbage salad so I have a soft tortilla I have some soft chicken a little crunchy salad cheese which is shredded you can buy shredded cheese you can also buy cheese in a block and grate it yourself in my lovely little grocery fire can of cheese was two for four dollars great deal I buy it I put it in the freezer and I just pull it out when I need it and I'm going to use packaged salsa so two items that I don't have to necessarily prepare myself and then for dessert I'm just going to have sliced blueberries with I mean I'm going to have sliced peaches with blueberries if you feel like you're not getting enough protein here if you didn't save enough chicken for your tortillas you could add beans to your corn tortillas or rice and you could also add a little yogurt to your peach and blueberries so let's talk about Wednesday Wednesday we don't have any tradeovers from what we've made before we're starting fresh but we're going to use some ground beef that we got brought home from the store or veggie burger that we brought home from the store a whole wheat bun as our grain some corn on the cob because that's in season a little ketchup and then a little claw salad if you did not actually put the salad on top of your burger so a pretty easy meal I'm going to enjoy some grapes with that as our a very light meal for this hot heavy season and easy to put together when we go to our Thursday attack in evening we're going to take some of our ground beef that we had from when we made our burger and we're going to incorporate that into a pre-made marinara sauce a store-bought marinara sauce that you like just be careful of the salt and sugar content in that marinara but you can purchase that product and not have to worry with making it you can use some whole wheat spaghetti remember the barilla pasta was on sale so I bought some spaghetti um if you don't do ground beef you can add white bean to that spaghetti and kale and that's a traditional Italian dish um you can also have broccoli on the side for some nice green and textural greenness uh vegetable and then peaches and blueberries again for dessert so this is actually a really attractive plate you have your spaghetti you maybe have a little ground beef you have your redness of your marinara bright green of your kale and broccoli and then your dessert so that's really a lovely meal um fish friday cod was on sale so I bought a little cod cod is a very flaky non-threatening white fish uh we're just going to boil it with a little bit of lemon and capers with that we're going to take quinoa which is a protein the complete protein and we're going to take some of our carrot and cabbage salad and fold it into the quinoa so we have a nice crunch quinoa some people feel like it's a little too small and uninteresting uh it can really accept all kinds of different flavors but if you feel like it's very bland to you you can add things to it so we're going to take some of our carriage cabbage apple salad fold it into our quinoa have it with our fish have some nice bright broccoli on the side and then orange slices if this is too much acid for you the lemon and the orange you could trade out your fruit for more grapes or maybe more apple sauce you do want something in this meal to be a little bit resistant the fish is going to be soft this is going to be kind of soft because those vegetables from Tuesday will have softened a bit especially if you've added the dressing to them broccoli depending on how much you need to cook it you might want something that gives a little resistance to your teeth so um but this is also a fairly easy meal and we're also making use of a salad that we made over here and broccoli is just a go-to vegetable you should have in the refrigerator all the time either broccoli raw or broccoli if you can't bring yourself to eat dark leafy greens broccoli is the next go-to Saturday we're going to make sheet pan tofu so we're just going to cube up tofu toss it in a little oil maybe in a little tamari throw it on a sheet pan we're going to throw carrots on there with it we're going to take some of our corn that we cooked on Wednesday to get off of the cob and toss it in with the carrots so it's a nice roasted richness to it and with the quinoa we're just going to shred the kale and fold it into the quinoa and add a little bit of a sesame dressing to it so it's very easy the quinoa and the kale and the dressing will help to kind of break the cell walls of that kale down so it's not so tough to eat so while your sheet pan tofu is in the oven and maybe you want to throw in like I said you want to throw your roasted carrots and corn in it as well you can start your quinoa salad with that kale and by the time you sit down to eat dinner that kale will be to a point where it's not tough to eat you definitely want to take the stems out and shred it or ribbon it before you add it into your quinoa but this quinoa is traveling over here it's just we made enough so that we can have it in a different way so when your meal plan don't be intimidated don't be kind of scared of actually putting stuff down on paper you can always scratch it out and put something else in you can always look at it and say oh that's way too much food it gives you an idea that's why it's a good thing to do because it gives you some sort of orientation to actually how much food you're eating or how much food you're not eating so it is important that we get all of those components of a healthy plate into at least our major meal of the day a lot of seniors are not eating three meals a day understandably because of economics and also because our metabolism is not going as fast we're not physically as active we're not as hungry so if you are down to one major meal a day with snacking on either side healthy snacking hopefully do make it and take the time to actually put consideration into what that meals want to be so i hope this helped you out a little bit and having some more tips to put a meal plan together don't be afraid to do it it's really fun it's really kind of interesting and it also can challenge you to change stuff up if you see that you're repeating the same things over and over and over take one day and make something different so anyway i'm chef robin i'll be seeing you in the kitchen thank you