Episode three point fifty four, Meal Planning for people who hate to cook.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live a life here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Welcome to Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jell, and today we are doing another meal planning episode specifically for people who hate cooking, and maybe even for people who hate planning. We'll see when we dive in. But this is really for my people. It's for me and my people.
This is the episode I needed. Approximately one decade ago. I was always asking people why do you do? How do you feed yourself? And how do you feed yourself? For years on years it just felt so cumbersome. And hopefully this will be the the breath of fresh air or the cold glass of water that we all need as.
We start every day. One of the biggest meal planning mistakes that many people make is making a meal plan that's unrealistic for your level of love for cooking and maybe even your level of like aptitude for it. So we'll cover both of those so that you can create a meal plan that's on your level of time and interest in cooking.
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All right, let's talk about meal planning. It is one aspect of the MELA to save money. On groceries. When people ask us how do you save so much money? We know, we say the big three housing, transportation, food. The biggest part of your food is your groceries, and so meal planning, meal prepping, and cooking. Those are the big three to saving money on groceries, So reducing that food waste by cooking, actually following through with your meal plan.
So today we are focusing on that one thing, meal planning, specifically for people who don't like to cook. And if you don't like to plan, don't change the channel. I don't know if this is on a channel, but don't change it. Don't listen to another podcast. We're going to talk about if you don't like to plan, kind of how you can modify and figure it out. So if you don't like planning, prepping, or cooking, you might have to you might have to explore ways to not enjoy it but just tolerate it.
So there's something if you can't go. Yeah, unless you also hate eating, but that's not going to be sustainable.
Yeah, if you hate eating, then definitely look at another you can maybe look at the New York Times. They released an article about skipping breakfast if you need to save money on groceries. Maybe that might be for you, but if you love eating, this first article is from health Shots and it talks about the six benefits of meal planning and hopefully this will help you create a little more love from it. What do you think of this article, Jill.
It's good, short and sweet. I think it's helpful for us to be reminded again of why should we even meal plan in the first place. So that's what this first one is going through, just top six reasons why this is good, followed by we'll get into another article on okay, exactly how can we do this for those of us who are short on time? But I think this outlines really well, and the first one is that
meal planning can save time, money, and effort. Really the ability to sit down, even if it's just for a short amount of time and write out or type out if you're digital or a little bit more analog, whatever your style is, thinking through the ingredients that you already have on hand and what you want to be eating in the upcoming week, and even taking into consideration what your week is going to look like. Chances are you're not going to be home every single night of the week.
And so having time to put into put some thought into it will ultimately save you money, save you money, time and effort throughout the week, and reducing the amount of time it takes each day then to make decisions, maybe gather ingredients, possibly need to stop at the grocery store and buy more things. So when we have a
plan and there's forethought that can go into something. Again, doesn't mean it has to be extended and sev or completely outside of the type of schedule that you typically hold, but at least some amount of time to meal plan is definitely going to save you time in the long run.
Yeah, I love to do it in bed before I conk out for the night. Instead of scrolling on Instagram, I will be meal planning and or grocery shopping because I grocery shop online Walmart dot com. They've got good prices, no upcharge for pickup, and it's just convenient for me. But a lot of a lot of times, even if there is an up charge for pickup, it can still be worth it if you're saving so much money on impulse purchases. So I would say try it for a
month and see if you save money on groceries. Grocery shopping online. That's just like a bonus tip. But I save a lot of time by replacing a habit that I would normally be doing anyway, which is the nightly scroll before bed, I will replace it with meal planning.
And sometimes when I'm on my scroll throughout the week, I'm saving recipes, Like I'm looking at recipes on Instagram, specifically from certain blogs and accounts that prioritize like a one pop meal, a freezer meal, six ingredients or less. So like there are a lot of blogs that specialize in stuff just like that. So if you hate cooking, then that's kind of what you're gonna want to veer towards. So not just like a even budget like friendly recipes,
so I love budget bites. They will usually have recipes with a shorter ingredients liss that's what we're looking for, And we're not scrolling the New York Times Cooking section or Food fifty two or stuff like that. That's not where we're looking. But so replacing things you'd be doing anyway with actions that are a little more beneficial to your meal planning. It's a seamless transition, and it will
second on the list help you eat healthier. So another question we get a lot is how do I eat healthy on a budget, And the first answer is always just start eating at home more. Focus on that first. So we think we want to focus first on everything, right, if I'm going to save money on meals, I also want to eat organic and grass fed and paleo and
keto and all the other diets. So if you want to follow a certain food diet, you will spend more on that particular on whatever that diet in particular promotes. So obviously Paleo we're spending more money, meat, Keto, we're spending more money on you know, dairy and meat and stuff like that. But I would say, before you think about anything like that, focus on eating more at home first.
So stop so don't think about the diets. Don't necessarily think about the types of food unless you're very like you're very committed to more organic and stuff like that. Just focus on the simple action of eating at home more, tailoring your meal plan so that it is easy enough, simple enough, short enough that you all are eating at home. That in itself is the first step to eating healthy. Because there is so much sodium, sugar, all fat, all these other things in takeout that the simple act of
just eating at home more is healthier. Get that step first, then you can move on to diets, organic, all this stuff like that.
Yes, progress over perfection. Just find what works for you and keep taking step by step. The third reason on here to meal plan is that it reduces stress, which I know sounds a little bit counterintuitive because for many
of us meal planning is an extra step. But I can speak from personal experience to say that when we do implement on that first step of planning, when we've been able to carve out time, whether it's on the weekend or a week night like you do, Jen, it's going to reduce stress throughout the week to know what to expect for that week, to not every single day need to be making decisions of what are we going to eat tonight? Oh no, I didn't defrost that meat,
What do I even have in my pantry? And the stress and pressure of coming up with a meal, multiple meals, really we don't just eat dinner every day on a daily basis can be really overwhelming. And so I know I've experienced personally when I've taken the time to write out, here's what we're going to do this week. I give myself the flexibility to change it up, but I at least know I've got all the ingredients to do this,
this and this meal and we can cook that. And it has taken a lot of the decision fatigue and overwhelm out of especially the week days for me, which can be particularly chaotic.
Yeah. I love how you meal plan, Jill, because it's different from how I meal plan. I have a pretty like strict this is what I eat at the time, I eat it like for every day, and you work
off of suggestions, off of ingredients. So if you don't like to plan, but you're trying to meal plan, then take Jill's way of meal planning where she just makes a list of this is what I have, these are the things I could make with it, and then just the night before decide, okay, tomorrow, I am going to make this thing on the list, so that you make sure you can defrost what you need, that you have the things ready to go for the next day. It doesn't have to be a week at a time, a
month at a time. You can have a meal plan where you just have options and you just decide. You have to decide with some amount of time to prepare, but it doesn't have to be like weeks in advance.
Yeah, well, that was one of the things that stressed me out so much with meal planning is inevitably there'd be an interruption. Just like budgeting, it's never this static thing. There's always shifts and changes, and so maybe by the time I get to Friday, my week didn't look like how I thought it was going to on Sunday night. And so giving myself the flexibility within my meal plan
that there can be an interruption. You can be invited over to somebody else's house, you can up needing to just grab a quick takeout meal, and it doesn't throw the whole thing off when you just kind of have the ingredients for four to five lunches four to five dinners each week.
Next is number four ensures no waste. So that is a big part of our wasted grocery budget. Right. We work so hard to minimize our grocery budget, but we don't look as much at our food waste, and people are throwing away food every single week. There are still weeks that I throw away food. Even with as careful as I am with my meal planning, things just go awry and I forget to freeze something. So meal planning
can reduce your waste. I don't think it ensures no waste, but it can drastically reduce the waste that you have. And so something we say, like when you're doing your ninety day transaction inventory, when you're trying to get a hold of your spending, specifically on food, is to look
at your grocery spending. So your regular groceries spending that you are taking on your plan trips to the grocery store, check the extra trips to the grocery store that are unplanned, and see what the difference is, how much extra you're spending per week on groceries. And then also take an inventory of the money that you're wasting when you go to throw something away, put a monetary value to that.
That's how much you're over buying. So we want to make these plans as simple as possible if we are the type of people that don't like cooking, Because if you have grand expectations to have a meal plan that somebody else created for you, or that it looks like somebody else is doing, and you can't do it because of time, season, and just enjoyment, just exhaustion at the
end of the day. Gosh, then you're gonna be wasting food, and all of that effort you put into meal planning to save money on groceries is gonna be wasted because you're gonna have to buy takeout because you're gonna be throwing out wasted food. So you want to set yourself up early for success and as little waste as possible by ensuring you will eat the meals that you make. And this often looks like creating meal plans that are
not perfect. So you might want to create a healthy meal plan with healthy dinners seven nights a week so that you can be the picture perfect health person that you see on Instagram, and it's probably not gonna work in reality. In real life. It looks like it works on Instagram, but it's very hard to recreate that in real life. So give yourself grace to not be perfect, to not have the perfect meal plan, and create a meal plan that works for you and your family that
may not look perfect. And when you prove to yourself that you can eat at home five nights a week or six nights a week, then you can start to shape it to be a little healthier, but let's work in stages, because gosh, trying to be perfect will just lead to a lot of waste in food and in time.
Oh yes, Number five on here is that meal planning can help with portion control. I would say it depends on your goals. I think that, as with anything else, there's a way to do it that is low waste and portion controlled, then there's a way to do it that's high waist and reckless abandonment to considerations of abortion.
But it could result in degrees of portion control as we are more aware of what we're putting into our shopping carts, more aware of what food do we have in the fridge, what are we using up this week, what are we cooking, how much of it are we cooking? How much of it will we eat? I think this one is a little bit comes in time that as you are more aware of what am I throwing out? What's the dollar amount to? That does that mean for how I want to adjust my meal plan for next
week and my shopping habits. So I think in time, certainly it can help with portion control as we become maybe more focused on the types of nutrients we want to be eating. The healthy meals that we're enjoying will get better and better. But certainly I think it is on the pros side of the list of meal planning, is that we can be more aware of our own consumption and ensuring that we're eating the amount and the nutrients that our bodies need.
Yeah, and it helps with leftover if you're the type of person that wants to take leftovers for lunch the next day, taking those leftovers out before you eat your dinner. I think that's the kind of portion control I love because everybody has been in that place where they prepared a meal that's supposed to serve like have four servings, and then at the end you're like, oh, this is actually just one big serving. This is a serving and
a half left. And then you're like, well, now I don't know what I'm gonna do with my lunch for day two, Or you give your husband the portion and you don't know what you're gonna do with your lunch the next day. So this can really help in that scenario when you are planning for leftovers in mind, then you will have then you can say, okay, I've planned this to make four servings, so we each have leftovers
for lunch tomorrow. I'm going to take two servings out right off the top, and here is our portion for tonight. And then if you're still hungry afterwards, that's where snacks come in.
You got snacky snacks. Nuts, it's nuts, some nuts in the freezer.
Yeah, that's maybe I was thinking of a yogurt, but whatever, your snack of choices.
Uh.
And then the last one is that it adds variety to your diet. And this is a this is a tricky one. I like this one, but I would say not in that you are buying variety, but that you are checking your pantry and your fridge and all around your kitchen for things that you have not used in a while that might be going bad, and you incorporate those into your meal plan. We are looking to not waste food and to not keep food in the kitchen
or pantry for longer than we need to. There's some stuff that doesn't go bad for a very long time. That doesn't mean you have to keep but in your in your kitchen for a very long time. I was into whole grains, like trying a variety of whole grains for a while, and I had farrow. Have you ever had farrow or heard of it?
I don't think I've heard of it. I've never purchased it. Yeah, it's not great.
And I had and I tried that and I realized it and I had just some fart like I hadn't for so long, and it didn't go bad. But finally last week I was like, this needs to leave my kitchen. So I made another recipe with it, and it's not. If it was horrible, I would have just thrown it away and like cut my losses. But it's like, this is not horrible, but it's not my favorite. So I just never wanted to use it. Finally used it and did end up throwing some of it away because again,
just stuff. I'm not going to force things down, and I'm not telling you to do that, but at like add variety to your in the form of using the things you already have that you may not use often. That's how I would say.
That, let's move on to the next one. What we're all really here for this next article comes from Wonderful wonderful. Yeah, that's taking it in.
Wonderful Wonderful from I hope. Her name is Wendy. She doesn't even say that her name is Wendy, but I hope it is.
We're all hoping that it's titled how does the Old Planned When you absolutely hate cooking? And I love that title because it's out the gate telling you exactly what to expect here. And many of us it can can feel that way, or we go in and out of seasons where cooking can just become cumbersome. And I think this especially happens for these of us who are in busier seasons of life. Whether you've got massive transition happening, you've got late nights at work, kids at home, you
name it there. Even if you enjoy cooking, if you don't feel like you have time for it, sometimes that can lead us to the disenjoyment of it, if that's a word. So here we go. We're picking our favorites off of here, and I'll kick us off with the first one. If you hate to cook, here's one of the things you can do when it comes to meal planning. Get someone else to do it for you. I love that they started off this way because I think it
kind of levels the playing field of recognizing. Listen, if we really can't stand doing something this badly, that it's interrupting our finances, our nutrition, we're eating out constantly because we hate it so so much. Then it might be maybe one of the alternatives, maybe not for whoever is
get someone else to do it for you. This could be where we hire meal planning services, maybe even meal delivery kits so that you also cut out the grocery shopping, or having a friend do it for you if you want to do some sort of trade disease with them, just to get you started on this path that you are deciding you want for yourself. I want to be able to meal plan. I want to be able to cook, even if they're not elaborate meals. I know it's going to be better for me and for my wallet to
be cooking at home. Then okay, if this is the biggest barrier, fine, get someone else to do it for you, even if it's just for a time.
Yeah. It mentions a few meal planning services and a few meal kits. I don't like that they put them together. They are separate. So I love meal planning services. There are different I think each of them has its own kind of place where they excel. So we love cook smarts Frugal friendspodcast dot com, slash cs or slash cook Smarts. They do, they cater. They have fewer types of plans, so they have a vegetarian, a regular, and a paleo. But where they excel is teaching you how to cook.
So if your disdain for cooking comes more from a lack of knowing how to cook, Smarts is it for you? It is? I think like eight dollars a month. You can try it for two weeks free if you go to Frugal friendspodcast dot com slash cs and so I love that one. It gives you four meals per week, assuming that the other three days you know, sandwiches, leftovers, eating out, whatever. I really like those meals. They're pretty easy. They give you a variety. I always alter them to
use the ingredients I have on hand. Some of the spices. She does reuse spices a lot, so if you have to buy a new spice, you will see it again and again and again in that meal plan. So they're very big on lowering food waste and videos to teach you how to cook and even how to put flavors together. So I really like Cooksmarts. They mentioned eat at home meal plans in here. This is a lot of like
kid friendly, big family type meal plans. So if you have a larger family, a lot of kids that are picky, then eat at home meal plans can be really good. There is like no dietary it's all regular if so, if you're on a special dietary plan it's not for you, then there's E Meals. They have every single type of diet like Whole thirty, Paleo, Keto, you know, all in on and on and on. So if you have a particular diet that is not vegetarian or paleo, check out
E Meals. I think we have an affiliate link for that. I think it might be Frugal friendspodcast dot com slash E Meals and you could get something free. Don't quote me on that, try it though. So those are kind of those are the meal plans I love. They are a means to an end. They're not permanent. I would say using them for a couple months or a year to get you started in the feel of meal planning is a great option, but I have never used them for longer than a year, and I don't know many
people who have. Some people love them, though, and they do so, and I've seen that in the cook Smarts Facebook group there are a lot of long time users. And then even more short term are these blue apron HelloFresh every plate type of things. These are I am coming up into a season that is going to be hellish and I need help. That's where meal planning kits. Meal kits come in, so I would I would say
those are to differentiate. But yes, I love meal planning services definitely to get you into the feel of meal planning and then you and all of them if you don't like what they serve you for the week for recipes, all of them have an archive that you can switch out, even like by ingredient.
It's also possible that you have a friend who is just crushing it in this category and just ask them if you can take a peek at their meal plan for that week, yeah, and see what they're doing and follow along. So lots of opportunities to just have someone else do it for you, m hmm, until you get to yourself.
Yes, my next favorite on the list, I know it's on your list too, Chill, but I want to talk about it. It's three make a list of your easy recipes. It's my turn, so I'm encroaching. This is so clutch, and if you have older kids, this is a great way to get them involved. Our friend Gina over at Saving Whiz, she has so many tips for meal planning,
especially with older kids. She requires her kids to meal plan one meal per week, like they choose it, and I don't know if they cook it, but they definitely choose it. So it's at least one meal per week. They're not going to fight her on eating. So I would say you can have your kids make a list of their favorite easy recipes. This is a great way. And my mother in law did this with Travis and
his siblings. They all had to cook once a week, and so you could do that and just make a list of things that your family likes, that you like making and that you know you will make. So maybe that's scrambled eggs, peanut butter, jelly sandwiches, sheep pan dinners, chili, something in a crock pot. We'll talk a little bit about our favorite like easy recipes at the end of
the episode. But this is just one time I was extra and I actually made a book with all my favorite recipes and I had it printed in spiral bound and.
Just for yourself. Yeah, are you selling this?
No, it's just it was just for me, and well I couldn't sell it. It was other people's recipes, so like yeah, yeah, so yeah, and you could do that. You don't have to be as extra as I am and spiral bound it, but you can have it. It's because it's such a pain to sometimes go back to your favorite recipe on the internet again and again with all those ads and the scrolling. So print it out and just have it. Have some like twenty of them or something. I love, love love this.
Yeah. Number four is really heavily related to number three. I'm still going to talk about it. Choosing simple and quick meals. I think this is super important. Whether you hate cooking, don't have time to cook again, whatever your barrier to entry is here, knowing what is going to be super quick. This is going to be your crock pot meals, your sheet pan meals, your almost no cooking,
no baking meals that you know your family likes. So this could even be one of those collect the recipes and if you're not one who even has recipes on hand, this is another seek out the community. Ask your friends and family what are your go to, quick, simple meals that your family enjoys, and start compiling them, start trying
them out. But we want these types of meals that are only going to take a few minutes to prep in less than an hour to cook, so that again that bearer to entry to eating at home is really heavily reduced, and so we're not overwhelmed by our meal plan. We can sit on a Sunday afternoon and write out all these fancy, elaborate meals and say, look, I meal planned for the week. But if we're not actually going to do it because they're far too complicated, then that's
just wasted time. So collecting these things that are going to be so so easy that it's easier to cook at home, do that versus even taking out or going out to eat. So compile that. If you know what that is already, then great, get it all into one place. And if you don't seek out the help of others around you Garan Tea others have lists of their easy quick meals.
Mm hmm. Next, I love this one is focus on dinner. So when we're making change, we say focus on one thing at a time. So instead of meal planning, breakfast, lunch, dinner, focus on dinner. Just meal plan dinner and then girl dinner. The other meals you know, like just ingredients toast, hard boiled eggs, whatever, it is, just girl girl brunch, girl breakfast, girl lunch, and then dinner. And I always lunch is
always leftovers for us. Sometimes I will do if there's not enough leftover, if I haven't had portion control, then it's turkey and a low carb tortilla with some lettuce and mustard. Like that's my girl lunch. And then I'm also always doing egg bites and egg cups and overnight oats for breakfast. I'll meal prep those on Sunday so
I don't have to think about it. It's you know, I get a dozen eggs and like you know, some oats, and I'm meal prep and breakfast for the week, so like I don't have to think about it, and I'm girl dinnering lunch or doing leftover. So just focus on dinner and don't and just make up breakfast and lunch you know, as you go along. But you still have to meal plan and be and like, okay, I need to have the ingredients for girl breakfast and girl lunch.
But you know, they don't have to be elaborate. You don't have to meal you have these beautiful meal prep like islands like you see on Instagram with all of your breakfasts and a glass container and all of your lunches and all of your dinners. Like that's too much, just girl breakfast and girl lunch.
I think it's deciding where you want the majority of your variety, and I think for many of us it is in dinner. From my perspective, most people are doing very similar things for breakfast and maybe even lunches, especially if it's leftovers week to week. I know I switch out just a rotation of four to five options for lunch every week, and those are just the ingredients I keep on hand, and then I'll fill in the gaps
with some of those leftovers on different days. But yeah, you don't need to focus on coming up with super cool, creative ideas for breakfast and lunch. Keep that simple. Get your variety in dinner, and then decide what's working, what's not working, and keep refining it for you. The last one on this list that I will mention is number six, which is to stock up emergency backup meals. I love
this one. It is such a nice treat when we really truly don't have the mental capacity, physical capacity, whatever version, and a capacity you want to talk about, to do dinner, to take some time when we have it. Let's say there is a particular night that we've got a little bit of extra time to cook, and maybe we cook a double batch of it. Maybe there's a weekend where we've got a couple of hours and we can make a few different meals that we know are going to
be freezer friendly. We do have some episodes on that our favorite freezer meals, so feel free to cueue up that one too. But having these types of meals on hand that you know, in a pinch you can pull out of the freezer and maybe even pop straight into the oven or the crock pot or on the stovetop, and you don't even have to think about it. Like the night before, it's not even something that you've got to think to thaw, but something you can pull out
and reheat immediately. Because we know we're all going to run into those circumstances. Life's going to throw us curveballs. We're going to be tired, exhausted, you name it. We don't have time to cook. We don't want to cook. We hate cooking. And we've got two or three backups in the freezer. And you are gonna just kiss yourself. So find some extra time do this. It's gonna be wonderful.
You're gonna kiss the back of your hand.
That's what I do, honestly.
Yeah, and these can be freezer meals you make yourself. I recently had to buy some kind of frozen, pre made freezer meals because I don't have the time right now to make freezer meals, but I did need emergency backup meals, so I got a couple. I paid a little extra, I put them in the freezer, but it's gonna be cheaper than takeout in the long run. So that is also an option if you are in a busy season of life. And then the last one for me.
Oh oh. If you're in our membership, you know that we do give monthly meal plans, which can be helpful. But one of the things that we say on there, like every Friday, is either a frozen pizza or frozen frozen patties that you can make into hamburgers. And so we are all about giving ourselves a hand wherever possible.
Mm hmm. We are not shy about using frozen burgers, frozen hot dogs, frozen pizza like stay pulls for us. All right, and so the last one for me. I already mentioned this before meal plan on your phone. So in times when you would be scrolling, whether it's doom scrolling or just veg out mindless scrolling, look be looking for easy recipes and be adding ingredients to an app to make a grocery list. So I personally add it right to my Walmart dot com cart. And we are
not sponsored by Walmart. But hey, Wally World girl, if you're listening, I'm here. But any app will do, or even a note. You don't need to have an app. A lot of people love meal Lime. That's an app you can make meal plans and grocery lists in. But I honestly will make the grocery list in my notes app. I will transfer it to a meal plan that is on the fridge. So nobody will ever ask me what's for dinner, And if they do, I just look at
them and I point at the fridge. And if we're not crying like I can't read, yes, yeah, he never asks what's for dinner. He's just like, I'm hungry, feed me, and it's just Travis and I just look at him and I'm like, that's me pointing. So transfer it over
there so everybody knows. My meal plan also has a place for lunch options and breakfast options, so everyone knows, like, these are what you have available for breakfast, These are what you have available for lunch, no set day for them, just pick and go as you choose, and by them, I mean Travis, but do it on your phone so it's with you. Make the grocery list easy to see.
And if you're the type of person who loves to go to Trader Joe's and just buy as the wind blows you like into the store through the aisles, this can be something where you can go to the Trader Joe's, you know, fearless flyer, or to the website and kind of plan that trip in advance so you're not blown as aimlessly by the wind introners. I don't know what it is with the wind in Trader Joe's or other specialty stores like that, but it can be pretty vicious
to your wallet. So you still have the freedom to quote unquote impulse buy cool stuff at the grocery store. But let's not let those impulse buys get you. Let's kind of plan an advance for them. So if you're somebody who who I wouldn't say if you're not somebody who go to Trader Joe's to do this, because then
you end up spending more. But if you are somebody who makes these extra grocery trips every week, let's either a increase your weekly grocery budgets so you don't have to make extra grocery trips, or be prepare yourself before you go, so you know, like, this is what my total will cost if I buy everything that I want and how, and this is what I'm actually willing to spend. So what are the most important things to me? And
go in and get those. So you just give yourself a little budget for quote unquote impulse grocery spending.
Do you know what the most important thing to me is? And I am fine wherever the wind blows on this one.
I will be blown away a week.
That's right, It's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Tough bills, Buffalo bills, bill claim. This is the bill of the week.
Hi, Jen and Jill.
My bill of the week is this first brand new laptop I've ever bought. Before this, I was using my brother's old laptop, which I bought for a fraction of its price. I bought this new laptop from the money I made by listening to other people's bills and writing about bills. This is Goldie, who might or might not have skipped the fe for the bill of the week entries. Thanks Jen and Jil. You guys are the biss Bye.
What gold.
Yeah, it's listed in here as anonymous, but this is Goldie so good.
That is the dream, the dream team, our content manager are everything. Frugal friends manager, She keeps the ship running. Goldie, bless you. You are a dream.
And the wind blew in the most beautiful direction today. The sun is shining. It's a light breeze brought to you by Goldie Man. There's not really a day that goes by that Jen and I aren't either verbal saying to each other or texting one another. Goldie is amazing and here you go. You all get to hear why because she's out here being a frugal friend buying her own laptop. Well done, Goldie, and filling in the gaps for us when apparently we're low on bills of the week.
No, I think she No, we're not low on both of the week. She like she put herself a little higher. I think, uh, so good.
I'm glad you could do that.
You have buy every right to cut in line, Goldie. We're here for it.
I'm so elated the wind's going to go today. Well it's one Goldie and taking your time, be impatient, getting a new laptop when the time was right, and borrowing in the meantime. If you all listening, wow, you're welcome. I'm so thrilled for you that you're that you're here
and you get to be introduced to Goldie. But if you've got to build to share, if it's about borrowing your brother's laptop, buying a laptop, submitting bills because you work for the Frugal Friends Aprugal Friends podcast dot com, slash bills, submit your bill, Let the wind blow in our direction, and now it's time for the lightning round.
Pew pew, all right, y'all, today's Lightning Round, we are going to share some of our favorite no cook meals. And no cook, I mean that's in quotations, but like very easy fast, So for me, I knew this very quickly. First up is absolutely no cook because it's kind of made in advance. And this isn't really a suggestion that we talked about in the episode, but I will prep a lot of mind ingredients that I use a lot, So if you follow us on Instagram at Frugal Friends podcast,
you'll actually see some of this. I posted a reel about the my meal prepping onions, so I will prep raw onions in my little Mini Ninja food chopper and then put them in bags so that when a recipe calls for onions, I don't have to chop them. I literally just and I don't even defrost onions. Don't defrost
them because they'll make your fridge smell bad. I will go right from freezer to pan and just let the pandy frost it because I'll put it in a plastic bag and pat it down really thin, so I can just break it up in the bag and then pour it in. So I'll do stuff like that And another thing that I'll do very frequently is shred chicken. So I'll get a five pound bag of frozen chicken breasts and I will put it all in my pressure cooker and cook it and then take it out transfer it
to my KitchenAid stand mixer. You don't have to have one of those, you can have a hand mixer. I will shred it all. I hate using forks to shred chicken. It is so cumbersome, so I will shred it all in the KitchenAid mixer stand mixer.
I just learned that you could do this, and I watch someone do it and it works.
Yeah, it works. In ten seconds, five pounds of chicken are shredded, and then I divide them into five ziploc bags and freeze them. And so my first recipe is this caprice chicken salad that I make pretty frequently. I'll use one one of the bags of shredded chicken with some mini mozzarella balls, a small jar of pesto, and I will cut up grape tomatoes. So that's literally the only prepping is cutting those tomatoes in half, and you
really don't even have to do that. But then I'll just mix all of that to make this like kapreese chicken salad, and I can either have that on top of some lettuce or just plane, which is usually what I do. No cook cold meal. Love it. My other go to recently has been this chicken apple sausage kale salad, and I shared a very similar recipe to it in the friend letter. Every Friday, we will post an easy meal like this, like whatever we've been making frequently to
help you in your meal planning. And I posted this one week. But it's literally I'll buy chicken apple sausage, cut it up, and I'll put it in the toaster ribbon for ten minutes just to kind of crisp it, and then it's kale. You got a massage it for sixty seconds and then it doesn't taste like buffet filler.
And then goat. I will use this bag of salad topper from Walmart which has like candied walnuts or pecans with some uh cran dried cranberries, so that salad topper goat cheese, and then I have a Dijon dressing, and that together is like life. Those are my two main ones right now.
Oh so hungry, that sounds so good. I love that it's a lunch of salad idea, yeah it is, okay, mine not gonna sound as healthy as yours. Kilbasa and sour kraut is my go to. That's a literal no cook meal. I my grandmother is one hundred percent Polish, and so I love that kill basa and sour kraut combo. And it's basically a hot dog for those of you who've ever had kill basa, you know, it's just a fancy word for hot dog in the pan with sour.
So so easy because I can keep the cabasa frozen, but then pull it out, put it in a pan with a can of sour kraut and put it on simmer and it's ready in twenty minutes. Usually then I'll also throw some carrot sticks on the side just to feel like I'm eating a veggie. My other go to meal is fried rice. I love making some fried rice, especially when I have leftover rice. So usually if there's a meal that calls for rice, I'll make a cup or two extra so that then I can make this
the next day for dinner. And I make my fried rice with a bag of frozen veggies, so it makes it very very easy to prep with even a few days old rice, a bag of frozen veggies, a couple of eggs, soy sauce. You're on your way. Another one for me is sharkouterie. You know it. That's just that's just a fancy word for saying, pull out everything from the fridge and put it on a plate for dinner. Call it something that's going to be my lunch today.
That's and that's apples and nuts and cheeses and pita chips. And it doesn't have to be super unhealthy veggies, whatever raw veggies you have on hand, just kind of throw it on a plate. I was talking with a friend recently who loves this for her kids, especially through the summer. I no kids are at school now, but this could even be a nice easy lunch box where she'll just kind of change up each week. What's the fruit, what's the veggie, what's the meat, what's the cheese she has
on hand? But that's pretty much every single day is a version of a CHARCOOTERI and you get the variety in week to week buying different things. And finally, yeah, exactly pasta or quinoa salad. I love cooking up just a big old batch of pasta or quinoa, and then throwing whatever raw veggies and whatever sauces I have. I do like to make my own pesto or chimmy cherry, and so when I've got that on hand, it's just so easy to pour over all this other stuff to bring it together and have an easy meal.
Mm hmm.
If I'm looking at something with a little bit more prep, I love a cob salad. I love a cob salad. It's so good. But no blue cheese sub out like a feta or something.
Send your blue cheese to me.
I'll eat it, yes, I'll send it to your charcuterie board. Thank you so much for listening. I hope this encouraged you. If you are somebody who doesn't like to plan or cook, I hope this encouraged you to be able to meal plan in your capacity in a way that makes you feel good and allows you to save money on groceries, waste less, and reach your financial goals faster and know that it can be done different ways. Jill and I meal plan and cook in different ways, and we both
meet our grocery budget goals. So thanks so much for listening, and thank you so much for leaving your kind reviews. We specially loved this one from Hannah the Dog Lady. She says, not like other financial podcasts, when I started my financial freedom journey, I tried to find something to motivate me. I looked for the podcast that would help me and also give me new ideas for savings. I'm so glad I found this one. It's not just full of fascinating chats about personal finance, but it's also fun.
I love the personalities of the two hosts and also the guests they've had on the show. It's super motivating and confidence building.
Thank you girls, amazing, Thank you Hannah so much, and thank the rest. I'm so grateful for the rest of you who are listening enjoying the show. If you are enjoying it and you haven't left us a review yet, please do that on whatever platform you are listening to us on.
See you next time.
Easy Street, but the.
Easy Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni Chill. What would you do with one thousand dollars?
One thousand big ones? Oh, I'm going to be boring right now. I'm probably added to one of my sinking funds. Which one would I add it to? I probably my car fund. I'm going to add it to my car fund, sinking fund, so I can feel real prepared for my next insurance cost oil change. The next time Eric wants to impulse purchase a vehicle, I'll be ready.
Oh wow, I did the calculations and I posted them on Instagram and I'm looking. It is roughly one hundred and seventy eight Grande suite cold bruise at Starbucks. So maybe that's what I would spend. I'd buy one hundred and seventy eight coffees. Wow.
How long would that last?
You?
Like a month?
Right?
Yeah? No, I'd buy I buy some kitchen cabinets. That's what I would buy. That, That is what I would buy.
What a thousand dollars cover that?
Absolutely? Not No, it would cover maybe one cabinet one. I would buy one cabinet, maybe two, not even custom.
Maybe an upper and a lower. It might cover an upper and a lower.
Yes, yes, yeah, not even custom, just like ready to assemble stock color cabinet.
It don't make a dath though in the kitchen.
It's it's not a huge There's not a lot of cabinets, so an upper and a lower goes a long way.
Do you realize how much we are going to be confusing our listeners or not going to be have been, most likely with the two of us just doing some very similar things. They think they know who's who and what's what. First my house was a dumpster fire. Now Gen's house is a dumpster fire. And we don't know up from down anymore. Everyone's doing kitchen renovations and we are becoming one. We're one person, one dumpster.
Sorry, everybody confuses us. Like every time somebody writes in, they say, oh, yeah, Jill this, and I'm like, no, that's me. And then they're like, oh, yeah, Gen's this, and we're like, no, that's Jill.
You know what, what a compliment that this is a true partnership. You brought your dumpster, I brought my fire, and the two have become one.
Yes, and now I have a fire and you have a beautiful kitchen. And soon here's a dumpster somewhere. Let the fire go. Yeah, there's a dumpster somewhere. Actually, I told Trevis the other day that he would be happy living in a dumpster. And then if we moved, we just have to get one and he's like, but we had one. And I'm like, you're right. So when we moved back to our other house, I said he could take up residence in the dumpster. And he's like, what about when it rains, And I was like, you can
sit inside the house. He's like, can I bring my dumpster inside the house? This is like an actual conversation that we had, word for word, and I said, no, you cannot bring the dumpster into the house. It's owned by the city. It has to stay outside because we don't own it. You'd be a renter.
It's just one side short of being a shipping container, and people are turning those into homes. So you're onto something.
Yeah, yeah, No, I mean I'm you know, I'm letting him live his best life, right, but he just can't bring his best life into my best life because that makes it not the best anymore.
Well, good luck meal planning and prepping and cooking.