214 episodes

Meal Prep Monday Podcast™ brings you 10 minutes of actionable meal prep advice, helping you answer the dreaded "What's for Dinner?" question with ease. Host Allison Schaaf is a personal chef, dietitian, mom and founder of meal planning website PrepDish.com. Listen along as she teaches you how to save time, money & energy through meal prep. Her healthy gluten free, paleo & keto meal plans have helped thousands! And in this podcast, she's sharing all of her time saving tips and tricks with you! Tune in every Monday to up your mealplan and mealprep game!

Meal Prep Monday Podcast‪™‬ Allison Schaaf

    • Health & Fitness
    • 4.8 • 57 Ratings

Meal Prep Monday Podcast™ brings you 10 minutes of actionable meal prep advice, helping you answer the dreaded "What's for Dinner?" question with ease. Host Allison Schaaf is a personal chef, dietitian, mom and founder of meal planning website PrepDish.com. Listen along as she teaches you how to save time, money & energy through meal prep. Her healthy gluten free, paleo & keto meal plans have helped thousands! And in this podcast, she's sharing all of her time saving tips and tricks with you! Tune in every Monday to up your mealplan and mealprep game!

    Home Habits for Simple Management | EP#214

    Home Habits for Simple Management | EP#214

    In episode 214, Allison Schaaf, founder of Prep Dish, discusses some key takeaways she’s gained from the book Home Management Plain and Simple, and notes home habits she’s incorporated into her daily routine for simple management.
     
    Allison has implemented home habits such as:
     
    Each time she takes a bathroom break, she will clean or tidy something.
    Using a timer for her own household tasks, or as a means to make a chore fun with the kids (think of a “beat-the-clock” game to get the job done before the timer runs out). This is a great habit to use for meal prep, too!
    Setting the stage for a great meal by cleaning up from the meal you just enjoyed.
    Having kids indicate they need your attention or assistance by coming over and resting a hand on your arm.
    When an issue arises with the kids, ask yourself the important question of “Is this a kid problem, or is this a mom problem?”  In other words, work to discover if the problem is arising by how the child has received instruction about a task or how to work through something.
    Work through the “how” of teaching kids to do chores.  Model the chores for them, do the chores with them, and repeat!  Modeling chores includes both the how-to as well as the attitude with which we complete the work.  Eventually, kids will be able to independently complete various tasks around the house; make tasks fun!
    Have tea parties! (Or picnics, or make s’mores).  Including various special family time into your home habits adds elements of whimsy and helps foster fond memories.
    Allison also includes a bonus boy mom tip that can work wonders for helping to keep bathrooms clean :)
     
    Connect with Allison: PrepDish.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prepdish/  
    Get your FREE mealplan at PrepDish.com/podcast OR text the word mealprep to 33777
     
    Resources mentioned in this podcast:
    Get your free trial at prepdish.com/mpm for two weeks of free meal plans!
    Kim Brenneman interview: https://prepdish.com/podcast-show-notes/ep212/
    Home Management Plain and Simple: Home Management: Plain and Simple

    • 10 min
    Home Routine Tips for House Management | EP#213

    Home Routine Tips for House Management | EP#213

    In episode 213, Prep Dish founder Allison Schaaf highlights daily home routine tips inspired by Kim Brenneman’s book Home Management Plain and Simple.  Allison includes Kim’s daily house management recommendations along with what works in her own home in her current season of family life.
     
    In Kim’s home, Monday is dedicated to taking care of laundry.  Allison’s personal hack for laundry is having multiple washing machines in the house and batching all of her clothes cleaning, drying, and putting away on the same day.  Tuesday is a kitchen day, where a batching practice (like meal prep!) comes in handy to prepare all of the meals for the week ahead.  Kim uses Wednesdays as her office day, and Allison notes that this time could be used for business as well as family schedule management.
     
    Thursdays are dedicated as town day, when running errands in town can be accomplished.  Like Kim, Allison lives in a rural area and batching errands, appointments, and meetings on one day of the week has become a useful approach to checking off important to-dos.  Home Management suggests Fridays as cleaning days, Saturday for gardening, and Sunday for the Lord’s day/day of rest to spend with family.
     
    Kim also approaches deep cleaning by dividing the month up into a five-week rotation.  Allison has adopted a similar approach in her home, but focuses on organizing each of the areas (dining room/bookshelves, bathroom & mudroom, bedrooms, living/family rooms, and play room) on a monthly rotation.
     
    Connect with Allison: PrepDish.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prepdish/  
    Get your FREE mealplan at PrepDish.com/podcast OR text the word mealprep to 33777
     
    Resources mentioned in this podcast:
    Get your free trial at prepdish.com/mpm for two weeks of free meal plans!
     
    Home Management Plain and Simple:   Home Management: Plain and Simple

    • 12 min
    House Management with Kim Brenneman | EP#212

    House Management with Kim Brenneman | EP#212

    In episode 212, Prep Dish founder Allison Schaaf welcomes author Kim Brenneman to the Meal Prep Monday Podcast where she shares how she went from a new mom struggling to manage her home rhythms to a thriving homeschooling mother of nine with routines that keep home and farm life humming along.
    Kim is the author of Home Management Plain and Simple and founder of The Home Management: Plain and Simple Blueprint Course. She lives in Iowa on a farm and is a wife of 33 years and a homeschooling mom of nine children. Kim realized she’d grown up with the advantage of having outside systems manage her life through school, college, and her employment. She’d never truly had to be the boss of her own life until she was an adult starting a family. Her book started as a blog in 2004, where Kim began documenting all the systems she was creating to manage her home, as more children were added to the family, the farming business grew, and homeschooling became a part of her day-to-day life.
    Kim’s home management system is based on getting a strong evening rhythm established first, to set up your morning of the next day for success. She notes that the evening rhythm consists of a kitchen routine and a personal routine, and that these will be personalized to you to set up what’s needed for the morning.
    The kitchen routine involves cleaning and tidying from the previous meal, and can be personalized by setting up what you’ll consume in the morning, such as coffee or tea, or prep-ahead breakfast items that can be set up the evening before. The personal routine includes what you do to get yourself ready for bed and how you’ll wind down your evening, perhaps with a book or a bath.
    Getting the kids involved with mealtime and chores has been an important part of Kim’s home management strategy, and she details some additional tips about setting the tone for different parts of the day and having the kids contribute to these household tasks.
     
    Connect with Allison: PrepDish.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prepdish/

    Get your FREE mealplan at PrepDish.com/podcast OR text the word mealprep to 33777
    Resources mentioned in this podcast:
    Get your free trial at prepdish.com/mpm for two weeks of free meal plans!
    ‌Nourishing Traditions: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/117835
    Home Plain and Simple https://homeplainandsimple.com/
    ‌Home Management Plain and Simple book ‌Home Management Plain and Simple
    Blueprint Course https://homeplainandsimple.com/blueprint
    Instagram instagram.com/homeplainandsimple

    • 22 min
    Best Digital Planner Apps for Household Planning | EP#211

    Best Digital Planner Apps for Household Planning | EP#211

    In episode 211, Allison Schaaf, founder of Prep Dish, discusses the best digital planner apps for home planning and management with her husband and shares what has worked well for them to navigate their family’s schedules, trips, and activities.

    Allison and her husband use Google Calendar as an invaluable shared digital planning resource to help them ensure everything at home runs smoothly. With this tool, Allison’s husband is able to share the details of his work schedule, but Allison is able to pull up his calendar notes as needed without overwhelming her own calendar. This schedule view helps the family see where there might be overlap with work and daily family tasks. Allison’s husband also books all of his work travel through Tripit, which can sync with their Google Calendar apps.

    Together, Allison and her husband also have a shared calendar for the kids’ schedules. Allison has her own personal digital calendar with combined work and personal tasks. She uses this digital tool in conjunction with a portable classic paper planner. Allison finds putting pen to paper extremely helpful in managing day-to-day life and focusing on important tasks that, when completed, will help propel bigger goals forward.

    A weekly meeting helps Allison and her husband review upcoming scheduling conflicts and work out details with their au pair. They also use this time to plan ahead over the upcoming weeks or month, especially if a new event or activity has recently been added to their schedules. Allison has also used the Trello App as a digital tool to help her organize specific longer-term projects and keep track of detailed project tasks.

    Connect with Allison: PrepDish.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prepdish/
    Get your FREE mealplan at PrepDish.com/podcast OR text the word mealprep to 33777

    Resources mentioned in this podcast:
    Get your free trial at prepdish.com/mpm for two weeks of free meal plans!

    Interview with Sarah Hart-Unger: https://prepdish.com/podcast-show-notes/ep209/
    Google Calendar: https://calendar.google.com/
    Tripit: https://www.tripit.com/
    Trello App: https://trello.com/

    • 12 min
    Allison’s Favorite Classic Planners | EP#210

    Allison’s Favorite Classic Planners | EP#210

    In episode 210, Prep Dish founder Allison Schaaf reviews some of her favorite classic planners that she’s used over the years to manage family, work, and personal goals.

    Allison has used and enjoyed several different types of paper planners to help her keep track of important details and work through longer-term achievements. Why switch through multiple planners over the years even when she finds one she enjoys? Allison can’t resist trying something new and mixing up her planning routine! Different planners each offer a unique approach and have features that work best for the variety of life stages Allison has found herself in.

    Allison’s recommended classic paper planners include:

    Day Designer https://daydesigner.com/collections/shop-all-flagship - An ideal smaller portable size

    Sol Planner https://solplanners.com/products/2024-sol-planner - Great for when there’s a baby in the house to track all of the details. The bigger size worked well for all the daily notes and when Allison was home more.

    Full Focus Planner https://fullfocusstore.com/collections/planners - Allison used this planner daily when work was her main focus. Pages are purchased and updated quarterly. Cons were that many tasks needed to be copied over and Allison didn’t care for the daily pages setup. Pros were that the planning and project pages worked well.

    Golden Coil Planner https://www.goldencoil.com/ - A beautiful, aesthetically pleasing planner. This planner is highly customizable, which is a fun way to personalize the planner, but so many choices could be overwhelming. Has a weekly calendar “at-a-glance” style.

    BestSelf Planner https://bestself.co/products/self-planner - An undated 6-month, week-to-week style planner that also includes daily pages and top 3 tasks to complete. Allison liked not having to transfer anything over, the option to write out notes for the week, and monthly reflection questions. This planner is not customizable and isn’t as aesthetic in style.

    Connect with Allison: PrepDish.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prepdish/
    Get your FREE mealplan at PrepDish.com/podcast OR text the word mealprep to 33777

    Resources mentioned in this podcast:
    Get your free trial at prepdish.com/mpm for two weeks of free meal plans!

    • 14 min
    Planning Strategies w/ Sarah Hart-Unger | EP#209

    Planning Strategies w/ Sarah Hart-Unger | EP#209

    In episode 209, Prep Dish founder Allison Schaaf talks about planning strategies with guest Sarah Hart-Unger from Best Laid Plans and Best of Both Worlds podcasts. They cover big-picture planning all the way down to smaller daily details, and even include a peek into Sarah’s personal meal planning approach at home.
    Sarah is a mother of three living in Florida, and is a physician, podcaster, and blogger with a passion for all things planning. She approaches planning as something essential to having her days run smoothly, not only to make the day-to-day less stressful, but also keep goals and dreams moving forward.
    Sarah’s approach to planning involves a nested-level strategy, touching on yearly, seasonal, monthly, weekly, and daily goals. This strategy ensures big goals don’t get left behind, while small details aren’t abandoned only to pile up later in the future. She explains that at each level, you’re referring back to the level above and using that to shape what you’ll accomplish. An annual planning strategy Sarah loves to utilize is breaking up her year into quintiles, or fifths of the calendar year.
    Both paper and digital aids are in Sarah’s planning arsenal. One of her favorite current planners is the Hobonichi Cousin A5 from Japan. She often tries out different planners and reviews them on her Best Laid Plans podcast.
    Prep Dish services have been a steady part of Sarah’s meal planning for many years and she loves the Super Fast menu in particular. She splits the meal prep work with her nanny, which is a streamlined process that has worked well in this season of Sarah’s life. The flexibility of Prep Dish meals and high protein options work very efficiently for her family’s current meal planning needs.

    Connect with Allison: PrepDish.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prepdish/
    Get your FREE mealplan at PrepDish.com/podcast OR text the word mealprep to 33777

    Resources mentioned in this podcast:
    Get your free trial at prepdish.com/mpm for two weeks of free meal plans!

    Hobonichi Cousin A5 Planner https://www.amazon.com/Hobonichi-Planner-English-Version-January/dp/B0CBRV53C5/ref=sr_1_2?hvadid=580661785858&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9002273&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=13874281725403070126&hvtargid=kwd-144025243986&hydadcr=4079_13192561&keywords=hobonichi+cousin+a5&qid=1707341391&sr=8-2

    Best Laid Plans podcast https://theshubox.com/best-laid-plans-podcast

    Best of Both Worlds podcast https://theshubox.com/best-of-both-worlds

    • 25 min

Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5
57 Ratings

57 Ratings

raptorrachel ,

Reliable, thoughtful, and not over complicated

I love that these episodes are quick and always thoughtful. And the show notes are great for looking at afterward instead of having to write things down! I still use some of my meal plans from several years ago. I love how Allison and team focus on making the meals DELICIOUS and not just healthy.

LVinXM ,

Great for many aspects of life!

I initially listened to this podcast to get tips about meal planning, but she gives fantastic advice for many areas of life. Love it.

Cissy62 ,

Helpful

Love this podcast!! Lots of great ideas and tips and not just meal prep. Thank you❤️

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