79 // Curate Ideas in Your Kitchen Like This Familiar Concept in Your Closet. Here's How...
Curate Ideas in Your Kitchen Like This Familiar Concept in Your Closet. Here's How...
What systems do you have set-up in your home to:
Remove the confusion of coming up with what to offer
Avoid having a full fridge but the feeling that there is "nothing to eat"
Turn the physical and mental energy of coming up with countless combinations from complicated into consolidated
Curate doable meal and snack ideas your child will actually eat
Help you feel more confident with feeding your kids
With Muffin Club running right now, you might think that I am going to suggest that that is the answer. However, on today's episode, I talk about how Muffin Club is simply a microcosm of a system set-up to function for my family and me and hopefully you and yours too.
You can still sign up for Muffin Club to get your hands on one, actionable recipe each week. Join us here!
Have more questions about Muffin Club? Get them answered here.
Listen to this episode of The Veggies & Virtue Podcast now!
Full Episode Transcription
Please note this a raw transcription. If something doesn’t read correctly, toggle to that timestamp in the show so that you can listen in on what was actually being said!
[00:00:00] Gradually creating sustainable habits will both lighten the mental load at feeding your family and make it easier to stick with even when you can barely keep your eyes open after a long day. Plus, having the right planning tools will make it easy to add simple variety each week without you having to buy expensive groceries that will just wilt and sit in the back of your fridge.
[00:00:21] In the last episode, we talked about how we need these simple meal and snack ideas that are staples, and how we can begin habit stacking in a way that will help us to feel like we can accomplish more with fewer ideas. In this episode, we're gonna chat about how we can go from. Offering the same foods on repeat and find ways to provide variety amidst our routine.
[00:00:49] Hey mama. I'm Ashley and welcome to the Veggies and Virtue Podcast. In this podcast you'll find simple menu ideas, kitchen organizational systems spelled out for mom life, and feeding tips and tricks that are both evidence based in grace. I believe that you can find flexibility when it comes to feeding your family so that you can feel calm, capable, and connected in the kitchen.
[00:01:08] As a registered dietician and Christian mom of three myself, I want you to break free from the mealtime battles and to feel equipped while feeding your kids all day long. Pull up a stool at my kitchen counter and let me pour you a cup of coffee and say a quick prayer for you. It's time to chat about the meal times, messes moments, and ministry of motherhood.
[00:01:29] So how do we do this? How do we feel organized and calm around the meals and snacks that we have to offer our family without over complicating things or the opposite of under complicating it so much that we feel stuck in a rut. Because if you listen to the last episode where I dove into just really high level habit stacking, I want this episode to really focus in on our systems because so often we assume that we need to spend hours upon hours every Sunday meal prepping, or that we need to have a large budget for groceries so that we can just make it all happen and buy things pre-made or have a bunch of ideas on hand or ingredients that's just gonna help us magically feed our family better.
[00:02:12] But the reality. None of these things are needed for you to be successful. What you need is to have the right planning and the right tools so that it's easy to add simple variety each week using the groceries you already buy and doing the things that you already do. And so if you haven't listened to the last episode, definitely go back.
[00:02:32] Cause I told you in step one and step two, how I help you identify what some of those simple ideas are and the criteria to. How you know if those are actually good ideas that fit for your family. And those are kind of what I consider the noun. They're the product of what we're creating. But then I also talk to you about the verb, the verb of what is the habit that's required to create that end product of something like a muffin as we talk about within Muffin Club and how Muffin Club is so much a microcosm of what we need to be practicing in our lives to begin to create sustainable.
[00:03:08] And one of the ways that we do this is by setting up systems. Systems are there to eliminate that mental energy of what to make or to in figuring out when are we gonna have the time. To make it, to prep it, to put it out, to ultimately offer it to our kids, so it's not something that just sits in the back of the pantry or spoils in the back of the fridge.
[00:03:32] So y'all know I'm a very visual person, so I wanna walk you through an example that really resonated with me when I was thinking of how systems work. Because if you've ever opened up an over an overstuffed closet and you just kind of stare at all the clothes you have, And you feel like there's nothing to wear and you just feel overwhelmed because there's so many options, and yet there's nothing that ultimately answers the outfit choice that you're looking for.
[00:04:01] It's like confusing to put together the perfect outfit, and it feels more complicated almost the more choices that you have in front of you. And so one thing that came to mind that I think is. Easy visual and fitting parallel to setting up systems in our home is thinking about what many stylists would do in creating a capsule wardrobe, because the similar concept to kind of investing in these essentials that someone could wear multiple ways, and you know, not just hopping on whatever the latest trend is, but instead finding a smarter and more sustainable.
[00:04:44] To coming up with your go-to options, I want us to think about how systems similar to Muffin Club help us to narrow down our choices and what to offer our kids and save us from that feeling of just feeling stumped every time they're hungry again. So I never wanna take an analogy too far, but I do wanna help you all think about this in a way that can be really easy to relate to and visual.
[00:05:10] And so, being someone who. I would say has very little fashion sense, and I can be the type of person who, I'll go to J Crew and I find a sweater that I like and I'll buy it in six colors because I like the sweater, I like how it fits. I like the price point. Boom, let's just be done with it and get it in six colors.
[00:05:26] However, I think we can often default to that and how we feed our families too. We can just find something that works, find a way to easily replicate it and boom, feel done. But if y'all have ever seen how I'm. , there is some room for improvement. And as your family's dietician, I wanna encourage you that if this is your approach to how you're feeding your family, in order to make it simplified and a little bit more streamlined so it's not so overwhelming to come up with an idea, there's something we can do to improve this approach.
[00:05:57] Because similar to a capsule, wardrobe being this concise, more curated selection of options. , it's going to vary a little bit from person to person and season to season and budget to budget and family to family and home to home and all these different things. Everyone's is going to look a little different.
[00:06:18] However, something that it accomplishes for each of us unanimously is that it's going to declutter our closet. And I think when we approach setting up systems in our kitchen and around meals and. It does something very similar because we're looking at how can we make the options a little bit more concise and curate a selection of simple meal and snack ideas that are timeless that just work for our family, not work for our family.
[00:06:47] Only when we spent hours meal prepping on a Sunday. Only when we have extra bandwidth or you know, that default of when we don't have bandwidth and we just go to these same selections because they're the only things we feel like we can offer. But instead, how do we declutter our fridge, our pantry, our home, and honestly our brains from all the excess that can overwhelm us?
[00:07:13] And it honestly gets in the way of coming up with those few simple idea. That are most essential. You want simple, healthy, kid approved meal and snack ideas, but you're feeling tired of scrolling, social screenshoting, a recipe idea or pinning ideas only to feel annoyed that your inspiration rarely leads to execution.
[00:07:33] As moms, I know we want to offer nourishing variety to our kids, but how do we get away from offering the same few foods on repeat? When the busyness of our lives demands routine, Friend, I get you and I understand the. Because as a busy moment through myself, I have had to spend years finding the strategies and assistance to simplify meal times.
[00:07:53] Some of you may remember that before my son was born, I shared a simple idea that I was going to start remaking muffins in anticipation for my postpartum muffins, for something that I knew our family could enjoy any hour of the day or night. By pre-selecting healthy recipes to make ahead and freeze, I knew that this was one simple.
[00:08:10] Stacks that I could actually achieve, even when very pregnant with two extra little kids helping in the kitchen. Fast forward four years later, and this is still something that you all ask me about again and again and again. Tens of thousands of you have joined me over the years for Muffin Club as we bake together and spend.
[00:08:26] Time, lightning our mental lot as moms one small sustainable habit at a time. I would love to have you come join for this year's Muffin Club kicking off November 11. All you need to do to sign up is to go to veggies and virtue.com/muffin club. It's going to be really simple recipes with ingredients that you already have on hand, including all of my family's favorite seasonal flavors of muffins, things like pumpkin, apple, and cranberry for.
[00:08:52] So be sure to get signed up@veggiesandvirtue.com. Now admittedly, I don't have a capsule wardrobe one, and I have no idea how to create it. So this is kind of where the analogy ends, and I'm gonna stay in my lane with talking about food and feeding your family and how I think this concept. Applies to the systems that we're setting up to simplify meal times.
[00:09:16] If last week we talked about coming up with those simple meal ideas, things like muffins and understanding the habits that have to stack to ultimately perpetuate more just as a capsule wardrobe is going to be something that, you know, we could add to and layer each season and you know, kind of bring in some trendy fashion forward fines.
[00:09:38] The same can be true with how we feed our family. It doesn't need to be the same drab six sweaters from J. Crew six days of the week, looking the same week after week. However, I'm gonna say that as someone who doesn't understand fashion, and maybe for you depending on where your level is with understanding food and feeding, it may start.
[00:10:00] With identifying what are those basics? What are those basics that you need to have to simplify your system as you get started? And that's why I think Muffin Club is such a microcosm for what so many of us are trying to find, because as we simplify it to something like muffins, as we simplify it to something like.
[00:10:23] Practice of baking muffins. Each week we begin to find ways that things actually work and find ways to actually begin feeling confident. With that process of feeding our families just the same way that I would assume, I would feel really confident If any of you are stylists and wanna come to my home in capsule wardrobe.
[00:10:45] For me, I would love it because I feel like that would take so much of the mental load out of figuring out what to wear every day. I personally am not someone who really cares, but I still have to decide every day. And if you're someone who doesn't really care what you feed your. But it's still something you have to decide every day.
[00:11:01] We can see how having an overwhelming number of options can really overcomplicate the process, drain us in the process, and ultimately not yield really that great of an end product from going through the process. Process. So what system are we setting up with Muffin Club and why does it matter for you?
[00:11:24] And I want you to think about it in this. That I have already curated a list of six dietician, mom approved muffin recipes. I've put my stamp of approval on them the way that I would have some comfort and added confidence knowing that a stylist had told me some go-to outfits I could wear that would just take the guesswork out of it because I don't know, and quite honestly, I don't really care and I'm not gonna spend the time into looking for it.
[00:11:48] And yes, I can go scroll for different ideas and follow fashion influencers and spend way too much. Picking random items that may or may not actually go together, or I may or may not know how to wear. The same is true here with Muffin Club. You can go do all those things in the food world and with recipes and ideas, but you're gonna get a closet full of excess.
[00:12:15] You're going to have a kitchen that doesn't function in a way that helps you feed your family any better. Where the opposite is also. Where Muffin Clubs helps you to take that overwhelming sense of what to offer your family and turn it into something that's actionable and achievable because it turns that endless never ending list of breakfast ideas, snack ideas, healthy, this, that, the other ideas, and it turns it into six.
[00:12:47] Dietician, mom approved muffin. Now are muffins the pinnacle of nutrition access here? No. You can fill in that blank. Fill in this system with whatever you want, because goodness knows I'm not always making muffins, especially if I see my kids are tiring out of muffins. You better believe I'm gonna take a break and try and help prevent that burnout because it probably is something that I've been over offering, but instead what I already have established, whether it be with Muffin or something.
[00:13:19] Is a system that is something that I can continue to build off of because those building blocks are already there for healthy snack ideas or healthy breakfast ideas for my kids. The same systems are true when I share with my meal Times made easy method. The process of how to go about setting up these systems for things like DIY dinner bins or a kid-friendly snack drawer.
[00:13:46] Does it matter what content? Fill my DIY dinner bins. Does it really matter what foods fill? My kid friendly snack drawer? Does it really matter what muffin recipes have been chosen for the six weeks of Muffin Club? Not really. It doesn't. I know as I give the example of my insecurity with fashion, I know the comfort that comes and the mental freedom we.
[00:14:14] when someone else makes these decisions for us and just says, This is a, you're good to go with this. Implement as is. I understand that, and that's why I think something like Muffin Club gives parents that easy win, that you don't have to think about it. You don't have to carry that mental load. You don't have to sift through 7,000 snack ideas to come up with one that may or may not work.
[00:14:37] But what I want you to see is beyond the recipe, beyond me curating your kitchen, With these six healthy muffin ideas. After the repetition of doing this for six weeks, you begin to see how you set up a system or this system of, as I mentioned in a former episode, make it Mondays that just rings my ear, and once I've done it six weeks in a row, I just realize that whether I'm making muffins or something else, that is just a homemade snack idea that I need for the.
[00:15:10] I may start doing homemade granola bars. I may do a breakfast cookie. I may do overnight oats. I quite honestly don't care what I do, what I do care about for myself as a busy mom of three. And for you as a busy mom juggling so much is coming up with that system of coming up with simple meal and snack ideas to fit your needs habit stacking so that you can fit it in amidst your real.
[00:15:37] And not like a special outfit. I mean, how many of us do I like? I just bought recently a really nice top and I was joking with a girlfriend how I spent a little bit more than I wanted to on it, but I was like, You know what? I'm gonna have this for years to come cuz I'm only gonna wear it in a blue moon.
[00:15:53] How many meal and snack ideas do we have like that? We're like, Oh, this is such a good snack idea, but I'm only gonna use it when like it's a full moon and my kids aren't grumpy and no one's sick. I have three hours to do all these things and to prep the ingredients. I mean, we do that with meals and snacks all the time.
[00:16:11] It has to fit all this different criteria. But instead, what I hope you're seeing through the system of Muffin Club is that this becomes a repeatable process that you can set up a system around doing in your home so that like a capsule wardrobe, you can begin to mix and match for the next. Weeks, months and years to come after Muffin Club is over and that you can see that it continues to perpetuate fresh ideas just as it does with things like DOI dinner bands, and kid friendly snack drawers because you have this system set up to support you to do so.
[00:16:51] You don't have to go into this cluttered fridge. You know, I hear so many of you saying, my fridge is always full and I have no idea what to. . Okay, then let's start setting up systems. Setting up systems to make healthy snack ideas once a week doesn't mean every snack you offer your kids every day of the week needs to be some glorified homemade snack idea.
[00:17:12] Absolutely not. I mean, if that fits for you, by all means have at it. But that's not realistic for most of us. Not in the physical ability and capacity or in just mental bandwidth to come up with that many idea. But so often, instead of centering that mental energy on how can we set up a system that's just a reproducible process that gives us the same building blocks to work with, it's the same ingredients that we may create different ideas with.
[00:17:45] We may freshen it up from season to season. We may add little fun ideas here and there. We come across new ideas as our kids request new things as we stumble across something new at the store. All of that can be added to our system, just the way that we can add some fresh new flare to a wardrobe. But we, what we see is that the versatility of having these reliable basics helps us feed our family faster.
[00:18:20] With less time and ultimately while avoiding the decision fatigue, just the way that we would get dressed in an easier process, I assume with something like a capsule closet. So as you work through Muffin Club, I know we're just at the beginning and we're just beginning to scratch the surface on how My Muffin Club really is a microcosm of setting up those systems that you need so you're not getting stuck in a rut with six of the same sweater.
[00:18:48] and you're not getting overwhelmed with a cluttered kitchen and a full fridge and having no idea what to make or what to offer your kids instead. See how this is beginning to build not only a curated selection of options that you could offer, but also how it's beginning to help you create systems that fit for your family and that work for your real life that you can continue using week after week, month after month, season after season.
[00:19:18] To add fresh ideas to so that when Muffin Club is over, you've already created the systems so that just as you want to leave the house feeling confident in what you are wearing and what you've put on, you want that confidence that you have. Curated options and dressed your child at a meal in the foods that are going to fit for them and ultimately make them feel their best.
