Meal Planning in Notion • NEW template for 2024!

Summary

In this informative video, Marie shares her extensive experience using Notion for meal prepping and planning. As a vegetarian with ADHD, she tailors her approach to optimize kitchen time and ensure healthy meals. Marie discusses various meal planning methods, including freestyle, ingredient-based, and pre-made plans, highlighting the flexibility to suit individual needs. She demonstrates how to set up a Notion workspace for meal planning, including databases for recipes, groceries, and pantry management. The video also covers how to create a simple meal planner from scratch and the importance of organizing recipes by category and course for easy meal selection. Marie's enthusiasm for meal planning and Notion's capabilities make this an engaging guide for anyone looking to streamline their meal prep.

Takeaways

• 📝 Marie has been using Notion for meal planning and prepping for years and finds it the most effective tool for streamlining her process.
• 🍲 Notion allows her to create a 'Food HQ' for pantry management, meal planning, recipe collection, and more, which caters to her vegetarian diet and ADHD.
• 🛠️ Notion's continuous updates and added features have enabled Marie to continuously improve her meal planning system.
• 🥗 Marie's approach to meal planning varies, from using up ingredients in her pantry to craving-based freestyle meal plans and pre-made meal plans.
• 🔍 She emphasizes the importance of personalization in meal planning, acknowledging that everyone's needs and preferences are different.
• 📈 Marie discusses different levels of meal planning complexity, from simple pantry checks to advanced pre-made meal plans that save time and reduce decision fatigue.
• 🛒 She uses Notion to create shopping lists based on her planned meals, which helps in organizing groceries and ensuring she has all needed ingredients.
• 📚 Marie's 'Food HQ' includes various pages for different aspects of meal planning, such as a recipe database, grocery database, and meal planning page.
• 📱 She mentions using a mobile widget to filter and view only the items needed for the week's meals, making grocery shopping more efficient.
• 📝 The process of adding recipes and linking them to ingredients in Notion is time-consuming but is a one-time effort that pays off in easier planning later.
• 🌟 Marie highlights the flexibility of Notion, allowing her to switch between different meal planning methods depending on her time and energy.

Q & A

What is the main purpose of the video?

The main purpose of the video is to share how Marie uses Notion for meal prepping and planning, and to demonstrate different approaches to meal planning that can be adapted to individual needs.

How long has Marie been doing meal planning?

Marie has been doing some form of meal planning for the last 15 years.

What is unique about Notion that made Marie choose it for meal planning?

Notion is unique because it is the only tool Marie found that helped speed up her meal planning process and continued to add new features and functionality that she could iterate on and improve her system.

What does Marie call her Notion workspace for food management?

Marie calls her Notion workspace for food management 'Food HQ'.

Why is Marie's approach to meal planning different from others?

Marie's approach to meal planning is different because she is a vegetarian with ADHD, and food is her special interest, which influences her meal planning strategy.

What are some of the different meal planning methods Marie discusses?

Marie discusses methods such as freestyle meal planning, planning by ingredient, and using pre-made meal plans that are designed to work well together.

How does Marie optimize her time spent in the kitchen?

Marie optimizes her time in the kitchen by planning meals in advance, batch cooking, and sometimes freezing and portioning out components for the week.

What is the benefit of using pre-made meal plans according to the video?

The benefit of using pre-made meal plans is that they can help with money-saving by factoring in shared components between recipes and reducing decision fatigue by planning out multiple weeks in advance.

How does Marie manage her pantry and groceries in Notion?

Marie manages her pantry and groceries using databases in Notion, where she can track ingredients, their status, and create shopping lists based on the recipes she plans to make.

What is the advantage of having a recipes database in Notion according to Marie?

The advantage of having a recipes database in Notion is that it allows Marie to easily plan meals, track ingredients, and create shopping lists, making the planning part quite easy once the recipes are added and linked to ingredients.

How does Marie ensure she is not wasting food while meal planning?

Marie ensures she is not wasting food by checking her pantry and fridge for ingredients that need to be used up and focusing her meal plan on those specific ingredients and flavor profiles.

What is the significance of the 'Freestyle' method in Marie's meal planning?

The 'Freestyle' method is significant because it is a simple and flexible approach that requires minimal setup and allows Marie to quickly decide on meals for the week without worrying about ingredient sharing or complex planning.

How does Marie's culinary boot camp experience influence her meal planning?

Marie's culinary boot camp experience influenced her meal planning by teaching her new skills in the kitchen, which helped her level up her flavor creation and gave her new perspectives on how to approach making food.

What does Marie mean by 'ingredient first' approach in meal planning?

The 'ingredient first' approach means that Marie starts her meal planning by considering which ingredients she has on hand or needs to use up, and then builds her meal plan around those specific ingredients.

How does Marie's Food HQ help in reducing decision fatigue?

Food HQ helps in reducing decision fatigue by providing a structured system where Marie can pre-select meal plans, decide on ingredients first, or choose from a freestyle selection, thus minimizing the daily decision-making process.

Outlines

00:00

🍽️ Introduction to Notion for Meal Planning

Marie introduces her experience with meal planning and how Notion has streamlined her process over the years. She explains that while she has been meal planning for 15 years, Notion stands out for its efficiency. As a vegetarian with ADHD, Marie emphasizes that her approach to meal planning is tailored to her needs and interests. She has created 'Food HQ' in Notion for pantry management, meal planning, recipe collection, and more. The video aims to show different ways to set up meal planning in Notion, acknowledging that individual needs vary and that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

05:02

📝 The Evolution of Marie's Notion Meal Planning System

Marie discusses the evolution of her Notion-based meal planning system, highlighting the changes she has made and the flexibility she has built into her approach. She shares her journey from her first Notion meal prepping video to the current system, which incorporates new features and functionalities added by Notion over time. The video will cover how she uses her workspace and provide a step-by-step guide to setting up a similar system. Marie also reflects on how culinary boot camp and technology have enhanced her meal planning and kitchen skills.

10:04

🥗 Customizing Meal Planning to Personal Needs and Interests

Marie emphasizes the importance of personalizing meal planning to one's dietary preferences, health needs, and interests. As a vegetarian with ADHD, she has a unique approach that may differ from others. She outlines various meal planning methods, such as focusing on ingredients that need to be used up, craving-based freestyle meal plans, and sales-driven grocery choices. Marie also discusses the different levels of complexity in meal planning, from simple to advanced, and how she uses technology to make the process faster and more efficient.

15:08

🛒 Notion's Role in Streamlining Grocery Shopping and Meal Prep

Marie demonstrates how she uses Notion to organize her recipes, track ingredients, and plan meals. She explains the process of setting up databases for recipes and groceries, and how she uses checkboxes to plan meals and manage inventory. Marie also shows how to create a grocery list based on planned meals and discusses the importance of categorizing recipes for easy meal planning. She shares her method of filtering and organizing the grocery list on her phone for shopping convenience.

20:14

🌟 Advanced Meal Planning with Pre-Made Plans and Inventory Management

Marie delves into more advanced meal planning techniques, such as using pre-made meal plans from Rainbow Plant Life, which she integrates into Notion. She shows how to organize these plans, view recipes, and manage shopping lists. Additionally, Marie discusses inventory management, showing how to filter and view ingredients that need to be used up quickly and how to generate meal ideas based on these ingredients. She also touches on the importance of updating recipes with categories to ensure effective planning.

25:15

📚 Creating a Comprehensive Meal Planning System in Notion

Marie provides an overview of her comprehensive meal planning system in Notion, which includes freestyle planning, pre-made plans, and inventory management. She explains how to use Notion's features to create a user-friendly and efficient meal planning workspace. The system includes a recipe explorer, weekly meal prep notes, and a pantry manager for easy stock checks. Marie also guides viewers on creating a new meal planner from scratch, emphasizing the flexibility and customization available in Notion.

🔍 Exploring Different Views and Filtering Options in Notion

Marie showcases the different views and filtering options available in Notion for meal planning. She discusses how to use the recipes database in various ways, such as grouping by category or course, and how to filter recipes based on ingredients or planning status. Marie also explains how to create a shopping list that automatically updates based on the recipes selected for the week, making the planning process more streamlined.

📝 Final Thoughts on Notion for Meal Planning and Next Steps

In the conclusion, Marie summarizes her approach to meal planning using Notion and invites viewers to ask questions for further clarification. She expresses her enthusiasm for the Food HQ and meal planning features in Notion and offers to provide additional insights and examples if needed. Marie also mentions that she will include a link to a template in the video description to help viewers get started with their own meal planning journey in Notion.

Keywords

💡Meal Planning

Meal planning is the process of organizing and deciding what meals will be eaten in the future, often for a week or more. In the video, Marie discusses her extensive experience with meal planning and how she uses Notion to streamline this process. She mentions different levels of complexity and intensity in meal planning, indicating that it can be tailored to individual needs and intentions, such as optimizing kitchen time or ensuring healthy meals.

💡Notion

Notion is a productivity tool that allows users to take notes, manage projects, and create databases. In the context of the video, Marie uses Notion as a platform to organize her meal planning. She refers to it as the only tool that helped her make the meal planning process speedier, highlighting its versatility and usefulness in managing her food HQ, pantry management, and recipe collection.

💡Food HQ

Food HQ, as mentioned in the script, is a term coined by Marie to describe her dedicated space for managing all aspects of meal preparation. It includes pantry management, meal planning, recipe collection, and more. The concept of Food HQ is central to the video as it represents the comprehensive system Marie has developed using Notion to stay on top of her meal prepping.

💡Pantry Management

Pantry management involves organizing and keeping track of food items stored in the pantry or fridge to avoid waste and ensure ingredients are used efficiently. In the video, Marie explains how she uses Notion for pantry management, which is a part of her Food HQ system. She discusses how she checks for ingredients that need to be used up and plans meals around them.

💡Recipe Database

A recipe database is a collection of recipes organized systematically, often including ingredients, preparation methods, and other relevant details. Marie mentions creating a recipe database in Notion, which is a key component of her meal planning strategy. She uses this database to store her tried-and-true recipes and link them to ingredients for easy planning and shopping list creation.

💡Groceries Database

A groceries database is a system for tracking and organizing grocery items needed for various recipes. Marie refers to her groceries database in Notion, which she uses in conjunction with her recipe database. This database helps her identify which ingredients are required for the meals she plans and generates shopping lists accordingly.

💡Freestyle Meal Plan

A freestyle meal plan is an approach where one collects a few recipes they love and are familiar with, without worrying about how ingredients are shared or the complexity of the dishes. In the video, Marie describes the freestyle method as one of the simplest ways to do meal prepping, requiring only a recipes database and a groceries database.

💡Pre Made Meal Plans

Pre made meal plans are pre-designed meal plans that include recipes and ingredients designed to work well together, often with shared components between recipes. Marie discusses using pre made meal plans in Notion, which she sources from Rainbow Plant Life. These plans are more advanced and intentional, helping to reduce decision fatigue and potentially save money.

💡Meal Prepping

Meal prepping refers to the practice of preparing meals in advance, often for the week, to save time and ensure healthy eating habits. Marie's video is focused on how she uses Notion to assist with her meal prepping routine. She provides examples of how she plans her meals, whether it's through freestyle planning, using ingredients that need to be used up, or following pre made meal plans.

💡Culinary Boot Camp

A culinary boot camp is an intensive culinary training program designed to teach and improve cooking skills. Marie mentions attending a culinary boot camp last year, which helped her level up her flavor creation and gain new perspectives on food preparation. This experience likely contributed to her refined approach to meal planning and cooking.

Highlights

Marie has been using Notion for meal prepping and planning for over 15 years, finding it to be a tool that speeds up the process.

Notion's continuous addition of new features has allowed Marie to improve her meal planning system over time.

Marie created 'Food HQ' in Notion for pantry management, meal planning, recipe collection, and more.

Meal planning can be approached differently based on individual needs and preferences.

Marie's vegetarian diet and ADHD influence her unique approach to meal planning.

Meal planning can range from simple to complex, with various levels of intensity based on personal energy and intention.

Marie uses a freestyle meal plan focusing on ingredients that need to be used up, like spinach in the fridge.

She also plans meals around recipes she craves or finds on sale at the grocery store.

Advanced meal planning involves creating meal plans with shared components to save money and reduce decision fatigue.

Marie's Food HQ includes a variety of pages for different aspects of meal planning and food management.

The meal planning page in Notion includes options for freestyle, by ingredient, pre-made plans, and weekly prep.

Freestyle meal planning in Notion requires a recipes database and a groceries database.

Marie does not add every recipe to Notion; only those that are frequently made make it into her workspace.

Notion's database can be displayed in different views, such as by category or course, aiding in meal planning.

Marie uses a grocery list widget on her phone to only see items marked as needed during shopping.

Filters in Notion allow for quick meal planning based on ingredients or other criteria.

Marie's pre-made meal plans are sourced from Rainbow Plant Life, imported into Notion for personalized use.

The template for pre-made meal plans in Notion includes recipes, ingredients, and shopping lists.

Marie demonstrates creating a new meal planner from scratch in Notion, showing customization options.

The final meal planning setup in Notion provides an easy way to decide meals and generate shopping lists.

Marie offers to answer questions and provide guidance for those interested in using Notion for meal planning.

Transcripts

Hey, I'm Marie.

And in this video, I want to share with you how I've been using Notion to help

me with my meal prepping and planning.

I've been doing some form of meal planning for the last probably 15 years.

And Notion was really the only tool that I found that actually helped me

with this process to make it speedier.

I would say food is probably my special interest.

So this is a use case that I have been iterating on for many many years.

The first video I ever made about how I was using Notion was a meal

prepping and meal planning video.

Two years later I made a new video and again Notion continues to add new features

and new functionality so I've continued to iterate on and improve this system.

I've shared online examples of how I've been using it to create what I call Food

HQ which is a place where I do my pantry management, and meal planning, recipe

collection, and all sorts of stuff to help me stay on top of my meal prepping.

Now I get a lot of questions about how I set this up, and what are the

different ways that we might want to do this, because there isn't just

one way to do your meal planning.

Everybody's needs are a little bit different.

I'm a vegetarian.

I have ADHD and food is my special interest.

So the way that I approach my meal planning is going to be a

little bit different than you.

And I wanted to highlight over the years some of the changes that I've

made and some of the different ways to give yourself some flexibility over

how you might want to approach this.

I'll showcase some of the ways that I've been using it in my workspace

and then we'll switch over and do a little bit of a build from scratch.

So you can understand how to do this in your own workspace.

As I've leaned on technology to help me make this process faster,

I've learned a number of things.

I also did a culinary boot camp last year that taught me a number of skills in the

kitchen And it's really kind of helped me level up my flavor creation and really

helped give me some new perspectives on how I approach making food in the kitchen

meal planning can mean different things to different people and you may have

different intentions For why you want to do meal planning and for also how much and

to what extent you want to plan in advance

For me, I want to optimize how much time I'm spending in the kitchen and

making sure that I have healthy meals So that I'm not resorting to grabbing

snacks or skipping meals because I don't have the energy to make good food

There are different levels of complexity and intensity in terms

of meal planning and there's by no means any right or wrong way to do it.

There's just options based on how much energy you have

and what your intention is.

One of the really simple ways that I do meal prepping is I ask

myself what needs to get used up in the pantry or the fridge.

Is there some spinach in the back of your fridge that's going

bad that you need to use up?

Then I might focus a meal plan on specific ingredients and specific flavor profiles.

Other times I might have recipes that I just haven't made in a

while and I'm really craving.

So sometimes I'll do a freestyle meal plan where I'm just collecting a few

recipes that I really love and I know how to make and I'll prep them and

I will batch cook them in advance.

Sometimes I'll walk through the store and do my groceries and I will plan a

meal around what groceries are on sale.

I choose my recipes in advance, I make the components, sometimes make

large batches of those things, and in some cases freeze and portion things

out so that I have them for the week.

And then on the more advanced side of things, there's the pre made meal plans.

And these are recipes, components, ingredients that are designed to work

well together because there's a lot of shared components between those recipes.

This can of course help with money saving as you're factoring in.

If I'm buying a bag of onions, I can use it in this recipe over here

and in this other one over here.

It's a little bit more intentional, it's a little bit more of an advanced use

case but it does kind of help take the decision making out of it when you've

made a group of recipes that really work well together and over time as you make

a couple collections of these pre made meal plans you get to the point where

you make up enough pre made meal plans that you can plan out six weeks, eight

weeks, 12 weeks in advance, and you know exactly what you're going to make,

which reduces that decision fatigue.

It's a little more advanced, but I've given myself the ability and

notion to be able to decide, do I want to go ingredient first?

Do I want to freestyle it?

Or do I just want to pre select a pre made meal plan that is already ready to go?

So let me jump in and show you what my food HQ looks like.

All right, so here we are in the food HQ.

For me, this is fun.

This is a hobby.

I love thinking about food, planning food, looking at what other chefs are doing.

Coming up with recipe ideas, planning dinner parties.

This is fun for me.

So I have a lot of supportive pages here.

For the purposes of this video, we are mostly going to focus on meal planning.

So let's jump into the meal planning page.

So here we are in the meal planning page.

You'll see there's a small table of contents here plan this week's

meals by freestyle by ingredient by pre made plans or by weekly prep.

So let's go through these one by one.

The freestyle is probably the easiest method.

It really only requires two databases, a recipes database and a groceries database.

In this case, I actually have a third database that is courses.

So breakfast, appetizers, snacks, etc.

That's a database.

You could also do this as a single select or a multi select.

As an example, let's just open up one so you can see what this looks like.

So baked oatmeal, I've got a checkbox for, is this planned?

Yes or no.

The status is, have I made it or not?

Or is it in progress?

I've got an ingredients database here, which is basically the groceries database.

And I've got a little checkbox for whether or not it's been

checked off that I need it.

So if I'm low on those, a little checkbox is going to show up.

I've got a URL if I've saved this from the web and there's a

specific website related to it.

I can relate this to other recipes.

And this is the category where I've got breakfast, but you could

also do this as a single select.

And then I choose the course, so it shows up in one of these categories.

And I've got a couple other formulas and things, I won't go

into too much detail about that.

And I also like to track the date that I last made it.

This is one way for me to clear out the database over time if I find that I'm

not really using recipes super often.

So then I include the recipe below with all the instructions.

I still include the ingredients here with their quantities and I just make

sure that I've added the ingredients here as well through a relation.

That's the part that takes the longest out of this system, is adding the

recipes into your recipe database and linking them up to the ingredients.

It's the most time consuming part.

Once that's done, the planning part is pretty easy.

I do not add every single recipe to my Notion workspace.

I would say my Notion workspace only has the recipes that are tried and true, the

ones that I make really frequently, The ones that make the cut, make it to Notion.

I have lots of Pinterest pins and recipes that I've saved online that,

you know, I've, I've maybe tried once and I'm not sure if they're

going to make it into Notion.

So for me, Notion is sort of the reliable ride or die.

And I know that they make the cut.

So what you are seeing here is the same recipe database

displayed in two different ways.

On the left hand side, I've got a list view grouped by category, breakfast,

appetizers, snacks, et cetera.

I hide the beverages, and even components I might show.

Um, again, there's lots of different ways to do this.

This is just how I like to organize the information and on the right hand side,

I do the same thing, but I group this by course, and this is a single select

so these are sort of like categories, you know, I could have a salad as a

main, I could have it for breakfast if I wanted to, I could have it for lunch.

And so basically what I do is go through section by section and I decide, what do

I want to eat for breakfast this week?

And I can go through and I can uncheck these and check them.

Maybe I want a breakfast bowl or some overnight oats.

Maybe I want overnight oats and then also want to do a Vietnamese crepe.

I can do that.

So I just check the boxes for the ones that I want.

And again, most of these I've made before, I've seen them before.

I can usually scan and kind of know what they are.

If not, I can always click on this and it's going to show

me a little, uh, preview here.

So let's say I've decided those are the things I want to make for breakfast.

Okay, great.

I can close this up.

And I'll go to the next one.

Okay, what do I want to have for snacks?

You know, maybe let's make some tzatziki.

And again, this is freestyle, so I'm not necessarily being wise about how

the ingredients are being shared.

I'm just deciding, okay, let's make some, you know, olive

tapenade and some tzatziki.

And if you scroll down, I can see this one actually hasn't been assigned to a course.

So if I open that, let's make sure that we give this a course

and that'll be snacks and sides.

And that should show up in the right spot here.

I think also tzatziki condiments and prep, I would probably

switch that to snacks and sides.

And you know, it's kind of up to you how you want to categorize these, but this

is just kind of how I think about it.

So again, I can go through and decide, yes, no, which ones I want, close

these up, okay, let's maybe add a, you know, egg salad or something like that.

And then I already made this one last week, so I'm going to hide that one.

And when I'm in the process of making this, I can change this from in

progress, uh, to ready, et cetera.

So a couple different options there.

So I just go through and make sure that every category has something in it.

And then that's going to give me my list for the week.

So these are all the recipes.

I can kind of scan that and decide, okay, yes, no, does that make sense?

And then I'm going to click on shop.

And this is going to give me the list of groceries for everything that is

included in the recipes that I checked.

And I can go through and say, okay, no, I know I don't have carrots.

I don't have bell peppers.

I need some more tofu.

And I'm just sorting this by need.

So the stuff that I need is always going to show up at the top first.

And I can just kind of go through.

I like to organize it by department first and then subcategory.

So I can look at all my spices in one go, all the oils, all this

good stuff here, jars and cans.

I would just go through, check anything that might be missing.

Now I also have a widget on my phone that shows me my grocery list filtered only

to show me things where need is checked.

So again, this is the full list, but on my phone when I'm actually doing

the groceries, I'm only going to see this list of things that are checked.

It's also going to show me anything that's been checked that isn't in this list.

And just to show you what the filters look like, in this case there

aren't actually any active filters.

I've got ingredients contains in case I do want to pick recipes that contain,

you know, let's say cauliflower.

I can save for everyone and you can see it really minimizes my choices so I can

go through and say, you know what, let's choose a main that uses one of these.

I really like these shawarma bowls here.

And again, sometimes if they haven't been given a category, they may not show up.

Here we go.

Dinner, shawarma bowl and wrap.

So again, that's just another quick way to, to do that.

I'll clear that out.

But generally speaking, I show all of the available recipes and I just add a rule

in case I want to do any quick filtering.

And then on this end, I'm only showing anything where planned is checked.

Pretty simple.

So that is the simple freestyle planner.

It's pretty basic.

Again, it just is mostly just using the recipes database displayed

in a couple different ways.

One is the selector.

The other is the visual overview, which I find very helpful as a visual person.

It kind of helps me plan like how do these flavors work together?

Is this going to make sense?

How much prep work is needed in advance?

All that good stuff.

And then, of course, I can uncheck these or I can go to clear and I can click

all of them in one go and I can change planned to unplanned just by clicking on

that And that's going to clear out the system So i've just given myself a couple

views that are already pre made for me.

It kind of reduces the amount of clicking um You know again, otherwise,

I would have to unclick unclick unclick.

So this just gives me one really quick way to do that Okay, so we've

got our freestyle meal planner, and I think that's probably sufficient

for most people who are just getting started with meal planning.

And then under the by ingredient area down here, I've got a

couple different views for me.

I'm showing my groceries here with the status visible so that I can go

through and, uh, quickly change the status in case there's something

that needs to get used up quickly.

So, you know, let's say I've got onions that need to get used up.

I can just change the status here.

And I just go through my list.

I've mostly, I think, filtered this to my, um,

Let's double check this filter.

So department is fresh fruits and vegetables because that's the

stuff that tends to go bad quickly.

And so I just kind of go through and do a little bit of the inventory,

check what needs to get used up.

And then I've got a filter over here that says only show things

where the stock is used me up.

And what's basically happening here is I'll open up one of these

so you can see what's going on.

I'm sure there's a lot easier of a way to do this But this works for now.

So basically I know that because lemons are Needing to be used up there.

It's showing up here as use me up So this is saying this recipe contains an

ingredient that needs to get used up.

So all of these here are Contain recipes that need to get used up.

So I can kind of visually go through here if I want to and say, oh, you know what a

great way to use up some of those veggies here would be This this and this and I

can go through and then I can say okay that's planned that's planned Etc and

you can see those getting added up here.

And so I can see that these also don't have a course.

Um, again, I might, I might need to go and batch, batch update some of

those recipes to make sure that they get assigned with a course, because

I never used to use this, uh, system.

So it's still pretty new.

So I have some old recipes that will probably need to get updated there.

So that's one way to sort of manage your, you know, inventory by ingredients and

get meal ideas and that sort of thing.

And then I can just go through a couple different views here.

So this is where I can get specific and say, you know, I want to see anything that

needs to get used up or anything that the ingredients contains specific ingredients.

So it's kind of up to you.

If you want to get really specific, maybe you saw something was on sale and

you bought it at the store and you're like, okay, now I need to know, like,

what can I make with Napa cabbage?

And that's going to show up here.

So I just give myself a couple of different views and then I can review

this again and be like, ah, you know what?

That's too many, too many dinners.

I don't need all of this.

And I already made that one, so I'm gonna hide that.

I don't always plan dessert, but hey, it's there.

Uh, I might even organize this a little bit to hide that.

Again, lots of different ways you could choose to display these, but

it's really the recipes and the groceries database that are working together.

So, then I might hide this, uh,

And move on to the pre made meal plans.

So full disclosure here, all these meal plans that you see here, I have

purchased from Rainbow Plant Life.

It's a meal planning system that you can pay quarterly for, and every

single week you get a PDF with your list of recipes, all of the prep work

is predefined, and all I've done is Brought that information into Notion.

So I'll show you roughly what that looks like.

So here's the recipes.

There's an overview here I can see all the instructions for the Components

and prep work that need to happen And a little overview of the recipes here.

And I can also see, again, all the ingredients, along with the ones

that actually need to get purchased.

So maybe I need more cashews, I need more chickpeas, etc.

So I can just go through the list and click those here.

And then at the end, I've just got the shopping list for

this meal plan specifically.

So it's a pretty simple view.

I've hidden most of these properties here, but yeah, you can basically see

the list of recipes, the ingredients.

I'm using a formula instead of a roll up because it's pretty nerdy, but it's

allowing me to look at the recipes, find the ingredients, flatten them,

turn them into a group, and then I want to organize those by subcategory.

And that way it just kind of groups things visually.

So I can see the oils are together, the breads are

together, proteins are together.

Etc.

It's just pretty nerdy.

And I just add some prep notes for myself here, any snacks and sides.

This formula is going to check whether or not the date is the current week.

And if so, it's going to check it.

And that way I can, um, I can filter that in different ways to say,

you know, show me the meal plans that are checked for this week.

And, you know, I can use a calendar view if I want to.

Um, I don't normally really use this calendar view, but if you

wanted to say, Hey, this is the meal plan for this particular week.

You can do that.

That's the one for this week.

I don't really use the dates in that way, but you can absolutely do that.

And then again, the shopping list is here.

The gallery and all recipes here.

So again, huge fan of Rainbow Plant Life.

If you are a vegetarian or vegan, I believe all of her recipes are

vegan and they are so ridiculously flavorful, huge fan of the service.

Um, the PDFs are great, but of course, because I do everything in

ocean, I wanted to get them moved into there as soon as possible.

So that's how I do the pre made meal plans.

There's quite a few here.

And then I've just got a general recipe explorer down here, which I can explore by

category if I want to and I can just kind of browse and see what's available to me.

I've got a couple quick filters here so I can just sort of, you know, I just need

to find something that I can use up a certain ingredient or whatever it is, I

can just include all of that here and it's just, just a really easy way to browse.

And then I just got some weekly meal prep notes of like things I can do every week.

I also realized I've got some beta features turned on, so I probably can't

show you what's in the weekly prep.

But I do have some notes for myself about some condiments and components

that I could make for the week.

I can't show you everything that's in here, unfortunately, so that

is kind of how I've been doing my meal planning at the moment.

Mostly I'm either using this freestyle planner, which is super, super simple.

The pre made plans are a little more complex.

The template itself is pretty advanced.

So if I make a new meal plan here,

new weekly meal plan, and let's say I add some recipes here.

I'm just going to add a couple randoms just so you can kind

of see what it looks like.

So let's say I add all of those.

The ingredients are added automatically.

The overview is here.

Any component notes I would add here.

And then it's going to show me a list of all the ingredients for the recipes above.

And then the shopping list is here.

So it's pretty ready to go.

Now all of this of course hinges on the fact that these recipes

were added and the ingredients for those recipes were related here.

So otherwise you won't see your lovely list of groceries showing up.

So this was just a test one.

I will delete that.

But yeah, that kind of gives you an idea of what this looks like.

And I can add some notes about the meal plan too.

You know, if I liked it, if I didn't like it, whatever, I can add some notes here.

I've got about 24 at the moment to choose from, which gives me

plenty of options for what to make.

So that's the meal planning page.

There's a number of other things in these other pages.

I'm not going to go too far into detail on those, but uh,

Pantry Manager, for example, is a super simple page that just has the groceries

database organized in different ways so that I can go through and um, you

know, just check these off, go through the pantry, go through the fridge, and

just check off any that are needed.

Same thing, nuts and seeds.

So I can go by category here.

subcategory.

This is just one way I can bring my laptop or iPad into the kitchen

and I can just go through and check very quickly which things we need.

Okay, let's go in stock.

And so yeah, I've just given myself some, some options for, uh, how I

want to view these different things.

And that just makes it faster to go through the kitchen and the fridge and

decide what needs to get purchased.

So there you have it.

The Food HQ is just an overview that's got all the recipes here with a couple

quick filters ready to go in case they just want to look things up by ingredient.

Okay, so all of this is pretty complex if you don't really know Notion or you're

not super comfortable with meal prepping.

So, let's make a new meal planner from scratch in easy mode.

Alright, so I'm going to make this page full page, full width.

I'm going to make two columns.

And that type quotation marks to hit a space.

And

I'm going to say choose your meals.

And over here,

plant.

Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to create a linked database.

And I'm going to bring in the Recipes.

And I'm going to bring these in in a table view.

I'm going to hide everything except planned.

I'm going to hide the database title.

I'm going to drag this into the callout block.

And you know what?

I don't like all these lines, so I'm actually going to change

this view to a list view.

Ah, much cleaner.

Although, I'm going to hide the The tags property, and I just want the planned.

Perfect.

Now I'm going to group this by category.

So I'm going to do the same thing.

You know what, I'm going to duplicate this database.

And I'm going to drag this one onto the right.

And I'm going to change this from a list layout into a gallery view.

And I'm going to filter this by planned is checked.

Now I want to group this by course instead.

And I'll probably just make sure to change the order here.

So, breakfast, lunch, condiments and prep, snacks inside, dinner and dessert.

Now we'll just close these.

Reorder these if you want these in a different order.

Again, I don't necessarily need dessert or that sort of thing.

Um, let's change this to manual.

And I'll probably hide beverages.

I might hide components.

Kind of depends.

Some of the dinner recipes have relations to components.

So I might leave that.

Let's drag dessert to the bottom.

And mains as well to the bottom.

So salad, soup, stews.

Okay, that's looking good.

Pretty good.

Might even bold this.

Gotta add a fun little icon.

Meal or food.

Right, so this is probably the easiest way, I think, to do your meal planning.

And that's just going through section by section, deciding what you want to eat.

And you'll notice these that have the pink icons are actually parent pages.

So, anything that's pink has supplemental recipes inside it.

So for example, here's peaches and cream baked oatmeal, and then there's

a blueberry one in it as well.

So some of them are messier than others, not a big deal.

But I know that if I click that, it means that there's other,

um, optional flavors inside.

And so the thing with using a category versus a course is that, you know, I

could make a lentil salad and I can have it for lunch one day and have

it for dinner the other day, but it's still a salad at the end of the day.

So I like to have both.

And personally, I like to have these category pages so that

I can do something like this.

I can see all the recipes that are categorized with that.

I can see how many there are in that category, and I can see

all of them here at a glance.

So doing it as a database instead of as a select or multi select, I like

that it gives me some options here.

All right, and I can even just paste images and things like that too.

So there's lots of random notes in here on your breakfast.

So obviously this only really works well if you have assigned

certain properties to your recipes.

You've given them the ingredients.

You have a planned checkbox, category, salads, maybe a subcategory, a course.

So all the recipes are here, and then the shopping list is just gonna show

anything that's been checked with need.

I think this is one of the easiest forms of meal planning and would probably

be sufficient for most people's needs.

But I do like the option of having that more advanced pre

made meal planner if I want it.

I hope it's helpful to see a couple examples of how you might want to

consider doing this again some weeks I will use a freestyle planner some weeks

I'll just do what's on sale and other times I'll just rely on a pre made meal

plan So I don't use the same method every week kind of depends on how much

time I have on my hands how much prep Time I have available on a Sunday, etc.

So you don't always have to do it the same way every time any little bit of

planning that you do in advance is going to make things a little bit easier.

I also like to do things in terms of components.

So I will make sauces, I will make, a batch of lentils, I will prep things

in separate containers, and I'm only mixing them at the time of preparation.

So that's another way that you can kind of keep things

interesting throughout the week.

So I hope this is helpful to see how you might approach it.

If you have any questions please post them below.

I love the Food HQ and the meal planning side of Notion and so I could

talk about this endlessly for hours.

So if you have any questions definitely post them below.

I'd love to, um, you know, show you other ways of approaching this and

clarify anything that is not clear.

I will include the link to the template in the description below.

And otherwise, I wish you luck on your meal planning journey.

Thanks so much for watching, and I will talk to you next time.