Our Best Takeaways from the Summer Ready Meal Planning Summit

A week ago, we hosted our first virtual meal planning summit! Summer Ready: A Meal Planning Summit was a half-day virtual event where we brought together experts from all areas of the food industry to talk about meal planning, cooking, and shopping.

Today, we’re sharing some of our takeaways from the summit and highlighting what we learned from the incredible speakers. We left the summit feeling like we learned something new from each speaker and it was a challenge to select only one highlight from each!

Here’s what we learned for the dinner table:

1. One thing we heard about multiple times during the summit was the Division of Responsibility in Feeding. This is an idea developed by Ellyn Satter around the different responsibilities parents and children have at meal times. Parents have a responsibility to provide the What, When, and Where of food, while a child’s responsibility is How Much and Whether or Not to eat. This approach offers parents a way out of power struggles, tantrums, and frustrations at eating times, so they can focus on supporting their children and building trust. The fact that multiple speakers mentioned this concept reinforced how important it is for families and parents to become aware of it at meal times. 
2. Diana Rice taught us about consistency with meals and how that leads to a trusting relationship between parent and child. Children (and most adults) thrive on routine, so keeping consistent meal times, even in the summer, helps them feel grounded and secure. 
3. Katie Kimball joined us to talk about picky eating and how to transition our kids away from it. She spoke about leaving at least 90 minutes between meals and snacks for kids to not sabotage hunger cues at meals. One of her best quotes was, “Hunger is the best seasoning”. 

Here’s what we learned for the grocery store:

1. Author Carol Ann Kates shared some of her grocery store secrets on how to get the most out of the food we buy. She mentioned that marinated meat at the store is often close to being past its prime, so it’s best to cook it as soon as possible after purchase for the best experience. 
2. Food waste expert, Pam Mercer, reminded us to choose loose produce over pre-packaged to reduce wasteful packaging and save money at the store. And going to the store with an organized grocery list reduces impulse buying and wasted food.

Here’s what we learned for the kitchen:

1. Hannah Van Ark spoke about the importance of scheduling your meal planning and protecting that time because of how beneficial it is for a calmer life. Make meal planning an agenda item and don’t skip it! 
2. Debbie Brosnan shared that beginner home cooks can focus on a few basic things to improve their cooking abilities, like meal planning and being ready to cook, reading recipes in full before cooking, and practicing the same recipe multiple times to gain confidence in new skills, because cooking a new recipe for the first time doesn’t always go as planned. 
3. Meal prep expert, Maddie, gave us food storage tips like hardier veggies like carrots and celery do well to be washed, prepped, and stored in glass containers in the fridge. While leafy greens do well to be washed and stored in tea towels in the fridge. 

We’re heading into summer with a clearer plan for the grocery store, more confidence in the kitchen, and a better understanding of how consistent meals can make a real difference for our families, and we have these incredible speakers to thank for that.

If you joined us for the summit or watched the replay, we hope you gained so much knowledge from our panel of experts! If you missed the summit, subscribe to our YouTube channel for more highlights and valuable insights.