The Bright Method Podcast: Realistic Time Management and Productivity for Working Women & Working Moms

101. Meal Planning & Prep Tips with Prep Dish founder Allison Schaaf

May 12, 2025

Allison Schaaf, a registered dietitian and trained chef, shares invaluable insights on tackling the time-consuming challenges of meal planning for busy families. She emphasizes simplifying the process with effective strategies that don’t require constant reinvention. Allison discusses practical ways to involve kids in cooking, making meals more enjoyable. The behind-the-scenes of her meal planning service, Prep Dish, highlights its role in easing the invisible workload of meals while promoting healthier eating habits and family engagement.

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ADVICE

Plan Weekly to Avoid Dinner Stress

Plan meals once a week to avoid last-minute unhealthy choices at dinner time.
Preparing a plan ahead creates intention and reduces stress around daily meal decisions.

ADVICE

Do Meal Prep To Ease Dinner

Dedicate a specific prep day to chop vegetables and mix sauces for the week.
This reduces chaos during dinner and makes meal preparation feel calm and manageable.

ADVICE

Involve Kids for Better Eating

Involve kids in meal prep from toddler age to build interest and improve eating habits.
Assign age-appropriate kitchen tasks to increase their connection to meals and willingness to try foods.

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Meal planning and meal prep come up again and again as one of the top time management challenges professional working women face on the personal side of life—and it makes sense. Between picking recipes, building grocery lists, shopping, and then actually making the meals, it’s a lot—and it happens every single week.

In this episode, I’m joined by Allison Schaaf, a registered dietitian, trained chef, and the founder of Prep Dish, a meal planning service designed to reduce the time and mental load that come with feeding yourself and your family. If you’ve ever wished for an option that hits the middle ground between a full meal kit delivery and figuring it all out on your own, this might be it.

In this conversation, we dig into:

why meal planning is such a universal time management pain point, especially for working parents
how to simplify and systematize it so it’s not something you reinvent every week
practical strategies for tackling both meal planning and prep in realistic ways (especially if cooking isn’t your thing)
different ways to involve your kids so they’re more likely to actually eat the food you make
the behind-the-scenes of Prep Dish and how it helps people reduce the invisible workload that comes with meals—without going all the way to fully outsourced kits
how to use your calendar to support and protect your meal planning time
and how Allison built this company after working as a personal chef and seeing what worked in real life

Whether you love cooking and just want to lighten the lift—or you're trying to get through dinner without a meltdown (yours or someone else’s)—this conversation offers great ideas and an option you may not have known existed.

Allison also shares a generous free trial of Prep Dish just for Bright Method listeners. To grab it, go to prepdish.com/bright.

Links you might enjoy:

🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

📱 Follow me on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.