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September is the new January 🙂 There’s something about September that just screams fresh beginnings. Although in Abu Dhabi we’re not even close to fall-ish weather, we’re back into that pre-fall routine and wrapping up some of the summer shenanigans.

I promised I’d share with you what works for us in terms of keeping real food on the table (most of the time) even when life gets busy, so here goes…

My first resource is the (beloved) meal plans created by Holistic Squid. I’m one of the O.G. subscribers, back when it was a humble PDF and hell, I loved it then, but OMG what they’ve done with it in the last few weeks is just ridiculous. It’s a meal planner on steroids, an app, and an endless vault of real food (and grain free) recipes that I turn to on a daily basis.

I especially love, love, love that you can make substitutions not only on the meal plan, but also on the grocery list your meal plan generates, because… did I mention that in Abu Dhabi I can’t find spaghetti squash to save my life? So of course I just swap it for zucchini noodles for me, and combo of half zucchini noodles/ half gluten free pasta for the little ones and we’re good to go.  

Anywho, if meal planning for you consists of staring at a blank piece of paper for an hour before you crumble it and order take out (ahem), I highly recommend you check it out here.

My other little secret weapon is my crockpot (slow cooker) coupled with Arsy Vartanian’s book The Paleo Slow Cooker.

Last week I had commited to write and film, and knew I’d have little to no energy to deal with dinner so this little combo was life saving. And I don’t know about you, but when we don’t have a plan, we tend to toss a fair bit of food which gets expensive quickly and waste drives me batty.

I hope these couple of tips help you get your (school) year off to the right start.

Would love to hear what’s working for you, OR what you’re struggling with. Let me know in the comments below!