Inspiring Meal Ideas: Unconventional Sources and Strategies

Here are some unique places that I look when I need some new meal ideas. The first is restaurant menus. We don’t go out to eat very often, but I love to use restaurant menus as a source of inspiration. Restaurants have corporate chefs that they pay to come up with new meal ideas, and so they can be a really fun source of inspiration. My favorite dinners to make I make because of this Whiskey River barbecue wrap that I tried to replicate from Red Robin. When I need meal prep ideas, I actually use meal prep services as the inspiration. I subscribe to their weekly newsletters and anytime they put out a meal prep that looks kind of good to me, I’ll screenshot it and save it on my phone. And I actually do the same thing with the crumble cookies as well. Another fun place is manufacturer websites. These recipes are usually simple and fairly easy to recreate, and they make good use of odds and ends that you might have in your pantry. And on the topic of pantries, always check the backs of packages. They might have some interesting but simple meal ideas. Lastly, I actually pay a subscription for a meal planning service. It’s an app that I have on my phone called e mails. This isn’t sponsored in any way, I just wanted to mention it. They have a lot of different meal plans to choose from, even some that are dietary restriction Friendly. And again, I do pay for this plan. I pay $60 a year for it. But they also have the $30 for three months. With that meal plan service. You can switch between the plans as often as you like. So I’ll generally kind of peruse it every now and again for some ideas. I do spend a lot of time kind of bouncing between those resources. For different meals to share on TikTok. So if you’re ever in a rut, that is how I come up with ideas.