Even a Pandemic Can't Stop Tiffani Thiessan's Dedicated Meal Planning

From Woman's Day

Actress and food-lover Tiffani Thiessen has always been a planner. And while the ongoing COVID-19 crisis has undoubtably changed the future in ways no one can predict, quarantine has only made Thiessen even more dedicated to her plans.

"The people who know me well know I'm very type-A, but I do believe it helps me, especially having a family, to be organized," Thiessen tells Woman's Day. Her go-to system for avoiding chaos in the kitchen is meal planning, which she says she spends time doing each and every Sunday. "No one wants to go to the grocery store right now, so it allows me [the opportunity] to streamline shopping, and then it allows me to prep meals," she explains.

Having her family's meals weekly meals planned in advance has become more important than ever, especially since they've all been spending time at home during quarantine. "I’ve always cooked a lot, but I can’t even compare it to what it was like before quarantine," Thiessen says. "I feel like I’m cooking 9 million meals a day, 17,000 snacks. The kids are home now, before I'd take them to school and they’d have their snacks and their lunch so I'd only do breakfast and dinner. Now we’re doing everything. It’s absurd. But I’ve been able to get the kids more involved in the kitchen which has been fun."

Thiessen's food supply isn't just from the grocery store, either. She and her family have cultivated a truly awe-inspiring garden that allows them to source a number of fresh produce. They grow everything from citrus to stone fruit to avocados to peppers. Thiessen's father is a retired landscape architect who passed on his green thumb to her, she says, so the presence of such an abundant garden is hardly surprising.

"One of the reasons why I wanted to have a big home garden was to teach my kids like my own father taught me when I was young,"Thiessen explains. "To see how things grow and how food can be something you can see grow from a seed in the ground. It's been a great learning lesson and it's helped them appreciate food. They'll pick it right off the vine."

With so many options from her own garden and beyond, Thiessen says the "sky's the limit" when it comes to coming up with new and innovative ideas for dinner and daily snacks. After suffering with sensitive teeth for a long time, Theissen, who has partnered with Sensodyne and Pronamel to launch Sensodyne Sensitivity & Gum, is grateful to be able to eat whatever she wants now that she's found a way to get her teeth sensitivity under control.

Being a California girl it killed me to know that I couldn't eat citrus," she says. "I feel like I have brand new teeth. I haven't had an issue for a while, and it's kind of mind boggling to have that renewed way to love food."

This summer she's celebrating her newfound "new teeth" by enjoying a number of foods she couldn't before. That means tons of fresh citrus and, of course, a few varieties of ice cream (which she makes from scratch with her kids at home, in case you needed yet another reason to be impressed). And in her not-so-spare time, Thiessen has been working on her second cookbook, a follow up to her successful family oriented Pull Up a Chair: Recipes from My Family to Yours. Her forthcoming cookbook will be geared toward kids, a reflection of Thiessen's experience cooking for and with her 10-year-old daughter.

In the meantime, Thiessen is staying busy with her work, family, and time spent in the kitchen. And at dinnertime, her family continues to gather around the table and share the highs and lows of their days. Turns out, there are some routines that a pandemic only makes stronger.

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