Sarah Michelle Gellar Reveals Her Top Secrets for Family Meal Planning

Sarah Michelle Gellar's schedule is more packed than ever, between raising two teenagers with husband Freddie Prinze Jr. and balancing work on Dexter: Original Sin, the sequel to Ready or Not, and the reboot of a little show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So how does she stay both sane and healthy? Meal planning.

She's currently a spokesperson for the MyFitnessPal meal-planning app, but her passion for cooking goes back decades: "Basically to when I moved out of my mom's house and realized that food just doesn't appear," says Gellar, who has also written a cookbook about baking with children. We talked to her about all things food, entertaining, and her love of lists.

Meal-Planning Strategies

"I find that we make our bad choices when we're rushed for time, right? That's when we grab the fried food or something that's been in the freezer forever that's full of sodium," says Gellar. A big proponent of meal planning (and self-described list lover in general), she has traditionally started got ahead of the week with a Sunday trip to the farmer's market with her best friend, and then a supermarket shop.

But these days, she's going all in on the digital age with the MyFitnessPal meal-planning app, through which you can choose recipes, then have any ingredients you're missing added to your cart and delivered. As soon as she tried it, she says: "I thought this is the key that's missing in meal prep. It's something that I've been attempting to do on my own for a long time, but it was a lot of work. The tool makes it so much easier and takes all that work off your 'plate'—it's so seamless."

Go-To Meals

So what are Gellar's tried-and-true recipes when she's in a hurry? "Honestly, whatever I put in the freezer. With meal planning, you can look at your week and say, goodness, on this day we are so swamped for time, I need something I can just take out and reheat. Or ooh, this next day is really crazy, I want to have a great lunch on the go. What can I make at night that I can make into lunch for tomorrow?" (And yes, she's known for packing her own lunch to bring to set.) Here are some current favorites:

Chicken burgers: She likes to batch prepare chicken burgers as a gift to her future (busy) self. "I will put some in the freezer for those days when I just need to pop out dinner."

Zucchini boats: "Zucchini is one of those great vegetables that you can really find year-round," she says. "We're big zucchini people in our house." She makes zucchini "boats" by scooping out the vegetable, filling them with a mix of ground chicken, beans, and vegetables, and then roasting them.

Avocado toast: "I definitely am a toast girl, and avocado toast is a great way to get protein. I love to put an egg, maybe a great little burrata cheese, on top."

Making Cooking a Family Activity

Sarah has a skilled partner in getting family meals on the table: Husband Freddie, who—little-known fact—went to culinary school and has authored a cookbook. "He's the chef; I'm the cook," she says.

Together, the two encouraged their kids to cook from a young age—an investment that's starting to pay off. "Now they cook for me. My daughter will find these recipes on Instagram and try them. She had a pasta recipe last week, which is so funny because she thinks she invented making pasta with a little chicken stock. But it's great, she's going for it."

The whole family makes a point to cook on the road, too. "We always try to take cooking lessons wherever we go," she says. "So we went to Italy last summer, and we did a pasta-making class in this woman's home in Tuscany and did a pizza-making class in an apartment in Florence ... We love to learn from wherever we are."

Combatting Picky Eating

Sarah has two strategies for raising not-too-picky eaters. The first is a commitment to cooking one meal for everyone. "The one thing we never did [when our kids were little] was make separate meals. They knew that this was what was for dinner. We were a family, we were eating."

She and Freddie also instituted a rule in their house early on: "You can't decide that you don't like something until you've tried it 10 times and two times more. Because a lot of times, kids may not like something the first time, and then you don't give it to them again. But maybe it was the preparation. Maybe it was a finicky age. So our kids know they have to keep trying."

Secret Entertaining Weapon

"We want people to feel at home," she says about her approach to hosting. "Having our friends and family over is really important because it's often the only way we get to see them. We just want them to feel comfortable."

So what's her trick to entertaining? "It's called Freddie," she laughs. "He’s always trying to switch it up, but I will say guests always rave about his tomato soup from scratch with no cream. Nobody ever believes it has no cream."