If you want to cook from-scratch and healthier at home, you’ll definitely want to master the art of menu planning! Thankfully it doesn’t have to be complicated or keep you tied to the kitchen every single night. Implementing this easy menu plan framework can help you save money on groceries and reduce the amount of trips you have to run to the store for last minute ingredients.
Also don’t forget to scroll down for the FREE printable menu planner worksheet.
How the menu plan is set up
To make sticking to a menu plan easier and take the burden off of trying to come up with meal ideas for every day of the week, we have developed a built-in framework that is easily repeatable. For us we have what we call a “snack meal” on Sundays. This includes a hodgepodge of leftovers, cheese and crackers, fruit, popcorn, nuts, or any other “snacky” food we have on hand to make a buffet that requires no cooking.
We also have a homemade pizza night every week, so I always know to have those ingredients on hand without having to plan for it. Maybe for your family you already have a weekly taco night or spaghetti night. If you don’t already have a regular weekly meal, see if you can find a quick meal that your family loves to try repeating one day each week.
With having a snack meal and weekly repeat meal, you then only have to account for 5 more dinners a week. However, you don’t have to cook 5 separate meals! Enter the leftovers. We have settled into a rhythm of making 1 dinner with leftovers for 1 additional night and another dinner with 2 nights of leftovers. So we get 5 dinners out of 2 nights in the kitchen. Not too shabby!
But my family won’t eat leftovers!
While Farmer Nathan and I are fond of leftovers, if you have pickier eaters that like more variety here’s a tip to keep each dinner feeling new while still decreasing the time in the kitchen. Pick your protein and then swap out the veggie and starch each night and make use of sauces. Say you want to have grilled chicken for 3 nights in a row. On the first night when you planned to be in the kitchen longer anyways, make biscuits and oven roasted veggies. Then the next night serve the same chicken with barbeque sauce and a microwave-baked potato. Then the third night, chop up the chicken and serve in a one-pot alfredo.
Another way to get leftover haters to eat them is to learn how to rearrange the same exact ingredients into something “new” each night. For example, on your first main night in the kitchen make a large batch of tex mex taco meat, open a can of beans, and make a pot of rice and have burritos. On the second night do a build-your-own quesadilla with the leftover beans and taco meat. On the third night make nachos with the leftover taco meat and beans. Swapping out the types of cheese and salsa flavors each night can help keep the flavors fresh and exciting without any extra prep work for you.
What about lunch?
As I mentioned earlier, Nathan and I are fine with leftovers, so we usually make a large batch on Saturday to feed us Monday through Friday. We typically rotate through various soups, rice bowls, and casseroles that are easy to portion and reheat each day for a quick lunch. And there’s nothing wrong with a deli sandwich, PB&J or last night’s leftovers thrown into the mix!
If you have folks that fight leftovers, see the ideas above to try and swap a few ingredients to make it feel like it has more variety. If you’re serving soup all week, try swapping the daily sides. Maybe day one is a side of garlic toast, cheese and crackers the next, chips the next day and so on to give it some flair without much extra work. Alternatively, freeze assorted soup leftovers in single-serve portions each time you have them to build a backlog of options that you can pull out when it feels monotonous to you-know-who.
What about breakfast?
To keep breakfast simple, we rotate through the same handful of foods with a side of eggs over the course of the month. For starters we have what we call Waffle Wednesday. Farmer Nathan will get up a bit early that morning and make a large batch of waffles (chocolate, sourdough, blueberry, etc) that will give us a starch with our breakfast for Wednesday-Saturday. On Sunday mornings I make muffins, pancakes, french toast, or some flavor of quick bread that then feeds us Sunday-Tuesday. We then have the option of a scrambled or fried egg to go along with it and wala! Breakfast. Farmer Nathan usually needs a bit more calories for his job, so we usually have yogurt/granola, overnight oatmeal, or, if we have time, make a hash ahead and pre-portion it out in the fridge for grab-and-go during the week.
Happy menu planning!
I hope this menu planning structure and method helps you feel like you can plan from-scratch meals without being a slave to the kitchen and the leftover haters in your family. If you’re looking for some recipe ideas for your weekly menu plan, check out some of our favorites here and here.
As promised, here is the free printable menu planner.