How to Make a Weekly Meal Plan

Creating a weekly meal plan is a great way to save time and money while ensuring your family is eating healthy meals. Meal planning can help you stay organized, stick to a budget, reduce food waste, and serve up variety. With just a few simple steps, you can create a personalized weekly meal plan that works for you and your family.

How to make a weekly meal plan

1. To make your weekly meal plan: Take inventory of the food you already have. Make a list of all your pantry staples, such as pasta, rice, canned goods, frozen foods and spices.

2. Review your calendar to make a weekly meal plan. Consider how many days you’ll be home for dinner and how many times you’ll need to eat out.

3. Decide on a theme for your meals. Do you want to focus on one-pot meals, vegetarian dishes or something else?

4. To make a weekly meal plan – Pick your recipes. Find recipes that suit your diet and use ingredients you already have. Try to pick recipes that you can use for several meals.

5. Make a shopping list. Look at the ingredients in your recipes and make a list of what you’ll need to buy.

6. Shop for groceries. Follow your shopping list to buy all the ingredients you need for cooking the week.

7. Make your meals. Get creative and use your meal plan to make some delicious, healthy dinners.

Weekly Meal Plan Tips

• Choose a theme each week. Choose one night to make a soup, another to do a stir fry, another to make a casserole, and so on. Having a theme each week can help make meal planning easier and more fun.
• Choose a variety of proteins. Choose a range of proteins each week, such as chicken, beef, pork, seafood, tofu, and eggs. This will keep meals interesting and help ensure that everyone in the family is getting enough protein.
• Shop the sales. Check the weekly sales at your local grocery store to see if you can get a better deal on any of the items you’re planning to buy. You can also use the store’s website to find out what’s on sale for the week.
• Keep it simple. Choose recipes that don’t require too much prep or cooking time. Look for recipes that use few ingredients and are easy to prepare.
• Plan for leftovers. Planning meals that can yield leftovers can save you time and money. For example, if you’re making a large pot of chili, you can use the leftovers for tacos or burritos later in the week.
• Use an online meal planner to help you save and organize recipes for your meal plans.