How to Plan Meals for a Week

Meal planning fails in a predictable way: an ambitious fortnight of new recipes, abandoned on the fourth evening when somebody comes home late. Here is the version that survives.

Plan a week, not a fortnight

A fortnight looks more efficient and is not. Plans made two weeks out do not survive one changed evening, and fresh food bought for day eleven is thrown away on day nine. Food thrown away is the quietest line in a monthly budget - it never appears as its own category, which is why it goes unnoticed for years.

Only dinners need planning

Breakfast is a habit and lunch is usually leftovers or whatever is nearby. Planning them adds work without removing a decision, because you were not really deciding them anyway. Plan seven dinners and the week is planned.

Write leftovers in as a meal

A plan where every dinner is cooked fresh is the plan that produces a bin full of food on Thursday. Cook once for two nights deliberately - it is the difference between a plan and an aspiration.

Leave one night open

Something will happen on one evening. Marking it as "out" or "whatever is in" ahead of time means the plan bends rather than breaks, and you do not spend Friday feeling you failed at cooking.

Build the list from the plan

Go through the seven dinners and write what each needs, then cross off what you already have. If a dish lives on a recipe card, its ingredient list is already half the shopping list. A list written separately from the plan is a list of things you usually buy, which is how three bunches of coriander end up in the fridge.

Put it where you will see it

On the fridge, not in a drawer. The plan's job at six in the evening is to answer the question before you open the fridge and start improvising - and it can only do that if it is in front of you. Every meal planner here prints at A4 for that reason rather than pocket size.