How to Streamline Cooking with Weekly Meal Plans

Today we’re discussing meal plans as a time- and cost-effective method to improving our cooking process.

With a weekly view of our meals and a few tips, we can reduce the energy required to answer the age-old question:

“What’s for dinner?”

Our ideal week should include time for meal prep to ensure we keep an effective schedule.

We’ll start with an overview of what a meal plan is and how it works. Then we’ll discuss my top tips for creating a meal plan and prepping meals beforehand.

We also touch on the types of nutrients we need to feel good before running through the difference between cooking for yourself, for a family and for a large group.

So let’s get started.

First off, what is a meal plan?

A meal plan is a weekly schedule we can follow to help plan and cook our food. We use it to streamline our meals for the week.

Meal plans have a variety of benefits, including:

Help us be more efficient with the quantity and quality of meals we consume
Reduce the number of trips to the grocery store each week
Help us be less likely to cheat on our diet
Avoid food waste, which is great for the environment!
Save on grocery bills, which is great if you’re on a budget!

My personal favourite reason to plan meals weekly comes down to the idea of batching. The meal plan practice allows us to think out what we want to eat, list the needed ingredients and go to the store. All just once per week!

Meal plans help us limit this dread to an hour or two per week and not experience it everyday. And to be honest, when you have a meal plan cooking becomes much less dreadful.

Meal plans also help us take a larger perspective to the food we eat and make sure we get all the nutrients we require.

How Do I Create a Meal Plan?

So now that we have an idea what a meal plan is, you’re probably asking:

How do I make a weekly meal plan?

An effective meal plan comes down to 8 steps

List out all the ingredients you already have at home
List out all the meals you can cook with your existing ingredients. We need lunch and dinner everyday. We can also plan for breakfast, though it’s usually simpler than other meals.
Check your local store’s website to see what’s on sale.
Use the on-sale ingredients to fill in more blanks in your week.
Explore cross-over ingredients to finalise your plan. (More on this below)
Go grocery shopping & stick to your list. (More on this below)
Add your planned meals to a calendar that’s visible to everyone involved.
Meal prep at the beginning of each week. (More on this below)

Cross-over Ingredients

See if any items you already plan to buy can be used for another meal. You might need an ingredient for one recipe, but not need all of it. That might make it more cost-effective to plan two meals around the same ingredient.

Cross-over ingredients also help avoid food waste. You can even plan to use up your leftovers from a large meal in another meal that week. For example, I find a left-over rice meal tends to go well with a fresh salad.

Effective Grocery Shopping Habits

When you visit your local grocery store, there are a few general rule you can follow to get the most bang for your buck.

Firstly, it’s usually best to default to the store’s own brand. Unless the name brand is on sale or you find the store brand is notably worse quality, you can save money for virtually the same quality.

The most expensive items are generally at eye-level, so make sure to look up and down the shelves to discover similar products at bargain prices.

Lastly, coupons are usually not so time-effective. You might find it takes an hour to save 5 dollars with coupons. But our time is worth more than that! There are better ways to save money with our grocery shopping.

Meal Prepping

Since meal planning helps reduce the surprises in your dinner schedule, you can dedicate time at the beginning of the week to prepare food for the week. Ultimately, a little bit of prep beforehand can help us save time each time we cook.

What and How Should I Meal Prep Beforehand?

When we meal prep we try to streamline our process by pre-preparing the foods that otherwise takes time before cooking. Aim to spend an hour at the beginning of each week preparing for your meals.

For example, this might include:

Grating a block of cheese
Cutting your vegetables: garlic, onions, brocolli, peppers
Boiling your rice and pasta

You might find it’s easier and fresher to meal prep twice per week. Generally you’ll find that cooked rice and pasta lasts about 4-5 days in the fridge, while cut vegetables may only last 2-3 days. Opt for frozen vegetables where possible to fill in holes in your meal prepped week.

When your ingredients are ready-to-cook, sort them in Tupperware and store them in your fridge. Tupperware is a handy way to keep them fresh and save space in your fridge at the same time. I find that rectangular Tupperware stacks like bricks and uses space effectively. It’s worth investing in a good set of Tupperware to save future time, energy and money.

What meals can I cook this week?

Whether you prefer to create your own meals or get inspiration from our favourite recipes, meal planning couldn’t be simpler. I’ve simplified the weekly recipe planning process by having a default list of recipes each month I cook.

This list helps me to think less about what meals I’m making, especially when I’ve had a busy week working on my most important projects. If I don’t have any cooking inspiration, I can just default to the meal I usually have at this time each month.

My meal planning document has three columns:

Recipe, which has the name of and a link to the recipe
Ingredients, which has the list of ingredients needed for the recipe
Shopping list, which I use to list out the needed ingredients each week before I shop

I started online shopping since the pandemic and highly recommend saving your recipe ingredients as a basket. This reduces any friction from online shopping and really speeds up the process generally.

This template helps me plan meals both for the week and for the month with very little on-going input. Each week, I know what to order from the store without needing to ask the dreaded question:

What’s for dinner?

If you want to speed up your own process, you can find my vegetarian monthly template in Google Sheets. Create a copy of this meal plan. If you prefer, you can even fill it out with your own recipes!

How to plan meals around macros

Your prime concern might be getting all the nutrients you need in a week. Luckily, meal prepping helps us figure out what food makes us feel good. Besides obvious tips like avoiding junk food and eating less sugary snacks, we can take a more holistic view to our diets.

Macronutrients include carbs, fat and protein and are the nutrients we need in large quantities to live healthily. It’s easy to have the misconception that fat is bad, if our goal is to reduce fat. But everybody needs fat in their diet, especially good ones like the kind you find in nuts and avocados.

Our weekly and daily plans should aim to mix a healthy amount of each macronutrient. We can even try to figure out our ideal ratios by logging how we feel physically to each day’s ratio.

Planning Meals by Group Size

It’s also worth considering how many people you’re cooking for. Ultimately, our meal planning will take a different angle depending on how many people we’re cooking for.

Here are some of our top tips, whether your planning meals for yourself, a family or a large crowd.

How to Plan Meals for One Person

It’s generally quite easy to plan meals for yourself. There’s usually left-overs and you can modify the weekly plan to your own habits.

Aim to cook 3-4 meals per week.
Save left-overs for dinner the next day
Make meals you can also eat for lunch the next day
Freeze left-overs when we there’s a lot left
Always keep some sort of pizza dough or flatbread at home. Then transform your left over veggies (and non-vegetarian ingredients) into a delicious impromptu pizza!

If you occasionally want to make a big meal that you can’t eat yourself, you might even consider having regular dinner parties. In addition to the food you love, you get to spend more time with your nearest and dearest.

How to Plan Meals for a Family

Planning for a family is more difficult than planning for yourself and will require more cooking and preparation.

Plan either 7 daily meals or 3 daily meals and 2 meals large enough for left-overs the next day. I’ve found that homemade Chili and Scandinavian pies make great 2-day meals.
Make sure everyone in the family is getting their macronutrients to feel good and healthy.
List out your family’s 20-30 favourites recipes and rotate this list by default.

Another of my favourite tips here is to ask your partner and children what they’d like to eat in the week. Then get their help with the preparation!

How to Plan Meals for Large Groups

Occasionally you may find yourself in a situation to cook for a large crowd. Whether it’s just a one-off meal, a week in the alps with friends or a professional obligation, these tips might come in handy.

Our top tip here is to ask for dietary requirements beforehand. Vegetarians can’t eat meat. Vegans can’t eat animal-based products. Lactose-intolerant people can’t eat cheese or drink lactose milk. Then there’s the gluten allergic, shellfish allergies, peanut allergies, halal – the list goes on. Since people take their diets seriously, this is really important to know! Sometimes you might even need to create a few alternatives depending on the various requirements.

Since feeding large groups usually costs more than small families, you may want to keep an eye out for cost-effective meals. Look for inexpensive recipes to produce in bulk like homemade Chili, Scandinavian Pies, Pastas, Lasagne, Wok-style meals, Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, crock pots – the list goes on!

Meal Planning in a Nutshell

While it may take a little more effort up-front to plan your weekly meals, you will undoubtedly get your time and energy back by the end of the first week.

If you follow the long-term approach to creating a monthly menu, it saves even more time and energy. Here you can just default to the list without fear of getting sick of these recipes.

Ultimately, meal planning helps us answer and even avoid the age-old question: