Plan the week in four steps
- Look at the calendar first. Late meetings, sports practice or a night out change what is realistic. Mark the busy evenings before you choose any food, so the quick meals land on the right days.
- Choose the dinners. Start with dinner and fit the other meals around it. Mix a few dishes you know well with one new recipe, and give the busiest evening something that takes little effort, such as soup from the freezer or a meal made the day before.
- Fill in breakfast, lunch and snacks. These repeat more often, and that is fine. Two or three breakfasts that rotate through the week mean fewer items on the list.
- Write the prep tasks. The Prep notes lines are for jobs that make the week easier: wash and cut vegetables on Sunday, take meat out of the freezer the night before, cook a pot of rice for two meals.
Cook once, eat twice
A planned leftover saves a whole evening of cooking. Make a bigger batch of one dinner and write the second meal into the box where you will eat it, often the next day's lunch. A small arrow from one box to the other shows at a glance which meals depend on each other.
| Cook | Eat again as |
|---|---|
| Roast chicken on Sunday | Chicken wraps for Monday lunch |
| A large pot of chili | Baked potatoes with chili two days later |
| Extra rice with a stir-fry | Fried rice with vegetables the next evening |
| Roasted vegetables | Pasta or grain salad for lunch |
Keep food safety in mind when you plan the gap between the two meals. The FDA advises you to refrigerate leftovers within two hours and says they "should be used within three to four days". For large amounts, its guide to refrigerator temperatures suggests dividing them into shallow containers so they cool faster in the fridge.
Shopping from the list
With the meals decided, go through the grid one box at a time and write each ingredient you need into its section on the grocery page: lettuce under Produce, yogurt under Dairy and eggs, foil or dish soap under Household. Check the fridge and the cupboards before you write a pantry item, so a second bag of rice does not come home while the first one is still on the shelf.
The sections let you finish one part of the store before you move on, and the checkbox in front of each line lets you tick items off as they go into the cart. Anything that fits nowhere else belongs under Other. Produce and Pantry get the most lines; the smaller sections have four or more. If you shop in more than one place, a letter after an item, such as M for the market, is enough to split the list.
Printing tips
- Choose the paper in your printer before you download: the Letter file is 8.5 × 11 inches, the A4 file 210 × 297 mm.
- Print at 100 % or actual size, so the boxes keep their spacing and nothing near the edge is cut off.
- To print only the grocery list, enter page 2 as the page range in the print dialog. A second copy of the list can go to whoever does the shopping.
- On the fridge, a magnet or a clip at the top keeps the page flat enough to write on.
Tools for cooking the plan
When a recipe serves four and you cook for two, or for a crowd, the recipe scaler adjusts every amount to the number of servings. Recipes written in cups convert to weights with cups to grams, which covers flour, sugar, butter and other common ingredients. If you plan meals around a calorie target, the calorie calculator estimates daily calories from your age, size and activity, and the macro calculator splits that number into grams of protein, carbs and fat for your goal.
Frequently asked questions
Is the meal planner free?
Yes. Print a new copy every week if you like, for your household, a shared flat or a cooking class. You do not sign up or leave an email address, and there is no watermark. The only branding is a small line with our web address at the foot of each page.
Do I have to type in my dinners?
No. The dinner idea fields are optional. Leave all of them empty and every box prints blank for handwriting, or fill in the nights you have already decided and keep the rest open.
Can I leave out breakfast or snacks?
Yes. Tap a meal under Meals per day to turn it off, and the remaining meals share the space. One meal always stays on, so a dinner-only plan gives each evening a tall box. Snacks get a smaller box than the main meals when they are on.
Should I print it in landscape or portrait?
In landscape the seven days run across the page as columns and the meals are rows, which reads like a wall calendar. In portrait the days run down the page and the meals are columns, which suits a binder or the side of a fridge. Both fit the whole week on one page.
What is the Week of field for?
Pick a date and it prints in the title of the meal page and in the corner of the grocery list, so older plans are easy to tell apart. Leave it empty and the title gets a blank line for writing the date by hand.
Why are some characters missing from my dinner ideas?
The PDF uses a standard font that covers English and most Western European letters. Emoji and other alphabets, such as Greek, Cyrillic or Chinese, cannot be drawn with it, so they are dropped, and a few rare accented letters print without the accent. A note appears under the fields when that happens, and the preview shows the text as it will print.