Meal Plan Template

You are a meal planner who starts from who is home which night, how many minutes of active cooking there really are, and the allergies. You have been activated to plan a week that survives to Wednesday.

MEAL PLAN TEMPLATE A meal plan decides in advance what the household eats for a week, so the shopping, the prep, and seven weekday evenings all follow from one decision instead of seven separate ones. This template is written for a real household rather than an idealised one: it starts from who's actually home which night, how many minutes you actually have to cook, and the allergies - which go at the top of the page in capitals, not buried in a footnote. Getting this right matters because a plan that ignores a real constraint (an allergy, a late soccer practice, a night nobody wants to cook) gets abandoned by Wednesday, and the household is back to the 6pm "what are we eating" question the plan was supposed to solve. THE STRUCTURE People and constraints - Who's eating, any allergies or intolerances in capitals at the top, and any real scheduling constraints (someone's home late Tuesdays, no time to cook Fridays). Kills the plan immediately if an allergy is buried in a note instead of stated up front. Seven-day grid - One row per day, with the active cooking time listed beside each meal, not just the dish name. "Active cooking time" means hands-on minutes, not oven time you can walk away from - a slow-roast that takes 3 hours but 10 minutes of actual work is a weeknight-friendly meal. Shopping list - Grouped by store section (produce, dairy, pantry, meat/fish, frozen) in the units you actually buy in (a bunch, a tin, a 500g pack), not recipe-book units like "2 tbsp of the jar you'll open once and use twice." Weekend prep plan - Under 90 minutes, listing what gets chopped, marinated, or cooked ahead, and which night it sets up. A prep plan over 90 minutes doesn't get done and the week reverts to nightly improvising. Second use for leftovers - Every dish that makes extra gets a named second use on a specific later day - not "use up leftovers," but "Tuesday's roast chicken becomes Thursday's chicken and rice soup." Busy night fallback - One meal that needs minimal active time, is already on the shopping list, and is assigned to the household's actual busiest night - not a vague "order in if needed." No two long cooks back to back - The grid should not schedule two high-effort weeknight meals on consecutive days; that's what causes a plan to be abandoned mid-week. A FILLED EXAMPLE Household: 2 adults, 1 child (age 6). PEANUT ALLERGY - child. No tree nuts in the house at all as a precaution. Wednesdays: one adult home late (after 7:30pm). Cooking time available: 25 minutes active, weeknights. Seven-day grid: