Meal plan template for families: planning the week, using leftovers, simplifying the shopping

"What are we having today?" is one of the questions asked most often in families, usually at just before six, when the fridge is half empty and everyone is hungry. A meal plan answers it once a week instead of anew every evening. It saves trips to the shops, stops food from going off and takes a daily burden off the person who otherwise always decides.

This article gives you a template for the family week that you can copy or print out, plus ideas for theme nights, a method for leftovers, the route from plan to shopping list, tips on letting children help plan, and a four-week rotation for anyone who doesn't want to think afresh every week.

Why a plan saves more than time

At first glance a meal plan looks like extra work. In practice it saves in several places at once:

• Fewer decisions. The question about dinner is asked once, not seven times.
• Fewer shopping trips. If you know what is being cooked this week, you do one big shop and at most one top-up for fresh food.
• Less waste. The half carton of cream from Monday already has a place in the plan on Wednesday.
• A fairer split. When the plan is visible, someone else can cook or shop without having to ask.

The plan doesn't need to be perfect. A plan you stick to seventy per cent of the time is better than none.

The template for the family week

The simplest form is a table with one theme per day. Themes make planning easier because you don't have to choose from every dish in the world, only from one category. Here is an example you can adopt or adapt:

If you print the template, leave the third column empty and fill it in again every Sunday. Two lines in the margin also help: one for "What needs using up?" (food that will soon go off) and one for appointments that affect cooking, such as a late parents' evening or training until 7 pm. On those days you plan something quick or something that can be prepared ahead.

Planning leftovers instead of using them up

Most advice on leftovers starts once the leftovers are already there. It is more effective to plan them in from the start:

• Cook twice, eat differently. On Monday there is rice with the curry; on Wednesday the remaining rice becomes fried rice. Tuesday's potatoes become sautéed potatoes on Thursday.
• Introduce a fixed leftovers night. One evening a week when you eat whatever is there. It seems unspectacular but relieves the plan and the fridge at the same time.
• Spread ingredients across several dishes. If you buy a bunch of parsley for one recipe, plan two more dishes that also need parsley.
• Use the freezer as a buffer. A double portion of sauce goes in the freezer and becomes dinner on the day when nothing went to plan.

From the plan to the shopping list

A meal plan only shows its value once it becomes a complete shopping list. Here is how:

1. Write down the ingredients for all the week's dishes.
2. Check against your stock. What is there, what is missing? Spices, oil, pasta: a quick look in the cupboard saves buying things twice.
3. Add the basics. Bread, milk, fruit, breakfast, packed lunches.
4. Sort by section. Fruit and veg, chilled, dry goods, toiletries. The shop is much quicker because nobody walks through it three times.

If you need fresh ingredients for the end of the week, split the shopping in two: a big shop at the weekend and a small one midweek.

Letting children help plan

Children who have a say usually eat more willingly. That doesn't mean they decide the plan, but they get a fixed place in it.

• One wish day a week. Each child chooses a dish in turn. With several children, the wish day moves on week by week.
• A choice rather than an open question. "Would you like lentil soup or potato soup?" works better than "What would you like to eat?".
• Cooking along by age. Small children wash vegetables or stir, primary-school children cut with a children's knife, older children cook a simple dish on their own. A dish you made yourself tastes different.
• Try new things calmly. One new dish a week is enough. If it doesn't go down well, that's no drama; it simply doesn't come back on the plan.

The four-week rotation

If you don't want to plan anew every week, set four weeks once and repeat them. After a month the rotation starts again. That sounds monotonous but hardly is: four weeks of seven days each make 28 dishes, and hardly any family cooks more different ones in everyday life. An example for the main meal:

A few tips for the rotation:

• Adapt it to the season. In summer, soups give way to lighter dishes; after three months it is worth taking a fresh look.
• Allow exceptions. Birthdays, visitors, an evening out: the rotation is a framework, not a law.
• Two rotations for two kinds of week. If your children live in a Wechselmodell (shared care in which they live roughly equally with both parents), you plan differently for the weeks with children than for those without. Two small rotations are then more practical than one big one.

A week in everyday life

A family with three children spends twenty minutes on Sunday afternoon planning the week. This time the eldest gets to choose Friday's meal and picks pancakes. Because there is a parents' evening on Tuesday, that day has an oven dish that waits, prepared, in the fridge and only needs to go into the oven. The shopping list comes out of the plan; on Monday one of the parents buys everything on the way home, on Thursday only bread and fruit.

Wednesday is leftovers night: Monday's rice becomes fried rice, and the remaining vegetables from Tuesday go in too. At the end of the week there is hardly anything in the fridge that has to be thrown away, and nobody has asked at six in the evening what's for dinner.

How patchio helps with your meal plan

patchio has the meal plan for this: a weekly overview with breakfast, snack, lunch and dinner, as a daily list on your phone and as a weekly table on your computer. For each entry you choose a recipe from your collection or simply type free text such as "Leftovers" or "Pizza". You send the ingredients of a planned recipe to a shopping list with one tap; there it says which plan and which recipe an item comes from. With "Copy week" you carry a week over into a later one, for example for your four-week rotation.

You collect recipes in cookbooks, via a link from recipe websites or as a photo of a cookbook page. The shopping list is shared by everyone in the household, sorts items into sections automatically and also works offline. The pantry keeps track of what is in the house and puts anything running low on the shopping list. If you use the parenting schedule, the meal plan shows for each day who is likely to be eating, so you know how many you are cooking for.

Conclusion

A meal plan is not a project for organisational talents but a tool any family can use in twenty minutes a week. Start with a simple template and theme nights, plan leftovers in from the start, turn the plan into a complete shopping list and give the children a fixed place in it. If you want it even simpler, set up a four-week rotation and only make small adjustments afterwards. The question "What are we having today?" won't disappear, but it will have an answer that is already hanging on the fridge door.