Food is one of the average household’s biggest categories of expenses, coming in just behind housing and transportation costs for many families. But unlike those other two categories, food is one area where we may have a little more flexibility in how much we’re spending. You can’t easily change your mortgage payment or rent month to month, but you can be more mindful at the grocery store.
Food spending is my biggest personal pain point. It’s not simply the cost—I don’t tend to buy pricey ingredients or name brands, or even much meat beyond chicken—but more so the mental energy of deciding what my husband and I are going to eat each day. We’ve been slowly working out our own system, but I’m always looking for new ways to streamline the mental load. I know I’m not alone.
The new Purse series Meal Plan aims to help. It’s all about how readers are planning their weekly grocery runs and prepping food for their families, and it will hopefully provide some inspiration if you, like me, are often sick of coming up with new ideas every week. We’ve received so many submissions, which is exciting. Because we’re only planning to publish one edition each month (at least to start), I wanted to share some of the pearls of wisdom readers have shared so far.
If you’re interested in being featured in a future edition of Meal Plan, please fill out this form! And if you’d like to contribute your own tips and tricks, please do so in the comments. We’re all ears!
Find the right system
“When my husband and I first moved in together, we quickly realized a natural division of labor (he loved to cook, I loved to grocery shop and think/plan about food). Every Sunday, he and I talk about our weekly schedule and work through a meal plan and grocery list. I scour the blogs (and now Substack) for new ideas/inspiration and do the grocery shopping. He executes the recipes and does the daily cooking.
“Over time, we’ve streamlined the process with themed days, i.e. fish on Monday, taco Tuesdays, pasta Wednesdays, etc. Also with the addition of three kids, we’ve had to adjust meals based on age and stage but our general goal has always been to make one meal for the entire family. And just live with the complaints.”
- 41-year-old in Virginia with a five-person household
Go analog
“I found a little weekly meal planner from Target where I write out our weekly meal plan and hang it on our fridge, with toddler-friendly adaptations noted for each night. This is to help my husband if I get home late, reminding us what groceries are for what meal, etc.”
- 33-year-old in Oregon with a three-person household
And then use the calendar
“I look at our family calendar and anticipate how busy we are each night and figure out what meal will make sense with our time or energy. Usually the day I grocery shop calls for an easier meal to make because I’m already burned out on thinking about dinner! I shop for five home-cooked meals at a time, expecting two meals a week to be leftovers, boxed mac and cheese, and/or takeout. Ideally at least one of the meals I shop for is meatless. My recipes shift with the season too, which helps to keep things interesting.
“After assessing our schedule, I will browse through my recipes (in cookbooks or written down on recipe cards) and choose the ones I like, write down the ingredients on my grocery list, and physically go shop for them. I write down the planned meal each night on our family calendar as well, so we all know what to expect. I still do the meal-planning portion most of the time, and my spouse and I split the cooking.”
- 42-year-old in New York State with a four-person household
“Our typical week of meal planning is: me picking out recipes, usually from some of my favorite bloggers, and slating them in for each night depending on our schedules. We typically plan and shop on Saturdays, so we plan out Saturday to Friday, then reset the next week. If one of us has an appointment or a busy work day, we’ll plan a super quick meal (like air-fried fish) or plan to have leftovers from a previous night where we do something bulkier. If we have our lives together, we’ll do some breakfast and lunch prep on Sunday afternoons, which makes a huge difference in feeling set up for the week.”
- 30-year-old in New Jersey with a two-person (soon to be three-person) household
Find the right inspiration
“For dinner, I exclusively cook from Caroline Chamber’s What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking newsletter. The recipes are delicious, actually take the time that they say they're going to take, and for any ingredients that I look at and think, ‘I’m not spending that much for one ingredient,’ there is always a sub for an easier to find a cheaper alternative.”
- 35-year-old in North Carolina with a three-person household
“The core of my planning has been recipes from the old Martha Stewart Living magazine and her Everyday Food cookbooks. (The books are still available, and the recipes are online) These ended up building the core of my cooking repertoire by providing workable recipes for seasonality and variety that were easy to halve for two portions or make the full recipe for a ‘twofer.’”
- 51-year-old in New York state with a two-person household
Set your own schedule
“I often cook or meal prep at weird times. Making a meal for the next day at 8:30 p.m. after my daughter goes to bed. Prepping chili at 7:30 a.m. before I leave for the day. Sometimes, that’s just when I am free, and it saves a lot of time later!”
- 33-year-old in Oregon with a three-person household
“I stick to a consistent approach every week. Homemade pizza every Tuesday night, and that’s the night after work when I finalize my shopping list for the week ahead. We shop on Wednesday, and dinner that night is ‘dealer’s choice.’ Hubs and I each pick our own prepared items or cook-yourself choice to have that night. So that leaves five shared dinners each week to plan—maybe only three or four if I rotate in what I call a ‘twofer,’ or a serving for four, often made on Sunday with leftovers on Monday. This can help with budgeting too; if I’m planning to get an expensive protein that week, I can factor in a less expensive soup or pasta twofer to compensate.”
- 51-year-old in New York State with a two-person household
Share the work
“My husband and I use an app. We both have access and add recipes, and it creates a shopping list automatically. We have 100+ of saved recipes we make regularly.”
- 45-year-old in New York state with a four-person household
“I’ve found creating a shared recipe folder on Google Drive, complete with a screenshot of the recipe, to be incredibly helpful for our planning. (I learned that one after a recipe vanished off the internet, and I had to Wayback Machine it.) My husband can read the same recipe I can on a different device so we can both make the meal while juggling kids; we can save recipes we love; and it creates a foundation for our kids to learn from in the future.”
- 41-year-old in California with a four-person household
Sugar crash
“Be ruthless in cutting added sugar from your diet. Buying soda, cookies, juice, and flavored yogurt gets EXPENSIVE and not just for your grocery budget, but also for your health and medical costs. We did a Whole30 in 2017, which helped us wean from products with added sugar, and it has had an impact on our eating habits.”
- 41-year-old in Maryland with a three-person household
Cut out some meat
“I was a vegetarian most of my life, and now my husband is mostly vegetarian due to health issues. Vegetarian meals are much more affordable. Many ‘traditional’ meals can be vegetarian-ized. Meat + starch + veggie can be tofu + starch + veggie. Substitute red lentils, tofu, or mushrooms for beef in pasta sauce. Substitute black beans for beef for tacos. Sheet pan meals with chickpeas—I could go on!”
- 33-year-old in Florida with a two-person household
Double up
“We are trying to do more ‘cook once, eat twice’ meals to cut down on cooking and dishes on weekday evenings, which just requires buying a bit more of certain ingredients or doubling a recipe. I would say that we are solid eaters, so there will sometimes be recipes that claim to serve four that end up giving us very scant leftovers, ha. I tend to keep a running tally in my head of what ingredients we have on hand in our pantry, freezer, or fridge, and try to pick recipes that will use those ingredients. Or, I will choose two recipes that use similar ingredients; i.e. two recipes that use cilantro or hoisin sauce.”
- 33-year-old in Oregon with a three-person household
“Batch cook your protein. It makes meal planning so much easier when all you have to do is roast a veggie or cook some rice because you already have a protein ready. Plus, if the meat is on sale that week, you can stock up and put some in your freezer.”
- 35-year-old in North Carolina with a three-person household
Embrace the tedium
“Cooking a meal each night is a habit that's tedious to build into your life, just like anything else, but it has gotten a lot easier. Now that we have a nice collection of recipes to choose from (ones that we know we enjoy), and we’ve gotten used to setting aside about 45 minutes or so each night to cook (we take turns), we can handle the work of making dinner without it feeling like a big ordeal. I look forward to someday giving my grown children a collection of familiar dinner recipes (and the memory of the time/effort that it takes to cook them) so they can be better prepared for this responsibility when they enter adulthood.”
- 42-year-old in New York state with a four-person household
