TableWeek Weekly food plan 7-Day Meal Plan · USD 12
Week of 5 October: two adults, one 6 year old
Twenty one meals, one shop, built around a Tuesday late shift and half a cabbage that needs using.
You cook four nights, Dani cooks two, and Wednesday is chaos. This plan is built around that, not around an ideal week. Everything shares ingredients deliberately, the shopping list is one trip, and the two hardest evenings are covered by things that are already made.
Twenty one meals from a single Saturday shop, inside your USD 100 budget, with nothing on a weeknight taking more than 25 minutes. Wednesday and Thursday are both reheats because those are the two evenings you told us go wrong.
The week
What you are eating
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Breakfast | Overnight oats | Overnight oats | Overnight oats | Eggs on toast | Overnight oats | Pancakes | Eggs on toast |
| Lunch | Soup, batch | Soup, batch | Soup, batch | Wraps | Soup, batch | Leftover roast | Cheese toasties |
| Dinner | Chicken traybake | Cabbage and bean stew | Traybake, reheat | Stew, reheat | Fish fingers and mash | Roast chicken | Chicken fried rice |
| Who cooks | You | Dani | Nobody | Nobody | You | You | Dani |
| Time at the stove | 25 min | 20 min | 8 min | 8 min | 15 min | 70 min | 20 min |
Wednesday is your late shift and Thursday is swimming. Both are reheats of something cooked the night before, on purpose. Saturday is the only long cook and it feeds Saturday, Sunday and Monday lunch.
The shop
One list, by aisle
| Aisle | Items | Rough spend |
|---|---|---|
| Produce | Onions x4, garlic, potatoes 2 kg, carrots 1 kg, lemons x2, spring onions, parsley, apples x6, bananas x6 | USD 17 |
| Meat and fish | Whole chicken 1.8 kg, chicken thighs 6, fish fingers 12 | USD 24 |
| Dairy and eggs | Eggs 12, milk 4 pints, butter, cheddar 400 g, natural yoghurt 500 g | USD 18 |
| Cupboard | Chopped tomatoes x3, butter beans x2, chicken stock, rice 1 kg, oats 1 kg, tortilla wraps | USD 15 |
| Bread and freezer | Sliced loaf x2, frozen peas, frozen sweetcorn | USD 11 |
| Already at home | Cabbage, carrots, harissa, flour, oil, basic spices | USD 0 |
| Total | USD 96 |
Two loaves is deliberate. One gets frozen on Saturday and comes out for Wednesday toasties, because bread bought on Saturday is not good by Thursday.
Ahead of time
Forty minutes on Sunday evening
This is the only prep session in the plan and it is what makes Wednesday and Thursday work. Do it while something else is happening.
- 10 min
Soup for the week
Carrots, one onion, stock, blitz. Five portions into containers. This is four lunches and one spare.
- 10 min
Four jars of overnight oats
Oats, milk, yoghurt, a spoon of jam. Monday to Friday minus Thursday. They keep five days.
- 15 min
Chop for Monday and Tuesday
Traybake vegetables into one box, cabbage and onion for the stew into another. Both cooks drop to under 25 minutes.
- 5 min
Freeze one loaf and move the chicken
Chicken from freezer to fridge if it is frozen. This is the step people forget and it is the one that breaks Saturday.
When it goes wrong
Swaps and leftovers
| If this happens | Do this instead |
|---|---|
| Late home on Monday | Move the traybake to Tuesday and eat wraps. Nothing spoils |
| Nobody wants the stew again on Thursday | Stew over rice with yoghurt. Different meal, same pot |
| Roast chicken does not stretch to Sunday | Fried rice works with peas, sweetcorn and egg alone |
| Child refuses the cabbage | Expected. There is cheese on the table on Tuesday for exactly this reason |
| Shop is out of chicken thighs | Any two of: sausages, drumsticks, halloumi. The traybake does not care |
- Chicken carcass into the freezer Saturday night for stock
- Soup portions labelled with the day
- One loaf frozen on Saturday
- Yoghurt opened by Wednesday or it will not get used
- Anything untouched by Sunday goes into next week's Pantry Rescue
- Tell us what nobody ate, so next week drops it