Coming up with dinner every.single.day. can be such a struggle. Many people have a hard time coming up with dinner ideas for one night let alone a whole week.
These weekly dinner plans are created to help you get one thing off your to-do list. Shop once for the week and you’ll have the ingredients and meal choices ready to go for the week.
Visit the WEEKLY DINNER PLANNER archive for more meal planning ideas!
Table of Contents
👇🏻 SCROLL for Recipe Links, Tips & Additional Info 👇🏻
How To Use the Meal Plans
People are typically put off by commitment but if you give yourself a guideline with the flexibility and permission to make changes as needed, you’ll be more likely to stick to it. That’s why flexible meal plans work.
I give you 5 suggestions and you pick 3-5 meals for your week. Each week I scour through my collections of recipes from a variety of amazing food bloggers, recipe sites, cookbooks and personal recipes to thoughtfully create a weekly dinner plan that is easy and delicious. Pick 3-5 of them for your week based on what works for your schedule and include days for eating out, leftovers, etc.
Use the order of the meals as a guideline. You’ll notice dinners are not listed as Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. and that’s on purpose. I don’t want you to feel restricted. That sense of “I HAVE to do this” is what makes people stop meal planning. Keep things flexible and be realistic with your expectations and schedule.
Make mindful adjustments as needed. Sometimes, you need to consider foods (i.e. meats) that need to be used by certain days. For example, if you planned on making steak fajitas on Tuesday, but now it’s Tuesday and you can’t or don’t want to, think about your ingredients for a minute. Check your steak, if the date is good til tomorrow then just make sure you make that meal tomorrow. Otherwise, throw it in the freezer and plan to make it on Friday instead (just take it out the day before to thaw.) This will become second nature as you continue meal planning.
Grocery shop for the week. Get all your groceries for the week so you have everything on hand. This will save you so much time and extra money spent on impulse purchases.
Dinner Plan #13
Meal Prep Tips
These are some BASIC prep ideas you can do before the week starts to get ahead of the game and save a little time each day! Do some, do them all, whatever works for you! I just barely make it to the grocery shopping part, so actual meal prep is a stretch for me personally …. but I hear it’s super-efficient 😬🤪
| Slow Cooker Beef Stroganoff | Dice onions. Mushrooms can be chopped one day in advance, they may turn a little brown but the flavor won’t be affected. You can substitute garlic powder for the garlic cloves, and then prepare your seasonings in a small container (salt, pepper, dill powder, garlic powder.) |
| Taco Salad | Wash, dry and chop lettuce. Dice tomatoes or other veggies that you are using. Cook ground meat. |
| Broccoli Chicken Casserole | Cut broccoli into florets. Crush Ritz crackers. Dice chicken (max 1-2 days before using.) |
| Cacio e Pepe | Grate cheeses. |
| Greek Chicken Bowls | Chop/dice cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, and onion. You can mix the full salad (minus the feta) 2-3 days in advance. You can prep the chicken in the marinade the night before cooking. |
Recipe Links, Side Ideas & Helpful Tips
Slow Cooker Beef Stroganoff
from The Wholesome Dish
FYI:
- A classic, no fuss, creamy and hearty meal that you can start in the slow cooker in the morning before work and then spend just a few minutes finishing it up when you get home.
- If you prefer a stove-top method, check out the one-pan stroganoff in week #5’s dinner plan.
- A word about dried dill – I prefer to use fresh dill and you can easily switch that in this dish if you prefer. If you don’t like dill, parsley is a good substitute, just stir it in or sprinkle on top right before serving. The Greek Chicken Bowls in this week’s meal plan also use dried dill so you would get double use out of it if you don’t have dill and need to buy some.
SIDE SUGGESTIONS:
- Because this is a heavy, cream-based dinner, lighter veggie or vinegar-based sides pair well. Try Braised Red Cabbage, Cucumber Salad, some store-bought jarred pickled beets or simply, a half-sour pickle!
Taco Salad
(basic meal idea ~ make it how you like)
FYI:
- Just some good ol’ taco salad tonight!
- I like to just crush some tortilla chips onto my taco salads, but if you’re feeling adventurous, try making your own tortilla bowls!
SIDE SUGGESTIONS:
- Guacamole
- Chips & salsa
- Elotes (Mexican grilled street corn)
- Refried beans and rice (FYI, I just tried Rosarita Refried Beans and they are *precisely* the flavor I wanted from quick refried beans… unlike another popular brand that I used to like but changed up their recipe and is now absolute garbage 😝)
Broccoli Chicken Casserole
from The Cozy Cook
FYI:
- A deliciously cheesy, flavorful and filling dinner that can easily be doubled and frozen for an easy make-ahead dinner another night.
- Only feeding 1 or 2 people? You can split this recipe into two smaller 8×8 baking pans, bake one and freeze the other (don’t bake before freezing)!
- The recipe has a lot of useful info for ingredient substitutions like using frozen broccoli, rotisserie chicken, and not minute rice – make sure to check it out!
- Condensed Cream of Chicken Soup – her ingredient list links to her homemade version if you don’t like buying store-bought.
SIDE SUGGESTIONS:
- Salad or fruit are my top choices to balance the “heaviness” of this dish!
Cacio e Pepe
from Blue Jean Chef
FYI:
- Cacio e Pepe is a deliciously simple and super quick, weeknight meal. If you’ve never had it, it’s lightly creamy, peppery, and just plain yummy!
- The linked recipe is basically how I typically make my cacio e pepe, though it is not how traditional Cacio e Pepe is made. If you’d like to try out the traditional way of making it, try this recipe instead. The main difference is rather than butter, it uses the starchy pasta water to make that silky creamy sauce, and takes a few minutes longer to make.
- Traditional Cacio e Pepe uses ONLY Pecorino Romano, the recipe from Blue Jean Chef uses both that and Parmigiano Reggiano. Personally, I use ONLY the Parmigiano because I’m not big on the taste of Pecorino Romano. Don’t hesitate to adjust recipes to your taste preferences!
SIDE SUGGESTIONS:
- Caesar Salad
- Sauteed Broccoli Rabe
- Parmesan Peas and Shallots
Greek Chicken Bowls
from The Skinny-ish Dish
FYI:
- These Greek chicken bowls have bright, fresh, and herby flavors and are easy to customize!
- There is marinate time involved HOWEVER the recipe recommends marinating 30 mins – 8 hours, and in the comments she even says overnight is fine. Unfortunately if you marinate chicken for that long, the acidity from the lemon juice and vinegar will actually start make the outside texture mushy and stringy. You typically only want to let chicken sit in acidic marinades for no more than a few hours.
- You could substitute for shrimp, lamb, or even chickpeas. If you go for shrimp, only marinate about 20-30 minutes to avoid mushy texture. Lamb should be longer, 4-5 hours for best flavor. Canned chickpeas can be about 30 minutes as they won’t absorb much flavor anyways.
- Grilled chicken, instead of sauteed, would also be delicious in these bowls!
SIDE SUGGESTIONS:
- Pita bread and hummus or tzatziki
- Baba Ganoush I usually get this at restaurants, but if you feel so inclined to try to make it, it’s absolutely delicious!!
Hope this helps make dinner time less stressful for you this week! If you have questions or feedback let me know in the comments or email me, I’d love to hear from you 💜
SAVE / PIN THIS POST
SAVE THIS POST TO REFER BACK TO THROUGHOUT THE WEEK
Copy & Paste the URL into your fave notes app:
https://momentsandmeals.com/weekly-dinner-plan-13/
-OR-
Click to Pin the image to your Pinterest board.
