Weekly Meal Plan Printable

One of the best things a homemaker can do to get organized is to create a weekly meal plan for her family. Today I’m sharing a free printable that will make doing this job so much easier.

To ensure good variety, you might think in terms of theme nights. I took a page out of my sweet daughter-in-law’s book and came up with these broad categories for my own family’s dinners:

Daily Dinner Theme Nights

• Soul Food Sundays

  Southern comfort foods I grew up eating, like chicken fried steak, potato salad, macaroni & cheese, chicken pot pie, pinto beans, and cornbread

• Meatless Mondays

  Vegan and vegetarian dishes many in our family have grown to love: lentil soup, quinoa chili, cauliflower steaks, roasted veggies, hummus

• Tex-Mex Tuesdays

  Favorite flavors from south of the border: tacos, enchiladas, tamales, fresh pico de gallo, homemade guacamole, nachos, and burritos

• World Cuisine Wednesdays

  We like to try recipes from all across the globe, so one week we’ll eat Italian dishes like spaghetti or lasagna, another week it will Indian, such as curry or butter chicken, another week Mediterranean fare including gyros, schwarma, and hummus

• Thrifty Thursdays

  This is a great night for cleaning out the refrigerator and eating up all the leftovers… or combining them into something new, such a vegetable beef stew or a huge fruit salad.

• Al Fresco Fridays

  We usually clean house on Fridays and will either picnic in the backyard to avoid messing up the kitchen or go out to eat as a family to give the cook a break!

• Soup & Salad Saturdays

We have lots of favorite soups in our family — minestrone, chicken noodle, creamy potato, etc. — and when paired with a big salad and some fresh dinner rolls, they can be quite filling.

Translated onto my weekly meal plan printable, here’s how our family’s dining habits would look:

More help in the kitchen

Love to cook? You can view a categorized list of my other recipe posts here: Our Favorite Recipes. Or — for even more Flanders family favorites, plus a wealth of ideas for making mealtime memorable — get a copy of my book Sit Down & Eat.

Want to revolutionize your meal planning? Then give freezer cooking a try! My kids and I took a class at our county extension office on how to do this. We brought our groceries along with us, and the instructor coached us through assembling the meals. It was a lot of fun to work together.

I realize not everybody has access to that kind of community educational offerings. But, thanks to the Internet, you can sign up for a FREE Freezer Cooking Class just like the one my family attended in person. The instructor provides a nice variety of delicious recipes (10 in total), a detailed shopping list, ready-to-print freezer labels, and step-by-step instruction on how to assemble everything in less than an hour.

So sign up today. Once you taste these flavorful dishes and experience the convenience of having two weeks’ worth of dinners ready to go, you’ll be sold on this meal prep method, just like I am!