About once a month I get my act together when it comes to food. It’s the one thing that can make or break my entire life. If I have enough *good* food, I’m happy and can handle pretty much anything. Too often though, I’m staring at a seemingly empty refrigerator and end up eating the leftover of a toddler’s (or god forbid, baby’s) pureed fruit pouch, crust of some toast, cold oatmeal, or plain mayo on a hot dog bun. I’ll let it to you to decide if I’m exaggerating.
So, when I share my bi-weekly meal plan and the process I use for creating it, it’s not to blow you away with how creative I am or boast about how well my family is eating.
I share it because I am a frequent passenger on the dinner struggle bus and thought that a meal plan for June that’s flexible, easy to prepare, and yet does have a few hidden gems on it would be a welcome inspiration for most of you.
A little background info:
I just celebrated my 16th veganniversary (16 years as a vegan), as you know if you also follow me on Instagram. My meal plan may confuse you knowing that fact because I sometimes forget to explicitly note *vegan* and we do have a mixed diet household. All of my meals are vegan though!
My husband is an omnivore and often cooks meat. This means many of our meals are pretty flexible on what the protein is and how it is incorporated into the meal. I make the base and my protein, and my husband adds his own protein. Our children are being raised vegetarian, which defaults to the vegan protein.
I get blank stares when I describe this in person because it sounds like a giant production, but I promise it’s really simple for us.
The planned breakfasts and lunches are for my daughter and I. Dinners are mostly for my husband and I. Again, it sounds way more confusing than it is! My husband works super early and tends to handle his own lunch (which doubles as his breakfast most days). Aurora (3) has been asking for dinner pretty early and so we tend to put together a pretty simple dinner for her, sometimes scraping something together, but it’s generally what you’d think of as toddler-friendly food. She is a pretty good eater but still doesn’t love a ton of bold or spicy flavors. We encourage her to try what we are eating or we purposely modify it towards her tastes if possible, but most of the time she will have some vegan protein, fruit, veggies, and cheese or grain side for her dinner.
Meal Planning Process
Why biweekly?
I don’t know if any of my answers are rooted in fact but there are a few reasons why biweekly works best for my family:
I feel like it saves us money on our groceries. The more visits to the grocery store, the more I will spend, right?
We are so busy (especially this time of the year) that it’s hard to carve out time to be really intentional about the process every week.
My husband has a biweekly work schedule (the pattern and his days off repeat every 14 days, he doesn’t work every other week) so it helps to plan meals around that same rhythm.
Flexible is key
We like to eat different food for dinner every night. We still build in some nights for leftovers, but we don’t like to plan three dinners for the week and eat them each over and over. I can do this for lunches, depending on what it is, but we prefer to mix up dinner every night.
We don’t like to have a strict process of designating a meal for a certain day. Most meal plans and templates I see are organized this way - on Monday we eat pasta, on Tuesday we grill, etc. Instead, I like to brainstorm about 12-16 different dinner ideas and make sure we have the ingredients on hand for all of them. I can pick and choose on any given day to allow for life to be unpredictable, for us to cook aligned with our energy levels or moods, and to eat what sounds good.
This means our meal plan looks like this:
4-5 breakfast ideas
5-6 lunch ideas
6-8 quick dinner ideas (30 min or less)
4-6 standard dinner ideas (60 min on average)
2-4 prep-ahead dinner ideas (15 min or less to prepare at time of meal)
When coming up with this list I like to have a list of perishable items that we have handy so I can be sure to use them up. I create a grocery and prep list at the same time as well, so ideally, once shopping is done I have the ingredients I need to make all of the meals listed on any given day.
About the template
Again, I wanted to share our process because I know how hard it can be to meal plan AND how impactful it is to your day-to-day.
Not only do you save money through meal planning but buying less convenience and last-minute ingredients, but you also avoid the fatigue and stress of the “what’s for dinner?” question.
It’s daily, and it still finds a way to creep up on us. If you’re hoping to make “take out” a less frequent answer to that question, meal planning is a really helpful tool! There’s no wrong way to do it, so be sure to adapt my process and template to what works best for you!
The template is pretty self-explanatory, especially if you read this whole post. I include a few symbols by dinners to note quick meals (the stop watch) and meals that can be prepped ahead (the calendar). This helps me make faster mealtime decisions and make sure I have enough easy meals prepped for work nights or busy weekends when I’m too exhausted to cook anything fancy!
The Template
The Meal Plan
Related Links & Recipes
Want a recipe or details on something not linked? Let me know in the comments!
Wow, you are juggling lots of moving parts with your mixed vegan/vegetarian/meat eater household!!! Kudos to you for pulling it off in such a thoughtful and organized way 😊