My wife and I have been planning 2-3 dinners per week and we double the recipe for them so we can just heat up leftovers for dinner or lunches the next day. It’s been a good compromise between the ‘make everything on Sunday’ style prepping and making something new every night. We still have flexibility in what we each each day, but we also only need to cook half as often.

We try (keyword try, doesn’t always work out) to pick recipes with overlapping ingredients so there’s asittle waste as possible.

Google shopping list is what we use to keep track of things since it has Google Home / Google Assistant integration and can connect to both of our accounts so everything is in-sync.

I don’t think what I do is really meal planning, but here are my usual steps:

1. Build a list of what recipes you know, and any new ones that you’d like to try. You can further categorize them based on your own preferences (easy/hard, have most spices/need to buy lots)

2. From this list, decide if you’ve got a craving for anything specific, haven’t eaten one in a long time and want to try it again, or want to try one of the new recipes. This narrows down to what you will likely plan to eat this week. Sometimes my cravings include fast food so that goes on my plan.

3. Look at your schedule for the coming week, do you have any after-work activities coming up (like gym or appointments)? These days you will likely be home late, so dinner will either be eaten out (fast food) or a quick recipe (maybe pasta or other types of Asian noodles). On the remaining days that you have time to cook, stick in recipes from your list in whichever order you like.

4. Now it’s time to take stock of what you have at home (fridge, cans, dried food, spices), and what else you need to get to meet your ‘plan’ this week. Anything that’s missing will become your grocery list. If any recipe lacks too many ingredients or seems not worth the effort at this point, swap it out for when you’ve got more motivation.

5. Shopping time is my favourite. You can buy exactly what you need, or meats can be bought in larger quantities and frozen for subsequent weeks. Sometimes you see something really fresh or nice that you just have to get, try to avoid this until you are comfortable enough in your routine to throw in changes.

That’s about it, after that it’s just taking one day at a time. Plans may change and you may have an extra appointment, then just decide if you skip that day’s recipe or push everything back by one. I don’t really write it down, it’s mostly in my head or just a quick record in notepad.

Every Wednesday. That’s when sales flyers come out for Aldi (website) and Food Lion (app). I make a list of all the produce going on sale. I keep a spreadsheet full of recipes organized by produce ingredient, and pick out recipes for the week based on sales and anything in my freezer that needs using.

I also have certain weekly rules. I plan 4 dinners and 3 breakfasts. In all these meals, only 2 can have meat, at least 2 must use legumes, at least one must have spinach, and at least one must have fatty fish (tuna or salmon, doesn’t count as meat). I aim for an anti-inflammatory diet, so I try to include that type of ingredient in each meal. It’s challenging, but fun to plan and has greatly increased my family’s nutrition.

I use Evernote on my phone to plan meals. I keep a list there of all foods in my freezer (meats, produce, breads, whole meals) and the date they were put in. Excel on my laptop to store and organize recipes. And the Anytime app to keep grocery lists for all the stores I visit.

I try to grocery shop once a week and pickup whatever looks good or fresh that I can use in a variety of meals throughout the week. My goal is to buy a small amount of higher quality things that I can use in 2-3 meals.

Lately though I’ve just been going to the store when I want to make something and it’s much more stressful that way. I need to get back into doing more planning.

Weekly. Meals based on what is on sale. Friday is always pizza night. Homemade or takeout.