One Month Family Menu
Meal Planning For a Family. Or, what we ate in a month.
I think we all love the idea of not having to think about what’s for dinner every day, and one of the best ways to give yourself that little gift is to make a meal plan ahead of time. Meal planning saves you time, reduces stress, and saves you money. When you’ve planned ahead what you’re going to make, then you can shop less often and buy just what you need. You reduce the impulse buying and eliminate the stress of having to figure out what’s for dinner at the last minute after a long day.
Another one of my favorite ways to think about meal planning is to look at a whole month at once. I don’t always plan the whole month ahead of time, but I always write my menus on a one month calendar page so I can easily look back at past months and see what we had, get ideas, or even just copy it.
Even if you don’t make a meal plan in advance - try just writing down what you cooked for dinner every day for a month, and then at the end of that month now you have a whole month dinner menu that you can just repeat with maybe a few changes! You’ve made a whole month meal plan without even trying.
You can look at my past meal plans too! For this post I’m sharing with you a very typical month for us, and what we had for dinner each night of the month.
A few of my meal planning & cooking guidelines:
We basically never eat out, except for birthdays and anniversaries, so I really am providing dinner for my family for 7 nights of the week.
I always cook extra, so we can have at least one night a week with leftovers for dinner. That’s how I get a break from cooking, instead of spending money to eat out. One night a week I get out all the leftovers from the fridge and everyone helps themself to whatever they want for dinner.
I honestly hardly ever follow recipes when I’m cooking, but I do look at a lot of recipes for ideas, and I might follow the general concept of a recipe for ingredients but not quantities. I’ve included recipes below where I could find ones for you that are similar to what I make.
I try very hard to use minimal processed foods, but you will see that canned cream of mushroom soup makes an appearance once or twice a month. I’ve tried to live without it and it keeps sneaking back in. Given how healthy we are with almost everything else, I don’t feel too bad about it. Sometimes little shortcuts are what keeps you sane.
I almost always follow a theme for each night of the week for my meal planning. This helps me keep a good variety while at the same time makes it easier to figure out what to cook because I’ve already narrowed it down to a category.
I used to use specific meal plan templates (and I do have some I’ll share if you want one), but most of the time now I just print out a month view from our shared family calendar to write the meal plan on. This allows me to see what we have happening on the calendar right at the same time I’m figuring out the dinners. Then I know if there’s an event I need to plan around separately from my usual routine.
Here you can see what a very typical month meal plan looks like. It’s not pretty but it works. I write the daily themes across the top, sometimes I scribble in the margins what meats I have in the freezer to use up, sometimes I cross things out and move things around as plans change. As you can see, we’ve got a busy calendar - we have four teenagers, with scout meetings, theater rehearsals, climbing classes, and more - and it really helps to have a solid plan to keep all these people fed. Also we live and die by our family calendar.
More detail about the meal plan!
I’ve typed it out week by week for you below, with a bit more description of most of the meals. I make a lot of one pot meals, soups, stews, casseroles - it let’s me get a well rounded meal in everyone without having to argue about vegetables. If the veggies are chopped up small and mixed in, they get eaten and basically not noticed. I always keep riced cauliflower in my freezer, and it probably makes it’s way into at least 2 meals a week. Otherwise, if there isn’t a serving of veggies mixed in the main course, then I’ll usually have a simple salad on the side, or at the very least heat up some frozen broccoli.
One Month Family Meal Plan / Dinner Menu
Thirty Days of Dinners
Burger night: Frozen beef patties (we love the ones from Costco), set up build-your-own style on the kitchen island, with lots of fixings and fries on the side (bag of frozen fries, cooked in the oven).
Cottage pie: a winter dinner favorite, basically like a rich stew of ground meat in gravy with veggies, topped with mashed potatoes and baked. Here’s a good recipe. The tomato paste really adds a lot, but I don’t do bouillon cubes.
Kale & meatball soup: a tomato & beef broth with kale, onions, carrots, celery, meatballs, pasta. This one is super easy to make if you have frozen meatballs, or I like to make what we call “brat-balls” - take bratwurst sausages and squeeze the sausage out of the casing into balls. Mine is similar to this recipe.
Chicken taco night: chicken pieces cooked in enchilada sauce until falling apart, served taco bar style with all the usual taco toppings and chips. I make this at least once a month, it’s the easiest thing ever. You don’t need a recipe for this - just frozen chicken pieces (we prefer thighs) and canned enchilada sauce, and cook it by your preferred method. You can do this in a pot on the stove, in a dutch oven in the oven, in an instant pot or slow cooker. I don’t usually add any other seasoning to this, not even salt, because canned enchilada sauce is usually salty enough.
leftover night
Korean beef bowl: ground beef seasoned with savory asian flavors. Here’s a great recipe. This is an easy meal to sneak a lot of veggies in - you can finely dice mushrooms & cabbage, or toss in a bag of frozen riced cauliflower - with all the seasoning and flavor the veggies hardly get noticed. served over rice. Here’s a good recipe to get you started, but you can really be creative and add a lot to this.
Homemade pizza
Roasted salmon, asparagus, pasta, salad. I watch for salmon on sale at my grocery store and usually buy two whole filets because we love it. I put the salmon on a baking sheet lined with either parchment or nonstick foil and season it generously with nothing but salt, and cook it on the top rack in a 500 degree oven for about 7 minutes, or slightly longer if it’s a very thick piece.
Chicken & rice casserole: easy old classic style, with cream of mushroom soup, cooked chicken, some frozen broccoli. I mixed this one up and used a wild rice blend this time, which gave it a really nice extra texture and flavor. You can google mushroom soup chicken and rice casserole if you don’t already know how to make this.
Dumpling soup: so easy! frozen asian potstickers or gyoza, in chicken broth with some carrots & celery. Our favorite frozen dumplings come from Trader Joes, but Costco has some pretty good ones too. When my oldest head out on their own I plan on writing them up a list of easy meals they can make for themselves and this soup is going on that list!
Taco casserole: leftover enchilada sauce chicken, with rice, black beans, salsa, cheese - baked until bubbly. This is a great one to make with leftovers from the fridge. A lot of my casseroles are made from leftovers actually.
leftover night
Macaroni & cheese: homemade the easy way - which is basically just mixing cooked pasta with a bit of milk and a combination of American cheese and shredded cheddar & jack cheese until it’s all melted and saucy.
Homemade pizza, chop salad
Sheet pan beef & broccoli: I sometimes loosely follow the Nom Nom Paleo recipe, except I do use soy sauce. Or here is another simple recipe from Damn Delicious, another of my favorite food blogs. Sometimes I add oyster sauce to either of these, it adds a ton of umami flavor. (seriously oyster sauce is on my apocalypse pantry prepping list.) I use all kinds of cuts of beef for this, usually whatever has been on sale. If you slice it very thin, then a tougher cut still works fine. And here’s a secret tip from Chinese restaurants - a way to make your beef extra tender - add a little bit of baking soda to the marinade. You can google “baking soda velveting beef” to read more about this technique and why it works. I make a lot so usually the beef and the broccoli are spread across two sheet pans and combined after cooking. Served with steamed rice.
Chicken Enchiladas: shredded chicken (I’ve got a great post here about how I cook a whole chicken in the instant pot), mixed with diced onions, cheese, enchilada sauce, rolled up in tortillas and topped with more enchilada sauce and cheese. I usually do this with flour tortillas because that what I keep in my fridge, and some people will argue with you that flour tortillas makes it a wet burrito instead of an enchilada, but call it whatever you want it’s still delicious.
Chicken & rice soup: homemade chicken broth (in the same post mentioned above about cooking the chicken, I also tell you how to make chicken broth), with diced onion, carrot, celery, and leftover rice.
Ground beef tacos: simple seasoned browned ground beef with taco bar fixings. I quit buying taco seasoning years ago. It’s unnecessary. I season the meat while it’s browning with a bit of salt, pepper, cumin, onion, garlic, and sometimes chili powder. Served with tortillas, chopped iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, salsa - a very American take on a Mexican class, but it’s delicious.
Leftover night
Moroccan chicken & couscous: chicken thighs, seasoned with my moroccan seasoning blend, browned and then added to a pot to finish cooking by braising in a broth sauce made with sautéed onions, canned diced tomatoes, preserved lemons, and a bit more moroccan seasoning. I added a bag of frozen spinach and a can of garbanzo beans to this to make it a complete meal. I might try to repeat this someday and write out a recipe, but here’s a very similar one I have actually posted, minus the tomatoes and plus potatoes.
Homemade pizza
Pot roast, potatoes & carrots, gravy, salad: I figured out a trick not long ago to make pot roast have loads of extra amazing flavor: add way more onions than you ever think you’ll need. You’ll get a broth or gravy that tastes like French onion soup. But please don’t add packaged onion soup mix - you really don’t need to do that to get that onion flavor. Just extra onions and salt are all you need.
Lasagna: I make lasagna the northern Italian style, with a béchamel sauce, a simple tomato sauce, and really very little cheese. You don’t need meat, you don’t need ricotta, just layers of thin pasta (I prefer flat pasta sheets instead of the ruffled ones), tomato & béchamel sauces, a sprinkling of cheese. Sometimes a little spinach in a layer is nice, or some basil. If you don’t know how to make béchamel, you need to learn. I basic white sauce is a kitchen staple and you can make so many wonderful things with it. Béchamel is just a white/milk sauce with a bit of pepper & nutmeg.
Beef stew (with leftover pot roast & veggies): all the leftover meat, gravy, veggies, chopped up and simmered in a pot with a little extra broth, with a fresh loaf of bread.
Enchilada sauce chicken and black beans taco bar again (it’s a favorite) and a pot of homemade black beans. If you’ve never cooked black beans from dry, you really must. They actually taste amazing, vs. canned beans that have very little flavor. You can pretty much just follow the cooking instructions on the bag, but I have found that adding a little bit of baking soda to the water helps soften the beans faster and I like the little flavor it adds. I think the bit about not adding salt while cooking because it toughens the beans is a myth. Salt makes them taste better. Sometimes I add a little cumin, or quarter an onion and toss it in.
Leftover night
Stir fry with chicken, tofu, cabbage & shiitake mushrooms, with steamed rice. There are a million good stir fry recipes out there and I have never followed one. Knowing how to stir fry some protein and veggies together and add a little flavorful sauce is a basic kitchen skill I think everyone needs to know. I highly recommend you find a few stir fry recipes you like and make them many times until you understand the basic technique and can do it with any combination of ingredients and without a recipe.
Frozen pizza & bag caesar salad
Turkey burgers, all the burger fixings, potato chips
Pasta with pork & cabbage: this is one I made up years ago and my kids ask for all the time. I came up with it one day when I hadn’t gotten to the store and there wasn’t a lot to work with. Ground pork, onions, cabbage, sautéed until cooked and the veggies are soft, and then mix in some cream of mushroom soup (or you can make a white sauce and add mushrooms), combine all that with cooked pasta, top with parmesan cheese. If you can find the cream of mushroom soup with roasted garlic, it really kicks it up a notch. Sometimes I do this with leftover pasta. I often also add other veggies, depending on what I have - riced cauliflower, chopped broccoli, frozen spinach. You can get a lot of veggies in this and the family doesn’t complain because what’s not to love about pork & pasta.
Phew. We did it.
That’s a whole month of real meals, what I actually cooked and what we actually eat for dinner.
You can see we have some repetitive themes and I repeat some favorites, but I try to mix it up enough that it doesn’t get boring for the cook or for the eaters. I hope this give you good ideas and helps you plan meals for your family!