Meal prep for the week: a real 7-day family meal plan with a shopping list
Sunday night, same question: what are we eating this week? Here's our real 7-day plan, where you cook on just 4 days and shop only once.
by The Mealody Team
Sunday night, same old question
You know the moment. It's Sunday night, the fridge is half empty and someone asks: "What are we having tomorrow?" And you already know the same question will be back on Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday.
Meal prep, cooking ahead for several days, is the answer you hear everywhere. Except it usually arrives with that picture of twenty matching containers and an entire Sunday spent at the hob. I've tried that version. Last time I cooked three kinds of meat and four sides to cover two or three days, and spent four to five hours in the kitchen. It turned out well, but I was shattered by the evening.
So this week I let Mealody plan it for me: 7 days, for the two of us, with batch cooking switched on. Here it is exactly as it came out, nothing tidied up.
Our 7-day plan
| Day | Breakfast | Lunch | Dinner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wednesday (cook) | Warm porridge with banana and peanut butter | Boiled egg and spinach sandwich | Baked pumpkin with meat and rice |
| Thursday | Warm porridge with banana and peanut butter | leftovers from Wednesday | leftovers from Wednesday |
| Friday (cook) | Quinoa and fruit bowl | Polenta with peppers and tomatoes | Pasta alla gricia |
| Saturday | Quinoa and fruit bowl | leftovers from Friday | leftovers from Friday |
| Sunday (cook) | Skyr bowl with mixed berries | Ross il-forn (Maltese baked rice) | Mushroom pasta |
| Monday | Skyr bowl with mixed berries | leftovers from Sunday | leftovers from Sunday |
| Tuesday (cook) | Cucumber with dill and kefir | Pasta with green beans and thyme | Tray-baked rice with peppers and tomatoes |
In short: you cook on Wednesday, Friday, Sunday and Tuesday. On the other three days you just reheat what you put aside the day before.
Four cooking days, not seven
What I liked most was the rhythm. No more lost Sundays, just four short sessions, two days apart. Each dish covers two days: enough that you're not cooking every night, and not so much that you're sick of it.
Wednesday is oven day. The baked pumpkin with meat and rice takes about an hour (63 minutes, according to the recipe), and while it's in the oven you make the egg and spinach sandwiches in around 12 minutes. Friday brings polenta with peppers and tomatoes (51 minutes), then pasta alla gricia for dinner, ready in 19 minutes. Sunday is the easy one: Maltese baked rice (46 minutes) and mushroom pasta in 15 minutes. On Tuesday you finish the week with green bean and thyme pasta (31 minutes) and a tray of rice with peppers and tomatoes (56 minutes).
Add it all up and it's about five hours of cooking for seven days of lunches and dinners. Roughly what I spent last time in a single day, for half a week.
Breakfast, sorted in ten minutes
There's nothing to prepare ahead for the mornings. You get four options, each lasting two days apart from Tuesday: warm porridge with banana and peanut butter, a quinoa and fruit bowl, a skyr bowl with berries and, to finish, cucumber with dill and kefir. Each one takes 6 to 10 minutes, and two of them never go near the hob.
I'll admit the cucumber and kefir made me raise an eyebrow. For breakfast? Then I read the recipe and got curious: something cold and tangy, with dill, ready in 7 minutes. I'm keen to see how it turns out.
One list, one trip to the shops
The shopping list came straight out of the plan, already sorted by aisle, with 46 items in total:
| Section | Items |
|---|---|
| Fruit and veg | 17 |
| Protein | 6 |
| Dairy and eggs | 3 |
| Bread and grains | 8 |
| Store cupboard | 12 |
With the list sorted by aisle, you go round the supermarket once, from one end to the other, and you're not nipping back the next day for something you forgot. If you'd like to build your own list from any plan, the steps are in our piece on turning a meal plan into a shopping list.
One tip from me: spinach and anything leafy wilts first. Handily, the plan uses it on Wednesday, the very first day.
Why two days is the sweet spot
Let's be honest: nobody dreams of eating the same stew five days running. When you cook the whole week in one go, by Thursday the food has lost its charm and you've started giving the containers a long, hard look.
Over two days, it's a different story. The food is just as good the next day, and plenty of dishes taste even better after a night in the fridge. And just as you'd start getting bored, it's a cooking day again and something new lands on the table.
My favourite part? The weekend stays mine. The longest session in the plan is Tuesday, under an hour and a half, and the oven dishes look after themselves. I pop the tray in, make myself a coffee and get on with the second dish. Or with nothing at all.
More of a cook-the-parts-and-mix-them person? A meat, a side, a sauce, and every evening looks different. Then the building-block approach to batch cooking is for you. And if you'd rather build a week from scratch, start with our 7-day family meal plan guide.
Three traps to avoid
Cooking everything on Sunday. It sounds like a good idea, but by Thursday the Sunday food reaches the table looking tired. Two days from hob to plate is a rhythm that holds.
Leaving breakfast to chance. You end up grabbing whatever's nearest on your way out the door. With a few ten-minute options, bought along with everything else, breakfast is sorted for the whole week.
Shopping in dribs and drabs. You end up at the supermarket three times, and on cooking day you're still out of onions. A list made from the plan saves you the extra trips.
Now it's your turn
The plan above is ours: two people, each with their own goal. Yours will look different, and that's the nice part. Mealody works out portions for everyone in the household based on their goal, so you all eat the same meals, each with your own portion.
Getting started takes three steps:
- Tell it who's at the table: age, goal, what you like and what you don't.
- Choose how many days you want, up to 7, and switch on batch cooking if you'd like to cook less often.
- Get your plan and a shopping list, already sorted by aisle.
Your first plan is free, no card needed. The hardest part is pressing the button.
Make your plan for this week, and next Sunday, when someone asks "what are we having tomorrow?", you can just smile and open the app.
Frequently asked questions
- What does meal prep actually mean?
- It means cooking ahead for several days so you're not starting from scratch every evening. In Mealody, the option is called batch cooking.
- How many days ahead can I cook?
- In our plan, every lunch and dinner covered two days, so you cook four times a week. A Mealody plan covers up to 7 days.
- How do I write a shopping list for meal prep?
- Start from the plan, add up the ingredients for every meal and group them by aisle. In Mealody the list comes straight from the plan; ours came to 46 items across 5 sections.
- Can we meal prep if people at home have different goals?
- Yes. You all eat the same meals and only the portions change. In Mealody everyone in the household picks their own goal, and the plan works out portions for each person.