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Monthly meal planner

A blank month calendar with lines in each day for what you will cook. It is for people who like to see the whole month of meals, or who cook the same repeating dishes on a rotation.

By Paul Gunder. Free to print for home, classroom and office use; see how our printables are made.

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Meals
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Monthly Meal Planner1 page · US Letter, landscape

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What prints

A landscape page headed Monthly Meal Planner, with a Month line and a Year line. Below is a calendar grid: seven weekday names over six rows of boxes. Each box has a small empty square at the top left for the date. No numbers are printed, so the same page works for any month.

What fills the rest of the box depends on the meals setting. For dinner only, each box has a stack of faint writing lines, which gives room for a main dish and a side. For all three meals, each box has three short lines marked B, L and D.

There is no grocery list on the monthly page and no snacks row. Those belong to the weekly version.

The settings

  • Heading. A title you write in, no longer than 40 characters.
  • Planner. One week or one month. This page opens on one month.
  • Meals. Dinner only, or breakfast, lunch and dinner. This page opens on dinner only.
  • Week starts on. Sunday or Monday. This page opens on Sunday.

The options for the snacks column and grocery list are hidden when the month is selected.

How the month works

Write the month and year, then number the boxes. Check which weekday the 1st falls on and put 1 in that box.

Before you put in any meals, mark the nights you will not cook: restaurant nights, school events, late shifts and dinners at someone else's table. What is left is the number of meals you need to plan, and the figure is usually smaller than you feared.

Then repeat. A rotation such as pasta on Monday, tacos on Tuesday and soup on Wednesday cuts down planning to a few new ideas per week. USDA MyPlate has free recipes and a way to think about balance if you need ideas for the empty boxes.

Pencil in the plan, because plans change. A smudge of eraser on the page is nothing compared with throwing out spoiled food.

Worked example: a four-week dinner rotation

Suppose the month starts on a Tuesday and your week starts on Sunday. Mark every Sunday "Roast chicken" and every Monday "Leftovers or eggs". Tuesdays are "Tacos". Wednesday alternates "Chili" and "Baked potatoes". Thursdays are "Pasta". Fridays alternate "Pizza night" and "Fish sticks and peas". Saturdays are for something new, such as "Try: lentil curry".

Mark the 12th "Book club, eat out" and the 25th "Thanksgiving at Aunt Rosa's". Now the rest is a repeat of the pattern, and you can see that only four Saturdays need new ideas. Before shopping, pick one week of the plan and write its ingredients on a grocery list.

Alternatives

If a whole month feels too far ahead, the weekly meal planner gives each meal its own column. The monthly planner is the right page when you need a general calendar, not just meals.

Sources

  1. USDA MyPlate myplate.gov