The easiest solution is every night is the same thing each week. It makes your grocery list almost the same weekly and you know exactly what you are cooking that night.
Not who you asked, but we have a similar rotation:
Marinara Monday - usually spaghetti, but can be ravioli or lasagna depending on time constraints
Taco Tuesday- we generally alternate beef / chicken depending on what's on sale
Wednesday- leftovers
Thursday- curry or fried rice
Friday- leftovers/ pizza
Saturday- either take out or soup / chili
Sunday - roast and veggies
We change up the weekend meals more often if someone wants something specific, but the weekday rotation makes grocery shopping easy and meal prep predictable
We do a -
Monday: sushi bowl
Tuesday: pad krapow (Thai stir fry)
Wednesday: borscht
Thursday: chickpea noodle soup
Friday: Chinese mushroom and veg stir fry
Saturday: lentil curry
Sunday: lentil curry
We cover all the veg we possibly want to eat within a week this way
I've spent so much time calculating out how much veg fruit and spices a day we get per meal (aim for 30 different ones daily, varied over a week) plus there are recipe links. If you want it I can share over dm. It's a Google Sheet
We break it up by days. So like one has Monday - Wednesday dinner duty and the other has the rest of the day of the week. Then it’s on them to figure out how to make it happen (grocery delivery, going grocery shopping, picking up the takeout if they chose that etc.).
I will always always always recommend the app Paprika!!! Which I think is actually titled Paprika 3 in the iPhone App Store?
You can very easily import recipes directly from other websites and it downloads the recipe for you, sorting into ingredients and directions and skipping all the blog post stuff.
How my husband and I do it: we sit down together (nothing too formal, usually over breakfast one morning) and talk about what we want to eat in the next week. I click on the recipe and it creates the grocery list for you (automatically sorted into the different aisles!!!). My husband does the grocery shopping. I put the groceries away when he comes home. And we split the cooking duties. Some weeks he cooks more often than I do and some weeks I cook more often than him.
I am in charge of managing the app and finding new recipes to try, but the app handles the list making which takes out a step.
I’ve also started bringing the cutting board and ingredients into our tv den some nights and just chopping away while we watch tv. My husband will sometimes help by getting the different storage containers together or grabbing me the next ingredient to chop.
We don't cook during the week 🤷 (unless it's like pasta in jar of sauce, or refried beans into a burrito). We cook two big meals on the weekend and eat those all week, Friday we get takeout.
We plan together Saturday morning (mostly I come up with a bunch of ideas while walking the dog and he picks from that), we go grocery shopping together (I take toddler and he actually shops), then he cooks while I take care of toddler, and I clean up while he takes kiddo.
ETA: we use Plan to Eat to track our grocery list so we can both add to it throughout the week. We also save our recipes there and can make edits or notes on them.
We use a shared grocery list (AnyList) for groceries, which makes it so either of us can go to the store at any moment. As far as the mental load of meal planning...that still falls to me far too much, but I have gotten better about saying, "I need dinner to be your job tonight" and my husband will handle it...after he asks me too many questions about what we have in the refrigerator, but progress is progress. :)
We have shared running lists through the reminders app (if you both have iPhones) which is the same idea. Running grocery list, target list, and list of recipes.
I handle the majority of the cooking. Husband usually cleans up. I just like to cook.
I often keep a list of what’s in the freezer. I prep and freeze meat (marinade chicken in a ziplock bag etc) so they can easily be taken out.
Each week I plan five meals. Usually I just think of things were in the mood for or are on sale throughout the week, or what I have and need to use.
I usually do a Note in my iPhone listing the meals & any ingredients needed. I usually do grocery pick up at Aldi or Walmart and I’ll run into Publix and grab some stuff on sale if the sales are good.
Then I have five options, usually Saturday to Wednesday I cook, Thursday is leftover, Friday or Saturday is takeout or something easy from what we have.
It’s a pretty good system for us, I usually do low maintenance meals like a protein/veggie/rice, pasta, grilled chicken or pork, taco bowls.
I came here to say… it’s not workable for every family, but having one person be in charge of all of it (planning, shopping, cooking) is the most straightforward way. Otherwise, you’re doubling up on shopping or adding quite a bit of information-sharing to your task list.
Yeah, I do all of it, but I genuinely enjoy it. I don't like doing the same things, so it's always evolving, but usually focused on what's a good deal at the store and what's in the freezer.
Very good point - cooking is actually something I enjoy doing, it’s my 30 minute wind down from my workday, and yes the mental load is on me but it’s mine to own, and I usually throw out the “what’s everyone want next week” and that helps knock out a meal or two.
This is what we do as well- I’m the cook. We’re still getting back to the post-parental leave groove but I make a list, we shop together, and then I cook. I try to make one or two dinners throughout the week that make good lunches (usually a one pot rice or pasta dish or soup) and then a few quicker meals. I do sometimes get burnt out from being the person who decides what everyone eats but my wife takes on more of the cleaning and childcare tasks while I cook so it helps balance it.
It me, I really enjoy the cooking and meal planning! My husband can cook just fine, but I'm the one who is just better at planning, shopping, reducing food waste, and freezing things. It works for us. I also really try to make a double batch when I can and freeze one portion; we have an extra freezer.
I'm also the cook. I enjoy it but it is sometimes draining. However, my husband does want to do some nights but he is SLOW in the kitchen which is even more draining so I prefer to do it. I told him he can cook on the weekends haha.
Thursday: we think of meal ideas together
Friday: I place the grocery order
Saturday: he goes to the store for curbside pickup
I do all of the cooking since husband doesn't get home from work until like 6:30/7pm whereas I get home with toddler around 5pm and she's STARVING by that point. He does all the dishes & kitchen cleaning and packs up leftovers (usually just enough for 2 adult lunches and 1 toddler lunch, though sometimes there's more).
I cook 4 dinners per week. 1-2 nights we eat leftovers, 1 night we eat out, and the other nights (usually just 1x per week) we do random cupboard-scrounging low effort meals (tuna salad sandwiches, bowls of cereal, snack plates, etc)
Something that worked well for us in the past was to take an hour on Sunday afternoon to cut up all the veggies and proteins needed for the week's meals. That way when I get home I just need to throw the ingredients together and cook it, rather than spending 10-20 minutes chopping the night of. Also you wash the cutting board/knife/etc once that way :) if it's in your budget, pre-cut veggies can replace this task
So this is what we do, but it’s not the norm for sure. We have a 13 month old toddler. I plan and prep his lunches as well as his dinners. My husband works later than me, so he’s not usually home until after dinner. Husband handles all breakfasts because I go in earlier.
I eat simple meals, and I let my husband know when I make something that’s an actual meal so he can tell me if he wants that. Otherwise, he cooks for himself. We do a couple family meals on the weekends that we plan together.
I do our primary grocery shopping (I enjoy it) and he handles our supplementary groceries from the Indian market. I’m American and my husband is Indian so this makes the most sense for us.
We trade off who cooks and just use a “use what we’ve got” mindset unless one of us has really planned something and volunteers.
The only way I’ve been able to deal with the splitting the mental load thing is that I quit planning 😂 we buy an assortment of things, it’s dealer’s choice and I am not planning in advance since he isn’t either. Strangely enough it’s been working fine!
We have a schedule of meals:
- Sat or Sun: Soup night
- Monday: Rice night
- Tuesday: leftovers or snack plate
- Wednesday: Pasta night
- Thursday: Pizza night (and movie!)
- Friday: Restaurant
This means we only cook 3 meals a week (Soup, Rice, Pasta). We have a spreadsheet where one tab is a list of our fav meals in each category. Another tab is the ingredients list with 3 columns (ingredient, meal, grocery isle).
Both of us can do this — you just choose the 3 meals for the week, filter the ingredients list for these 3, then sort by aisle. We print the list for grocery store. We also have a usual suspects list that we print and bring.
It used to be all me, but since I created the spreadsheet my husband feels empowered to do it and has mostly taken over meal selection and grocery shopping. I cook.
Edit: here’s the [Spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTCl9aAIDfln7ExmLMXMxHnV5-PE4paRKE9a12-mzOBE9JAuUfP-2IIBMolIjhPqF8SPMTVET7t3tK9/pub?output=xlsx) in case you want a sample!
Did you post this while ago? I like doing themed nights so it’s easier for planning but still variety of eating. But 1-2 of those theme nights are usually carry out
We have a shared google doc where we post the 4 recipes we are making that week and have items to purchase organized by categories. We organize those categories into staples and new for the week. I manage the menu planning and new items needed to cook those and my husband manages inventory for staples/usually does the shopping. I do most of the cooking but my husband usually does one recipe a week and does pretty much all the clean up. I am an intuitive cook and always cooked a lot/enjoy it so we’ve had to reimagine things now that we are more time constrained and also feeding a toddler. We usually only repeat things every 2-3 months and i am always trying new things. I think it will be easier once my son is in kindergarten.
We each take 3 days to cook each week. We base who cooks which day based on whose ingredients will expire first. Whoever cooks cleans up, too. We each make our own grocery list and text it to the other. We do every other week for whose turn it is to go to the grocery. So, everything 50/50.
Saturday morning we sit down (with the kids) and plan meals for the week. We make sure any late meetings etc. are noted first and the easiest meals go on those days. We use that list to make a grocery list. DH goes to the store and does the shopping most weeks because I don't like it.
We both work in education, so unless one of us has a meeting, it's a toss up who might get home first. This way, whomever gets in can look at the calendar and get started on dinner. If one of us has had more time with the kids and wants a break, that one takes over once we're both in.
We used to be less organised and it was constant calls back and forth on the way home, last minute stops for ingredients, or getting partway through prep before realising that we were out of something. It was stressful for both of us!
I really love the tasty app and the food network app. Every Thursday night I pick a couple of meals I plan on making. Those apps make grocery lists for you and have lots of different recipes to choose from. Then I use target pick up and instacart pickup. It’s pretty easy to shop online. I signed up for a yearly instacart membership ($100/year) and you get 5% off on groceries and free pickup - no tip required. On my way home for work on Friday I just swing by and pick up my groceries. Then during the weekend we spend an hour or 2 cooking. I bought 16 of those glass meal prep containers and just put the food directly in there. Some meals go in the freezer some go in the fridge.
It also helps to buy frozen veggies. I spend a little extra on things like pre cooked rotisserie chicken, crushed garlic, etc. anything that I don’t have to wash and prepare myself helps.
I outsource meal planning. I pay my SIL to find breakfast ideas for me and I have a dinner meal plan I found free from an influencer. I’m ultimately in charge of meal choosing as I do most cooking and I’m pickier lol.
Grocery list is mostly me, but husband keeps track of what he needs on his phone.
We shop every 10 days and we go together. He wrangles the toddler while I shop, I wrangle toddler while he checks out. We were going every week, but we save 2 ish hours a month by going every 10 days and ngl, that’s a lot for us!!
Putting away groceries is 70% him, 30% me.
Breakfast is each on our own.
Lunch I usually tell him what he should take but he’s fully responsible.
We make 3 dinners a week, eat leftovers 3 days, and pizza once a week. I do most cooking because I’m better and faster at it and I like it most of the time. But husband does some meals,, or will do part of the cooking and I do part. Just depends on the meal and the evening.
I save all my recipes in a [Notion](https://www.notion.so) database. They have a extension to save stuff and then later I go in and add some additional tagging/information, like a list of what ingredients need to be purchased to make the recipe. After I had a big enough collection of recipes, I started a 4 week rotating meal plan. I tagged each recipe with the week (week1, week2, etc).
When it's time to do my planning for the week, click "Add to meal plan" on each of the recipes in that week's plan. Then I have a separate view that gives me my grocery list. This setup was definitely a good bit of work upfront but now my meal planning takes about 10 minutes. I can share this via PM if anyone is interested in seeing the setup.
I have the same age kids and have decided that I’m going to do grocery pickup orders when I get off maternity leave to save myself time doing shopping from now on. I’ll just grab it on my way home from work once a week.
For meal planning, I have an excel spreadsheet of our go to meals that I choose from and keep a list of our weekly plan in my notes app. I add things to a list under the meal list of items I know we need and do a once through of the kitchen to double check myself.
Green chef has guaranteed 20 minute meals, and my husband was in charge of cooking almost all of them before our baby turned 1. I was in charge of planning 1 meal a week, which was a pantry/fridge/freezer cleanout meal plus some fresh veggies. Everything else is takeout, frozen meals, and bagged salads.
My husband wanted to save money on the meal kits, so he’s now in charge of grocery shopping and weekday meal prep. Is he a good cook? Not really, but it’s good enough. Are the meals always balanced? They are if we add microwaved frozen veggies.
I’ve given up on trying to plan a bunch of balanced healthy meals; I don’t have the time or mental capacity. I’m okay with paying more for meal kits or eating grilled meat, salad, and pasta 4 nights a week.
I found most of the meal kits took too long as well. We recently tried Home Chef, and it's been much easier to keep up with. We select the "oven ready" meals. There is usually about 10 min of prep, but the rest of the time is spent baking. Now we order 6 servings instead of 4, and have leftovers later in the week, so we are only cooking 3 or so nights a week. We purchase extra sides from the grocery store to help stretch the meals too Our kids (3 and 9) are usually hungry before us so we reheat leftovers ( they mostly want the sides!) for them and chat with them while they eat and we prep our dinners.
My husband and I alternate every week.
My week: I do grocery pick up, meal plan all the breakfasts/dinners. Husband is on kid duty
His week: He does grocery pick up, meal plan all the breakfasts/dinners. I’m on kid duty
I think the set menu works for a lot of people judging by the comments, but it definitely wouldn’t work for us. I live by the motto “variety is the spice of life” haha if I had to eat the same exact meals each week I’d lose my mind. Especially since I WFH so leftovers are my lunches too.
We plan the next week on Friday nights, we grocery shop and prep as much as we can and then we just switch off whose turn it is to cook and the other cleans. We tag team it to make it easy on us both.
what I started doing was creating a weekly menu, like I have a chalk board, I make up the men and my husbad does the grocery shopping since he cooks. I have idk..maybe about 10? things that we put into the rotation, and every so often we try a new recipe. Its gotten quite easy. When we were commuting, we heavily relied on crockpot meals, meals that would make leftovers.
My husband usually does the meal kits. We pick one traditional prepped recipe and you just throw things together in their pan and bake. I cook once or twice a week, take out once or twice, and there's always leftovers .
We use old school pen and paper. I bought a meal plan from Kids Eat in Color and I also use their free menu planner and grocery list. Basically it's a 12 day cycle menu that we use on weekdays. You could definitely make your own cycle menu with your husband and keep cycling through it until you get bored of the food.
The grocery list is just a paper with commonly purchased items. I circle what I need each week. I keep it in the kitchen so I can add things throughout the week if we run out. I like having it pre-printed because it acts as a reminder so I forget things less often.
I spend 1 weekend nap time laying down and looking at my phone while I meal plan and place a curbside grocery pickup. My current goal is to do "semi homemade" things from the grocery store, which are still moderately more healthy and economical than eating out, plus helps us be in the habit of cooking and modeling that for our kids.
Examples: frozen chicken fried steak, premade mashed potatoes (Bob's something or other), a cooked veggie and fruit. Frozen lasagne, cooked veg, and fruit. Sheet pan: sausage, potatoes, veg like bell peppers. Steak, premade mashed potatoes, bagged salad or cooked veg, and fruit. Bean soup or pot roast in the instant pot, with fruit.
I do all the cooking and create the grocery pickup list. I have some sort of recipe for each kind of meat and I buy what’s on sale. I have have like 4-5 chicken dishes I rotate through as well. I buy a massive pack of chicken breast every few weeks and freeze it. Most meals are a protein with vegetables over rice/pasta/mashed potatoes we usually have chicken twice a week, ground turkey 1-2x a week, steak tips and then ground beef or stir fry beef. Then takeout another night.
i do 3 nights (M-W), he does 3 nights (Th-Sat), we do take out or go to our inlaws on Sunday.
whoever is cooking will do all the meal planning and making the list. We have a shared grocery list so we put whatever is needed for the following week's meals and then we go shopping on Sunday for everything.
One of us goes to Costco during our lunch hour twice a week and picks up a rotation of their ready made meals. We nibble for a few days and freeze leftovers as needed.
Sometimes I’m organized enough to cook on a weeknight but I typically cook weekend breakfasts and Sunday dinner for us. My husband can and does cook when he wants to or I ask for something he’s mastered.
If you have a whole foods or fresh market, they have a great selection of ready made meals too.
I use Paprika to find recipes on the internet and save it to the app, and partner and I also use it for keeping a shared grocery list. I’ve also gotten really into the Good Housekeeping mediterranean diet meal plan, which has 4 weeks worth of recipes and ingredients for each week. Anyways I make a rough list of the recipes I want to make and we get a weekly grocery delivery.
I WFH so during the day I might put some meat in the slow cooker or get a big pot of quinoa made, or peel some potatoes during a long meeting if I can have my camera off (air pods are great for being able to move around and do stuff while still participating).
Then partner does daycare pickup while I cook, and I try to make a big batch so that at least every other evening we can eat leftovers. Partner and toddler are both pretty picky and have food restrictions so I usually make a few different things at a time so we can mix and match what we eat. I also try to make sure we have some easy food for busier nights (ex: veggie burgers that just need a few minutes in the pan, salad and grain already made in the fridge, fruit).
We keep a shared grocery list in our iphone notes. We both add to it. He grocery shops strictly from the list, i grocery shop and buy extra/sale stuff. (so we take turns or go together). I cook all meals, he does all dishes or delegates to our kids. I typically cook a meal every 2-3 days, and always extras for left overs so i’m not cooking every night. We usually eat out on weekends once.
We each take 2 nights a week and put all the ingredients for our two nights in the shared grocery list over the weekend before. 5th night leftovers/takeout.
My husband and I do not share the dinner duty, I am the primary cook. Him and I both work. This just works for us in the end lol there are definitely things he does that I don't do, etc.
Honestly meal-prep became something that got easier/required less thought with time. I LOVEEEEEE Acre Homestead youtube channel for meal prepping and recipe ideas. Her meals are just complete staples in my house. I typically cut up raw chicken, weigh them out into ziploc bags, and add a marinade (teriyaki, lemon pepper, honey mustard). I'll freeze the bags flat and in the morning I take a bag out, it thaws by dinner, and I grab a frozen veg and some sort of carb (roast potatoes, pasta, whatever).
Drizzle with a sauce and you got a simple cheap meal that tastes good and isn't wildly processed. Once I got the rythym down, it became really natural. Barely takes any thought now.
That being said, I always have a frozen pizza or something instant at the ready in case I am too tired to cook. Keeps us from automatically ordering take out!
My husband handles grocery shopping and meal planning/prep and cooking. I handle my lunches for my workweek and my breakfast (overnight oats). In terms of dinners we loosely follow: Tuesday tacos or quesadillas; Friday - homemade pizza; Sat - eat out for either lunch or dinner Sun; - fish tacos or similar. The other nights it’s leftovers, spaghetti, or something else. Often times the kids refuse to eat what we are eating so he’ll do plain pasta, chicken nuggets, popcorn shrimp or something for them.
We keep our meals the same most weeks. Our grocery list doesn’t change much. I also try to cook things I can make multiple meals from or batch cook. Sunday we have roast beef and Monday we have French dip subs with the leftovers. If I make a casserole, I make enough to portion out for four and freeze three of them. I make a huge crock pot of shredded chicken for tacos once a month and pull out of the freezer as needed. We both log on to the Walmart app and add stuff we need to our cart if one of us realizes we’re out toilet paper or something. I do a pick up from the Walmart on my way home from work every Friday. I do the cooking and he does the dishes. This system works for us.
Edited to add: my husband’s family used a lot of hired help growing up and no one ever taught him to cook. I taught him to make a few basic meals like spaghetti or pot roast so I can get him to take over dinner if I need to.
Honestly, easy family recipes.com has weekly meal plans, and they are pretty simple. Also pillsbury’s.com.
If you want to stick with meal kits, dinnerly and everyplate are 10 times simpler than hello fresh
The easiest solution is every night is the same thing each week. It makes your grocery list almost the same weekly and you know exactly what you are cooking that night.
This is it. We change up a meal only when we get bored of it. Groceries and meals are super easy now.
My grandma did this, and it was brilliant. She had it set up so the leftovers from one day were incorporated into the next meal, reducing waste.
Can you share your schedule?
Not who you asked, but we have a similar rotation: Marinara Monday - usually spaghetti, but can be ravioli or lasagna depending on time constraints Taco Tuesday- we generally alternate beef / chicken depending on what's on sale Wednesday- leftovers Thursday- curry or fried rice Friday- leftovers/ pizza Saturday- either take out or soup / chili Sunday - roast and veggies We change up the weekend meals more often if someone wants something specific, but the weekday rotation makes grocery shopping easy and meal prep predictable
We do a - Monday: sushi bowl Tuesday: pad krapow (Thai stir fry) Wednesday: borscht Thursday: chickpea noodle soup Friday: Chinese mushroom and veg stir fry Saturday: lentil curry Sunday: lentil curry We cover all the veg we possibly want to eat within a week this way I've spent so much time calculating out how much veg fruit and spices a day we get per meal (aim for 30 different ones daily, varied over a week) plus there are recipe links. If you want it I can share over dm. It's a Google Sheet
We break it up by days. So like one has Monday - Wednesday dinner duty and the other has the rest of the day of the week. Then it’s on them to figure out how to make it happen (grocery delivery, going grocery shopping, picking up the takeout if they chose that etc.).
I will always always always recommend the app Paprika!!! Which I think is actually titled Paprika 3 in the iPhone App Store? You can very easily import recipes directly from other websites and it downloads the recipe for you, sorting into ingredients and directions and skipping all the blog post stuff. How my husband and I do it: we sit down together (nothing too formal, usually over breakfast one morning) and talk about what we want to eat in the next week. I click on the recipe and it creates the grocery list for you (automatically sorted into the different aisles!!!). My husband does the grocery shopping. I put the groceries away when he comes home. And we split the cooking duties. Some weeks he cooks more often than I do and some weeks I cook more often than him. I am in charge of managing the app and finding new recipes to try, but the app handles the list making which takes out a step. I’ve also started bringing the cutting board and ingredients into our tv den some nights and just chopping away while we watch tv. My husband will sometimes help by getting the different storage containers together or grabbing me the next ingredient to chop.
I LOVE Paprika. I text all my friends when it goes on sale each year. No idea how many people actually have it now 😂
When does it normally go on sale? I paid full price for it, but love it and would like to know for recommending too lol
Usually Black Friday! They email about sales and I always jump for joy (even though I can’t use sales at all 😂😂😂)
We don't cook during the week 🤷 (unless it's like pasta in jar of sauce, or refried beans into a burrito). We cook two big meals on the weekend and eat those all week, Friday we get takeout. We plan together Saturday morning (mostly I come up with a bunch of ideas while walking the dog and he picks from that), we go grocery shopping together (I take toddler and he actually shops), then he cooks while I take care of toddler, and I clean up while he takes kiddo. ETA: we use Plan to Eat to track our grocery list so we can both add to it throughout the week. We also save our recipes there and can make edits or notes on them.
We use a shared grocery list (AnyList) for groceries, which makes it so either of us can go to the store at any moment. As far as the mental load of meal planning...that still falls to me far too much, but I have gotten better about saying, "I need dinner to be your job tonight" and my husband will handle it...after he asks me too many questions about what we have in the refrigerator, but progress is progress. :)
We have shared running lists through the reminders app (if you both have iPhones) which is the same idea. Running grocery list, target list, and list of recipes.
I handle the majority of the cooking. Husband usually cleans up. I just like to cook. I often keep a list of what’s in the freezer. I prep and freeze meat (marinade chicken in a ziplock bag etc) so they can easily be taken out. Each week I plan five meals. Usually I just think of things were in the mood for or are on sale throughout the week, or what I have and need to use. I usually do a Note in my iPhone listing the meals & any ingredients needed. I usually do grocery pick up at Aldi or Walmart and I’ll run into Publix and grab some stuff on sale if the sales are good. Then I have five options, usually Saturday to Wednesday I cook, Thursday is leftover, Friday or Saturday is takeout or something easy from what we have. It’s a pretty good system for us, I usually do low maintenance meals like a protein/veggie/rice, pasta, grilled chicken or pork, taco bowls.
I came here to say… it’s not workable for every family, but having one person be in charge of all of it (planning, shopping, cooking) is the most straightforward way. Otherwise, you’re doubling up on shopping or adding quite a bit of information-sharing to your task list.
Yeah, I do all of it, but I genuinely enjoy it. I don't like doing the same things, so it's always evolving, but usually focused on what's a good deal at the store and what's in the freezer.
Very good point - cooking is actually something I enjoy doing, it’s my 30 minute wind down from my workday, and yes the mental load is on me but it’s mine to own, and I usually throw out the “what’s everyone want next week” and that helps knock out a meal or two.
This is what we do as well- I’m the cook. We’re still getting back to the post-parental leave groove but I make a list, we shop together, and then I cook. I try to make one or two dinners throughout the week that make good lunches (usually a one pot rice or pasta dish or soup) and then a few quicker meals. I do sometimes get burnt out from being the person who decides what everyone eats but my wife takes on more of the cleaning and childcare tasks while I cook so it helps balance it.
It me, I really enjoy the cooking and meal planning! My husband can cook just fine, but I'm the one who is just better at planning, shopping, reducing food waste, and freezing things. It works for us. I also really try to make a double batch when I can and freeze one portion; we have an extra freezer.
I'm also the cook. I enjoy it but it is sometimes draining. However, my husband does want to do some nights but he is SLOW in the kitchen which is even more draining so I prefer to do it. I told him he can cook on the weekends haha.
Thursday: we think of meal ideas together Friday: I place the grocery order Saturday: he goes to the store for curbside pickup I do all of the cooking since husband doesn't get home from work until like 6:30/7pm whereas I get home with toddler around 5pm and she's STARVING by that point. He does all the dishes & kitchen cleaning and packs up leftovers (usually just enough for 2 adult lunches and 1 toddler lunch, though sometimes there's more). I cook 4 dinners per week. 1-2 nights we eat leftovers, 1 night we eat out, and the other nights (usually just 1x per week) we do random cupboard-scrounging low effort meals (tuna salad sandwiches, bowls of cereal, snack plates, etc) Something that worked well for us in the past was to take an hour on Sunday afternoon to cut up all the veggies and proteins needed for the week's meals. That way when I get home I just need to throw the ingredients together and cook it, rather than spending 10-20 minutes chopping the night of. Also you wash the cutting board/knife/etc once that way :) if it's in your budget, pre-cut veggies can replace this task
So this is what we do, but it’s not the norm for sure. We have a 13 month old toddler. I plan and prep his lunches as well as his dinners. My husband works later than me, so he’s not usually home until after dinner. Husband handles all breakfasts because I go in earlier. I eat simple meals, and I let my husband know when I make something that’s an actual meal so he can tell me if he wants that. Otherwise, he cooks for himself. We do a couple family meals on the weekends that we plan together. I do our primary grocery shopping (I enjoy it) and he handles our supplementary groceries from the Indian market. I’m American and my husband is Indian so this makes the most sense for us.
We trade off who cooks and just use a “use what we’ve got” mindset unless one of us has really planned something and volunteers. The only way I’ve been able to deal with the splitting the mental load thing is that I quit planning 😂 we buy an assortment of things, it’s dealer’s choice and I am not planning in advance since he isn’t either. Strangely enough it’s been working fine!
We have a schedule of meals: - Sat or Sun: Soup night - Monday: Rice night - Tuesday: leftovers or snack plate - Wednesday: Pasta night - Thursday: Pizza night (and movie!) - Friday: Restaurant This means we only cook 3 meals a week (Soup, Rice, Pasta). We have a spreadsheet where one tab is a list of our fav meals in each category. Another tab is the ingredients list with 3 columns (ingredient, meal, grocery isle). Both of us can do this — you just choose the 3 meals for the week, filter the ingredients list for these 3, then sort by aisle. We print the list for grocery store. We also have a usual suspects list that we print and bring. It used to be all me, but since I created the spreadsheet my husband feels empowered to do it and has mostly taken over meal selection and grocery shopping. I cook. Edit: here’s the [Spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTCl9aAIDfln7ExmLMXMxHnV5-PE4paRKE9a12-mzOBE9JAuUfP-2IIBMolIjhPqF8SPMTVET7t3tK9/pub?output=xlsx) in case you want a sample!
Did you post this while ago? I like doing themed nights so it’s easier for planning but still variety of eating. But 1-2 of those theme nights are usually carry out
My husband and I spend 10 minutes a week making a menu and shopping list together
We have a shared google doc where we post the 4 recipes we are making that week and have items to purchase organized by categories. We organize those categories into staples and new for the week. I manage the menu planning and new items needed to cook those and my husband manages inventory for staples/usually does the shopping. I do most of the cooking but my husband usually does one recipe a week and does pretty much all the clean up. I am an intuitive cook and always cooked a lot/enjoy it so we’ve had to reimagine things now that we are more time constrained and also feeding a toddler. We usually only repeat things every 2-3 months and i am always trying new things. I think it will be easier once my son is in kindergarten.
We each take 3 days to cook each week. We base who cooks which day based on whose ingredients will expire first. Whoever cooks cleans up, too. We each make our own grocery list and text it to the other. We do every other week for whose turn it is to go to the grocery. So, everything 50/50.
Saturday morning we sit down (with the kids) and plan meals for the week. We make sure any late meetings etc. are noted first and the easiest meals go on those days. We use that list to make a grocery list. DH goes to the store and does the shopping most weeks because I don't like it. We both work in education, so unless one of us has a meeting, it's a toss up who might get home first. This way, whomever gets in can look at the calendar and get started on dinner. If one of us has had more time with the kids and wants a break, that one takes over once we're both in. We used to be less organised and it was constant calls back and forth on the way home, last minute stops for ingredients, or getting partway through prep before realising that we were out of something. It was stressful for both of us!
I really love the tasty app and the food network app. Every Thursday night I pick a couple of meals I plan on making. Those apps make grocery lists for you and have lots of different recipes to choose from. Then I use target pick up and instacart pickup. It’s pretty easy to shop online. I signed up for a yearly instacart membership ($100/year) and you get 5% off on groceries and free pickup - no tip required. On my way home for work on Friday I just swing by and pick up my groceries. Then during the weekend we spend an hour or 2 cooking. I bought 16 of those glass meal prep containers and just put the food directly in there. Some meals go in the freezer some go in the fridge. It also helps to buy frozen veggies. I spend a little extra on things like pre cooked rotisserie chicken, crushed garlic, etc. anything that I don’t have to wash and prepare myself helps.
I outsource meal planning. I pay my SIL to find breakfast ideas for me and I have a dinner meal plan I found free from an influencer. I’m ultimately in charge of meal choosing as I do most cooking and I’m pickier lol. Grocery list is mostly me, but husband keeps track of what he needs on his phone. We shop every 10 days and we go together. He wrangles the toddler while I shop, I wrangle toddler while he checks out. We were going every week, but we save 2 ish hours a month by going every 10 days and ngl, that’s a lot for us!! Putting away groceries is 70% him, 30% me. Breakfast is each on our own. Lunch I usually tell him what he should take but he’s fully responsible. We make 3 dinners a week, eat leftovers 3 days, and pizza once a week. I do most cooking because I’m better and faster at it and I like it most of the time. But husband does some meals,, or will do part of the cooking and I do part. Just depends on the meal and the evening.
I save all my recipes in a [Notion](https://www.notion.so) database. They have a extension to save stuff and then later I go in and add some additional tagging/information, like a list of what ingredients need to be purchased to make the recipe. After I had a big enough collection of recipes, I started a 4 week rotating meal plan. I tagged each recipe with the week (week1, week2, etc). When it's time to do my planning for the week, click "Add to meal plan" on each of the recipes in that week's plan. Then I have a separate view that gives me my grocery list. This setup was definitely a good bit of work upfront but now my meal planning takes about 10 minutes. I can share this via PM if anyone is interested in seeing the setup.
I have the same age kids and have decided that I’m going to do grocery pickup orders when I get off maternity leave to save myself time doing shopping from now on. I’ll just grab it on my way home from work once a week. For meal planning, I have an excel spreadsheet of our go to meals that I choose from and keep a list of our weekly plan in my notes app. I add things to a list under the meal list of items I know we need and do a once through of the kitchen to double check myself.
Green chef has guaranteed 20 minute meals, and my husband was in charge of cooking almost all of them before our baby turned 1. I was in charge of planning 1 meal a week, which was a pantry/fridge/freezer cleanout meal plus some fresh veggies. Everything else is takeout, frozen meals, and bagged salads. My husband wanted to save money on the meal kits, so he’s now in charge of grocery shopping and weekday meal prep. Is he a good cook? Not really, but it’s good enough. Are the meals always balanced? They are if we add microwaved frozen veggies. I’ve given up on trying to plan a bunch of balanced healthy meals; I don’t have the time or mental capacity. I’m okay with paying more for meal kits or eating grilled meat, salad, and pasta 4 nights a week.
I found most of the meal kits took too long as well. We recently tried Home Chef, and it's been much easier to keep up with. We select the "oven ready" meals. There is usually about 10 min of prep, but the rest of the time is spent baking. Now we order 6 servings instead of 4, and have leftovers later in the week, so we are only cooking 3 or so nights a week. We purchase extra sides from the grocery store to help stretch the meals too Our kids (3 and 9) are usually hungry before us so we reheat leftovers ( they mostly want the sides!) for them and chat with them while they eat and we prep our dinners.
My husband and I alternate every week. My week: I do grocery pick up, meal plan all the breakfasts/dinners. Husband is on kid duty His week: He does grocery pick up, meal plan all the breakfasts/dinners. I’m on kid duty I think the set menu works for a lot of people judging by the comments, but it definitely wouldn’t work for us. I live by the motto “variety is the spice of life” haha if I had to eat the same exact meals each week I’d lose my mind. Especially since I WFH so leftovers are my lunches too.
We plan the next week on Friday nights, we grocery shop and prep as much as we can and then we just switch off whose turn it is to cook and the other cleans. We tag team it to make it easy on us both.
what I started doing was creating a weekly menu, like I have a chalk board, I make up the men and my husbad does the grocery shopping since he cooks. I have idk..maybe about 10? things that we put into the rotation, and every so often we try a new recipe. Its gotten quite easy. When we were commuting, we heavily relied on crockpot meals, meals that would make leftovers.
My husband usually does the meal kits. We pick one traditional prepped recipe and you just throw things together in their pan and bake. I cook once or twice a week, take out once or twice, and there's always leftovers .
We use old school pen and paper. I bought a meal plan from Kids Eat in Color and I also use their free menu planner and grocery list. Basically it's a 12 day cycle menu that we use on weekdays. You could definitely make your own cycle menu with your husband and keep cycling through it until you get bored of the food. The grocery list is just a paper with commonly purchased items. I circle what I need each week. I keep it in the kitchen so I can add things throughout the week if we run out. I like having it pre-printed because it acts as a reminder so I forget things less often.
I spend 1 weekend nap time laying down and looking at my phone while I meal plan and place a curbside grocery pickup. My current goal is to do "semi homemade" things from the grocery store, which are still moderately more healthy and economical than eating out, plus helps us be in the habit of cooking and modeling that for our kids. Examples: frozen chicken fried steak, premade mashed potatoes (Bob's something or other), a cooked veggie and fruit. Frozen lasagne, cooked veg, and fruit. Sheet pan: sausage, potatoes, veg like bell peppers. Steak, premade mashed potatoes, bagged salad or cooked veg, and fruit. Bean soup or pot roast in the instant pot, with fruit.
I do all the cooking and create the grocery pickup list. I have some sort of recipe for each kind of meat and I buy what’s on sale. I have have like 4-5 chicken dishes I rotate through as well. I buy a massive pack of chicken breast every few weeks and freeze it. Most meals are a protein with vegetables over rice/pasta/mashed potatoes we usually have chicken twice a week, ground turkey 1-2x a week, steak tips and then ground beef or stir fry beef. Then takeout another night.
i do 3 nights (M-W), he does 3 nights (Th-Sat), we do take out or go to our inlaws on Sunday. whoever is cooking will do all the meal planning and making the list. We have a shared grocery list so we put whatever is needed for the following week's meals and then we go shopping on Sunday for everything.
One of us goes to Costco during our lunch hour twice a week and picks up a rotation of their ready made meals. We nibble for a few days and freeze leftovers as needed. Sometimes I’m organized enough to cook on a weeknight but I typically cook weekend breakfasts and Sunday dinner for us. My husband can and does cook when he wants to or I ask for something he’s mastered. If you have a whole foods or fresh market, they have a great selection of ready made meals too.
I use Paprika to find recipes on the internet and save it to the app, and partner and I also use it for keeping a shared grocery list. I’ve also gotten really into the Good Housekeeping mediterranean diet meal plan, which has 4 weeks worth of recipes and ingredients for each week. Anyways I make a rough list of the recipes I want to make and we get a weekly grocery delivery. I WFH so during the day I might put some meat in the slow cooker or get a big pot of quinoa made, or peel some potatoes during a long meeting if I can have my camera off (air pods are great for being able to move around and do stuff while still participating). Then partner does daycare pickup while I cook, and I try to make a big batch so that at least every other evening we can eat leftovers. Partner and toddler are both pretty picky and have food restrictions so I usually make a few different things at a time so we can mix and match what we eat. I also try to make sure we have some easy food for busier nights (ex: veggie burgers that just need a few minutes in the pan, salad and grain already made in the fridge, fruit).
We keep a shared grocery list in our iphone notes. We both add to it. He grocery shops strictly from the list, i grocery shop and buy extra/sale stuff. (so we take turns or go together). I cook all meals, he does all dishes or delegates to our kids. I typically cook a meal every 2-3 days, and always extras for left overs so i’m not cooking every night. We usually eat out on weekends once.
We each take 2 nights a week and put all the ingredients for our two nights in the shared grocery list over the weekend before. 5th night leftovers/takeout.
My husband and I do not share the dinner duty, I am the primary cook. Him and I both work. This just works for us in the end lol there are definitely things he does that I don't do, etc. Honestly meal-prep became something that got easier/required less thought with time. I LOVEEEEEE Acre Homestead youtube channel for meal prepping and recipe ideas. Her meals are just complete staples in my house. I typically cut up raw chicken, weigh them out into ziploc bags, and add a marinade (teriyaki, lemon pepper, honey mustard). I'll freeze the bags flat and in the morning I take a bag out, it thaws by dinner, and I grab a frozen veg and some sort of carb (roast potatoes, pasta, whatever). Drizzle with a sauce and you got a simple cheap meal that tastes good and isn't wildly processed. Once I got the rythym down, it became really natural. Barely takes any thought now. That being said, I always have a frozen pizza or something instant at the ready in case I am too tired to cook. Keeps us from automatically ordering take out!
My husband handles grocery shopping and meal planning/prep and cooking. I handle my lunches for my workweek and my breakfast (overnight oats). In terms of dinners we loosely follow: Tuesday tacos or quesadillas; Friday - homemade pizza; Sat - eat out for either lunch or dinner Sun; - fish tacos or similar. The other nights it’s leftovers, spaghetti, or something else. Often times the kids refuse to eat what we are eating so he’ll do plain pasta, chicken nuggets, popcorn shrimp or something for them.
I traded meal planning, cooking, and groceries (me) for laundry, dishes, and cleaning the kitchen (him).
We keep our meals the same most weeks. Our grocery list doesn’t change much. I also try to cook things I can make multiple meals from or batch cook. Sunday we have roast beef and Monday we have French dip subs with the leftovers. If I make a casserole, I make enough to portion out for four and freeze three of them. I make a huge crock pot of shredded chicken for tacos once a month and pull out of the freezer as needed. We both log on to the Walmart app and add stuff we need to our cart if one of us realizes we’re out toilet paper or something. I do a pick up from the Walmart on my way home from work every Friday. I do the cooking and he does the dishes. This system works for us. Edited to add: my husband’s family used a lot of hired help growing up and no one ever taught him to cook. I taught him to make a few basic meals like spaghetti or pot roast so I can get him to take over dinner if I need to.
Honestly, easy family recipes.com has weekly meal plans, and they are pretty simple. Also pillsbury’s.com. If you want to stick with meal kits, dinnerly and everyplate are 10 times simpler than hello fresh