How to Make a Go-To Meals List for Easier Meal Planning

By Cedar & Ledger

Meal planning gets hard when you start from a blank page every week. A go-to meals list fixes that: it's a short list of meals you already know how to make, that your household will eat, and that fit your grocery budget. Planning the week then becomes picking from the list instead of inventing dinners. This guide shows how to build the list, sort it, put a rough cost on each meal and use it to plan a week.

Every price and cost per serving below is a made-up example to show the math, not a real store price. Prices change by store, place and week, so use what you actually pay. This is general information, not financial or nutrition advice.

Quick checklist

• ☐ Write down meals you've made in the last month
• ☐ Keep only the ones people actually ate and you'd make again
• ☐ Sort them by meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack)
• ☐ Mark the quick ones and the ones that make leftovers
• ☐ Put a rough cost per serving on your dinners
• ☐ Plan the week by picking from the list
• ☐ Add one new meal at a time, and drop ones nobody wants

Step 1: Write down what you already make

Don't start with recipes you want to try. Start with what you've actually made in the last few weeks. Look back through grocery receipts, your camera roll or food delivery history if it helps. Most households have 10 to 20 meals they come back to without thinking about it.

Include the easy stuff: "eggs and toast," "frozen pizza plus a salad," "leftovers." If you eat it, it counts.

Step 2: Keep only the keepers

Go through the list and cross off anything that:

• nobody really liked,
• took a lot more time or money than it was worth, or
• needs an ingredient you can rarely find.

What's left is your go-to list. A short list you'll actually use beats a long one you won't.

Step 3: Sort it and add short notes

Group the meals by breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack. Then add a few words to each one so planning is quicker:

• Quick (about 20 minutes or less) for busy nights
• Makes leftovers for meals that cover tomorrow's lunch
• Freezer for meals that freeze well
• Pantry for meals you can make from shelf-stable food when the fridge is empty

Example (made-up list):

Step 4: Put a rough cost on each dinner

You don't need exact numbers. A rough cost per serving shows which meals are cheap and which are "sometimes" meals. For each ingredient, divide what you paid by how many servings it covers, then add them up.

Example (made-up prices): a rice + bean bowl

Done the same way with made-up prices, tacos come to about $2.80 a serving and spaghetti with meatballs to about $2.15. Those numbers are only examples. Yours will be different, and that's the point of working them out.

Write the rough cost in the notes column. When money is tight, plan more of the cheaper meals that week.

Step 5: Plan the week from the list

Now planning is quick:

1. Look at the calendar. Busy nights get a "quick" meal.
2. Pick 5 or 6 dinners from the list, not 7. Leave a night for leftovers or eating what's left in the fridge. Planned leftovers are a lot less likely to get thrown out (How to Waste Less Food at Home (Example Numbers)).
3. Use "makes leftovers" meals to cover a lunch or two. To cook several at once, see How to Batch Cook on a Budget (Example Week).
4. Check what you already have before you write the grocery list.

How to Meal Plan on a Grocery Budget walks through turning the plan into a list and checking spent vs. budget each week.

Step 6: Keep the list alive

• Add one new meal at a time. Try it once. If people liked it and it fit the budget, add it to the list.
• Drop meals nobody wants anymore. The list should match how you eat now.
• Update the rough cost a few times a year. Prices change, so a cheap meal last spring might not be cheap now.

Common snags

• A list of meals you wish you made. Start with what you actually make. Add new ones slowly.
• Too many dinners that need a long cook. Make sure there are enough quick meals for busy nights.
• No pantry backup. Keep two or three meals you can make from shelf-stable food. They're cheaper than takeout on a night when the plan falls apart. How to Spend Less on Takeout and Delivery (Example Numbers) has more on backup meals, and How to Stock a Budget Pantry (Starter Staples List) covers building the shelf slowly.
• Forgetting breakfast and lunch. Those add up too. Leftovers are a lunch.
• Making it too detailed. A meal name and a few words of notes is enough.

A simple way to track it

A note on your phone works fine for a go-to list. If you'd like it in a spreadsheet, the Meal Plan + Grocery Budget ($5, Excel and Google Sheets) has a Meals tab for up to 60 go-to meals with a type and notes column. Those meals show up as drop-downs in its 4-week meal plan (breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack). It also has a grocery list by store section with estimated prices, a spending log and a budget tab that shows weekly target vs. spent (details). It doesn't work out cost per serving for you, and the grocery list doesn't fill itself from the meal plan. You add items yourself. No recipes, nutrition data or store price lookups.

Honest note: I make this template and sell it under Cedar & Ledger, so I'd earn from a purchase. General information only, not financial or nutrition advice.

Try the free grocery budget calculator (per week and per meal) →

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Related template: read about the meal plan grocery template

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