How to build an affordable menu without repeating the same dish

Short answer: instead of planning seven different dishes from scratch, choose a few bases (a grain, a legume, a protein, vegetables) and vary how you prepare and combine them. That way the shopping is short, waste drops and the menu feels different each day. This guide focuses on the structure of the week and on a shopping list within budget.

Prerequisites

• The weekly food budget.
• A list of what you already have at home.
• An idea of the dishes your household likes.

Steps

1. Define the number of meals you need to plan (lunch, dinner, packed lunches).
2. Choose the week's bases. Two sources of starch, one or two legumes, one or two proteins and seasonal vegetables.
3. Spread them across days, alternating the way of preparing: boiled, roasted, sautéed, in soup, in salad.
4. Use ingredients in more than one dish. The chicken from lunch becomes a filling at the next dinner.
5. Reserve a flexible day for leftovers or for something different.
6. Build the shopping list from the menu, subtracting what you already have.
7. Review at the end of the week. What was left, what was missing and what people liked.

An example

Rafael cooks for two people and set a fixed amount for the week. Before going to the market, he wrote the menu and crossed off the list what he already had at home. The bases were potatoes, chickpeas, eggs, ground beef and vegetables: on Monday, an omelet with potatoes and salad; on Tuesday, sautéed chickpeas with vegetables; on Wednesday, ground beef with mashed potatoes; on Thursday, baked patties made from the leftover mash; on Friday, vegetable soup. The shopping list contained only what was missing. This is an illustrative example.

Common mistakes

• Over-planning and abandoning it by the second week.
• Buying ingredients that only serve one dish.
• Ignoring the shelf life of fresh items.
• Not planning for tired days, with very simple options.

A useful tip is to split dishes into three groups: those that produce useful leftovers, those that are quick and those that are more elaborate. Place the quick ones on busy days and the elaborate ones at the weekend, and use leftovers as a bridge from one day to the next.

Next step

Choose this week's bases, plan five meals and leave two free. If you want to adjust quantities to the number of people, use the portion calculator below.

Related tool: Recipe Portion Calculator