Weekly Meal Plan and Grocery List
A free prompt that asks you a few questions and builds a seven day meal plan for your household, with a grocery list sorted by aisle.
Really tested. The prompts were tested with Claude Sonnet 5.5 on realistic cases and refined after testing. Below is the untouched result of the final test on October 21, 2026.
What's in the kit
- How to use it
- The prompt
- Tips
Preview of the first prompt
Help me plan next week's meals. Before suggesting anything, ask me these questions one at a time and wait for my answers: 1. How many people are eating, and are there children? How old? 2. Which meals do you want to plan: lunch, dinner, or both? Does anyone eat out on certain days? 3. Allergies, intolerances, foods that someone does not eat, choices such as vegetarian? 4. How much time do you have to cook on weekdays and at the weekend? 5. Do you have a rough weekly grocery budget (and in which currency)? 6. What do you already have in the fridge or pantry that you want to use up? When you have the answers, prepare for me: A) A table with the 7 days and the meals requested. Use simple home-cooked dishes, vary the proteins (legumes, eggs, fish, white meat, red meat at most once) and reuse leftovers cleverly (for example, the rice from dinner becomes rice salad the next day). B) The shopping list for the whole week, with quantities, divided by section: fruit and vegetables, bread and pasta, meat and fish, dairy, pantry, frozen, other. Remove from the list what I said I already have. C) Three preparations I can do ahead on Sunday to save time. …
Real example result
The test case (fictional people and companies)
Two adults, one of them vegetarian, want to plan dinners only. They have 45 minutes on weekdays, eat out on Friday, and have a budget of 90 dollars. At home they have pasta, canned tomatoes and 4 eggs, and they use pounds and ounces. The AI asked the six questions one at a time; only the final result is shown here.
What the AI answered
Dinner plan
| Day | Dinner |
|---|---|
| Monday | Pasta with tomato sauce and white beans |
| Tuesday | Tofu and vegetable stir-fry with rice (cook double the rice) |
| Wednesday | Black bean chili with the leftover rice |
| Thursday | Egg fried rice with peas and carrots |
| Friday | Out |
| Saturday | Sheet-pan vegetables and potatoes, with chicken thighs for one and halloumi for the other |
| Sunday | Tacos: beef for one, spiced black beans for the other |
Red meat appears once, on Sunday. Every dinner has a vegetarian version or suits both of you.
Shopping list
- Fruit and vegetables: onions 3, garlic 1 head, bell peppers 4, broccoli 1 lb, carrots 1 lb, potatoes 2 lb, zucchini 2, lettuce 1, limes 2
- Bread and pasta: rice 2 lb, flour tortillas 1 pack (pasta: already at home)
- Meat and fish: chicken thighs 1 lb, ground beef 3/4 lb
- Dairy: halloumi 8 oz, shredded cheese 6 oz (eggs: already at home)
- Pantry: white beans 1 can, black beans 3 cans, soy sauce, taco seasoning 1 packet (canned tomatoes: already at home)
- Frozen: peas 12 oz
- Other: firm tofu 14 oz
Sunday prep
- Chop onions, peppers and carrots for the week.
- Make the tomato sauce for Monday.
- Wash and dry the lettuce.
Estimate
About $60 to $75, but prices change from store to store. That is under your $90 budget, so nothing needs to come off.
Would you like the recipes for any of these dishes?