One autumn week, five dinners, one cabbage and a single shopping list. How to plan the week together in twenty minutes, so one person isn't carrying it all.
The question that arrives at five o'clock
"What's for dinner?" sounds like a question about food. Usually it's a question about who has to think. In a lot of households it's the same person every day: the one who knows what's in the fridge, remembers the milk ran out and ends up deciding.
A weekly plan doesn't take the cooking away. It takes away the seven small decisions, and it makes them something you can share.
Twenty minutes on Sunday is enough
Sit down together, with a coffee or a glass of wine. Three rules keep it short:
- Plan five dinners, not seven. One night will be leftovers and one will be something else. A plan that expects that survives the week.
- At most one new dish a week. Everything else is something you've made before or that takes under 40 minutes.
- Let dishes share ingredients. One cabbage across two dinners is cheaper than two half cabbages wilting in the fridge.
An autumn week to start from
This week is built so every dinner leaves something for the next. Portions serve four; the soup serves six.
| Day | Dinner | Time | What it hands on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday | Gołąbki soup | 50 min | Soup for Tuesday, half the cabbage |
| Monday | Cabbage Alfredo | 30 min | Cook 150 g extra pasta for Wednesday |
| Tuesday | Leftovers: Sunday's soup | 10 min | – |
| Wednesday | Leftover spaghetti frittata | 25 min | The rest of the spinach |
| Thursday | Creamy baked dumplings | 35 min | – |
| Friday | Tinned-fish dinner board | 25 min | – |
| Saturday | Free | – | – |
The soup keeps for three days in the fridge, so Tuesday is its last night. Monday's extra pasta comes to about 350 g cooked, exactly what the frittata needs. Fettuccine works as well as spaghetti.
One shopping list instead of three
Once the plan is set, write the list from it, not from memory. These ingredients are shared across dinners, so you buy them once:
- 1 white cabbage: half for the soup, half for the Alfredo
- 140 g parmesan: the Alfredo and the frittata
- 250 g baby spinach: the frittata and the dumplings
- 7 eggs: one for the soup, six for the frittata
- 2 lemons and 1 bunch of dill: the soup, the Alfredo and Friday's board
Cross off what you already have before anyone goes to the shop. That's where a shared list earns its keep: whoever shops sees the same list as whoever planned, even if it was written on a different phone.
Split the nights, not just the washing-up
Decide who owns which night. Whoever owns Thursday takes the dumplings out of the freezer and turns the oven on without asking anyone. Nobody has to hold the whole week in their head, and nobody has to ask "what were we having?".
Swap nights from week to week. The person who always makes the Sunday soup never learns what's in the fridge on a Tuesday.
How to do it in Samla
Add the recipes to the week plan and set the servings for each day. Then tap From meal plan in the shopping list, and the week's ingredients land on one list everyone in the household can see and tick off.
Households are part of Premium. An editor can move a dinner, change servings or add milk to the list. A viewer sees the plan but changes nothing.
