by Corinne Schmitt
Disclosure: This post may include affiliate links. As an affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
After one too many days of scrambling to conjure up dinner, I sat down and came up with this 4 Week Family Dinner Plan.
Why 4 weeks? Because I figured that was long enough I could just keep repeating so I would never have to meal plan again (that’s the dream at least).
I got pretty close to the perfect dinner solution (in my opinion). Don’t worry, I’m going to share ALL the details so you can reap the same benefits without having to do all the work of putting the menus together!
Jump to:
- About The Recipes in This Family Dinner Plan
- How to Get the Most Out of This Meal Plan
- Dinner Plan
- Week 1 Dinner Menu
- Week 2 Dinner Menu
- Week 3 Dinner Menu
- Week 4 Dinner Menu
- More Dinner Inspiration
About The Recipes in This Family Dinner Plan
To simplify my meal planning process, I assigned themes to days (e.g. Mexican Mondays, Fun Fridays).
I get bored pretty easily so variety is super important to me. For that reason, you’ll see a good variety of chicken, beef, pork, and seafood recipes incorporated into the meal plan. With two teen boys, vegetarian dishes were out — sorry.
I love my Instant Pot AND my slow cooker, so you’ll see at least one to two recipes each week that relies on those appliances. The oven also gets a workout and even the stove gets turned on occasionally.
I stuck with meals I knew my family would eat without complaining (too much). I also stuck with mostly quick and easy all-in-one meals.
I don’t hate cooking, but there are a ton of other things I’d usually rather be doing. Plus, I tend to be forgetful so dinner is often an afterthought until either the kids or my stomach start making noise about wanting to eat.
I do hate making grocery lists and going grocery shopping, so in the next section, I’m going to tell you how I took my dinner plan and simplified my life even further.
How to Get the Most Out of This Meal Plan
My goal with this 4 week dinner plan was simply to do the work once so I’d never have to do it again. I came pretty close to this goal by pairing these menus with a couple of handy resources.
Use a Planning Program
I save all of my recipes in this meal planning program. I like this program because it lets me:
- Save recipes from any site (or input my own)
- Easily adapt recipes and save the changes
- Adjust the number of servings with the click of a button
- Drag and drop recipes onto the schedule
- Auto-generate a shopping list from the menu I’ve created
Streamline Your Shopping
Next, I took those auto-generated shopping lists and ordered my groceries from Walmart. I’ve been a big fan of their pickup service and they recently introduced delivery!
If you haven’t tried Walmart’s grocery service yet, you can place your first order and save $10 by using my referral link. Pickup service is 100% free. Delivery costs extra, plus you’re encouraged to tip so if you don’t mind picking up your groceries you can save quite a bit.
One of the cool features of Walmart’s grocery service (both the pickup and delivery options) is that the system stores your orders. So, four weeks from now when you’re recycling the week 1 dinner menu, you can simply duplicate your order and make minor adjustments rather than input all the items from scratch!
Using Plan to Eat and Walmart’s online grocery ordering, once I’d planned all four weeks of dinners and gone through one full rotation of all the menus, my weekly meal planning and shopping was reduced to a couple of mouse clicks and about 5 minutes total. #WondermomWin
Dinner Plan
So let’s get to those dinner recipes, shall we?
Week 1 Dinner Menu
- Instant Pot Chicken Taco Bowls
- 15 Minute Shrimp Alfredo
- Slow Cooker Asian Pot Roast
- Easy 30-Minute Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup
- Lasagna Casserole
- Instant Pot Creamy Sun Dried Tomato Chicken Parmesan
- Perfect Pot Roast
Week 2 Dinner Menu
- Best Chicken Enchiladas Ever
- Maple Glazed Baked Pork Chops
- Instant Pot Shrimp Scampi
- Potsticker Stir-Fry
- Chicken Bacon Ranch Tater Tot Casserole
- 30 Minute Shepherd’s Pie
- One Pot Chicken and Sausage Alfredo Pasta
Week 3 Dinner Menu
- Slow Cooker Creamy Fiesta Chicken
- Easy Beef & Broccoli
- Baked Pork Chops and Creamy Potatoes
- Microwave Shrimp Primavera
- Instant Pot Philly Cheesesteaks
- Classic Chicken Pot Pie
- Easy Tortellini Dinner
Week 4 Dinner Menu
- Slow Cooker Chile Verde
- Instant Pot Beef Stroganoff
- Easy Chicken Lo Mein
- Sausage, Onion and Potato Sheet Pan Dinner
- Pizza Sliders
- Instant Pot Swiss Chicken
- Beef Brisket with coleslaw and mashed potatoes
More Dinner Inspiration
If a month of dinner ideas isn’t enough for you. Or if you don’t like all of the options included in the meal plans above, download my free What’s For Dinner Guide.
It includes over 200 dinner ideas, broken down into categories to make it easy to find what you’re looking for. And every idea is hyperlinked to a recipe to make it even easier to plan your meals!
Or, if you prefer to see the recipes and photos when meal planning, you might prefer the Family’s Favorite Quick & Easy Dinner Recipes Digital Cookbook. I created it with some of my favorite food bloggers (who are also busy moms).
