Pick how many people you cook for and how many nights to plan. You get a week of simple dinners that do not repeat the same main protein two nights running, and one shopping list with the quantities already added up.
Save and track this in Mealfolder. Plan with your own recipes, drag dinners between days, and keep the list on your phone at the store. The free plan holds 10 recipes and this week's plan.
Use Mealfolder freeIt draws from a built-in list of 26 everyday dinners, each written for four servings: sheet-pan chicken, turkey chili, salmon with broccoli, lentil curry, black bean tacos and so on. It shuffles that list, then walks through the nights and skips any dinner whose main protein matches the night before, so you do not get chicken three times in a row. No dinner repeats inside one week. The vegetarian and 30-minute boxes filter the list before it is shuffled.
Meals you type in yourself take the first nights in order. They show on the plan but not on the grocery list, because the generator does not know their ingredients.
Every ingredient is scaled from four servings to the number of people you picked, then the same ingredient from different dinners is added together: two dinners with 1½ cups of rice each become one line of 3 cups. Things you buy whole (cans, onions, cloves of garlic, bunches) round up to the next whole one. Meat and produce sold by weight round up to the next quarter pound. The list is grouped by aisle so the trip is one lap of the store.
Every dinner on the list has a vegetable in it, and most are built around chicken, fish, beans or lentils. That is a reasonable start for a balanced week, but the generator does not count calories or nutrients. If you are planning around a calorie or protein target, work it out with the macro calculator and choose portions to match. For a medical diet, follow the plan from your doctor or dietitian.
Yes. It runs in your browser, needs no account and does not save anything. If you want to plan from your own recipes and keep past weeks, Mealfolder's free plan holds 10 recipes and this week's plan.
Yes. Tick "Vegetarian only" and every dinner comes from the meatless part of the list (beans, lentils, chickpeas, tofu, eggs and pasta dishes). There are 10 vegetarian dinners, enough for a full week without repeats.
Things you buy whole are rounded up so the list matches what you can actually pick up at the store. Measured items like rice or oil keep quarter steps.
Yes. Press "Swap" next to that night. You get another dinner from the list that is not already in the week and does not share a main protein with the nights on either side, and the grocery list updates.
This page gives the dinner ideas and the shopping list. Use your own favorite version of each dish, or save recipes from any website into Mealfolder, which plans the week from your own recipe box.
Your list and your prices at 2 to 4 stores: the cheapest store for each item and what splitting the trip saves.
Daily calories, protein, carbs and fat from your height, weight and activity.
Paste ingredients, change the servings, get tidy kitchen fractions back.
What a recipe costs per serving, from your own receipt prices.
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