Weekly meal planning for one.

Weekly meal planning for one can be ultra efficient, versatile and fun.  Ready to try something new, get incredibly organized, and see what you can do?  If so, this system is for you!  

O.f.O.'s Seven Day Solo Meal Planner on Google Sheets helps busy singles mix & match fresh produce across recipes, manage freezer rotation, fortify the kitchen with fabulous preps, and collect recipes along the way!  

Easy as one, two, three.

Think of weekly meal planning for one (or two) as setting up a buffet in three categories:

  1. Small "no frozen leftovers" recipes & repeats.
  2. Full freezable recipes for fresh servings, plus intentional leftovers for freezer meals.
  3. Single serving freezer meals from previous weeks.

O.f.O. style planning balances four-nine fresh recipes with a conservative rotation of homemade freezer meals/preps for a week's worth of tasty variety.

Welcome to Club Well Fed - Must be 21 to Enter.

Sticker character with a dutch oven for a head.Ovenia Forking Onederfull, meal plan manager, self sufficient solo chef.

Sitting down to three squares a day isn't for everyone, but aiming for 21 or more servings each week can be realistic for busy singles, thanks to the freezer.  

Here's an example of how 21 servings can fit into three categories:

  • Section 1:  3-6 "no frozen leftovers" recipes for 10-16 fresh servings.
  • Section 2:  1-3 freezable recipes for 0-6 fresh servings, plus freezer meals.
  • Section 3:  2-5 freezer meals for 2-5 servings.

Those who prefer to dine just once or twice per day may simply scale down on section 1 servings.

Cooking for two?   

It's easy to plan a higher serving count, like 42!  The planner's servings counter individually auto-adds breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and sides/snacks.  

Not into freezing?

That's cool.  O.f.O.'s Mix & Match Scratch Pad can totally help with that too.

Homemade ranch dressing.Homemade ranch

Mix and match fresh perishables across each week's menu, so nothing goes to waste.

O.f.O.'s Mix & Match Scratch Pad is a handy brainstorming tool for coordinating weekly recipe choices with shared perishables, like fresh produce.

Mixing and matching produce across recipes is easy.

My advice on mixing and matching plenty of fresh produce?  Make friends with your salad spinner, and embrace routine weekly salad prep.  Experiment with homemade dressings and never go back to bottled.  Salad is everything!

Meal planner that looks like a fridge.Fridge planner

Weekly meal planning for one with the O.f.O. system:

Section 1:  Choose 3-5 "no frozen leftovers" recipes to top the meal plan and prep list.

Balance small recipes with single-serve recipes & repeats.

Plan fresh whip-ups like salads, dips, pasta, or whatever pleases your palette.

Here's an example of 13 servings from five recipe choices:

  1. Chicken/veggie-avocado sandwich with organic chips - 2 servings .
  2. Chicken nachos with homemade guacamole and refried beans - 2 servings.
  3. Egg dishes with bread/potatoes and fruit - 4 servings.
  4. Spinach-arugula chicken bacon salad with walnuts, apples & homemade vinaigrette - 4 servings.
  5. Grilled NY strip steak with sheet pan veggies and potatoes -1 serving.

Section 2:  Choose 1-3 freezable recipes to prepare throughout the week.

Decide on recipes to either cook or assemble raw and freeze.  Sauces, sides, snacks, and desserts count.  Freeze in single servings.

Here are a few examples of freezable recipes for fresh servings and intentional leftovers:

  • Pot roast.
  • Spinach bacon Swiss mini quiche.
  • Raw chicken marinade (for grilling).
  • Chocolate chip cookies (or raw dough).

Section 3:  Cook or reheat two-five single serving homemade freezer meals throughout the week.

Decide what to reach for, then reap the rewards of batch cooking for one and take it easy!

Consider which ingredients can be added to or matched with freezer meals, like heavy cream for loaded potato soup, sour cream for ground beef stroganoff, or salad with mini quiche.  Then add items to the shopping list.

Here are a few examples of individual freezer meals to reheat:

  • Shepard's pie.
  • Loaded potato soup.
  • Linguica pizza.
  • Spaghetti gravy & garlic bread.

Here are examples of homemade frozen treats to grab and defrost or enjoy frozen:

  • Banana berry smoothies in mason jars.
  • Muffins.
  • Brownies and most cookies.
  • Chocolate nut clusters.
  • Coffee and cream (ice tray) cubes.
Wooden serving spoon sticker character wearing clothing and an apron.Ace, the asymmetrical handmade wooden serving spoon. Stylish and unique, yet classically capable, Ace Tastyface is Ovenia's left hand man.

Build and maintain a rotating storehouse of single serving freezer meals & preps:

  • Track frozen meals & preps in the planner's freezer tracker.
  • Once a good variety of frozen meals, sides and snacks are in play, section 2 can safely be skipped without disrupting routine weekly rotation.
  • Should freezer space begin to crowd, simply slow down on intentional leftovers.
  • For busy singles who love to cook ahead for longer term storage, vacuum sealing is the way to go!  Vacuum sealing can also help protect fridge and pantry preps.

A note about O.f.O.'s Sheets layout.

O.f.O.'s refillable Sheets layout was styled for efficient weekly meal planning, not tedious data entry.  The Ingredient Inventory Image Gallery-Notepad area alleviates the need for line item inventory entry, so there are no self generating shopping lists to edit.  However, the planner is set up to do some pretty cool stuff...

  • The Kitchen Inventory Gallery-Notepad holds big-picture shelf images, and the Seasonings Sorter and Freezer Tracker hold more detailed entries.
  • O.f.O. is available in two versions; one with a Recipe Cost Calculator + Bulk Ingredient Calculator, and one without.
  • Built in auto-calculation and data migration for meals, minutes, and money gives planning power a huge boost while alleviating error.
  • Fun, functional stickers and gifs pad the planner.  
  • Pics are captured directly onto the planner without leaving the app.
  • Imbedded images can "float over cells" to instantly become stickers.

But digital recipe boxes are best built on notetaking or word processing apps as opposed to spreadsheets for a couple of good reasons. 

Aside from the ability to capture recipes online seamlessly, the text grabbing capability of notetaking apps and word processors can't be beat!  Why settle for doing line item entry when even hand written words can be stored as searchable text with just a click?

Start building a digital recipe box with a free (or cheap) note taking app or word processor.  It's easy! 

I love using Google Keep with Chrome for my personal collection.  Saving recipes to Keep is so easy, you don't even have to open the app.  Simply highlight, click, and "Save to keep?" pops up.  I love it!

The ability to reference each week's pinned recipes from Chrome's handy sidebar along side the planner is a game changer.  Besides, keeping a stand-alone box safeguards your collection without needlessly tying it to a planner.

Whether you choose to go with a fabulous free app like Google Keep, Apple Notes, or Google Docs, or an affordable favorite like Goodnotes, you can't go wrong.

Use the Try & Buy page's Recipe Link Library to keep and sort links to yet-to-be collected recipes.

Prepare for convenient, pleasant planning with paper & digital planners, stickers & recipe keepers.  

O.f.O.'s digital planner + any free notetaking or word processing app is all one needs to get started and keep going strong, but hybrid paper-digital planning and recipe collecting can make kitchen life even nicer.

I recommend hybrid recipe collecting for everyone.  It's so nice to have recipe cards within reach in the kitchen!

Weekly meal planning for one, beautifully done.

The flexibility to choose between a selection of yummy homemade options according to mood, schedule and energy level makes eating well easier.  Here's to making delicious decisions, and savoring each day!