How to make a meal plan (and save money)

We get asked quite often:

"How do you choose what to put in a meal plan?"

At the end of the day, figuring out what to cook every night is just a test of your imagination. And it's a challenge for all of us. Singer Arethra Franklin said it best:

This challenge is why we started meal planning, and it's why we share our plans. A meal plan takes deciding on dinner one step further. It makes a week's meals into a coherent menu that cuts waste, saves time, and encourages financial savings.

And it pays off - in 2025, we spent €117.50 per month on all groceries, compared to €450 for the average couple in Belgium (according to Testachats/Testaankoop).

After six years of meal planning, we have a reliable process. Here's how we do it:

Start with a target

Find a budget that you're happy with and let this number be your guide.

As a couple, we find that €25 per week, per person is a good goal. This makes big savings, while still being realistic and allowing a quality diet.

Find offers of the week

Start with the promotions in the supermarket. Promotions highlight the week's most affordable, seasonal ingredients.

Taking advantage of offers has a huge impact in Belgium. Because Belgium is smaller than neighbours like Germany, France, or the UK, stores price differently. Instead of competitive low prices, they operate higher prices, bigger offers.

Often, the most attractive offers are bulk discounts. These are famous at Colruyt - buy 48 Jupilers to save 5c per bottle, anyone? - but they are common in big retailers and becoming more common. In January 2026, Carrefour announced a new pricing system where the more you buy, the cheaper it is.

All the more reason to find the good offers and plan ahead!

Food shopping in Belgium is all about the offers

A recent Delhaize shop of ours - following the promotions reduced our total bill by 43%.

Find the must-make meal

A blank slate is scary. Too many choices! So decide on one meal straight away.

Is there a great offer on? Do you have a classic, reliable dish? Is there a star ingredient that you really enjoy?

A must-make meal gives the week its first flavour and influences the other dishes.

Choice of carb

Avoid repetition by mixing up the week's carbs. This shapes the meal plan. For example, if Tuesday is pasta, we cook with other carbs for the next two days. To put it simply, we vary our dishes based around seven basic carbohydrates:

1. Bread. Wraps, baguettes, tortillas, pizzas...
2. Grains. Couscous, bulgur, quinoa, oats, freekeh...
3. Noodle. Rice, egg, sweet potato, buckwheat...
4. Pasta. Wheat-based pasta in all its shapes!
5. Pastry. Shortcrust, puff, filo; you name it.
6. Potato. Fries, gratin, mashed, baked...
7. Rice. Risotto, long-grain, basmati, rice paper, rice cake...

Find ways to reuse ingredients

Save time and money by reusing ingredients in a week. This is especially important if you're bulk buying ingredients or cooking dishes that take preparation. Find links between dishes and vary them with different spices. To save even more time, cook extras where possible and freeze ingredients/whole meals for emergencies.

Still need inspiration?

What goes with what? Need a new way to use an ingredient? Find your inspiration sources, whether it be Pinterest, Instagram, or Dagelijkse Kost. Everyone has different tastes, but here's a few places I always draw inspiration from:

• BBC Good Food. I don't always use the recipes, but BBC has a huge library of recipes from chefs across the world. Plus, their website has no ads and you don't need to scroll past long descriptions of someone's grandma's kitchen.
• Akis Petretzikis. Fancy something Greek? This famous Greek chef has many good recipes and they are written very simply.
• Maangchi. She's been making amazing Korean food on YouTube since 2007.
• Nadiya Hussain. The winner of the Great British Bake Off recently did a BBC series called Cook Once, Eat Twice.
• Many, many global creators. Online, language is no barrier! So find someone sharing their local recipes. For Indian dishes, I found Kabita; for Turkish there's Refika; Lau shares Chinese/American; while Carmen has reliable Spanish dishes. The list could go on.
• Of course, you can check out our very own Spoonfeed recipes! Our recipes are written to be flexible for meal plans, ready to tweak to fit your day's meal.

And that's the method behind our meal plans. Like this, we never have to decide what to make for dinner "night after night". It's all there, ready to go!