Plan Your Meals for the Week

The meal planner is one of Cookonut’s most loved features. It gives you a clear view of your week, helps you eat more varied meals, and makes grocery shopping effortless.

Opening the Meal Planner

1. Tap the Plan tab at the bottom of the screen
2. You’ll see the current week laid out with days and meal slots

How the Week View Works

The meal planner shows seven days at a glance. Each day has slots for:

• Breakfast
• Lunch
• Dinner
• Snack

Slots can be empty (waiting to be filled) or show a recipe you’ve assigned. You can see recipe names and thumbnails at a glance.

Navigating Between Weeks

• Swipe left to see the next week
• Swipe right to go back to the previous week
• Tap the Today button to jump back to the current week
• Plan as far ahead as you’d like — there’s no limit

Adding Recipes to Your Meal Plan

There are several ways to add recipes:

From the Plan

1. On a day, tap Add meal
2. Choose a meal type (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snack, Dessert, or Drinks)
3. The recipe picker opens — search or browse your recipes
4. Tap the recipe to assign it to that slot

From a Recipe

1. Open any recipe in your collection
2. Tap the options menu (three dots)
3. Choose Add to Meal Plan
4. Select the day and meal slot
5. The recipe appears in your plan

See the Add Recipes to Your Meal Plan article for more detailed methods.

Rearranging Your Plan

Plans change, and that’s fine:

• Open a recipe — tap any planned meal to open its full recipe
• Remove a meal — swipe the meal left and tap delete
• Move a meal — remove it from one day, then use Add meal to add it to another day
• Add another meal — tap Add meal on any day, choose the meal type, and pick a recipe
• Day options — tap the ••• button on a day for more actions, like clearing the whole day

Building a Shopping List

One of the biggest benefits of meal planning is turning your week into a shopping list in a few taps:

1. Plan your meals for the week
2. Tap the cart icon in the Plan header
3. The Add to Shopping List modal opens — under Select days to add, pick the days you want (use Select all or Deselect all)
4. Review and pick the ingredients
5. Confirm — you’ll see an Added to Shopping List toast with a List button to jump straight to the List tab

Cookonut combines all ingredients from the selected days and merges duplicates (e.g., if two recipes need onions, they’re combined).

Benefits of Meal Planning

Save time. No more “what’s for dinner?” stress every evening. Your week is planned.

Eat better. Seeing the whole week helps you ensure variety and balance.

Waste less food. Buy exactly what you need for your planned meals.

Save money. A planned grocery list means fewer impulse purchases and less food thrown away.

Reduce decision fatigue. The hardest part of cooking is often deciding what to make.

Tips for Effective Meal Planning

• Start small — plan just dinners for the first week, then add lunches and breakfasts once you’re comfortable
• Pick a planning day — Sunday evening or Saturday morning is popular
• Use Generate random week (a Premium feature) when you’re stuck — open the Manage week (•••) sheet and let Cookonut auto-fill your week with recipes from your collection
• Keep a few “quick recipes” in your collection for busy weeknights
• Plan around your schedule — elaborate recipes on weekends, simple ones on busy weekdays
• Leave a day or two open for leftovers, eating out, or spontaneous cooking

What’s Free and What’s Premium

Building your weekly plan by hand and generating grocery lists from it are free on every plan. Smart Meal Planning — Generate random week and Copy a week — is part of Cookonut Premium. See Free vs Premium for the full breakdown.