Busy Week Meal Planner

Is your work week crazy? Are you looking for a manageable meal planner for your busy week? Then you are in the right place. Check out my meal planner that is perfect for those busy weeks. 

Last week, I shared easy-to-make kind of meals in the meal planner. This week also I am following the same suite. Are you wondering why? It’s going to be a busy week for me, both at work and life front. 

I don’t want to give up on my homemade meals because of my crazy schedule. So, I planned simple, yet healthy meals. I am not going with two veggies a day, but planning to use mixed vegetables for all my dishes.

Staple Vegetables in my Refrigerator:

Every week, I buy carrots, zucchini, cucumber, and brinjal/eggplant. Zucchini and eggplant are easy to chop, and you can whip up quick curries, or they are great in soups and pasta too. Carrots and cucumbers are perfect for salads, and I can make curry or kootu with them. I make sure to keep these four vegetables always.  

And this week, I am planning to buy these four and also some cabbage, cauliflower, and potatoes. 

With these vegetables and paneer, I have planned this week’s menu. Now let me share the prep-work and the recipes in detail.

Even though the menu for the meals is different, they are effortless to make, and they are mostly homemade too. Now without any delay, here is this week’s meal planner.

Prep-Work:

• Chop the required vegetables, especially purple cabbage.
• Make the idli-dosa batter. This week, I am planning to prepare my batter with little millet or saamai, as we say in Tamil. I am going to use 3 cups of little millet, 1 cup of idli rice, and 1 cup of urad dal to make my batter. 
• Prepare the tomato chutney for Monday.

Menu For This Week:

Monday:

• I am keeping the breakfast simple with waffles and smoothie. I am not making the waffle mix from scratch this week. I have a store-bought mix, and I am planning to use that.
• Lunch is super simple Instant Pot moong dal Khichdi with tomato chutney.
• Dinner is the millet idli with the tomato chutney.

Tuesday:

• If its idli the previous day, then it has to be dosai the next day. :-) Yes, opting for simple dosai with idli podi for breakfast.
• Lunch is going to be the simple lemon rice with cauliflower fry. (I will post the recipe soon)
• I am planning to make vathal kuzhambu with cabbage stir-fry for dinner. You can steam the cabbage in Instant Pot and prepare the stir-fry quickly. The steaming time would be 2 to 3 minutes for cabbage. Once you have the chopped vegetable ready, you can make stir-fry quite easily. 

Wednesday:

• It’s been ages since I made puda or the chickpea flour pancakes. So added it on my menu. But if things get busy, I will change this to my go-to oatmeal.
• Lunch is pasta with store-bought red sauce.
• Wednesday seems to be free, so I decided to do some recipe testing. I am planning to try a grilled paneer sandwich with some new soup.

You can check the updates on my Instagram. But you can find quite a few soup recipes on my blog.

Thursday:

• As always, Thursdays are our “no onion no garlic” days, and for breakfast, I am planning to keep it simple with idli. 
• Lunch is going to be a no onion, no garlic pulav with tomato raita.
• Dinner is going to be broken wheat upma with chutney. 

Friday:

• I am breaking the “paratha Fridays,” and this week, opting for oatmeal and potato sandwich for lunch. 
• For dinner, I am planning to make oats khichdi with all the veggies that I have in the fridge – more like “fridge clean up” sort of meal. I am yet to post the oats khichdi recipe. I will do it soon.

I hope this menu planner helps, and you all can draw some inspiration. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. I will share the daily updates on my Instagram and my FB group. So stay connected!