Sunday Meal Planning | Weekly Meal Planner

Setting aside a few hours during the weekend and planning your weekly meal helps a lot during the hectic week. Here is my upcoming week’s meal planner with a beverage option for snacks. 

Before getting into the meal planner, I want to share about the grain options. Last week, I did share the meal planner with different grain options, but this week, I have just mentioned grain. You can pick your favorite ones. 

Even for making pulav or tamarind rice, you can opt for millet or brown rice or matta rice. My goal is to reduce processed white rice and use more complex carbs. So these days I switch between steel-cut oats, millet, hand pound rice, quinoa or a mix of rice and quinoa or millet. Somedays I prefer cauliflower rice as well.

If you are following me on Instagram, you would have known that my in-laws are here. What I pack for lunch and what I make for them slightly varies. I have included that too in the meal planner with a dash. 

For example, Monday, I am packing sambar idli for us, but for in-laws, it’s going to rice with sambar and dry curry. My MIL makes vegetable-based curry and rice for her and FIL. I try to make a dish to two in the morning, and she takes care of the rest. 

Now back to this week’s meal planner. As promised last week, this week’s meal planner includes some beverages along with the snack as well. These beverages are mostly for us than for the kiddo. :-) You can relish them as a mid-morning drink or as afternoon drink instead of your tea or have them along with your lunch. I am trying to avoid my caffeine intake, so I relish these drinks around 2 PM. 

Meal-Prep:

• Chop all the required veggies. 
• Prepare idli/dosa batter.
• Make sure you have sufficient yogurt for buttermilk. 
• This week, I am planning to use store-bought tamarind rice paste. I bought it during our home renovation time, and I want to finish it. You can also make it home, and here is my tamarind rice paste recipe. 
• You can make sukku malli kaapi (dried ginger and coriander seeds) powder for the tea. It’s decaf tea. I will soon share my recipe here. 
• Pressure cook toor dal for the sambar for Monday, or you can make mixed veg sambar in Instant Pot like this. 

Now here are details and the recipe links.

Monday:

• Starting the week with the humble idli and sambar.
• For lunch, it is going to be sambar idli for us. And for my in-laws, it is rice with sambar and bottle gourd gravy.
• Here is the rough recipe for the curry leaves buttermilk. I will soon share the detailed recipe here with all the details. Grind a handful of curry leaves along with cilantro and one green chili. Mix it with 3 to 4 cups of thin buttermilk. Add black salt or regular salt and relish it. 
• For dinner, it is the simple Bombay sandwich. I wanted to try if I can pack this for lunch. So I am going to make it in the evening and see how it holds. 

Tuesday:

• If it’s idli on Monday, then it has to be Dosai on Tuesday, right? 
• For lunch, I am planning for veg pulav with cauliflower curry. Yet another curry that I have to share here on the blog. I have shared this on my IG thought. Here is the link.
• For a snack, it’s mixed dry fruits and nuts with Nannari sarbath. Guess what, Bay Area Indian groceries now have Nannari syrup. :-) 
• Dinner is pretty elaborate with eriserry, rasam, and beetroot stir-fry.

Wednesday:

• I am planning to make oats smoothie for us and the sweet one for the kiddo. 
• Lunch is lemon rice with plantain curry and simple spinach mash or keerai kadaiyal.
• I will soon share the sukku malli kaapi recipe here.
• For dinner, it’s roti with simple dal and paneer stir-fry. As I am planning to make roti with Rotimatic, I did not include the prep-work for kneading the dough. You can knead the dough the previous day as well. 

Thursday:

• As always, my Thursday meals are without onion and garlic and kicking off the day with healthy avocado toast. 
• For lunch, it’s the tamarind rice with chow-chow kootu, but for the kiddo, it is semiya upma. 
• Snack is fruits with spiced buttermilk.
• For dinner, it’s quinoa pongal with coconut chutney. 

Friday:

• As always, it’s a paratha Friday, and this week it’s the potato paratha or aloo paratha. 
• I love lemonade with sabja/basil seeds, but as it’s not yet summer, I thought of adding chia seeds. You can add a tsp of chia seeds for 8 oz shikanji/Indian style lemonade. 

I started to share about our home renovation from last week. Check out my intro post, and this week I am going to share about design considerations and budget planning. So stay tuned! 

Happy Cooking!