Deck of Cards – 8 Week Meal Plan

ByJennifer

I am a HUGE fan of making routine tasks more fun, so this week I designed a “game” to make meal planning for 2 months be more exciting.

This is a very simple game, and it is so easy to include your family and kids to help with making meal planning just a little bit easier.

The Game

All you need is to print out the 3 pages for this game (or just grab a sheet of paper and your calendar).

You will also need a deck of cards!

1. The Cards

We will be assigning a different dinner to each card in the deck. You can do this in so many ways:

  • Give each person in your family a series (heart, club, diamond, or spade) and ask them what their favorite meals are that they want to eat.
  • Assign a different theme to each series like Mexican, Sandwiches, Salads, etc.
  • Use your Favorite Meals List pdf to fill in each meal.
  • Assign a different protein to each series (example: hearts= chicken, spades=ground beef, etc.)
  • Assign a different starch to each series (example: clubs= rice, diamonds=pasta, etc)
  • Assign a different cooking method to each series (example: hearts-crockpot, clubs=grilling, etc.)
  • Use your freezer or pantry inventory list to fill out items that need to be used up instead of listing meals.
  • Use the Joker spots for fun stuff like Snack Night, Order a Pizza, or something else that is unexpected!

As you can see there are tons of different ways to fill out your meals list. The important part is that you fill in the spot next to each card.

*You can repeat favorite meals if you like. So, if you want to put Hamburgers multiple times that is totally fine!

2. Meal Plan

Now comes the fun part! When I did this, I was aiming for 8 weeks of meals, but you can easily just do a few weeks at a time.

Go ahead and fill in the numbers on your calendar and block out any days that you know you won’t be cooking. You can also assign a day each week for leftovers.

I pulled 6 cards for the first week and then arranged them in a way so similar dishes weren’t right next to each other.

Then I kept doing this to fill in all weeks on my calendar! It took like 10 minutes, and it was done. MEGA EASY!

*You can easily adjust the weeks and the number of days that you want to plan for cooking. After you pick your meals, just put the unused cards in a safe spot until you need to plan some more.

Free Printable PDF

Here are the 3 pages you need to play this game. It is set up for a standard sheet of paper but you can adjust if needed.

deck-of-cards-8-week-meal-planDownload

Deck of Meal Plans

Hopefully you enjoy this fun game and it makes your meal planning a little bit more enjoyable!

You can totally adjust this game as needed, the point is that it helps keep you focused, and you continue to meal plan on a regular basis.

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