Next Week’s Meal Plan: 5 Simple Dishes for a Week of Easy Cooking

This week I’m traveling to New York for a photo shoot with the Kitchn team and my husband is in charge of feeding the kids. My husband is a great cook, even though he doesn’t do it regularly, but he isn’t very confident in the kitchen so he chooses simple, easy dishes plus a few things I won’t normally cook that he and the kids love.

Here’s what our family’s meal plan looks like when my husband is in charge of dinner for the week.

Planning my weekly meals is a habit I enjoy. Since I’m frequently asked by friends and family what I’m cooking for dinner each week, I thought it’d be useful to share my weekly meal plan here. Whether you’re just learning to meal plan and looking for a real-life example of how this works or you’re an old pro on the hunt for inspiration, here’s a peek at how I’m feeding my family this week.

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Refrigerated tortellini, frozen peas, and crispy prosciutto join forces with creamy mascarpone to make a carbonara-like dish with way less work. My husband isn’t big fan of lemon so he’ll skip the zest, but we all love this easy riff on pasta carbonara.

Tacos Tuesday is timeless in our house. For ease and insurance, Brian likes to use taco seasoning, but he’ll still include all the classic Tex-Mex toppings — lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and sour cream. We crack the taco shells in half and top them with the beef and cheese and then broil them to make an easier-to-eat sort of open-faced taco for our kids.

While this chicken and broccoli sheet pan dinner isn’t what most of us think of as summer fare it’s one of our go-to dinners because it’s easy (requiring only one pan), everyone loves it, and you can change it up with a new sauce. He’ll be serving this with store-bought barbecue sauce for a little seasonal summer feel.

I love this little tradition that my husband has with our kids! Whenever I travel, they cook and eat hot dogs together. I’m not a huge fan, only eating the annual baseball game hot dog each summer, but they love them. It’s a special treat dinner that the kids call “dad food.”

Continuing our summer burger Friday tradition, we will be cooking up classic grilled beef burgers to close out the week. I’ll be back from traveling this afternoon and we plan to celebrate the end of a long week with burgers and dinner outside.