Where the nine portions come from
Each dinner makes two portions on its first night, plus one for each person who takes leftovers for lunch the next day.
Past three nights, the same dinners come back on nights four to six. You double the batch instead of cooking it twice.
One warning: the list looks complete, but it isn’t. None of these recipes includes the rice, bread or tortillas you’ll eat them with, so add those yourself.
A portion is Food Hero’s serving size: 1/2 cup of Lentil Taco Filling, 1 cup of Vegetarian Chili, 1 cup of Pork Chili. That’s a modest plate. If one dinner is a soup, or you’re hungry, plan on two portions each.
Choosing Both of us for lunch does that for you, since it cooks four portions a night.
When a dinner comes out at 3/8 or 3/4 of a batch, cook the whole batch and freeze the rest. The recipe is written for the full batch, and exact math leaves odd fractions of a can.
These three share chili powder, cumin, onion, oregano and corn, so one head of garlic or one jar of cumin covers more than one night.
Don’t like a dinner? Swap it for one of the 42 others that fit your settings, or press Shuffle.
Six days means each pot comes back once: night four repeats night one. We’d keep it to three or four days unless you’d happily eat all three dinners twice.
Box up tomorrow’s lunch before you eat
Put tomorrow’s lunch in its container before you sit down. It cools faster, and nobody takes seconds from it.
Leftovers on nights four to six still fall inside the FDA’s three-to-four-day window, because each dinner was cooked no more than three days before. That’s why the plan never stretches a batch past night six.
The recipes and serving sizes come from Food Hero, a collection of tested recipes from Oregon State University. Follow the linked recipe for the method.
The FDA and USDA say leftovers keep three to four days in a fridge at 40°F (4°C) or below. Every plan here stays inside that limit.
For more than two people, or a week of different dinners, use the meal planner.
