Meal Planner
Plan breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for the week. Assign saved recipes or jot a quick custom name, then send the whole week's ingredients to a shopping list in one tap.
Navigating the planner
The Meal Planner opens to the current week. Use the ← → arrows to move back or forward one week at a time.
On desktop, the week is shown as a grid: days across the top, meal slots (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snack) down the side. On mobile, one day is shown at a time — swipe or tap the day tabs to move between days.
Filling a meal slot
Tap any empty slot to open the slot editor. You have two options:
- Assign a recipe — search your family's saved recipes and select one. The recipe name appears in the slot and its ingredients are available for the shopping list.
- Custom name — type any free-text name (for example Leftovers or Takeout night). Custom names have no ingredient list.
Editing or clearing a slot
Tap a filled slot to open the slot editor again. Change the recipe or custom name, or tap Clear slot to remove the entry entirely.
Adding the week's ingredients to a list
Tap Add to List at the top of the Meal Planner. FamilyChaos aggregates all ingredients from every recipe assigned in the current week into a single new list named after the date range — for example, Meal plan: Aug 11–17.
The generated list appears in your Lists page alongside your other lists and can be edited, pinned, or checked off during your grocery run. Only slots with a saved recipe contribute ingredients — custom-name slots are skipped.
Repeating a week's plan
Navigate to a previous week and tap Copy to this week to duplicate all its meal assignments into the current week. This is useful for weeks where you want to repeat a meal plan without re-entering every slot manually.