What a week looks like

• Monday – One Pot: Thai curry risotto with snow peas and mushrooms, 35 minutes. View recipe
• Tuesday – Greek feta and pepper boats with sourdough bread and tzatziki, 30 minutes. View recipe
• Wednesday – Pasta with baked feta tomato sauce, served with arugula, 30 minutes. View recipe
• Thursday – Leftovers: a portion of Monday's risotto, with bread and a salad made from whatever's on hand.
• Friday – Sweet & sticky tofu with peanuts on yellow rice, with broccoli, 25 minutes. View recipe
• Saturday – Cheese spaetzle with homemade crispy onions, 30 minutes.
• Sunday – Bread platter with bread, cheese, olives and tomatoes; no new shopping trip.

The times are cooking times, not promises for every evening. If it takes longer, it takes longer; the plan won't fall apart because of it.

The plan is built around two ingredients that often end up half-used: feta and tomatoes. On Tuesday the feta goes into the peppers, on Wednesday into the oven sauce; the cherry tomatoes are needed on both evenings. So a larger piece of feta and two packs of tomatoes are enough for two dishes, instead of one dish and an opened pack.

Add rice, which appears twice: Monday in the risotto, Friday under the tofu. Onions, garlic and olive oil are already on hand. So five dishes don't turn into five separate shopping trips, but a basket with repeats – and those are welcome here.

Thursday and Sunday are not gaps. On Thursday you eat what's left from Monday; on Sunday whatever the fridge still has to offer goes on the table. Both evenings are deliberately planned so the week holds up even if an appointment comes up.

If you don't want to cook on these evenings, you don't have to. A leftovers day can be bread, a jar of pickles, a plate of cheese. The only important thing is that it doesn't secretly become another cooking evening. More on that in Leftover cooking: use what you already have first.

It isn't a meal plan, and it isn't a promise that every ingredient will be in stock at your store. It's an example of what a plan looks like when it's built from what you already have and from overlapping ingredients. Your week will look different because your fridge looks different.

If five dishes feel like too much, choose three and leave four evenings open. The plan is a tool, not a test. How it works explains what you need to send us for it.

Start on WhatsApp