Weekly meal plan on a tight budget

This prompt plans a week of breakfasts, lunches and dinners around your food budget, diet, kitchen and time. It reuses ingredients to cut waste, gives a grocery list with rough prices and tells you if the budget is too tight for balanced meals.

text-budget-meal-plan — chatgpt — 90 words

Create a 7-day meal plan on a tight budget.

People: [NUMBER, e.g. 2 adults]
Weekly food budget: [AMOUNT]
Where I shop: [e.g. local market, supermarket]
Diet: [e.g. vegetarian, eats eggs, no pork]
Kitchen and time: [e.g. one burner, 30 minutes on weekdays]

Give breakfast, lunch and dinner for each day, reusing ingredients so little goes to waste. Add a grocery list grouped by section with rough prices, and point out which meals I can cook once and eat twice. Tell me if the budget looks too tight for balanced meals.

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Prices vary a lot by city. Treat the costs as a rough guide and adjust after your first shop.

Get a better result

What you will get

A 7-day plan of breakfast, lunch and dinner built around your budget and kitchen, reusing ingredients, with a grocery list grouped by section with rough prices and a note on which meals you can cook once and eat twice.

Common mistake

The prices are for another country or an earlier year.

Fix: Put your city and shop in the box and replace the prices with the ones you see. Check the total against your budget after your first shop.

Also watch for

The plan needs equipment you do not have. State exactly what your kitchen has: “one burner, a pressure cooker, no oven”. Then the dishes only use those.
The meals are balanced on paper but you would not enjoy them. Reply “swap the three meals I am least likely to enjoy for cheap dishes with more flavour, and ask me my favourites first”.

Try a variation: Sunday batch cook

Add “make Sunday a two-hour batch-cook session and show what I cook then, so weekday dinners take 10 minutes”. One big cook can save daily effort.

Still not right? Reply with this

Use my real kitchen limits, price everything for my city, and replace anything I am unlikely to enjoy with cheap but tasty dishes.