Meal Planning | Cooklang

A meal plan in Cooklang is a .menu file: a plain-text file that names the recipes you intend to cook, grouped by day. Because it is just another Cooklang file, every tool that understands recipes understands plans too. The payoff is one command that turns the whole week into a shopping list, with the pantry subtracted and everything scaled to the number of people you are feeding.

What you need

A handful of .cook recipes in a folder. cook seed ~/recipes gives you the sample collection this guide uses.
Any text editor. CookCLI to generate the list, or the Cook Editor if you prefer a visual week view.

1. Write the plan

Create a file called Weekly Plan.menu in your recipe folder. Where you keep plans is up to you; a Plans/ sub-folder keeps them out of the recipe listing.

---
servings: 2
---

==Saturday (2026-03-07)==

Breakfast: \
- @oats{1%cup} with @milk{1/2%cup} and @honey{1%tbsp}

Lunch: \
- @./lamb-chops{}

-- save leftover lamb for sandwiches

Dinner: \
- @./Neapolitan Pizza{}

==Sunday (2026-03-08)==

Breakfast: \
- @./Breakfast/Easy Pancakes{} with @maple syrup{2%tbsp}

Lunch: \
- @./Salads/Caprese{}

Dinner: \
- @./Risotto{}

==Monday (2026-03-09)==

Breakfast: \
- @./Breakfast/Chocolate Toast Delight{}

Lunch: \
- @./Breakfast/Mexican Style Burrito{}

-- use up the remaining guacamole

Dinner: \
- @./Thai Green Curry{}

Snacks: \
- @almonds{50%g} \
- @dark chocolate{30%g}

Reading it line by line:

servings: 2 in the front matter says how many people the plan feeds. Referenced recipes are scaled to match (see below).
==Saturday (2026-03-07)== is a section, one per day. The date in parentheses is optional but worth adding: apps that recognise it can jump straight to today's meals. Any section name works, so ==Day 1== or ==Batch prep== are fine too.
@./lamb-chops{} is a recipe reference. The path is relative to the recipe folder root, without the .cook extension, and can go into sub-folders: @./Breakfast/Easy Pancakes{}.
@oats{1%cup} is an ordinary ingredient. Use these for things that do not need a recipe. They land on the shopping list like any other ingredient.
\ at the end of a line joins it to the next one, so "Breakfast:" and its bullet points render as one block instead of separate steps.
-- save leftover lamb is a comment. It is for you and is ignored by the tools.

Scaling referenced recipes

The braces after a recipe reference decide how much of it to make:

You write	Meaning
`@./Risotto{}`	The recipe as written
`@./Risotto{2}`	Two times the recipe
`@./Risotto{6%servings}`	Enough for six people, using the recipe's `servings` metadata to work out the factor
`@./Slow-cooker beef stew{1/2}`	Half a batch, useful when one cook covers several meals

The Conventions page has the full rules.

2. Check the plan

Render it the same way you would a recipe. The ingredient table lists every referenced recipe and loose ingredient with its scaled amount, which is a quick way to spot a typo in a path:

cook recipe &#34;Weekly Plan.menu&#34;

 Weekly Plan

servings: 2

Ingredients:
  Caprese                (recipe: ./Salads/Caprese)
  Easy Pancakes          (recipe: ./Breakfast/Easy Pancakes)
  Neapolitan Pizza       (recipe: ./Neapolitan Pizza)
  Risotto                (recipe: ./Risotto)
  ...
  almonds                50 g
  honey                  1 tbsp
  oats                   1 c

A reference that does not resolve shows up as a warning. cook doctor validate checks every reference in the folder at once.

3. Shop for the whole week in one command

cook shopping-list &#34;Weekly Plan.menu&#34;

Everything the Shopping Lists guide describes applies: ingredients are merged across days, grouped by the aisles in config/aisle.conf, and reduced by what config/pantry.conf says you already have. Scale the entire plan for guests with the usual suffix:

cook shopping-list &#34;Weekly Plan.menu:2&#34;

4. Cook from the plan

In the browser. cook server renders .menu files as a day-by-day page with links to each recipe and an "Add all to shopping list" button. The Raspberry Pi guide runs this permanently for the whole household.

In the Cook Editor. The desktop editor shows the .menu source and a live preview side by side, with links into each recipe and the combined shopping list one click away. With CookBot it can also draft a plan from your collection for you to approve and edit.

On paper. cook recipe "Weekly Plan.menu" -f markdown gives you something printable.

Tips from a real plan

The plan below is a lightly edited three-day plan from the author's own collection. A few habits make plans like this cheaper and quicker:

---
servings: 2
---

==Day 1==

Breakfast: \
- @./Breakfast/Mexican Style Burrito{2%servings}

Lunch: \
- @./Lunches/Spaghetti Bolognese{}

Dinner: \
- @./Salads/Caprese{2}

==Day 2==

Breakfast: \
- @./Breakfast/Mexican Style Burrito{2%servings}

Lunch: \
- @./Slowcooker/Slow-cooker beef stew{1/2} with @rice{1%cup}(boiled)

Dinner: \
- @./Salads/Prawn Evening Salad{2} + @sourdough bread{1%slice}

== Snacks ==
- @kefir{2} \
- @dates \
- @apples

== Batch Prep ==
- @./Freezable/Kotletter{}

Repeat a breakfast. The burrito appears twice; prep the filling once.
Halve a big batch. {1/2} of the stew per lunch means one cook covers two days and the shopping list buys for exactly that.
Give snacks and batch cooking their own sections. They are not tied to a day but still need to be bought for.
Keep old plans. A folder of past .menu files is a menu of menus; copy one and tweak it rather than starting from blank.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
A recipe shows up as an ingredient, not expanded	The reference must start with `@./` and match the file path from the recipe folder root, without `.cook`.
Day headings render as steps	Sections need `=` on both sides of the name (`==Monday==`).
Meal lines render as separate steps	Add `\` at the end of every line except the last one in the block.
Amounts look doubled or halved	Check the number in braces: a bare number multiplies the recipe as written, `N%servings` scales to N people using the recipe's own `servings`.