Weekly Meal Plan 2026-01-03

For this week’s menu, I chose old favourites from our meal plan, and included one new recipe.

Click here to get your copy of this week’s Excel Weekly Meal Plan.

There’s a week of cloudy weather ahead, with the sun only showing up once! But at least it will be slightly warmer than last week, which is good news.

This week’s new recipe is Golden Turnip Latkes, which is different from anything we’ve tried before! Keith bought white turnips for Christmas dinner, and there’s still one left, so this will take care of that leftover!

The Weekly Plan

Here is our plan for the week starting Sunday, Jan 04, 2026. There are links for some recipes, and others are made “freestyle”.

Note: Beside each recipe, I show the number of times that we’ve made this recipe, since I started keeping track in 2015.

Sunday — Carrot Apple Ginger Soup ( 27 times )

Prep: 0.25 hr, Cook: 0.75 hr

Monday — Sheet Pan Lemon Chicken and Vegetables ( 21 times )
TIP: use your fav veggies

Prep: 0.25 hr, Cook: 0.75 hr

Tuesday — Fettuccine Alfredo with Cauliflower Sauce ( 1 times )

Prep: 0.33 hr, Cook: 0.17 hr

Wednesday — 15-Minute Wonton Soup ( 3 times )

Total Time – 15 minutes

Thursday — Sheet Pan Hot Italian Meatballs ( 32 times )

Prep: 0.25 hr, Cook: 0.50 hr

Friday — Sheet Pan Lemon Garlic Salmon ( 39 times )

Prep: 0.17 hr, Cook: 0.33 hr

Saturday — Golden Turnip Latkes with Zesty Red Pepper Relish ( 0 times )

Prep: 0.12 hr, Cook: 0.50 hr

Food Celebration Days

Almost every day of the year has a food celebration that we can enjoy, or ignore! Here are a few of the food days for the upcoming week, with recipe ideas for you.

Sunday Jan 4th – National Spaghetti Day

It’s not clear how or when National Spaghetti Day got started, but if you love spaghetti, you’ll be happy to celebrate this day, no matter how it originated. While you eat your spaghetti supper, you could watch the 1955 Disney movie, Lady and the Tramp. Those two cartoon dogs enjoyed a romantic dish of spaghetti one evening!

Here are a couple of spaghetti recipes that I’ve posted:

Spaghetti with Asiago Meatballs, is one of our family favourites
Spaghetti with Roasted Tomatoes, is a lighter version of spaghetti (on my old food blog)

Tuesday Jan 6th – National Bean Day

We’re trying to include more plant-based dishes in our daily meals, and we’ve always enjoyed bean dishes. Keith likes to make a giant pot of chili for the Super Bowl, and the Grey Cup game. I used to serve beans and wieners on a regular basis, when our kids were young, and it was a low-cost supper that we all enjoyed.

Here are 3 bean recipes from my old food blog, that you could try for Bean Day, and learn more about beans on the Ontario Bean Growers website.

Wednesday Jan 7th – International Programmers’ Day

Programmers’ Day isn’t a traditional food-related day, but recipes are just like computer programs! You need step-by-step instructions, the right equipment, and someone to manage the process. If you do the steps correctly, things should go smoothly. But in recipes, and computer programs, things can sometimes go horribly wrong!

If you like this idea, take a look at the Dinner for Devs page on the GitHub site. There’s a list of cooking tips, and links to 12 recipes for programmers, including “Correct Pasta”

Tip: To create your own meal plan, get my free Excel Weekly Meal Planner template.

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