Vegetarian Weekly Meal Planner: 7 Dinners, Priced

Planning a week of vegetarian dinners is easier than most people expect, and cheaper than most people realize. The gap between “I’ll just figure it out” and actually eating well every night comes down to one thing: knowing what you’re making before the week starts.

This vegetarian weekly meal planner gives you 7 real dinners, a priced grocery list sorted by aisle, and a planning routine you can repeat every week. All prices are estimates (~) based on typical US shelf prices at Walmart, Kroger and Aldi.

A vegetarian weekly meal planner is a 7-day dinner schedule built around plant-based proteins (legumes, eggs and dairy) with a matching grocery list priced before you shop. A solid week for 4 typically costs ~$45–$65 in groceries. The key is rotating proteins (lentils, beans, eggs) so the week stays varied without feeling repetitive.

7 Vegetarian Dinners for the Week

Here’s a full week of dinners: real dishes, real ingredients, and a rough cost per serving for a family of 4.

Night	Dinner	~Cost/Serving
Monday	Red lentil soup with crusty bread	~$1.10
Tuesday	Black bean tacos with cabbage slaw and cheddar	~$1.50
Wednesday	Pasta e fagioli (pasta with white beans)	~$1.20
Thursday	Cheese and veggie frittata	~$1.80
Friday	Black bean enchiladas with salsa and cheese	~$2.10
Saturday	Sheet-pan roasted vegetables with quinoa	~$2.40
Sunday	Lentil shepherd’s pie with mashed potato topping	~$1.80

Total for 4 people: ~$48–$54 for the week (pantry staples like olive oil and spices aren’t included).

Vegetarian weekly meal planners built around legumes, eggs and dairy typically cost 30–45% less than equivalent meat-heavy plans. A pound of dried lentils (~$1.50 at Walmart or Kroger) yields roughly 2.5 lb cooked, covering 10–12 generous servings. A dozen eggs costs ~$3.50–$4.50 and supplies 12 complete-protein portions at under $0.40 each. The USDA Thrifty Food Plan, the federal benchmark for nutritionally adequate eating on a tight budget, sets total household food spending for a family of four at roughly $230–$250 per week in 2026 across all meals; vegetarian households running dinner from legumes, eggs and dairy can often hit that figure on dinners alone and still have room to spare. Cycling through beans, lentils, eggs and cheese across seven nights covers all nine essential amino acids without supplements or nutritional math. Batch-cooking one pot of lentils or beans on Sunday, then pulling from it across two or three dinners mid-week, keeps most weeknights under 25 minutes of active cooking.

The Grocery List, Priced by Aisle

Here’s the shopping list for the 7 dinners above, broken into store sections. Prices are estimates (~) for Walmart or Kroger.

Produce

• 1 bag shredded cabbage (~$1.80)
• 2 bell peppers (~$2.00)
• 1 head garlic (~$0.80)
• 2 medium onions (~$1.20)
• 1 bag baby spinach, 5 oz (~$3.50)
• 4 medium russet potatoes (~$2.00)
• 1 head broccoli (~$1.80)

Dairy and Eggs

• 1 dozen eggs (~$3.80)
• 1 bag shredded cheddar, 8 oz (~$3.50)
• 1 bag shredded Monterey Jack, 8 oz (~$3.50)

Canned and Dry Goods

• 2 × 15 oz cans black beans (~$1.80)
• 2 × 15 oz cans cannellini beans (~$2.20)
• 1 cup dried red lentils (~$1.80)
• 1 cup dried green lentils (~$1.80)
• 1 cup quinoa (~$2.50)
• 8 oz small pasta (ditalini or small shells) (~$1.20)
• 2 × 15 oz cans diced tomatoes (~$2.00)
• 1 × 10 oz can enchilada sauce (~$1.80)
• 1 × 32 oz box vegetable broth (~$2.50)
• 1 pack corn tortillas, 30 count (~$2.20)

Pantry (assume already home)

• Olive oil, salt, cumin, chili powder, paprika, dried oregano

Estimated total: ~$42–$50 for the week’s main ingredients, before pantry restocking.

If you shop at two stores (Aldi for produce and Walmart for pantry staples), sorting the list by store before you leave cuts a bit off both the trip time and the total. Mittsy’s grocery list splits automatically into a tab per store when you shop at two.

How to Build a Vegetarian Weekly Meal Planner

The 7-dinner table above is a template. Here’s the planning routine behind it.

Pick your protein rotation. Aim for no more than 2 nights on the same protein category. This week uses lentils twice, beans twice, eggs once, and a legume-grain combo once. That spread keeps meals distinct enough that the week doesn’t feel monotonous.

Assign meals by effort. Pasta e fagioli and tacos are 25-minute dinners; put them on your busiest nights. The frittata takes about 20 minutes. Save the shepherd’s pie for a weekend or any evening with extra time, since the mashed potato topping adds 15 minutes of prep.

Plan one Sunday batch cook. A big pot of lentils on Sunday covers Monday’s soup and can be repurposed for the shepherd’s pie filling later in the week. That’s 2 dinners from one 30-minute cook. The batch cooking guide covers the full approach if you want to extend this to a broader prep session.

Price it before you shop. Add up the estimated costs before heading out. If the total runs higher than your budget, swap quinoa ($2.50 per cup) for rice ($0.60) or replace the frittata with a simpler bean quesadilla. For a broader list of dinners under ~$3/serving across both meat and vegetarian options, cheap healthy meals has 10 options with per-serving cost estimates.

For general guidance on setting a weekly food budget by household size, how to meal plan on a budget walks through USDA ranges and practical cuts.

How Mittsy Fits Into Vegetarian Meal Planning

Mittsy’s cookbook has a vegetarian diet filter built in. When you set your diet to “vegetarian” in onboarding, every recipe in the browse view filters automatically. No toggling required each time you open the planner.

There’s also a “budget hero” vibe filter, which surfaces the cheapest recipes in the vegetarian catalogue. That combination (vegetarian diet + budget hero) is the fastest way to find dishes like the ones in the table above without searching manually.

For Pro subscribers, the “Plan my week” AI planner takes your diet setting into account. Tell it your weekly budget, household size and stores: it generates 7 real dinners with no two consecutive nights sharing the same protein or cuisine, then prices the list before you shop. The grocery list auto-aggregates from the plan and sorts by aisle for each store.

For free users, the cookbook, weekly planner grid and grocery list are all unlimited. Building the 7-dinner plan above manually takes about 5 minutes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a vegetarian weekly meal planner actually cheaper than a regular plan?

Usually, yes. Lentils, beans and eggs typically cost ~$1–$2 per serving for 4 people. Ground beef and chicken thighs average ~$2.50–$4.50 per serving for the same household. A vegetarian week for 4 runs ~$45–$65 in groceries; a comparable meat-heavy week lands at ~$80–$120. The gap depends on what meat you’d normally buy.

What about vegan meal planning — does it work the same way?

A vegan weekly meal planner uses the same rotation approach, but swaps eggs and cheese for extra legumes, tofu or nutritional yeast. The 7 dinners above can all be made vegan: skip the cheese on the tacos and enchiladas, replace the frittata with a tofu scramble, and use olive oil instead of butter in the shepherd’s pie topping. Mittsy’s cookbook includes a vegan filter as a separate diet option alongside vegetarian.

How do I make sure the plan is filling enough without meat?

Include a legume (lentils, beans or chickpeas) or eggs in at least 5 of your 7 dinners. These are the protein anchors. Pairing them with a starch (pasta, quinoa, rice or bread) adds staying power. The shepherd’s pie, pasta e fagioli and enchiladas in this plan all do that naturally.

Can I use this plan for a family of 2 or 3?

Scale the servings down when you add each recipe to your Mittsy plan. Halving a recipe for 4 gives you exactly 2 servings; at 3 people you get one leftover portion for lunch the next day. The grocery list in Mittsy auto-adjusts when you change the servings on a recipe.

Plan Your Vegetarian Week

The 7 dinners above cost roughly ~$48–$54 to feed a family of 4 for the week. The system is repeatable: rotate protein types, batch-cook one base ingredient on Sunday, and price the list before you shop.

Mittsy’s vegetarian filter, budget hero vibe and aisle-sorted grocery list handle most of the planning automatically. Download Mittsy on the App Store or Google Play and set your diet to “vegetarian” in onboarding. The first week of planning is free, with no account required.