Mostly Made

Six weeks of dinners with the shopping lists already written and most of the cooking done on Sunday.

This is a plan, not a recipe collection. It decides dinner for you, five nights a week for six weeks, hands you one shopping list a week with every amount added up, and moves the cooking to one session at the weekend. On a weeknight you reheat what you made, boil the pasta or rice, and eat.

How a week works

• Shop once. One list, grouped by aisle, for four people or for two. It tells you which days each thing is used and what you will have left over, before you buy it.
• Cook up on Sunday. Three things cook at once and a chart shows what your hands are doing minute by minute. The six sessions are planned at 69 to 88 minutes for one cook who knows the week; allow two hours the first time. The biggest pot is always made double and split two ways (one pot of beef becomes pasta ragu and chili), so the week does not taste like leftovers.
• Finish each night in 25 minutes or less. Monday's dinner waits in the fridge. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday come out of the freezer the night before. Friday is cooked fresh from things that keep all week. The 30 dinners are planned at 14 to 25 minutes each.

What makes it different

• The lists cannot disagree with the recipes. The recipes are stored as data and a program prints both the recipe pages and the shopping lists from them, then checks that every ingredient is on its week's list in a quantity that covers it and that nothing is on a list that no recipe uses.
• Every amount is printed for four and for two, and the list for two is worked out again from scratch, so it buys the right number of packs. A page explains what to do for one, three, five or six.
• Five different dinners a week, never the same one twice. 11 of the 30 have no meat or fish.
• It expects the week to go wrong. A page covers the missed Monday, the dinner you forgot to thaw, the night nobody wants what is planned and the Sunday that did not happen.
• Food safety is built into the schedule. Where US (USDA) and UK (Food Standards Agency) advice differ, the plan follows the stricter: only tomorrow's dinner waits in the fridge, everything else is frozen the same evening, nothing is reheated twice, and cooked rice and pasta are never stored. A table shows both countries' rules beside what the plan does.
• Real prices. Every item on every list was looked up on Walmart.com on 13 October 2026. That day the six weekly lists came to $341.65 for four people ($2.85 a plate) and $260.17 for two, plus $74.97 if you bought the whole pantry stock-up new. Your store and date will differ; the book shows how the sums were done.

The six weeks

• Week 1: Beef, two ways. Rigatoni with beef ragu and peas; Sticky soy-ginger chicken rice bowls; Chili-loaded baked potatoes; Smoky chickpea and spinach stew with couscous and feta; Huevos rancheros.
• Week 2: Chicken, two ways. Smoky pulled chicken tacos with lime slaw; Peanut and sweet potato stew with rice; Lemony chicken and orzo soup; Penne with smoky bacon-tomato sauce and broccoli; Cabbage and potato hash with fried eggs.
• Week 3: Meatballs, two ways. Meatballs in marinara with garlic bread and salad; Tomato-coconut chicken curry with rice and peas; Sticky sweet-and-sour meatballs with noodles and green beans; Smoky black bean burrito bowls; Lemon-garlic shrimp with couscous and peas.
• Week 4: Turkey, two ways. Skillet cottage pie with cheddar mash; Shawarma-style chicken with couscous, chopped salad and garlic yogurt; Coconut red lentil dal with rice and spinach; Crispy turkey and bean burritos with skillet corn; Potato and pea tortilla with lemony carrot salad.
• Week 5: Sausage, two ways. Sausage ragu with gnocchi and spinach; Salmon and corn cakes with buttered baby potatoes and green beans; Sausage, white bean and kale stew with buttered toast; Thai-style red curry with sweet potato, chickpeas and rice; Pasta e ceci.
• Week 6: Red sauce, two ways. Shakshuka with feta and crusty bread; Chicken fajitas with lime slaw; Naan pizzas with a romaine salad; Black bean soup with cheddar, lime and tortilla chips; Stir-fried noodles with cabbage and a fried egg.

What is inside the book (83 pages)

• Start here (11 pages): how a week runs, how to read the pages, cooking for other household sizes, the kit, the safety rules, how to cool, freeze, thaw and reheat, when the week goes wrong, the one-time pantry stock-up (28 items) and what it all costs.
• Six weeks (11 pages each): the week at a glance, a map of where everything goes, the shopping list, what goes into each pot, the cook-up in order with a chart, then one page for each dinner with a photograph, the amounts for four and for two, timed steps, how to know it is hot enough, and the one thing to do before bed.
• After Week 6: the ten rules for building your own week, UK names and pack sizes, all thirty dinners on one page, a dinner finder, and sources.

What you download

• Mostly Made (83 pages, PDF, US Letter): the book, in color, with bookmarks and clickable page references.
• Kitchen Pack, US Letter (39 pages, PDF) and Kitchen Pack, A4 (the same 39 pages): the pages to print and write on. For each week: the shopping list for four, the shopping list for two, what goes into each pot, the cook-up steps with tick boxes, labels for the containers and a card for the fridge door. Plus the pantry list, a one-page safety card and a blank planner for your own week.

Good to know

• Amounts are in American cups, spoons, ounces and pounds with grams and millilitres beside them. Oven temperatures are in Fahrenheit, Celsius and fan. Ingredient names are American, with a page of UK equivalents.
• You need a freezer with about a shoebox of free space, four shallow containers with lids, freezer bags, and ideally an instant-read thermometer.
• The book covers dinners only. It is not written for any diet and has no calorie counts or nutrition figures. Between them the recipes use wheat, milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, peanuts, soy and coconut.
• Prices are in US dollars from one retailer on one day. No UK prices were looked up.
• The book is US Letter size; on A4 paper print it with "fit to page". The Kitchen Pack comes in both sizes.
• This is a PDF download. No physical book is shipped.