The week is off to a running start and it’s time to think about dinner! Check out these Monday dinner ideas that will help your weekly meal plan start strong, no matter how your week has started.
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Monday Meal Planning
Monday is always an interesting day for family meal planning. Depending on how you feel about the start of the work week, you’re either energized to get your weekly meal plan started or you’re feeling too wiped out to cook. (That’s quite the range!)
If grocery shopping on the weekends is your preference, that means your fridge is likely stocked with fresh produce and the makings for plenty of meals…as long as you have the energy.
If you had a large Sunday dinner, you might have some leftovers that you can repurpose into an easy Monday meal.
Mondays are also big days for meetings, sports practices, dance classes, and so on. It’s likely that you’ve hit the ground running and you need an easy dinner idea to match your momentum at the beginning of the week.
Monday Dinner Ideas
Let’s dive into some Monday dinner ideas so you can find some inspiration no matter what kind of week you’re having already.
If You Have Leftovers
Did you have a big meal over the weekend and your fridge has leftovers, but not quite enough for a full meal? Leverage those leftovers into a fresh meal for Monday! Here are a few examples:
- Fajitas: If you have a few leftover steaks or chicken breasts from your barbeque, slice them up for fajitas! You likely have some fresh veggies at the top of the crisper from grocery shopping over the weekend.
- Salad Night: Put your leftover protein on top of a salad! Everyone can customize their dinner salad to their tastes with whatever options are left from the weekend.
- Potato Pancakes: We always seem to have more potatoes left over than anything else. Leftover mashed potatoes make great potato pancakes! Just add an egg, some flour, and seasonings to your bowl of leftover potatoes and fry them up like pancakes. You’ll have a delicious vessel for a quick gravy!
If You Had a Tough Day at Work
Are Mondays your toughest day of the week? Take it easy in the kitchen! This is a great day to leverage your slow cooker so you don’t even have to think about dinner when you get home.
If Your Kids Are Heading to Practice
It can feel like Mondays are the 0-to-60 acceleration of the school week. As soon as the kids are back from school, you’re headed somewhere else with little time for dinner. This is when “instant dinners” can come in handy. These are the meals that take zero prep work and minimal thought, but are usually the kid favorites:
- Sandwiches
- Quesadillas
- Breakfast
- Hot Dogs
- Nachos
- Bagged salad kit
You get the idea. Mondays are a great time to add these easy meal ideas to your weekly meal plan. Be sure to check out my blog post with over 25 no-prep dinner ideas!
If You Had Time to Meal Prep on Sunday
One of my favorite things to prep on Sunday for the rest of the week is chicken. I either barbeque and dice it up or slow cook it for shredded chicken. It’s so easy to add the cooked chicken to a dish for an easy Monday night dinner.
This copycat rice-a-roni is one of my favorite ways to use prepped chicken. I just add the cooked chicken near the end so it doesn’t get too rubbery.
Dinner Theme Nights for Monday
Do you love to meal plan with theme nights? So do I! Here are some alliterative theme ideas that you can use to kickstart your meal planning inspiration:
- Meatless Monday: Put the makings of vegetable stew in the crockpot for a busy night of sports practice!
- Made-From-Scratch Monday: If you start the week with both energy and time, this would be a great option!
- Make-It-Up Monday: This is a fun day for ditching the recipe cards and creating something from the weekend leftovers in the fridge.
- Meatball Monday: Keep some frozen meatballs on hand for a quick dinner of pasta or meatball subs. Check out my favorite recipe for gluten-free meatballs!
- Macaroni Monday: You could prep a pasta casserole on Sunday and pop it in the oven on Monday.
- Marinara Monday: If you have the time on Sunday, you could simmer a big batch of sauce to use on Monday.
- Muffin Tin Monday: Corn dog muffins are an easy meal for a Monday night! Just mix up a box of Jiffy cornbread mix and spoon it into mini muffin tins. Then add about one-fifth of a hot dog to the center before baking.
- Make-It-Yourself Monday: Does your household seem to go in five different directions on Mondays? Keep some easy-to-airfry meal components on hand for everyone to whip up for themselves whenever they get home.
How to Organize Your Monday Meals
Once you’ve figured out your go-to favorite meals for Monday, be sure to keep them organized so you can save loads of time on meal planning! Here are some of my favorite ways to keep my Monday dinner ideas organized:
- Pinterest Board – You can create a Pinterest board with your favorite dinner ideas for Monday, or you could add sections to your “Dinner Ideas” board to organize your recipes by day of the week.
- Recipe Storage – If you’re putting together your a recipe binder or another storage method, you could have a section or list where you keep your favorite recipes organized by day.
- Digital Meal Planner – I like to tag my go-to recipes with the days of the week that they’re perfect for. That way, I can quickly search my recipe collection for Monday meals when I’m putting together my monthly meal plan. My go-to digital meal planner is Plan to Eat (referral link). If you haven’t heard of this awesome meal planning app before, check out my blog post with a full Plan to Eat review.
Save These Monday Dinner Ideas
Be sure to save this post if you’d like to come back to it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite Pinterest board so you can quickly and easy find these dinner ideas for Monday.
