When we meal plan (it's sort of off season at the moment here lol), I list one or two recipes and go from there - for example if something has chicken breast, I'll cook extra and maybe shred it for soup or enchiladas later in the week. Same with things that we often have leftovers of, like sour cream. If I use sour cream with Mexican, we might have it on soup or baked potatoes later. If you're planning longer than a week, I bet that would work really well too for making double batches of things like bolognese and freezing half for the next week.

I never planned weekends, so if we missed a meal we could make it up on the weekend, and also with more adults home it's easier to run to the shops, cook something complicated on a whim, or you know, have takeaway.