The ultimate meal planner for 2026

If saving money and eating better are top of your to-do list for 2026, Nathan Anthony has you covered. The Northern Irish recipe writer and social media sensation is back with a new book, Bored Of Lunch: Meal Planner.

Inspired by Nadia Hussain, Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, and Irish chef Donal Skehan, Anthony grew up around “some amazing home cooks”, including his granny and auntie, who was a chef in New York. After “falling in love” with the air fryer and slow cooker at university, he started his Bored Of Lunch account during lockdown and has gone on to amass 2.7 million Instagram followers and six-times Sunday Times best selling cookbooks.

His latest is designed to help you organise your life, your menu and your bank balance. “A lot of people are finding the pinch at the moment with the cost of living crisis. Ingredients in Northern Ireland, the cost of them is absolutely insane at the minute,” says Anthony. His meal planner will, he hopes, give “people control over their weekly spend, in a journal format, where they can look at the recipes in the book, they can write how much they’re spending, budget accordingly [and] plan their meals to save money”.

Here are his top tips for planning your way to better meals, and a healthier bank balance too…

Organising your food shop saves time and freezer space

“When you don’t plan your food shop, you come home, like, ‘I bought peas.’ And there’s already peas in the freezer. [You think] ‘No, I have not been organised at all here’,” says Anthony, knowing exactly how it feels. “It really does make a difference when you spend five minutes planning your food.”

It’ll save you cash too

Even small amounts of forward planning can help keep you on track. “If there’s five days and I’m organised for two or three of them, then I’ve made some type of win that week,” says Anthony. “Whereas if I don’t make any plans, the week’s just a bit of a free for all, and you end up spending so much money.”

Don’t shop with a rumbling tummy

“The worst thing to do is shopping when you’re hungry because you’ll add so many things you don’t need,” says Anthony, especially unhealthy foods. “You’re like, ‘Oh, look at those cookies, let’s get them’.”

Planning helps with variety

“Sitting down and saying, ‘Let’s do a spag bol on Monday, and then on Tuesday let’s do a vindaloo, gives you so much variety. My mum probably won’t mind me saying this, but she made bolognese every week. ‘Thursday night, she’s gonna make a bolognese again!’” remembers Anthony. The book includes a 12-week meal planner though, and if you plan well, “your weeks should never look the same.”

Portion out servings

Only using three chicken breasts but bought four? Freeze the fourth. “I use resealable freezer bags you can put in the dishwasher [after use]. We’re very big on recycling and not adding any waste, so adding your meat into little fridge and freezer bags is a massive, massive money saver.”

Be creative with batched meals

No one wants to eat the same meal night after night. “I would make a bolognese and batch cook it in a way that the next day, I can turn it into chilli con carne, or maybe use it in sliders or fajitas. I try to use one dish, but give it a second life the next day to make it something a bit more special.”

Don’t bin leftovers

Even scraps of leftovers can help zhuzh up another meal. “Yesterday I made a turkey and ham pie, and I’ve used a bit of the turkey and ham for a risotto tonight,” says Anthony. “I just want to put in a bit of rice and a bit of lemon and make something different.”

Embrace the ‘rustle up’

“I love a rustle up,” says Anthony, who is a big Celebrity MasterChef fan and particularly enjoys the ‘Under the cloche’ mystery ingredient challenge. “You lift that dish and see what’s underneath it. You have a banana or a bit of salmon [to make something with]. I love a fridge raid; it’s how I get inspired to write new recipes.” He adds: “Ready Steady Cook was one of my favourite shows as a child. I used to watch it with my granny.”

Set yourself a food budget

It’s Anthony’s personal mission in 2026, to be “as strict as possible when it comes to planning and trying to stick to the food budget that I set every month.” “Sometimes you can say, ‘Oh, we’ll go out for one or two meals this month,’ but sometimes it ends up being maybe three or four.’” He’s hoping to reduce those unexpected, often expensive, dinners out.

Scrawl all over your cookbooks

“I love seeing when people tag me in recipes they’ve used where there’s sauce splattered all over the pages, there’s corners folded, it just shows a sign of love that the book is really being used,” says Anthony. “If it’s sitting pristine on a shelf, not touched, it doesn’t have the same character. Like, when I look at all of my granny’s cookbooks, they’re covered. There’s flour on the inside, where she’s spilled jam on it, there’s little notes where she’s changed maybe brown sugar to caster sugar. And I love that.”

Consider your own preferences

You don’t have to see a recipe as a set of unbreakable rules. “The recipes are how I cook, but they’re very much up to your interpretation,” says Anthony. “If you don’t want to use double cream, use crème fraîche or a bit of soft cheese.”

Don’t get too swept up in the ‘new year, new you mentality’

“It’s great to have new goals, but we should never beat ourselves up,” muses Anthony. “It’s a mechanism to get people into the zone again, because from probably November onwards, people are like, ‘Hell, it’s Christmas, I’ll just have the whole box of Ferrero Rocher’ and we lose a bit of normality.”

He continues: “I don’t think it’s a new year, new me, because it’s not a new me. It’s going back to the old me from before Christmas.”

Bored Of Lunch: Meal Planner by Nathan Anthony is published by Ebury Press, priced £18.99. Photography by Dan Jones. Available January 1