The interesting part of a meal planner spreadsheet is not the weekly grid. It is turning "Monday dinner: fajitas, Tuesday dinner: bolognese..." into one shopping list where the onions from four recipes are added together, scaled to how many people you feed, minus the onions you already have, and printed in the order you walk the store. Here is how I did that with plain formulas (Excel + Google Sheets, no macros, no QUERY, no FILTER).

The data model

Four tables:

Ingredients : name, store section, unit, price per unit, amount on hand.

Recipes : name, meal type, servings, minutes, method.

Recipe Ingredients : one row per ingredient per recipe: recipe, ingredient, quantity (for the recipe's own servings).

Week Plan : a 7 x 4 grid of dropdowns (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack) whose list source is the recipe names.

The long "one row per ingredient" table is the key.…