March Dinner Menus for Winter into Spring Meals

March is a transition month in the kitchen, leaning away from heavy winter meals and toward lighter, vegetable forward cooking. These March dinner menus focus on complete meals with sides that use simple ingredients leaning towards seasonality, and using up what we have, making it easier to cook from scratch as the seasons begin to shift.

Not sure why to meal plan? Check out all the great reasons here!

This menu is part of a monthly series of meal plans with the goal of supporting steady, from scratch cooking that fits real life, not perfection.

March is that month when you’re SO ready for spring…but then winter seems to hang on for just a little longer than we’d like. Even so, it is the month we start thinking about the new gardening season and all the fresh food we can look forward to harvesting.

Which makes it a good time to think about what we have left from anything preserved from last season. For me March begins the “spring use-up” season where I take stock of our freezer and pantry and intentionally make plans to include them in our meal plans. This helps use the produce within a year (usually the optimum time frame) and it makes room for the upcoming season’s produce.

Preserved Produce to Use Up

When meal planning for March I look for ways to use things like:

• frozen corn
• pesto
• frozen green beans, and frozen broccoli
• frozen beets
• roasted tomato sauce, canned tomato sauce, diced tomatoes or other tomato products
• pizza sauce
• salsa, salsa verde
• frozen berries or cherries

What’s Included in this Plan

• Five days of complete dinner menus for four weeks. Mix and match to the days that work for your schedule.
• The no-thinking, repeatable menu we have on weekends you can replicate.
• Each day’s menu includes a main dish and sides.
• Use the sides as-is, come up with your own, or pull from the other days.
• A dessert idea that uses up one of my favorites, frozen berries.

The recipes featured in the menus are all tried-and-true recipes that actually show up on my own dinner menus all the time. They illustrate some of simple homemade life key recipe components, from scratch, using real, healthy ingredients that are delicious and easy.

How to use the dinner meal plans

You have a couple options to make these menu ideas work for you and whatever system you use:

1. Click the heart in the lower right corner to add the whole month’s plan to your recipe box. When you want the recipes, revisit the menu and click on the recipes you need to make.
2. Copy the daily menus you like and paste them into your own menu planning system.
3. NEW!! Download a PDF of this entire meal plan, complete with links (with no other text and only the recipe images), to keep on your computer. When you want to make something, open the pdf, click on the recipe you want and it will take you straight there! (And on the off chance you want to make the whole month’s menus, you can print it out and post it as your menu, too.)

March Dinner Menus

Week 1

• Seafood Chowder with Green Chilies, Spicy Cumin Lime Coleslaw, Whole Wheat Flaky Biscuits
• 30 Minute Chicken Frittata with Spinach and Feta, left over artisan bread, vegetable plate and Creamy Feta Dip
• Cajun Beef on Spiced Potatoes, green salad with Vinaigrette
• Garlic Shrimp and Green Bean Pasta 30 Minute Meal, green salad with cranberries & feta
• One bowl breakfast for dinner: Quick Mexican Breakfast Bowls

Week 2

• Simple Baked Pasta with Cheese, green salad or Chopped Salad
• Easy French Beef Stew with Bacon, Garlic Sour Cream Mashed Potatoes, green salad with Maple Balsamic Vinaigrette
• Cajun Chicken Barley Vegetable Soup, cut vegetables & ranch dip
• Sauteed pork chops served with Spicy Rhubarb Chutney, brown rice, Corn & Pepper Saute, Caesar slaw
• Mini Meatloaves with Chipotle BBQ Sauce, Easy Baked Potato Fans, Roasted Beet Salad

Week 3

• Easy Slow Cooker Cassoulet, green salad, Quick & Tender Breadsticks
• Slow Cooker Italian Vegetable Beef Soup, leftover breadsticks, or quick French Baguettes
• Lemon-Garlic Roasted Chicken & Vegetables, green salad with Honey Mustard Dressing, leftover breadsticks (if available)
• Sriracha Beef and Vegetable Rice Bowls
• Baked Ham Recipe with 2-Ingredient Glaze and Amazing Mustard Sauce, Easy Seasoned Roasted Broccoli, Simple & Flavorful Olive Salad, Garlic Sour Cream Mashed Potatoes

Week 4

• Asparagus and Ham Egg Cups with Easy Hollandaise Sauce (using leftover ham), roasted potatoes, green salad with Simple Strawberry Vinaigrette
• Slow Cooker Chicken Chili, Rich Corn Bread  with Honey Butter, carrot & red pepper sticks
• Haystacks: leftover chicken chili over 10 Minute Baked Tortilla Chips (or store bought) + lettuce, cheese, onions, tomatoes, salsa, pickled jalapeños, etc. for toppings
• One Pot Italian Pasta with Sausage & Spinach, cut vegetables
• Spiced Lemon Skillet Chicken with Kale & Beans, Parmesan Rice Cakes, Long-Cooked Green Beans with Onions & Bacon (using Frozen Green Beans)

Monthly Dessert Idea

Individual Berry Crisp with Big Crumb Topping (to use up any frozen berries you may have!)

More Meal Planning Help

• Menu Planning 101 (5 steps to easy meal planning)
• Seasonal cooking through the year
• Quick & Easy Pantry Meals
• Our main dish, slow cooker, and soups & stews recipe indexes

I hope you enjoy and are able to use some of these favorite family meals of ours. Make sure to sign up here to download the PDF of this meal plan if you haven’t yet, and get more recipes and simple homemade life tips delivered right to your inbox!

This menu has been updated – it was originally published in 2014, updated in 2022 and 2026.