May Dinner Menus for Delicious Low Stress Meals

May is when cooking starts to feel more flexible, with fresh produce showing up and schedules filling quickly. These May dinner menus are built around real food meals with sides, designed to keep dinner nourishing and organized without spending extra time in the kitchen.

Not sure why to menu 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.

Sweet May is the promise of warmer weather, the start of grilling season (at least up north where we are…), and hopefully fresh garden lettuce and peas coming on strong. There are actually quite a few fresh seasonal choices for May (yay!) including asparagus, spinach, and green onions which you can read more about in seasonal foods to cook with in May.

This month also may find us continuing to use up last year’s preserved food from the freezer and pantry so we have room for the new season’s preserved food (consider this your reminder to defrost your freezer now, too, to be ready for the new season!).

May is also a busy time of life for many of us (holidays, end of school, etc.) so you’ll find a lot of quick, low stress meal ideas this month, too, with planned leftovers in addition to a dessert idea perfect for spring.

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 below 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.)

May Dinner Menus

Week 1

• Savory Tomato Seafood Stew, green salad, Easy French Baguettes (freeze one loaf after baking for next week)
• Rotisserie-Style Slow Cooker Spiced Whole Chicken, cabbage-carrot slaw with spicy vinaigrette
• Spicy Noodle Salad with Asparagus, grilled pork chops with Rhubarb Chutney (so good together!)
• Chicken-Bean (or Chili-Bean) Haystacks: freezer beans cooked with chili-powdered seasoned tomato sauce over tortilla chips topped with: shredded lettuce & cheese, chopped onions, salsa, guacamole and/or sour cream, plus optional shredded leftover chicken
• Slow Cooker Sweet Chili Chicken & Vegetables served over noodles or rice

Week 2

• Spring Asparagus Quiche, Broccoli Slaw with Cranberries & Feta (or cabbage slaw)
• Quick Parmesan-Herb Crusted Baked Fish, Easy French Baguettes (made the week before & frozen) green salad with balsamic vinaigrette,
• Grilled sausages, grilled asparagus, onions & sweet peppers, leftover French bread
• Chicken-Lime Lettuce Wraps, rice, Asian Slaw
• Potato & Caramelized Onion Frittata, Roasted Beet Salad with Goat Cheese

Week 3

• Cajun Beef on Crispy Spiced Potatoes, Three Pea Salad with Feta & Walnuts (use just one or two peas if that’s all you have)
• Soft Tacos (ground beef/turkey cooked with taco seasoning + toppings) with homemade salsa & 10 Minute Baked Chips
• Lemon-Garlic Roasted Chicken & Vegetables, Kale Quinoa Salad with Lemon & Parmesan
• Quick High Protein Chicken Salad Recipe (made with leftover roasted chicken instead of canned) on a bed of lettuce or spinach, Whole Wheat Flaky Biscuits (or other bread you have in the freezer), Quick Sourdough Vegetable Fritters (make them small and they are like chips to me, but healthier!)
• Sautéed pork chops with Spicy Rhubarb Chutney, Simple Corn, Pepper and Onion Saute, green salad with lemon vinaigrette

Week 4

• Mediterranean Scramble with Spinach & Bacon, green salad, toasted Easy Artisan Bread
• Sesame Cabbage Salad with Grilled Chicken (one dish in 30 minutes)
• Homemade Tomato Soup, Black Bean Quesadillas
• Easy Chicken-Spinach Calzone, green salad with creamy feta or best ranch dressing
• Greek Style Shrimp and Orzo, spinach salad with strawberries and strawberry vinaigrette (or other dressing you have made)

May Dessert Idea

Light, tart and sweet Glazed Lemon Cupcakes make a perfect spring dessert.

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.