Planning a family meal can be stressful as chefs must first design a nutritious dish around varying tastes, and then cleverly disguise that nutritious dish as donuts. Leave meal planning to the professionals with today's Groupon: for $20, you get a one-year menu-planning membership to MenuForTheWeek.com (a $48 value).

An online menu-planning service piloted by a mother of two, MenuForTheWeek.com lures loved ones to the dinner table with kid- and budget-compatible meal plans that have earned the attention of publications such as Redbook magazine. A weekly email equips home chefs with recipes for five dinners, each engineered to feed a family of four or two Hall & Oates cover bands with a swift preparation times of 30 minutes or less. A weekly brunch recipe, such as breakfast pizza, serves as an olfactory alarm clock for sleepy stomachs, and one dessert is also deployed each week to add a sweet end to any special day. In addition to a weekly menu of recipes, members' emails also contain itemized grocery lists encompassing all of the week's necessary ingredients, which tend to shy away from overly processed foods. Members also get access a burgeoning cache of past recipes, and can find helpful online tips for making health-savvy substitutions such as using applesauce instead of butter or sipping tacos through a straw.