Hi, my name is Kerri and I LOVE FOOD…..
Its borderline a problem.
ok, it is a problem.
One of our goals for the new year is to cut back on our grocery/food budget. We have three kids, one income, two daughters in softball, one daughter only 4 years away from college, and a mortgage that nearly doubled in the past few months, so needless to say money is precious and we want to save every penny we can!
At the end of every year I like to print out our bank statements and look back at exactly where every penny went.
And I’m sure I’m not alone in that fact, that the grocery and food spending was outrageous this year!!
I mean, I knew it was bad, but when I saw the number on paper it literally blew my mind.
I’m talking, we could cut the total in half and still be eating like kings.
So, I decided to really improve on my meal planning and budgeting in the New Year, and I would LOVE for you all to join! Share your favorite go to family recipes and tips on what you do to feed your family good wholesome meals all while keeping the grocery budget low! I’d love to learn new tips and tricks from all of you as well.
I learned from the very wise Jordan Page at Funcheaporfree.com that you should only be spending $100/month per person in your family. So for us that number would be $500. I have proven this to be true in the past, but you have to be smart about it.
One of my biggest challenges is that my husband is pescatarian and it’s very hard to get fish for cheap. Not to mention my youngest daughter doesn’t love fish and my oldest daughter doesn’t like beans, so its so hard to find meals that the whole family will love.
Ok, so here are few tips when doing your meal planning.
Tip #1: You HAVE to plan ahead and USE what you ALREADY HAVE on hand!
If you plan out 6 different meals for the week but need to buy most of the ingredient’s for all the recipes, then it’ll be pretty hard for you to keep the grocery bill down.
Tip #2: Use your leftovers! For example if you have a recipe with noodles on Monday, make enough of those noodles to use in a different recipes on Wednesday. And have a night designated for leftover meals, anything you didn’t eat from the previous nights, warm up and eat again! No food should go to waste.
Tip #3: Try to double or even triple your recipe if you are able to score good sales then stock up on some of the things your cooking. Then you can freeze them so you can build a stock pile.
Tip #4: Make one or two meals a week meatless. That will save you so much money in the long run! Meat can be pricey and this will really help to stretch what you have on hand.
Tip#5: Plan some themed nights. Ex: Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday. Get creative and have fun with it.
BUT, if you don’t feel like doing the work then you are definitely in the right place! Stop by here every Monday for my families weekly meal plan! I’ll even try to start incorporating printable menus each week as I start getting the hang of it all! 🙂
MONDAY
I’ll whip up a big batch of pancakes on Monday morning. They can have that and some fruit before heading out the door.
Lunches will be Ham and Cheese Sandwiches, bag of chips, yogurt, fruit, and a brownie.
For dinner I’ll make Garlic Butter Chicken (from Eatwell 101.com)
I’ll serve this with angel hair pasta, tossed in a little Olive oil and maybe some light Parm Cheese and Brocoli.
TUESDAY
Tuesday Morning the kids can have leftover pancakes and I will also fry them up an egg or two if they are feeling super hungry. My kids aren’t often too hugry in the mornings but I like them to try to get a little something in their belly before we head out the door.
Lunch will be the same as yesterday. No shame in the repeat game!
Dinner will be homemade Fajitas. I’ll use this recipe from Simplyrecipes.com I will use chicken and shrimp to go with the pescatarian diet.
I’ll serve Fajitas with some Jasmine Rice. Anytime I make Jasmine Rice I like to make big batches so that Mike and I can use it for our lunches throughout the week.
WEDNESDAY
Breakfast will be two eggs and toast with peanut butter.
Lunch will be a salad with some of the leftover chicken, fruit of choice, yougurt and a brownie.
And for dinner I will take the leftover angel hair pasta and use this recipe from the Pioneer woman and make these simple sesame noodles.
I’ll serve them up with these homemade bakes vegetarian egg rolls from tablespoon.com
THURSDAY
Breakfast for everyone will be an isgenix shake before we head out the door! The kids LOVE these shakes. They are yummy meal replacement shakes loaded with TONS Of vitamins and minerals. I like to drink them as is because I still have weight loss goals, but the kids sometimes add bananas or other fruits to it and blend it up for a higher calorie breakfast.
Lunch will be another ham and cheese sandwich with a small side salad, fruit of choice and a brownie. They can also take a bag of the chips for a snack later in the afternoon.
Dinner will be this Pepperoni Chicken Pizza Bake from Kalyns kitchen
I’ll just serve this with a side salad. And for Mike I’ll make some kind of meatless “Pizza” dish with a salad.
FRIDAY
Friday breakfast will be another Breakfast smoohie on the way out the door.
Lunch will be peanut butter and jelly (because at this point they are kind of tired of ham and cheese), banana, chips, brownie. (I try not to get too creative with the lunches. They are given such a small amount of time to eat anyway, and I try my best to keep the budget down when it comes to lunches. Sometimes they’ll take leftovers if they don’t really need to be reheated but its usually sandwiches or salads on school days)
Dinner will be LEFTOVERS! Clean out the fridge for the weekend. We’ll just have a big smorgasboard of everything that’s left in the fridge. This is actually the kids favorite night of the week!
SATURDAY
For breakfast on Saturdays I like to make big breakfasts that we can sit down and enjoy together. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t But I like to do French Toast or Pancakes with Eggs and Sausage/bacon.
Lunch on the weekends is where we would usually spend the most money. It just always seemed like the perfect opportunity for take out or wawa. (<—-wawa is out BIGGEST weakness of all!) But since we are avoiding that in this New year I will just make some more boring sandwiches. maybe make it a hot ham and cheese. Or they can have a salad with hard boiled egg and whatever proteins we may still have left in the fridge. (chicken, shrimp, bacon, fish)
For dinner we’ll have these amazing Blackened Fish Burgers from Oh Sweet Basil.
I will be waiting alllll week for this meal!! so so yummy!!
Instead of buying a head of cabbage I’ll just set aside some of the coleslaw mix from earlier in the week.
For a side I’ll cut up the sweet potatoes and make homemade sweet potato fries.
SUNDAY
Sunday is another day I love to have big breakfasts but depending on what we have leftover sometimes we’ll just grab a shake and get the day started, or we’ll just mix up more pancake mix and grab the waffle maker to change it up a bit.
Lunch I’ll just make sure to save some fish from the fish burgers and we’ll probably put it over a salad or rice. I also like to always have a couple frozen pizzas in the freezer just in case. Walmart has some really yummy ones for under $3 each!
Dinner will be this easy 3 ingredient Ravioli bake from instrupix.com
I’ll serve this up with a big side salad and some garlic bread!
I’m still trying to figure out the best time for my grocery shopping. I am still loving the Walmart Grocery pick up that I wrote about here. It is BY FAR the cheapest Groceries I’ve found so far!
I’m thinking a weekday is the best time for pickup, but I work Mondays so that makes it kind of tough to get there and still manage drop off pick up and after school activities. So I think I’m going to stick to Friday mornings after I drop the little guy off.
This meal plan won’t start for us until Monday January 7th since we’ll be gone all of this coming week, but I put everything I need for these meals in my Walmart cart on the app and the total comes to $137.72 So its about $12 more then I wanted to spend but I did add those two frozen pizzas and paper towels so I’m ok with that. I also have ingredients for double recipe of the ravioli bake which I will prep and freeze for a future meal.
The biggest challenge for our family will be sticking to proper portion sizes to make sure that this food lasts! We all have such big appetites! But that’s another reason I love my shakes, because when all else fails we all just make a shake to curb the hunger!
So, what do you say?! Are you up for the 2019 meal plan challenge!
We want to see how long we can go without going through a drive thru or ordering a pizza! There is just no point in throwing away those hard earned dollars when you can make better quality food in the comfort of your own home for a fraction of the price!
Let me know if you’ll be joining us!!
I hope you all have the best week and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
