I just published a post about how meal planning saves me thousands of dollars per year (and hundreds of dollars per month)! I used to spend so much money on food every month because I would go to the store at least 3 times a week and buy lots of things I didn’t need, and ultimately ended up throwing away lots of food I never ate. So I want to show you how we save so much money every week. Most of my meal plans create leftovers, which we take for lunch to work. Going out to lunch can cost you so much! So without further adieu, here is my meal plan for this week.
We are planning to make:
- Pork stir fry
- Burgers (We already have ground beef and buns in the freezer) – sorry no recipe, I just throw these together
- Slow cooker creamy Tuscany chicken
- Summer Corn Chowder
- Butter garlic tin foil steak
At the grocery store this week we needed:
- 2 15oz cans of alfredo sauce
- Half and Half (at least 1 cup)
- 6oz of frozen spinach
- Sun dried tomatoes, not in oil
- Snow peas
- Yukon potatoes, at least 1lb
- 2 Onions
- 6 ears of corn
- Sirloin steak
- Red Potatoes, at least 1lb
- Chives
- 2 Red Peppers
- Red onion
- Parsley
- Chicken breasts
- Pork Chops
- Bacon
Not in our recipes, but other foods we bought for the week:
- Bananas
- Palisade Peaches (the best!!)
- Strawberries
- Grapes
In addition to this list for our meals, we also needed (nope), wanted fruit bars that Sprouts has – they are delicious. Our favorite flavors are pina colada and lime. We really couldn’t resist since we were there. But they are $2.99 for each box, so factor that into our weekly grocery cost. See how adding in more non-necessary stuff really makes.a difference. We bought 3 boxes, so that was an extra $9 on our grocery bill! We also have no air conditioning, so those really help cool us down when we’re really hot.
Total Money spent at the grocery store this week: $78.22. This is higher than our average weekly grocery bill, but I want to be totally transparent, so you understand that sometimes we go over, sometimes we are under our grocery budget! Sun dried tomatoes and fruit bars were our main added expenses this week. Oh, and bacon from the butcher counter – expensive, but delicious! Steak also isn’t cheap, so I wouldn’t recommend it if you are on a super strict budget!
So that is my exact shopping list above. We are usually covered with just 5 meals per week, and then we eat leftovers the other two nights of the week! We try to pick some easier ones that are not too time consuming during the week. We both work full time jobs, so time is hard to come by on the week days. Once we have the ingredients, we follow the recipes linked above!
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