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While grabbing the deals is a huge savings in our grocery budget, having a meal plan is another huge way to save. Putting them together of course is the only way to live on our $70 a week grocery/household budget.
That doesn’t mean that eat beans and rice ever night though. Here’s our meal plan this week. Hopefully it helps you see that we eat real food and this week actually enjoy a night out (thanks to a deal at DG last week)!
For our meal plan, we focus on what produce we get in our co-op every other weekend and then plug meals around the produce. It’s a joy to get a huge laundry basket full of vegetables and fruit for $25 and it challenges me to fit in lots of veggies to our meals each week.
Our Meal Plan
Monday –Â Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs, Bacon and Biscuits.
With 10+ chickens in the yard, this is a required meal every few weeks. We have reached a point where there are way to many eggs in the fridge! I highly recommend Alton Brown’s Biscuit recipe, it’s the only one we make.
Tuesday –Â Frozen Pizza for the Kids — Date Night for Us!
I recently grabbed a few Wild Mike’s pizzas with the B2G1 coupon that was out. These stay in the freezer for the hopeful night that we can get away. Grandma really doesn’t cook… so pizza makes everyone happy.  A huge thanks to our amazing Grandma that comes to play so we don’t have to pay a babysitter.
Wednesday –Â Italian Chicken, Pesto Pasta, Fresh Green Beans
This is probably the easiest recipe I make and I feel like I’m cheating, but everyone loves it! Grab a bottle of Italian Salad Dressing (if you’ve been couponing for any time you have at least 10 somewhere) and marinate your chicken for at least 30 minutes. Grill it or put in the oven on Broil until it’s cooked through. Then add Mozzarella cheese to the top until it melts. That’s it! It takes about 10 minutes max to cook.
I use a jarred pesto sauce, there are a number that are BOGO at Publix from time to time. We do add olives and sun dried tomatoes to make it fancy. Both are also on sale at Publix regularly.
Thursday – Shepherd’s Pie
I’ve got 10 lbs of potatoes to use this week before we get even more in our produce basket Saturday… So Thursday we are going to have a big Shepherd’s Pie Marathon. I love to make this in big batches and then freeze as many as we can make! The easiest and best recipe is Rachael Ray’s 30 minute shepherd’s pie.
To freeze this, put everything together but don’t bake it. Just put it straight in the freezer. I do recommend fully thawing it before cooking when you take it out.
Friday –Â Soup & Left Overs Night
I’m not sure how much will be left to eat, but we are headed to the Beach on Saturday so it’s important that tonight be clean out the fridge night! If things are slim then I have some frozen turkey noodle soup we will pull out.
Saturday –Â Taco Night
It’s pretty much a tradition that our first meal at the beach is taco’s. It’s so easy to plan for and doesn’t take much work to get on the table when you are already in vacation mode.
See our past week meal plans.
