Once everybody in my house goes to bed, no matter how tired I am all day long, I perk up for my 'mommy time' and don't fall asleep until about midnight to 1am, just to get up at 7am! Normal! So...during my mommy time, I have been on pinterest, researching new foods, budget planning, DIYs and how to save money (my husband said: "don't spend it") <---DUH!!!
I ran across this lady's blog: http://www.blissfulanddomestic.com/2012/03/31-days-to-yumminess-grocery-shopping.html?showComment=1342681248761 She has EVERYTHING! I did a smaller version of her meal planning and shopping. She does monthly shopping, which is great if you have a HUGE freezer and pantry...our pantry is the size of my thumb nail and our freezer, well....it's normal size. Thus, we can't do a month but I'm perfectly happy with 2 weeks of meals, food bought and no fighting grocery stores! Let me just tell you...if you see me at the grocery store, here is a visual of what you will witness. My 3 yr old pushing the little cart behind me, half paying attention to where she is going, half paying attention to everything else, so I hang on to the front of her cart so she doesn't run into anything as I'm pushing my cart, which has my infant son and his carseat in the main part. All while carrying around my backpack diaper bag, un-showered for 3 days (that's a luxury at this point--febreeze goes a long way!), wearing a hat, my husband's tshirt and a hat with little or left over makeup. I'm a hot mess....when I say 'hot' I literally mean HOT. It's exhausting!
I did a month's worth of meal plans but only shopped for about 2-2 1/2 weeks worth of food. Good advice I read from the site above, have breakfast for dinner once a week and leftovers once a week. PERFECT by me!
Here is my list:
Dinners
Day 1: Pizza (we made it a picnic in our jammies movie night)
Day 2: Skinny Chicken & Broccoli Alfredo Pasta (no sides needed)
Day 3: Leftovers (lots of both of these)
Day 4: Deli style sandwiches with potato chips and fruit
Day 5: Boxed/frozen Lasagna with garlic bread and side of choice
Day 6: Crock-pot Chicken BBQ with Oven Roasted Corn on the Cob and potato chips
Day 7: Sesame Sweet Teriyaki Salmon with Garlic Quinoa Stir-Fry (no sides needed)
Day 8: Breakfast-Pancakes for K, biscuits and eggs for Z, Peanut Butter Banana Freedom Toast for me. All with eggs and turkey bacon
Day 9: Left overs
Day 10: Turkey Burgers with chips and homemade potato salad
Day 11: Chicken Tacos/Quesadillas with Mexican rice and chips with salsa/guacamole
Day 12: Savory Turkey Meatloaf with Parmesan Roasted Green Beans and Mashed Potatoes
Day 13: Honey Lime Tilapia with Long Grain & Wild Rice and steam fresh Broccoli. K and the hubs like shrimp so I do half a pound of shrimp, Baked Coconut Shrimp
Day 14: Chinese. Teriyaki marinated chicken with Bennihana style rice. (no sides needed)
Day 15: Leftovers
Day 16: Slammin' Salmon with left over rice and broccoli
Day 17: Breakfast
Day 18: Pizza
Day 19: Deli sandwiches
**This is as far as I made it in one shopping trip. However, here is the rest of the month worth of meal planning.**
Day 20: Sweet and Spicy Chicken with green beans and mashed potatoes
Day 21: Parmesan Crusted Tilapia with Long Grain & Wild Rice and left over green beans
Day 22: Spaghetti with meat balls and cheesy garlic bread
Day 23: Chicken fajitas (no sides needed)
Day 24: Leftovers
Day 25: Salmon Teriyaki with brown sugar seasoned brown rice and roasted red potatoes
Day 26: Out to eat
Day 27: Savory Turkey Meatloaf with leftover red potatoes and green beans
Day 28: Breakfast
Day 29: Baked Parmesan Garlic Chicken with broccoli and baked corn
Day 30: Lasagna with garlic toast and side of choice
Day 31: Left overs
On top of everything we already had (I took inventory of and tried to find recipes that included those items, most needed to be used anyways). That saved A LOT of money! I got Breakfast, lunch and dinner for 21 days (to feed 3 people) for $140. I know I said I stopped at Day 19, however, I bought 2 boxes of lasagna and breakfast along with leftovers don't count! :)
How I saved.....
1) I came up with my menu (it was all tentative depending on what meats/foods were on sale at the time of grocery shopping) and then organized my shopping list. Here is a free grocery list organizer
http://www.tipjunkie.com/organize/organization/printable-grocery-list/
2) I visited ALL of these sites and registered, even though I already had the 'member cards', there are extra savings online.
Kroger
Tom Thumb
Coupons
Shop at Home
Great way to see what is on sale and compare to other places. Once on these sites, when a food was on sale that was on my list, I wrote down how much it was at each place and then checked for coupons.
3) Most of my food was found at Kroger, so I went there (especially for their meat and produce). Take advantage of their 10 for $10. We got out sour cream, oranges, guacamole, buns for BBQ chicken, potato chips, BBQ sauce for BBQ chicken, and regular bread all for $10! :) Also, they had 3 Dijorno (spelling) pizzas 3/$10. Stoffer's lasagna $5.00 each so, 2 nights plus left overs for $10! 2 large cartons of strawberries for $4... loaded up on those, came home and cut and froze most of them, I bought $8 worth and we will have them all month, even with my fruit shakes! Salmon was on sale for $5.99/lb so I bought 2 pounds worth (have them separate the pounds, most recipes call for one pound and unless you have a scale, just have them cut it for you! Works for me.
4) The items on my list that I didn't see on sale at Kroger, I went to Walmart and grabbed the walmart brand of whatever I could. I doesn't taste any different than the name brand and you save A LOT more! Walmart also price matches...
5) Make sure to bring your coupons and double check your weekly ads. Also, check the manufactures web sites for their coupons on top of the store coupons/deals. Most will let you use one store and one manufacture coupon on a single item!
Just at Kroger, I saved about $30, doesn't seem like a lot but lets do the math (bust out the calculator). $30 x2 (since I'm shopping twice a month) =$60 (yes, my calculator is out for this--sad) $60 x 12 (months) =$720/year. As I get better about this, I hope to make an improvement on this amount but until then, this is MUCH better than it has been and I don't have to scramble to get dinner ideas! woohoo!
I'm trying to compile all of the pinterest recipes that we have tried and LOVE! I put them into a file and thought I'd share. Seriously....ALL of them are uh-maze-ing! If you need the website where I pinned these from, I THINK I put them all under each recipe. I can't take credit for ANY of them! I'm a terrible cook so there is no way I could have come up with these. Anything on these pictures that is different from the web site is our version of them. I hope you enjoy them all, we sure do! Follow me on Pinterest: Brokenlizzard
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