Monday, November 1, 2010

Use What You Have Menu Plan

In our home there is someone in charge of the budget.  It's that person's responsibility to make sure there is enough for all the bills and all the extras we may have planned each week.  Unfortunately, that person is an airhead, and sometimes I forget they forget things like fuel or prescriptions in that planning.

This is one of those weeks, so I created a menu plan that will use what we have in the house with only a few $'s spent at the store.  We have plenty of apples to snack on and for cooking.  We also received some more potatoes yesterday, so I may do something more with them.

Sunday: Breakfast Casserole
Monday: Spaghetti, marinara sauce, bread
Tuesday: Tacos, beans and rice (beans and rice are in the freezer, and shredded steak cooked in the crock for the taco meat)
Wednesday: Barbeque chicken, mashed potatoes, and fresh veggies
Thursday: Beans in the crockpot with homemade rolls
Friday: BBQ Pork and fried rice

What we'll need: dried beans, spaghetti sauce, and milk for a total of $5 at the grocery store. 

Lunches are bologna sandwiches, peanut butter sandwiches, salads, and cheese and crackers for Kaia and Dana.  I eat leftovers.  Breakfast is cereal for the kids and Dana eats cereal alternating with sausage and egg. 

On pay day, I plan to do some stocking up!  Our freezers are empty of meat!  I like to have at least a few pounds of ground beef, some inexpensive steak cuts and a whole chicken in the freezer.  But, as you can see from the menu, we have chicken thighs, 1 steak, and the sausage is in the fridge.  I'm hoping Wednesday's ads have some good prices!

What are you eating this week?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Dianna said...

Your menu looks awesome. I'd never know that you just planned it around what you have.

I have the second half of a two-week plan to make this week, but that may change because we've got some sick kids here!

Michelle said...

I think it's great to challenge yourself to learn to make do with what you have from time to time, anyway...keeps you thinking about not letting anything go to waste!

Have fun on the shopping trip! :)

becky3086 said...

Let' see,
Saturday was hamburger on the grill, with corn on the cob and canned coleslaw
Sunday was steak sandwhiches (Steakum were buy one get one) with swiss cheese
Monday-hot chicken wings, mac n' cheese and a veggie
Tuesday-Probably spaghetti with sausage
Wed-Maybe a chicken soup or casserole
Thurs-I think we will have a meatloaf, canned potatoes and a vegetable
Frid- is always decided Friday when we go to the store.

Breakfasts will be either homemade yogurt or homemade waffle (which I hope to get made tomorrow).
Lunch will be sandwhiches or noodles.
We are stocked up pretty good

Mallory said...

A couple weeks a go we had a plan-around-what-was-there meal plan :P It worked out pretty good! I had to spend about 26.00 though. MY kids and hubby go through a huge amount of fruit!

We do a lot of leftovers for lunches. Trev enjoys having soemthing hot to warm up. I generally will plan to make a casserole and soup each week, or something similar that creates a good amount of leftovers. We have a couple nights of potatos and veggies and a meat, and a couple nights based around rice. Then Friday night is something fun like tocos, pizza, nacho's, or fries and burgers. Something quick, but also something we might have if we ate out. I find that curbs the itch to eat out :)