Monday Meal Planning

Good Morning I was sitting here in my fuzzy pajama pants wondering what I should write about today. Well we go grocery shopping every Wednesday , so thinking about what we should buy is always one of my top priorities of the week along with what to make for supper. Needless to say my life kinda revolves around food at some time during the day. I love food , I love to cook it and I love to eat it, and boy does my waist agree that it shows.

well normally through out the year we buy our food at fruit markets and meat markets.
The average spent is :
$15-17 dollars at the fruit store for what ever vedg that we want to eat that week. spinach or kale or collard greens ( one of those) a squash ( I like butternut) 4 carrots , some corn or beets , green chilli , potatoes , peas ( green beans work too), 12 eggs, 1/2 gallon milk, 1 Q half and half , and what fruit EA picks out for her normally bananas, apples, peaches, plumbs With these items I make meals to last all 7 days .

At the meat market :
We spend $25-30 dollars a week. This is what we usually buy:
1 whole chicken, 1 roast (pork or beef) , 1 lb lean hamburger, 1 lb bacon ( we like our bacon), 3 pieces carne asada (thin steak), 3 pork chops (if we didn't buy a pork roast) and that is about it again this much lasts for 7 days dinner for 3 each night and 2 lunches every day.

This is a picture of my dry goods area
please note the bag of tomatoes.

once a month we go to a regular store for:
dry goods (flour, oats, barley, molasses,beans, split peas,oat bran, flax seed, cream of wheat, corn meal), butter, spices, baking stuff ( vanilla, chocolate chips, baking powder, baking soda), and what ever else we can't find at the meat market/ fruit market

An example of a weeks worth of meals :

Wednesday:
Lunch: what ever we ate for dinner the night before
Dinner:Pork chops with peas and mashed potatoes or home made bread

Thursday

Lunch: pork chops

Dinner: Roast chicken with squash and spinach

Friday:

Lunch: leftovers possibly with leftover mashed potatoes (if there were any left)

Dinner: Chicken noodle soup with spinach, peas , carrot, what ever else I have laying around that hasn't been eaten

Saturday:
Breakfast: Barley, oatmeal, cream of wheat, (etc...)

Lunch : soup

Dinner: Roast with Potatoes, Carrots , Corn

Sunday:

Breakfast: Biscuits and gravy ( mostly bacon some times sausage)

Supper: french dip sandwiches ( save broth and meat it will be stew next week) ( some times fried chicken if I bought chicken pieces on wed)

Monday :
Lunch: Leftover dinner

Dinner: potato, hamburger, green chilli burritos

Tuesday:

Lunch: Leftovers

Dinner: Hamburger and gravy over mashed potatoes ( my equivalent to fast food )

Repeat


We will use or freeze EVERYTHING for a later meal from the water the vegetables were cooked in (for soup) to bones from the chicken ( for soup). We save meat from meals to make new meals all the time. we don't really have leftovers we just have new meal starters.
Normally we make 1 vegetarian meal a week (not shown in the example) We eat a pot of beans at least once a month (some times twice), and split pea soup once every two months.

This is not a fancy way of eating, We eat "special" food rarely.

My recipes are not gourmet, but they will fill your stomach, and most of them it doesn't take much to stretch them to feed more people.

Remember: " If some one comes over to your home unannounced near dinner , it doesn't take much to through another potato into the pot"

Kind Regards, KB

Snacks

Ok well now that I have a few readers lol, I can get down to business so to speak. The reason I started this blog was to share some helpful tips on saving money. A few years ago I was on some forums begging for advice on how to save and no one wanted to help, they did offer quite a bit of judgement and criticism though. Well at first I felt discouraged but that got me to thinking about how other moms may be trying to do the same thing so I may as well blog about it so I could help them. I never wanted to start a blog I thought that it would make me seem quite self absorbed, but hey blogs are free and can give a lot of people access to what I have to say. Well this explanation has gone quite long so lets get down to the topic at hand I did title this post snacks.


Snacks are a big deal to children and adults, but buying all that pre packaged stuff is a big waste of money and calories that could have had more nutrition. I try to keep fresh vedgies and fruit around for general grab and go feeding for my active 7 year old. these past weeks it has been some cherry tomatoes that my neighbor gave to us and surprisingly I find even the adults have been grabbing a few to snack on remember when you are offering fruit and vegetables to have them out in the open to draw attention to them when hungry people are on the prowl. you can have some sliced and visible in the refrigerator, because out of sight means out of mind.

how does this help save money? Well fresh is more expensive than PP (pre-packaged) but you can get more than one use out of them. Lets say for example that the tomatoes I have out do not get eaten by the time they start to go soft, I can turn them into a spaghetti sauce base, or slice them in half and put some onion and sliced cucumber with them covered in oil and vinegar for a side salad one night. another example is if I buy apples, Bananas, peaches etc.. I can turn them into another dish. lets say I bought a bunch of bananas and a few got eaten except for 3-4 of them and the ones that are left turned brown that makes them perfect for my flax-banana bread that CB loves so much!! In the event it is only 1 banana that no one ate I keep a gallon size zip lock bag in the freezer I peel the offending banana and put it in that bag to be added to when I buy more until I have enough for bread, cream pie, pudding etc... etc..

just remember to peel the banana before freezing it because when they defrost they are mostly liquid and that makes it hard to remove the peel from. you can add a little lemon juice to the bag if you like to help them not turn brown, however I don't and no one has complained about my bread, pudding, pie being un appetizing.

After I offer fresh food as a snack the leftovers get re birthed into another type of snack that I can offer for a few more days . <---- this is a big money saver !!!! I just use and reuse and reuse again until it was all used up, then what ever is left either gets offered to the neighbors chickens or a compost. Waste is well wasteful.

another old saying is "waste not, want not"

I have a few more snack tips that I will share in future posts .


Kind Regards,
KB