Meal Plan for the Week

 

One of my recent blog finds is Life as Mom.  I love her menu plans! I love to see what she is serving for HER family of 8!  Since that is one of my all time favorite posts from her I thought you all might enjoy the same from me.  :-)

I like to plan my meals about a week in advance.  I have done as far ahead as a month, but in my current life stage planning a month ahead just feels impossible!

 

I plan my meals in 3 steps:

1. Check the fridge for foods that need to be used up.

2. Check the pantry and freezer for foods on hand.

3. Check my lists of meals for ideas and make a list of meals for the week.

Pretty simple really.  I usually use what ever I have on hand, I don’t like to have to buy ingredients special for a meal.  The hardest part for me is thinking about side dishes!

 

Here is my meal plan for this week:

* Beans and Rice with lettuce, tomatoes, olives, cheese, green peppers and sour cream for toppings.  Fruit Salad.

* Salsa Verde Beef served in tortillas with lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and sour cream.  I don’t make side dishes with this kind of meal anymore because my family doesn’t eat them!

* BBQ Chicken, steamed vegies, cut fruit.

* Easy Manicotti (ie: recipe made up as I go!), green salad, fruit salad.

* Homemade Pizza, green salad.

*Snacky Dinner (bread, cheese, fruit, vegies) – A meal in one so to speak!

* Shrimp!  A special treat from the freezer that I forgot I had!  Green salad.  Or this might end up being smoothies, depending on how busy the day is, ha!

What’s on YOUR menu this week?

I CAN make breakfast!

As you might remember from my posts about our menus, I have always said that I CAN'T make breakfast.  Well, I have to admit, this is not entirely true.  I CAN make breakfast, I just struggle with it.

A lot.

In the past two months we have been struggling with finances (so what else is new?!?), enough so that we have only been able to pay ourselves enough to cover bills, gas, and minimal groceries.  (Good thing I'm good at budgeting and planning ahead for expenses, but that's a subject for another time.)  Anyhow, cold cereal was simply NOT an option for February or March.  So, I have had to make breakfast.  Good thing we are self employed since the first week or so it was nearly 9 a.m. before I could get breakfast around!  I'm getting better now, and can have it around by 8.  Mark likes to leave for work between 8:20 and 8:30, so this just gives him time to eat.  In the past month I've made for breakfast (some multiple times):

Oatmeal
Baked Oatmeal
Maple Polenta
Cornmeal Mush (no, not the same as polenta, similar, but not the same)
Grits, Toast, and Bacon
Cream of Wheat
Rice with milk, raisins and sugar
Toast and Juice
Biscuits
Muffins
Pancakes
Waffles
French Toast
Scrambled Eggs and Toast
Fried Eggs and Toast
Bagels and Cream Cheese
English Muffin Melts (tried this recipe from Pioneer Woman blog, it was not good, don't try it, you will be disappointed!)
Biscuits and Egg Gravy
Fruit
Peach Cobbler
Cornbread
Crepes
French Breakfast Puffs
Doughnuts (this was our one special treat, store bought!)

It's been nice to have so much variety!  We have mostly been eating from our pantry, I've only bought perishable things like fruit, vegies, and dairy products. I'm so glad I had a full pantry to eat from!

I guess the lesson that can be learned from this is, never say you CAN'T do something, because that thing will probably happen!

Pantry Challenge, Week 2

*The blog I follow that suggested this challenge is stopping it due to some difficult life circumstances, however, I will be continuing the series through to the end of the month*

So far, so good!  I'm well within my budget for food for the month, $300 for our family of 7.  I spent $40 this week on milk, vegies, and some foods for my hubbies upcoming birthday.  That puts my total for food for the month to $233.  Not too shabby!

Here is my menu for this week:

Thursday
Breakfast - Hot Cereal. I'm thinking about trying a polenta. Update: I did try a polenta recipe from a cookbook called "Family Feasts for $75 a week" and it was really good!
Lunch - Sandwiches.
Dinner - Pasta Mama (pasta, eggs, meat and vegies, cooked on the stovetop) and vegies. 

Friday
Breakfast - Bagels with cream cheese, and grapefruit.
Lunch - Soup and Homemade Biscuits.
Dinner - Homemade Pizza. 

Saturday
Breakfast - Pancakes (my favorite!)
Lunch - Leftovers (Smorgasbord!)
Dinner - Soup, Fruit, Vegies. 

Sunday
Breakfast - Cold Cereal.  We always have cold cereal on Sundays, we leave early for church and cooking something has proved to be completely impossible.
Lunch -Beans and Rice.
Dinner - High Tea!  Yum!

Monday
Breakfast - Cold Cereal
Lunch - More leftovers
Dinner -Baked Potato Soup and rolls.

Tuesday
Breakfast - Cold Cereal (This many days in a row of cold cereal gets really OLD, but my hubbie had an early appointment and since we always eat as a family there wasn't time to make something.)
Lunch - Leftovers (For some reason we are swimming in leftovers right now.  Good thing we don't have picky eaters in our house!)
Dinner - Spaghetti & Meatballs, green salad, rolls.

Wednesday
Breakfast - Oatmeal
Lunch - Sandwiches
Dinner - Mexican chicken, vegies, rice.

Snacks
We don't snack much, mostly on fruit and vegies.  I stock up on them whenever it's on sale, usually we have apples, oranges, bananas, carrots, and celery on hand.

Drinks
We go through around 4 gallons of milk a week here, roughly $8 when it's on sale.  I will buy as much as can fit in my fridge when it's on sale, it usually lasts till the next sale.  I purchase soda on sale and keep it on hand for Mark on Friday nights, otherwise we don't drink it.  (Notice I keep it on hand for Mark, not the rest of the family)  We have juice with breakfast on the weekends ($2) and water the rest of the week.  Water with lunch and with dinner, except occasionally when I make iced tea (.20 a batch).

If you missed my first post of this series, you can find it here.

Pantry Challenge

For the month of January I am participating in a pantry challenge, to feed my family for $75 a week!  I go shopping once a month for the bulk of what I need and then pick up the perishable stuff that we need on the in between weeks.  So my goal is to keep the monthly total to $300, if possible.  Yesterday was my shopping day and the total for the day was $193.  Not too shabby for a start but we will see how the rest of the month goes!

So, here is my tentative menu for the month.  I usually plan out my menu for the month but we are extremely flexible in what gets made when, or even gets made at all.  I cook based more on what we have on hand than anything else.  With all that said, here is the menu, it has been updated to reflect our actual meals for the week:

Thursday
Breakfast - Cold cereal. I'm not much of a morning person and getting up and making breakfast is really difficult for me thus we have cold cereal fairly often.  I figure this costs us about $2 for the whole meal for the 7 of us.
Lunch - Sandwiches. Not sure what kind, we will use whatever we have on hand.  I bought the bread at the day old bread store for .60 (100% whole wheat!), 1 loaf will feed the family for lunch, plus whatever it costs for the filling and fruit/vegies served with it.  Probably around $1.50 - 2 for the whole lunch
Dinner - Tostadas and fruit.  Not sure exactly how much this meal costs, I package of shells will last for 2 meals, 1 can of refried beans is around $2, plus all the toppings (tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, sour cream, salsa)  Actual Meal: Beef Stew &Rolls.  Cost is about the same as what I planned to make.

Friday
Breakfast - Baked Oatmeal
Lunch - Sandwiches, fruit and/or vegies Leftovers
Dinner - Homemade Pizza.  This is probably the most expensive meal of the week but it's our family tradition and we all love it.  I figure it costs me about $7 (ouch!).

Saturday
Breakfast - Homemade Biscuits and Sausage Egg Gravy.  $3 for everything with leftovers!
Lunch - Leftovers (Smorgasbord!)  Free!Tostadas with all the fixings (See Thursday night dinner above.)
Dinner - Homemade Mac N' Cheese, Fruit, Vegies.  $3 for everything.

Sunday
Breakfast - Cold Cereal.  We always have cold cereal on Sundays, we leave early for church and cooking something has proved to be completely impossible.
Lunch - ?  I'll decide when I get home from church.  :-)  This turned out to be more leftovers.
Dinner - High Tea!  Yum!  This is a very inexpensive meal, around $2.  We were invited to a friends house for the afternoon and evening so I didn't have to cook, Yay!

Monday
Breakfast - Cold Cereal
Lunch - More leftovers
Dinner -Baked Chicken, vegies, fruit.  $4

Tuesday
Breakfast -Hot Cereal.  We will choose between oatmeal, cream of wheat, or rice with milk, fruit and sugar. - We picked Oatmeal.
Lunch - PBJ, fruit and/or vegies
Dinner - Enchiladas, green salad.  $4.50

Wednesday
Breakfast - Cold Cereal. Fruit and toast.
Lunch - Sandwiches
Dinner - BBQ chicken, rolls, vegies. green salad $4.50

Snacks
We don't snack much, mostly on fruit and vegies.  I stock up on them whenever it's on sale, usually we have apples, oranges, and bananas on hand.

Drinks
We go through around 4 gallons of milk a week here, roughly $8 when it's on sale.  I will buy as much as can fit in my fridge when it's on sale, it usually last till the next sale.  I purchase soda on sale and keep it on hand for Mark on Friday nights, otherwise we don't drink it.  (Notice I keep it on hand for Mark, not the rest of the family)  We have juice with breakfast on the weekends ($2) and water the rest of the week.  Water with lunch and with dinner, except occasionally when I make iced tea (.20 a batch).

I think that about covers it.  Not sure how close I am on my prices but I did the best I could.   I'm linking up to Large family living in a small family world pantry challenge. 

Homemade Laundry Soap

To help save money for our family I make our own homemade laundry detergent.  One batch lasts around 3 months.  I wash about 20 loads a week.  So for a smaller family it would go a long ways!  Here is the recipe I use, as well as some pictures of the process.

First, gather your ingredients:

4  Cups - hot tap water
1  Fels-Naptha soap bar
1 Cup - Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
½ Cup Borax


The fels-naptha bar can be bought at Ace Hardware and the Borax and Washing soda come from King Soopers.

 

Grate bar of soap.  I use a cheese grater from the dollar store reserved only for this.  Put in a saucepan along with your water.  Stir continually over medium-low heat with a wire whisk till soap is dissolved and melted.   It's important to stir it continually or the mix will not gel.  You can use it if it's not gelled, it will still clean.  But for me it's a mental thing, it needs to be gelled to seem like I'm using the "right" thing.  :-)

Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of HOT tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.  This is what it will look like the next day.

Stir.  Divide the mix between two 5 gallon buckets.  Fill each to the top with HOT tap water and stir again.   Fill a used, clean, laundry soap dispenser with this mix.  Shake before each use.

For those of you who just like to see the recipe without all the pictures, here it is:

Homemade Liquid Laundry Detergent
4  Cups - hot tap water
1  Fels-Naptha soap bar
1 Cup - Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
½ Cup Borax

1.  Grate bar of soap.  I use a cheese grater from the dollar store reserved only for this.  Put in a saucepan along with your water.  Stir continually over medium-low heat with a wire whisk till soap is dissolved and melted. 

2.  Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of HOT tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.

3.  Stir.  Divide the mix between two 5 gallon buckets.  Fill each to the top with HOT tap water and stir again.   Fill a used, clean, laundry soap dispenser with this mix.  Shake before each use.
 
Yield: Liquid soap recipe makes 10 gallons.
-Top Load Machine- 5/8 Cup per load (Approx. 180 loads)
-Front Load Machines- ¼ Cup per load (Approx. 640 loads)

A weeks worth of meals

I thought some of you out there might be interested in knowing how I cook for our family. 

And I didn't have anything better to post about, but we don't need to mention that...

Anyway...

First off, a bit of background info. 
1.)  I have a Very limited grocery budget, $340.00 for the month for our family of 7.  This is all our family can afford right now.  However, thanks to the wonderful training from my mom when I was growing up, I'm able to make this work. 

2.)  We are not on any government assistance at all.  We have received benefits from WIC in the past, but I'm not comfortable with the amount of influence they want to have in our life and for that reason we have stopped receiving it.  But, I do occasionally visit a local food panty when a month is really tight.

3.)  Due to our budget restrictions, I don't buy organic, or even "all natural" unless those things come up on sale for a GREAT price.  I have had to come to grips with the fact that it is more important for my family to have enough to eat over not enough but organic.  Please understand that I am not saying that I have a problem with organic anything, it is simply not an option for us at this time.

All that said, here are the pictures of our weeks worth of meals.

Wednesday :  We decided to use some of the coupons that the kids earned from the summer reading program to go out for dinner.  There was only one problem with our plan, the restaurant that we chose to go to was no longer accepting the coupons even though they weren't expired!  "Note to self, call to confirm restaurant is accepting coupons before going!"  Our local Del Taco was having a special, 29 cent taco's, so we went there for dinner.  We don't normally go out to dinner so this was a GREAT treat!

Thursday:  Spaghetti, fruit salad (made with all the bits and pieces leftover from other meals), bread and butter, and a green salad.  And water to drink.  We drink water with almost all our meals.  No dessert, we are trying to cut back on the sweets.

Friday:  Pizza.  I didn't get a picture of this but you're not missing anything.  I didn't get to make my normal homemade pizza because we had company stop by right as I was getting ready to start the dough and by the time they left it was too late to make homemade pizza.  Thank goodness for Little Caesars $5 pizza!

Saturday:  I usually do a "smorgasbord" meal on Saturday, aka: leftovers!  This is a great way to make sure all the little odds and ends in the fridge get eaten up!  Also forgot to get a picture of this.  Obviously I'm not the best at planning out my blog posts!

Sunday:  On Sunday evenings we always have tea.  So, menu: tea, crackers, tomato slices, cucumber slices, and pizza bites.  Sometimes I will make scones but this was not one of those times.

Monday:  Cheese tortellini with spaghetti sauce, green salad, cantaloupe.  I'm sure you're seeing a pattern here...  We use up what we have on hand, it's one of the great secrets to making a budget work!

Tuesday:  A real winner, hot dogs and watermelon!  I spent most of the day shopping and by the time we got home at 6:15 I just wanted to get something on the table and get it over with.  Yet again, forgot to get a picture.

On second thought maybe I shouldn't post this after all.  It was quite an atypical week, I forgot to take pictures, I want to impress you all with how well we eat, etc., but... well, I guess I'll post this anyways.  :-)  

Hope you all enjoyed this little peak into our life, if you have any questions about anything feel free to leave a comment and I will try to get back with you!  :-)

How I freeze strawberries

I have seen several "how-to" blog posts around and thought I would share one of my own.  This past week my mom picked up 8lbs of strawberries for me for $1 a pound, a great deal here!  This is what I did with all those berries to keep them from going bad.


 The first think I did was dump them in a sink full of cold water to wash off all the dirt.  I just left them floating in the water.

Then I went through them while still in the sink and sorted out all the moldy berries.  You could probably cut off the mold and use the rest of the berry but that makes me a bit uncomfortable so I just throw out the "bad"ones.  You can also pull out the soft berries and use them to make jam or some other thing but I just cut them up along with the rest of them.

 Then I took the remaining good berries and cut them up.  First I cut off the green top...

and threw it into a bowl that I had handy for all the moldy berries and green tops.  This is much easier than making a trip to the trash can after cutting every berry and less messy than just having the trash can next to you. 

Then take the berries and slice them.

I cut up 8 cups of strawberries, then added 1 cup sugar.

Stirred it in well...

And packaged it up in small freezer bags in 2 cup portions.  Make sure to label your bags!  Once in the freezer everything starts to look the same and it can be hard to guess what it is and how long it's been in there.

Lay these bags out flat on the shelf of your freezer and when frozen stack up.  If you just stick the stack of bags in your freezer they stick together, not fun.

These bags of strawberries can be substituted in any recipe that calls for a bag of frozen strawberries.  A word of warning: these are somewhat mushy when thawed so don't expect to eat them plain!

I have never frozen them without the sugar, if any of you have let me know how it worked!  :-)

A BIG Thank you to my Mom for teaching me how to do this when I was growing up and for always showing me how to live frugally! 

And finally, here is the recipe:

Freezing Strawberries

8 cups strawberries

1 cup sugar

Wash all your berries and sort out the moldy ones.  Cut off the green tops.  Slice your berries.  Add sugar; stir.  Package up in 2 cup portions in freezer bags.  Freeze.  Good for 1 year.