This Week's Meal Plan

We are getting our meats for this week's menu from our freezer.  When there is a good sale, we buy extra, then wrap/freeze in portions that make sense for our family.  This week, the meat sales were...okay, but not great, so we'll use what we have already purchased, and supplement with pantry staples and some fresh produce.  This set of strategies makes it possible for us to keep a budget of $200/month for three people - breakfast, lunch, supper and snacks.  We also have a dining out budget of $30 per month.  I mention that to make it clear that we're not eating out for a lot of our meals.

Our produce finds this week were celery for 50 cents per bunch (we bought...four), 5lb. of organic carrots for 2.98, cantaloupe for .98/each.  We still have cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, oranges, apples, red peppers, onions, cilantro, and parsley from previous weeks, all fresh and good.  One of the stores had 'cutie' oranges out as the sample, and we each took one.  We had just eaten lunch, so we brought them home and they'll be used here as snacks or put in lunch boxes.

The meat we bought this week was wild caught salmon for $5 per pound - we picked up two pounds - and some battered fish portions that Husband got on sale with a special offer from Safeway and an Ibotta rebate (10 portions, $3). We had already come up with this week's menu, so the fish is in the freezer for future weeks.  We also picked up one pound of breakfast sausage for 1.99.

Safeway also gave us some special offers for butter (.75/pound limit of two), and free Dannon whole milk yogurt.  The yogurt one was interesting, because it was for 2 free cartons of the yogurt.  We also had coupons loaded to the card that were 'buy two, get one free', and we ended up getting all three, not only free, but it registered a .20 credit on the purchase.  That made our gallon of milk a little less costly.

Finally, at King Sooper, we picked up our free Friday download (a Hershey's candy bar), whole wheat saltines that were on sale for $1/box, and sour cream on sale $1.25 for a 16 oz. container.

Anything else you see in this menu is coming from the freezer or pantry.  With the exception of the egg rolls, which we got for .25/each with an Ibotta rebate and sale, the other items are all homemade.  Here is the plan for this week:

M - Seville chicken, sausage, potato & onion roast, home-canned green beans, cantaloupe wedges

T - eggrolls, rice, Asian slaw, home-canned plums

W - cheese enchiladas, black bean-corn-tomato 'relish', green salad, sliced oranges

R - marinated, grilled pork chops, mashed potatoes, sweet corn, cantaloupe wedges

F - hamburgers on the grill, oven fries, carrots and celery, pickles, sliced oranges

S - chicken-pepperoni pasta bowl (this is a copycat of something from Zio's restaurant, and it is really yummy!), garden salad, sliced apples

S - Italian turkey sandwiches, potato chips, carrot and celery sticks, sliced oranges

We've got plenty of yogurt, granola and frozen blueberries on hand for breakfasts and/or snacks, and we'll likely make some steel-cut oats.  I made some hard-boiled eggs for breakfasts and snacks too.  With 4 bunches of celery in the fridge, I can almost guarantee that Daughter and I will take ants on a log for lunch this week - we both love them for lunch!  Otherwise, lunches are generally leftovers from supper or something simple - a can of soup and a sandwich, salad and crackers/cheese, or maybe a frozen pizza (if we're being fancy! hee hee).

I have two questions for you.  If I were to share recipes on the All Recipes site, would that help?  I could link to them from here.  I think you have to sign up for All Recipes, I think, but it is free.  I've tried a couple of ways to share recipes here, and they are not printer friendly.  Would that work for you?

Question two....What's cookin' at your house this week?