Budget Friendly Meal Plan Week 15

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Happy Easter!

During this Easter season you can find ham at deeply discounted prices, it would be a good time to fill your freezer. Ham will keep for up to four months in the freezer, if it is wrapped properly.

One of the keys to lowering your food budget is to keep a well stocked pantry and stocking up on items when they go on sale. However, before stocking up educate yourself on how long items will keep as well as knowing the best method for storing them.

Here’s what our meal plan looks like this week:

Budget Friendly Meal Planning

Monday
Cheese Pizza – served with a tossed salad.

Serves 4
Cost Cutting Tips:
- Look for pizza coupons or make the pizza from scratch to save some money.
- Don’t buy the bags of salad. Instead buy salad ingredients separately, it’s cheaper and you’ll get more for your money.
- Make your own salad dressing, it’s cheaper and tastes better. Bonus, you only have to make what you’ll use so no more wasted space in the refrigerator.

Tuesday
Leftovers – pork, mashed potatoes, green beans and biscuits from last Sunday’s dinner.

Wednesday
Pressure Cooker Cubed Steak by Adventures of a Nurse – served with egg noodles and corn.

Serves 4
Cost Cutting Tips:
- When possible, purchase store brand products, they are quite similar in taste but cost a lot less.

Thursday
Fish Tacos – served with Mexican coleslaw and pinto beans.

Serves 8
Cost Cutting Tips:
- Using dry pinto beans cook up a batch in the slow cooker. They are simple to make, taste better, easy to freeze and cost a lot less.

Friday
Parmesan Crusted Tilapia (from The Best Cooking Recipes)- served with quinoa and Brussels sprouts.

Serves 4
Cost Cutting Tips:
- If you keep a well stocked pantry then you’ll only need to purchase a few items for this meal.
- Purchase frozen tilapia fillets instead of fresh.
- The fish recipe calls for real Parmesan cheese, however I used the processed kind, at a fraction of the price and, it turned out fine.

Saturday
Leftovers – fish tacos with Mexican coleslaw and pinto beans.

Serves
Cost Cutting Tips:

Sunday
Easter Dinner – ham served with crowd pleaser potatoes, green beans, deviled eggs, biscuits and for dessert the best ever carrot cake.

Serves 12
Cost Cutting Tips:
- Ham will be on sale this week, purchase enough for your Easter dinner as well as one or two extras for future dinners.
- Instead of purchasing frozen hash browns for the crowd pleaser potatoes shred your own potatoes using a food processor.
- Make your own cream of chicken soup for a fraction of the price.
- Most of the ingredients for the carrot cake can be found in a fully stocked pantry. You’ll only need to purchase a couple of items to create the best carrot cake you’ve ever tasted.

Download – Week 15: Menu & Shopping List

Budget Friendly Tips

✔ Keep a well stocked pantry, it is an essential part to feeding a family on a small budget. Plus it’s comforting knowing that there is always something at home to cook.

✔ Stock up when prices are at there lowest. Sales usually go in a 3 month cycle, so if you see an item at it’s rock bottom price, buy enough to use between now and the next sale.

✔ One way that I keep my grocery bill low is by using coupons for the items that I need. I rarely plan my menu around the coupons that are available, I find that I end up spending more. Instead I create my menu first and then look for coupons that will lower my bill.

Time Saving Tips

✔ Do your grocery shopping online, you’ll save so much time because someone else does the shopping for you. It also allows you more flexibility for staying on budget, you don’t check out until your total is just right. Use my Walmart Grocery Pickup link and get $10 off your first order of $50 or more.

✔ Spending a little time meal planning can make your life so much easier. It’ll save you time and money, improve your nutrition, it’ll make cooking more manageable and it will give you more control over what you put on the table.

✔ A simple way to save yourself some time in the kitchen is by prepping your food for the week. This can be done by simply washing your fruits, chopping your vegetables or portioning the food for each meal. It’s up to you how much you want to do to save yourself sometime later in the week.

About Our Meal Plan

✔ Our menus are designed to feed a family of four, two adults and two teenage boys. It can also feed two adults and 3-4 young children.

✔ Many of the meals included in our meal plan are budget friendly to begin with, however we do offer tips that will reduce the grocery bill even further.

✔ Our family eats a pretty simple meal for breakfast and lunch, like cereal or sandwiches and sometimes leftovers. We don’t make to much of a fuss over it.

✔ Sunday dinner is our biggest meal of the week, that’s when all of the family gets together, so we tend to spend a little more money and include dessert. I try to make enough for leftovers during the week.