Chicken breasts are on sale this week so I’ll be stocking up to save money for the weeks to come. I was also excited to find avocados on sale, I bought quite a few and froze them.
It’s been a pretty uneventful week around here which has given me a little more time to spend in the kitchen making things from scratch. I love it when I have weeks like this and so does my family. There is just isn’t anything better than making your own flour tortillas or re-fried beans, the flavors are unbeatable.
Here’s what our meal plan looks like this week:
Budget Friendly Meal Planning
Pinto Beans – served with garlic green beans and cornbread. This is one of my families favorite meatless meals especially when the beans are topped with grandma’s hot mix, some onions and tabasco sauce.
Peppered Chicken – served with buttered garlic noodles and steamed broccoli. The noodles are easy to make – cook 8 ounces of noodles according to package directions, drain, and add 2 cloves minced garlic and 4 tablespoons butter. You can add a little salt or Parmesan cheese for added flavor, if you’d like.
Poor Mans Hash – served with biscuits. This is something that my mom would feed us when money was tight. Brown 1-pound ground beef, add 1/2 diced onion, and 2 lb diced potatoes, cover. Cook until potatoes are tender, you can add a little water if needed. Then add 1-can corn and season with some salt and pepper.
Zuppa Toscano Soup – served with salad and Italian bread. This soup recipe serves 8, so you should have leftovers for lunch or dinner. However, it is really delicious and in our house we rarely have any leftover.
Leftovers – You might be able to squeeze in two nights of leftovers this week, which will save you both time and money this week.
Chicken Fajita – served with re-fried beans and Spanish rice. This is a simple recipe that takes less than 30 minutes. Try topping the fajitas with avocado, lettuce, shredded cheese, salsa, sour cream, and/or tomatoes.
Pot Roast – served with potatoes, carrots and rolls. I love Sunday dinner and there’s not a more traditional Sunday dinner than pot roast. For dessert we had apple pie flautas with caramel sauce.
Download – Week 2: Menu & Shopping List
Budget Friendly Tips
✔ To lower your grocery budget even more, trying purchasing salad ingredients separately instead of the salad bags
✔ Make your own baking mix (Bisquick), it’s simple, delicious and a lot cheaper. It can be used to make pancakes, cakes, cookies, crusts, biscuits and a whole lot more.
✔ Even though the Jiffy cornbread mix is really cheap, making it from scratch is pretty cheap too, and it tastes a lot better.
✔ Using dried beans is considerably cheaper then the canned beans. They are surprisingly not that hard to make and any extras can be frozen to be used later.
✔ 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
✔ Spending a little time meal planning can make your life so much easier. It’ll save you time and money, improve your nutrition, make cooking more manageable and it gives you more control over what you put on the table.
✔ Doing your grocery shopping online is a great way to save time and money. You order your groceries online, they do the shopping for you and they even load them in your car. It helps to keep you on budget, keeps you from impulse shopping and no more waiting in line.
✔ 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.
What budget friendly meal is your families favorite?
About Our Meal Plan
✔ Our menus are created for a family of four, two adults and two teen boys.
✔ Our menus do not include breakfast or lunch, but there is space on the menu to add what your family likes.
✔ Sunday dinner is the biggest meal of the week which includes dessert.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a commission. I only recommend products or services that I personally believe will add value to my readers. All opinions stated are strictly my own. Read our full disclosure policy for more information.
I have never tried freezing avocados, but it’s on my to-do list! These are fantastic tips for meal-planning and shopping on a budget. Aren’t meat sales the greatest? 🙂
Some good useful tips and reminders for meal planning on a budget! We’re on Day 23 of a 60-day pantry and freezer challenge and meal planning is helping us use up our leftovers and almost-expired meals. Love the idea of making baking mixes ahead of time too. P.S. – You havesuch a pretty site! Found you from the Homestead Blog Hop.
Thank you for stopping by, I’m heading over to take a peek at your blog.
Great tips for saving money and planning on here! And I’ve never heard of poor man’s hash. Sounds yummy.
Great tips! Thanks for sharing at Fiesta Friday.
Mollie
Poor Mans Hash sounds pretty tasty! We’ve started being savvy with our shopping and found a few different places that do cheaper food and most of it tastes nicer too! With me working from home we can do online shopping and have it delivered so we don’t even need to leave the house to get it yay!
Thank you for sharing this with us at #TriumphantTales. I hope to see you back next week.
I love online shopping, it’s such a great way to track your spending as well as saving time.
Thank you for those mealplanning tips! Very useful!
– Ela –
I’m glad you enjoyed them!
Thanks for sharing it at the What’s for Dinner party! Have a wonderful week.
Thanks for these very helpful tips with meal planning. We would like to feature your post on the next Blogger’s Pit Stop. Well done.
Kathleen
Blogger’s Pit Stop
Great tips and recipes!
Just found your meal plans and have tried 2 so far are you still doing the meal plans? Really appreciate all the suggestions and money savings ideas. So far had the meatball subs and cheese enchiladas so great!
I haven’t continued the meal plans, because we have a few different diet restrictions in our home, so our menu is currently all over the place. I would like to start it back up because it was such a time an money saver. You picked two really good recipes.