Meal Planning: 2/18 thru 2/24

Brand new to Meal Planning?

Start by reading all about Meal Planning (scroll down to "A Day in My Life" on the right-hand side of this page and click Meal Planning: How To Get Started or just click here) in order to familiarize yourself with the steps! There, you will find a link to a detailed example of my own weekly meal planning where I walk you through step-by-step.
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The first thing I do on Saturday mornings is to look back over the week to see if we did indeed eat everything on my meal plan and adjust my inventory, reducing it by what we ate and increasing it by anything I purchased and/or made-ahead. Last week, in celebration of Emily earning another Star Citizen Award, we ordered pizza (her choice!) for dinner on Friday night instead of eating the crockpot shredded bbq chicken sandwiches so, we'll have those this week.

Inventory
8 portions ground turkey
1 portions porkchops
9 portions boneless, skinless chicken breasts
9 portions ground sirloin
1 portions flank steak
1 portions pork baby back ribs
1 portions made-ahead chicken enchiladas original red
1 portions made-ahead chicken enchiladas verdes
1 portions marinated chicken fajitas
2 portions made-ahead cheese turkey bake
1 portions made-ahead meatloaf
1 portions made-ahead meatballs
1 portions made-ahead tomato-basil spaghetti sauce

Then, I shopped my pantry, freezer and fridge for ingredients to come up with some meals, looking at our family calendar to ensure I wasn't planning on something we had recently eaten. I scanned the weekly ad to see what was on sale that might complement and/or substitute for what I had come up with and of course, how to stretch ingredients over enough meals to use them up.




My last step would be to clip any coupons I would need but there weren't any of value to me this week.

So, how did I come up with this meal plan?

Weekly Meal Plan
Chicken fajitas with guacamole & chips
Grilled chicken salad
Meatloaf with mashed potatoes and salad
Sloppy Joe's
Leftovers
Cheesy turkey bake and salad
Crockpot Shredded BBQ chicken sandwiches

Organic romaine hearts (three in a bag) were on sale "Buy 1 Get 1 Free" so, we'll have a salad as a meal one night for sure and as a side dish two other nights to use them all up. I still have blue cheese vinaigrette dressing, nuts, carrots, tomatoes, and dried cranberries on-hand that we like to use in our salads. Because of the gorgeous, unseasonably warm weather, David wanted to grill this weekend so I will thaw out our last portion of marinated chicken breasts for fajitas and we'll also grill chicken breasts that I'll slather with BBQ sauce the last five minutes to eat in our salad another night. Because I'm volunteering a lot in Emily's classroom this week, I decided to choose super easy meals this week. I'm using our last made-ahead meatloaf with mashed potatoes because Organic yukon gold potatoes were on sale. I have whole wheat buns in the freezer from the last time I stocked up on bread and a can of Manwich sloppy joe sauce so we'll have sloppy joe's with baked sweet potato fries one night. My crockpot shredded BBQ sandwiches are a super easy meal as well that I can prepare in about 10 minutes in the morning that I'll pair with chips and fruit. And of course we always have a leftovers night. I spent today testing a new recipe I found on Pinterest called cheesy chicken bake, though I tweaked it to use ground turkey breast and to my great surprise, the recipe made enough for three portions so, I have one in the fridge ready to bake one night this week and two more that I put in my freezer.

What did I purchase this week?


I spent $153.28 most of which was on all the basics we use each week (milk, deli ham, go-yogurt, fresh fruit) though I did stock up on a few items: extra lean ground beef, normally $5.49/lb on sale "Buy 1 Get 1 Free", which made the 6lbs I purchased only $2.75/lb; Organic tomato-basil pasta sauce, normally $5.99 each on sale $3.99; Organic frozen vegetables 3 @ $6; Burger buns "Buy 1 Get 1 Free"; Quaker oatmeal squares cereal, normally $4.99 on sale 2 @ $4; and Rotel normally $2.19 on sale $0.99.

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