Meal Planning: 2/25 thru 3/2

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. We ate everything from last week's meal plan so, I only adjusted my inventory down but what we ate and increased it by what I purchased.

Inventory
8 portions ground turkey
1 portions porkchops
7 portions boneless, skinless chicken breasts
8 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
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 and there was one, for Grand's biscuits. At only $0.99 and an expiration date of May, I bought the limit of 4 as we love them for breakfast!

Weekly Meal Plan

Grilled chicken with grilled asparagus and pan-fried smashed potatoes

Chili corn chip pie (aka Frito Pie)**

Leftovers

Chicken with mustard sauce and a salad**

Bacon corn chowder with shrimp**

Two cheese linguini with chicken and a salad**

Pizza delivery for Family Game Night

**I'll be adding these recipes to my blog soon!

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

We always grill something on the weekend and, as you've probably noticed from my weekly meal plans over the last couple of years, I almost always have a grilled chicken meal for the night we grill and then, I save some of the chicken to use in a future meal, which is the two cheese linguini with chicken I'm making (I have the linguini and Parmesan cheese, just had to purchase mascarpone and fresh basil). I have potatoes leftover from last week and asparagus was an amazing deal so I purchased it to round out the meal. Frito's were "buy 1 get 1 free" and combined with the rotel I stocked up on last week and the remaining ingredients I had on-hand, I had everything for this new Frito pie recipe I'm trying out. David requested this chicken with mustard sauce I made a few months ago, which was great with me as I have all the ingredients on-hand already (including romaine lettuce leftover from last week for a side salad) so this meal cost me nothing at the grocery store this week. Bacon corn chowder with shrimp was added because shrimp was an excellent buy, I have several packages of bacon in my freezer I had stocked up on in past months and I have a bag of frozen corn I've been trying to find a reason to use. A leftovers night is always included and this week we are also have pizza delivered for our new, weekly family game night we have on Friday nights.

What did I purchase this week?

I needed very few ingredients this week but because of the amazing deals, I stocked up and spent just over $180. Chips have a long shelf-life and were "buy 1 get 1 free" so I bought tortilla chips, Cheetos, and Frito's. My favorite Lucerne shredded cheeses (Mozzarella, Monterrey Jack, and four cheese Mexican blend) were $3.00 off and don't expire until June so I bought one of each. Also, butter was on sale 2@$5 (almost 50% off!) and doesn't expire until May so I stocked up. Though $3.99 isn't the best price I've seen on Kraft singles, we were out and it's the only way to make a grilled cheese sandwich which Emily eats for dinner twice a week. Emily's favorite snacks in her lunch include Cheez-its and Wheat Thins and Fig Newton cookies and all three were "buy 1 get 1 free" (mix and match). Another great item to stock up on is La Victoria salsa verde (I make chicken enchiladas with this stuff) at 2@$4 (40% off!). We didn't need another box of Saltine crackers nor another package of Jell-O but they were too good of a price to pass up and they won't spoil before we can use them. Of course I purchased four cans of Grands biscuits (they don't expire until late April) at only $0.99 each and I also grabbed a box of Diamond crystal Kosher salt which was $2.50 off. As I do every week, I also purchased fresh fruit for our breakfast and lunches, eggs, deli ham, and yogurt. Oh, and did you notice the chocolate chips and giant marshmallows? Yeah, those are for the chocolate chip pancakes Emily asked me to make for her on Sunday and to roast over the charcoal pit fire while David grills chicken. Emily is dying to go camping but for now she has to settle. :)

Check out these and all my recipes on the right-hand side of this page under From My Kitchen!