Meal Planning: 3/17 thru 3/23

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 we planned for so I reduced my inventory by last week's meal plan.

Inventory
7 portions ground turkey
1 portions porkchops
5 portions boneless, skinless chicken breasts
6 portions ground sirloin
1 portions flank steak
1 portions pork baby back ribs
1 portions made-ahead lasagna
1 portions made-ahead chicken enchiladas original red
2 portions made-ahead cheesy turkey bake
2 portions made-ahead marinated chicken fajitas
1 portions made-ahead meatloaf
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 could use. 

Weekly Meal Plan
Turkey chili with cornbread

Grilled chicken with asparagus

Meatball subs

Leftovers

Cheesy turkey bake with a salad

Enchiladas

Girl's Night Out

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

Emily has decided she no longer hates spaghetti and meatballs so, I going to use one portion of ground turkey to make meatballs for us to have meatball subs one night and Emily to have meatballs for dinner herself 2+ nights this week. I have jarred pasta sauce, fresh mozerella on-hand and only needed to purchase sub rolls and panko bread crumbs. Another portion of ground turkey will be used to make a quick and easy turkey chili with home-made cornbread to go with it. I have all the seasonings on-hand as well as all the ingredients to make cornbread so this meal cost me nothing at the store this week. We always grill chicken over the weekend so a meal of grilled chicken with a side of grilled asparagus is on my menu. I chose asparagus because it's in season, cheap, and looked really beautiful! I'm pulling one of my made-ahead cheesy turkey bakes out of my freezer for a quick meal on a night this week I know David will be working late. I'm also using up our last made-ahead enchiladas original red on the night I'm at the school volunteering. A leftovers night has been added as always and Girl's Night Out will have David eating leftovers at home while I enjoy a meal out.

What did I purchase this week?

 

 

I spent $99.12 and bought very little in the way of ingredients for the meals on my meal plan and more so items offered at great prices. Some items I couldn't pass up that I no longer have a stock pile of included: Bertolli olive oils (Buy 1 Get 1 Free), Quaker oatmeal (Buy 1 Get 1 Free), Velveeta (normally $9.99 on sale $6.99, limit 2), Quaker granola bars (normally $4.89, on sale $1.88, limit 4), Tostitos tortilla chips (regulary $3.29, on sale $1.99), Mission 10ct. tortillas (normally $2.49, on sale $0.99), and Safeway brand spices (Buy 2, Get 1 Free). I purchased the tortillas as well as fresh cilantro and sour cream to combine with the jars of verde sauce I have on-hand to make a few more made-ahead enchiladas Verdes to add to my freezer stash. Oranges, cucumber, organic strawberries, and grapes were all on sale so those were purchase for this week's breakfasts, lunches, and snacks. Milk, yogurt, string cheese, deli meat, popcorn, and almonds were also purchased.