Meal Planning: 3/7 thru 3/13

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
6 portions boneless, skinless chicken breasts
5 portions ground sirloin
1 portions flank steak
1 portions pork baby back ribs
1 portions brats
1 portions made-ahead chicken enchiladas original red
1 portions made-ahead chicken enchiladas Verdes
1 portions made-ahead cheesy turkey bake
2 portions made-ahead marinated chicken fajitas
1 portions made-ahead tomato-basil spaghetti sauce
1 portions made-ahead turkey meatballs

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. None to clip BUT I did have my $10 coupon I earned from last week's purchases. You can view that information HERE.

Weekly Meal Plan

Chicken fajitas with chips & guacamole

Spaghetti with meatballs

Turkey sliders with baked sweet potato fries

Leftovers

Beef stroganoff with a salad

Roasted red pepper Alfredo with a salad

Tortilla soup

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

Spring break from Kindergarten is over so, it's back to our hectic schedule come Monday! I wanted to go easy on myself as getting us all back into our routine is going to be hard enough so, I chose several things from my freezer including: the made-ahead portion of meatballs and spaghetti sauce I have left for one meal (already have the pasta on-hand), the made-ahead marinated chicken fajitas (I purchased lettuce, tortillas only for this meal as I had everything else on-hand), and a container of roasted red pepper puree (I forgot to add that to my inventory, apparently!) for an easy meal of Roasted red pepper Alfredo with shrimp (on sale so I purchased a pound!) with a side salad (I have all other ingredients on-hand!). Emily loves burgers and I have recently started to make slider-sized turkey patties for her so, I'll make an entire package of ground turkey's worth so we'll have a weeknight meal of turkey sliders with sweet potato fries (have those on-hand) and have enough leftover for her this next month. I've been craving Stroganoff and was recently sent a recipe that I've decided to test out this week. I only need to purchase egg noodles for this meal and we'll finish off the lettuce with a side salad. We have more rainy cold weather forecasted this week so a quick, crock pot meal of Tortilla soup was a no-brainer for this week and all I needed to purchase was fresh cilantro as I had everything else on-hand. Lastly, we always have a leftovers/fendforyourself night.

What did I purchase this week?

 

 I spent $111.04 on our weekly milk, yogurt, deli ham and fresh produce for the week's breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners plus I stocked up on some great deals. Because oranges, pineapple, and grapes were on sale, those are the fruits I purchased. I purchased pickles (Buy1 Get1 Free), Wheat Thins toasted chips & original crackers (Buy1 Get1 Free), Tostito's chips (2@$5), Alexis brand hasbrowns (2@$5), frozen corn & peas (normally $2.99 on sale $0.99), red bell peppers (normally $3.99ea on sale 10@$10), and Frosted mini-wheats cereal (normally $4.49 on sale 2@$5). I also needed tortillas for fajitas, mini slider buns for burgers, raw almonds for snacks, and organic russet potatoes for easy meals of baked potato for me during the week.