Meal Planning: 5/19 thru 5/25

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 on our meal plan last week so, I adjusted my inventory accordingly. I also reduced my inventory by the 2 portions of ground sirloin because I made and had David grill up mini beef patties ("sliders") for Emily to eat throughout the coming months as she loves cheeseburgers!

Inventory
4 portions ground turkey
1 portions pork chops
2 portions boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 portions flank steak
1 portions made-ahead turkey meatballs
2 portions made-ahead meatloaf
3 portions made-ahead chicken enchiladas verdes
1 portions made-ahead chicken enchiladas original red
1 portions made-ahead smoked pork tenderloin
1 portions made-ahead Tortilla soup
3 portions made-ahead red pepper puree
2 portions mushroom stroganoff sauce
1 portions made-ahead pesto

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.


Weekly Meal Plan

Grilled flank steak over blue cheese dressed salad

Chicken, peach & zucchini kabobs

Chicken enchiladas with chips & salsa

Leftovers

Turkey goulash with salad

Pork tenderloin stuffed herb biscuits

Tequila soaked shrimp tacos

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

David and I both wanted to try a few new recipes this week so, after seeing how I could use up several ingredients I had on-hand (flank steak, sour cream, green onions) I chose grilled flank steak over a salad with home-made blue cheese dressing. I purchased a block of blue cheese and some Organic Romaine hearts and that meal was set. I'm using up the remaining Romaine hearts as a side dish to go with the Turkey goulash, which I had 100% of the ingredients on-hand (whole wheat elbows, ground turkey breast, canned tomato sauce, ground paprika, ground cumin, and the remaining sour cream not needed for the blue cheese dressing). I'm pulling the enchiladas original red from my freezer stash and serving it with some chips & queso as we have Speech therapy and softball this week so I needed a quick meal. I'm using up the remaining buttermilk as well as taking advantage of the $1.00ea. sale on Organic herbs (I purchased sage and thyme) to make herb biscuits that I will serve with sliced, smoked pork tenderloin that I had in my freezer. This was a meal David requested and I'm happy to oblige as it means I don't really have to cook anything, just bake some biscuits that I'm actually going to freeze half of! ;) Another new recipe I am testing is the Tequila-soaked shrimp tacos. Yum. Colossal shrimp, normally $19/lb was on sale $11/lb so I grabbed a pound this week. Corn tortillas were on sale, avacados were on sale, limes were on sale, and cherry tomatoes were on sale so, it was an easy meal to plan. With peaches coming around in the market, we decided to add fresh, grilled peaches to a meal of grilled chicken with apricot-BBQ sauce (I had apricot preserves, BBQ sauce, granulated onion powder, fresh garlic on-hand) and because asparagus was on sale, I'm serving with grilled asparagus. As with every week, we have a leftovers night as well.

What did I purchase this week?

 

Only $104.76 spent this week! I bought our usual, eggs, weekly deli ham, yogurt, and fresh fruit (Organic strawberries, raspberries, and blue berries were Buy 1, Get 1 Free, bing cherries were only $3.99/lb, pears were $0.99/lb, red seedless grapes were $1.99/lb) for the week's breakfasts, lunches, and snacks. I also needed English muffins and corn tortillas (both on sale 2@$4), herb & garlic marinade for the chicken ($1.00 off), Go-gurt for Emily's lunches ($1.88, limit 3), ground turkey breast (normally $8.99ea on sale $4.99, limit 2), and graham crackers (buy 1 get 1 free). Jell-O sugar-free pudding cups were on sale (2@$5), Goldfish crackers were $1.00 off, and Sargento string cheese was 50% off so I purchased those items as well. For my very healthy, gluten-free, lunches, I purchased zucchini and asparagus.