Meal Planning: 5/5 thru 5/11

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.
__________________________________________________________________________

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 didn't manage to eat everything from last week's meal plan because of a PTA meeting I forgot about and David being ill (we had cereal/leftovers those two nights) so I reduced my inventory only by the meals we did eat and added the Hawaiian burgers and the Chick-fil-a burgers to this week's meal plan. I bought two packages, four portions of ground turkey breast today so, I increased my inventory accordingly.

Inventory
6 portions ground turkey
1 portions pork chops
7 portions boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 portions ground sirloin
1 portions flank steak
1 portions pork baby back ribs
1 portions made-ahead turkey meatballs
2 portions made-ahead meatloaf
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

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. The weekly ad was full of them this week!




Weekly Meal Plan

Grilled chicken with kale & bacon quinoa mac
Baby back ribs with balsamic potato salad
Hawaiian burgers with baked tater tots
Chick-fil-a burgers
Leftovers or order take-out for Family Game Night
Bacon corn chowder with grilled shrimp
Turkey bolognese and spinach salad

So, how did I come up with this meal plan? 
We grill every weekend and almost always have a grilled chicken meal on our meal plan. I decided to pair it with a kale and bacon Qunioa mac because I have really started to love living a more gluten-free lifestyle and wanted my family to experience it as well. I had Quinoa elbow pasta on hand, bacon was "buy 1 get 1 free", the extra sharp cheddar I wanted to use was on a "buy 1 get 1 free" sale as well and pre-chopped, triple washed kale was $1.00 off. We invited friends an early Sunday dinner of smoked baby back ribs which I served with a side of balsamic potato salad. It's not your mama's potato salad with mayo and onion & celery. This is more of a balsamic dressing poured over warm, boiled new potatoes. I'll post the recipe this week. This side dish only cost me capers and the potatoes as I had all other ingredients on hand. Hawaiian burgers and Chick-fil-a sandwiches are added back this week because we didn't eat them last week. I have all ingredients on hand for these meals. With corn on the cob being on sale 6@$2 I had David grill it all next to the chicken on Saturday night, stripped it from the cob and am making our favorite bacon corn chowder with it! I had celery on hand and will use up the remaining one package of bacon. I needed half & half, onion, Better than Bouillon chicken base to complete the soup as I had all other ingredients on hand. Shrimp already de-veined and peeled were 50% off so I bought enough (1/2lb) to make this soup and another 1/2lb to make a garlic herb cous cous for me to eat for lunch this week. I will be posting that recipe as well! To use up the remaining onion and celery as well as a good portion of the baby spinach I purchased today, I'm making a new recipe called Turkey bolognese. Ground turkey was on sale "buy 1 get 1 free", zucchini was also on sale $0.79/lb, roma tomatoes were on sale $0.99/lb so I purchased those things to make the dish. I have all other ingredients including whole wheat fettuccini on hand.

What did I purchase this week?
 

I busted through my budget for the month and I'm okay with that as we were running low on many things that were on sale that I chose to spend the money to stock up on. I spent $231.40 this week. Besides our weekly milk, yogurt, deli meat, and fresh fruit (organic raspberries, organic blueberries, organic strawberries, bananas, pears were all on sale!), I stocked up on the following that were on sale "buy 1 get 1 free": Tostitos tortilla chips, Sargento cheddar cheese sticks, O organic flaxseed waffles, O organic unsweetened apple sauce 4pk, Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips, Lucerne cheese products (i bought shredded Monterey Jack and got block extrasharp cheddar free). I had coupons for Go-gurt, Verdes salsa, taco shells, canned beans, sweet potato fries, and eggs so I purchased the limit on those items as well. Things we were out of that were discounted enough for me to chose to purchase this week instead of waiting for a possible better sale in a few weeks include: tortilla strips (to top tortilla soup!), almond milk (breakfast smoothies), rolled oats, Boboli pizza sauce, grated Parmesan cheese, sugar-free pudding, Mini burger buns, marinade, and all the ingredients for enchilads Verdes (corn tortillas, limes, cilantro, sour cream). Basil was on sale as were pine nuts so I purchased those to make pesto that I like to mix with quinoa for lunch and to freeze for future use. I'm experimenting with two new recipes this week: a shrimp & herb cous cous and a mushroom barley, both I'm excited to try to have in my toolbox for weekly lunches, which required me to purchase bell peppers (still on sale $1.00ea), mushrooms (on sale $2.00ea). Coconut milk was discounted 50% and Sweet chili sauce was $1.50 off so, I purchased those two ingredients to make coconut chicken strips, a new recipe I'm going to test, in the future. I like to roast broccoli to have for Emily and I throughout the week (my lunch, her dinner) and it was on sale $0.99/lb) so I purchased it as well. 
 
Y'all know I'm a huge fan of "stretching" aka using up all ingredients so there's no waste! In order to use up the rest of the kale and one of the 18ct eggs I bought, I made a frittata with sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese (leftover from weeks past) that I'll have for breakfast a few times this week and a possible lunch. To use up the remaining baby spinach, I will be eating spinach salad one day for lunch, I mixed in 1 cup of it into baked mini chorizo frittatas (Soy chorizo was on sale $0.99ea), and I sauteed 2 cups of it and mixed it in with a pineapple and green chili cous cous I made to use up the remaining pineapple I had from last week.

Okay I think that's it. I'll work on getting as many of these recipes up on my blog as quickly as I can!

You can find [most] all of my recipes in the sidebar (----> to the right) under "From My Kitchen".

Comments

  1. EEEEKKK! I'm excited for {{Grilled chicken with kale & bacon quinoa mac}} <<<<---- recipe!! :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular Posts