Grocery Report/Menu Plan | Studies in avoiding the grocery store

On Saturdays, I share my menu plan for the upcoming week along with a photo of my groceries and a tally of my spending. My goal is to spend $100/week for our food, toiletries, and cleaning products. I’m currently in the midst of trying to buy more local, sustainably-produced food while sticking to my budget. Can it be done? I don’t know, but I’m going to try, and I’ll share what I learn as I go along.

Grocery Shopping

I didn’t purposely shop for two weeks when I went shopping the last time, but I’m happy to report that I’ve managed to go the whole week without really grocery shopping.

Nice.

I just made a quick stop into Aldi to pick up some milk, oranges, and clementines, and a few other things, and then we were good to go for the rest of the week. The meals I made used a lot of stuff I had on hand, and I found some goodies buried in the freezer that helped us get through.

Of course, this means I really do need to go grocery shopping on Monday, but I’m pleased to have put it off for a week.

By the way, I’ve been shopping early in the week recently, which means these posts are usually reporting on shopping that’s been done almost a week ago.

That sounds awfully confusing.

I used to shop on Thursdays or Fridays and then report on Saturdays, but I’ve been trying a new routine of shopping earlier in the week, and I think I like that better so far.

You probably didn’t need to know all that, huh?

Anyway! The long and short of it is that I only spent $35 on groceries this week, which means that my January grocery budget is lookin’ good.

Also, my fridge is lookin’ nice and empty, which is as it should be prior to a grocery shopping trip.

The Meal Plan

Since Mr. FG works second shift, we eat our dinner meal at noon during the week, and at night on the weekends. And our lunch meal happens at night during the week and at noon on the weekends.

We do eat breakfast in the morning, though, all week long!

Breakfast options are homemade yogurt, granola, scrambled eggs, oatmeal, fruit, and cereal.

Lunches will be comprised of sandwiches made with whole wheat bread, homemade yogurt, yogurt smoothies, cottage cheese, fruit, raw veggies, nuts, cheese, and leftovers as necessary.

Here’s the dinner meal plan:

Saturday

• Takeout date night for Mr. FG and me, something easy for the kids

Sunday

• French Toast. And I’m thinking about going all fancy and making Challah especially so that we can use it for French Toast.
• local sausage
• OJ

Monday

• Fish Sandwiches
• Whatever produce still happens to be lurking about!

Tuesday

• Tortilla Soup (this got bumped)
• Cornmeal Loaves
• green salad

Wednesday

• Panini sandwiches
• Pan-Roasted Green Beans
• grapefruit halves

Thursday

• Aussie Chicken
• Spinach Salad
• I think I might try these soft breadsticks (except, of course, I’ll make the dough myself because I don’t own a bread machine!)

Friday

• Thin Crust Pizza. This got bumped last week because I was busy giving my talk at the mom’s meeting, so when I got home, I made pizza bagels instead. Those are so great for days when you’re a bit rushed.

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Today’s 365 post: This is an unusual January sight.

Joshua’s 365 post: Bird Good, Bird Bad