Grocery Spending and Menu Plan-2.21

I forgot a few essentials(like butter and toilet paper!) when I went shopping last week, so I made a $12 stop-gap trip to Aldi. This meant that I only had $68 to work with this week.

Most of the meat we’re eating this week is coming from my freezer stash, excepting the Italian sausage, which is going into the soup for Sunday. In fact, a large portion of the ingredients for our meals this week are coming from my pantry or freezer.

I spent $54.44 at Aldi, and then instead of going to Weis, I went to Shoppers Food Warehouse because they had the Italian sausage on sale. I spent $16.81 there(I bought sausage, brown rice, tortellini, onions, ginger root and potatoes, which were all things that Aldi doesn’t carry. And I swear that I did not buy the rice and potatoes because of the discussion in the comments after last week’s menu! lol It just so happened we needed both items.).

That’s $71.25 altogether, which would be fine except that I made that $12 trip early in the week. Adding that in puts me at $83.25, which is $3.25 over my goal. However, after shopping last week I was still under budget by $2.25 for the month. And that means that currently, I’m only over budget this month by $1…yay! I can easily make that up next week. So, I’m shooting for $79 or less next week. 😉

As a reminder(because I get this question a lot), the $80 budget includes all of our toiletries and cleaning products as well as the food for all of our meals.

For breakfast this week, we’ll have oranges, bananas, muffins, oatmeal, cold cereal, and bagels(not all on one day, obviously!). Lunch will be a combination of leftovers, whole wheat bread, yogurt, baby carrots, and fruit.

And here’s what we’ll be eating at dinnertime.

Saturday(Joshua is at a friend’s house, and we’re sort of having a clean the freezer night)

• Beef Ravioli
• Pasta with cilantro pesto(me)
• corn(all of us)
• fresh strawberries(all of us)
• misc. bread from the freezer(all of us)

Sunday(my in-laws are coming over for a birthday celebration. )

• Green Salad
• Tortellini Soup
• French Bread
• Cherry Cheesecake

Monday

• Swiss Mushroom Chicken
• Potato Rolls
• Green Salad

Tuesday

• Shrimp and Vegetable Stir-Fry with brown rice(veggies will be carrots, broccoli, and green onions)
• Grapefruit halves

Wednesday

• Chicken Pasta Primavera(I use fresh vegetables instead of the frozen the recipe suggests, and I grill the chicken instead of sauteeing it in the pan)
• Garlic Bread(I have a ridiculous number of baguettes to use up)

Thursday

• Onion Beef Au Jus(I use a top sirloin roast instead of a rump roast, as per Cook’s Illustrated) on french bread
• fruit salad

Friday

• Grilled Pizza
• green salad