I planned a menu. Did I stick to it? Mostly.
(not this week's menu plan. Although, mmm, hibachi sounds good.)
On the menu planning front, I did improve over last week.
However, on the grocery shopping front, there was little improvement. Ahem.
(Although I did manage another low-spending week.)
So.
To start out the week, I dropped into Costco because I was almost completely out of frozen fruit for smoothies, and I needed some snacky stuff for our Sunday night meal.
I spent $60.55 there on berries, ham, apples, bananas, crackers, 4 pounds of butter, and 2 gallons of milk (I think that's it. I lost my receipt!)
Then I stayed out of the stores until Wednesday, when I had to pick up some individually packaged snacks for the girls' ballet party.
Those cost $7.47. And they reminded me why I almost never buy individually packaged snacks.
That was totally not $7.50 worth of chips.
I also stopped in to Aldi ($31.91) to pick up some necessities, plus supplies for making a big batch of stuffed shells (one for us to eat, one for the freezer.)
But then I ended up not making those.
(More on that in a sec.)
And lastly, yesterday we made plans to go see some Christmas lights and we ended up needing a portable dinner meal. I had to stop at Target anyway to buy an umbrella, so I bought our food needs there.
I spent $40 on clementines, a big box of Goldfish, a package of rolls, 4 bags of flour (on sale for $1.79. Not for our portable dinner. Ha.), a big box of fruit leathers, and potato chips.
So, I'm in at $139.93, which is pretty good considering that I still have uneaten supplies for a double batch of stuffed shells.
The running tally for December:
Week 1: $215.55
Week 2: $114.52
Week 3: $139.93
What did we eat this week?
I mentioned we had a snacky meal on Sunday night, but here's how the rest of the week went.
Monday
We had a rehearsal to go to at night, so the kids and I ate breakfast for dinner and Mr. FG picked up two slices of pizza since he had to go straight to rehearsal from work.
The kids were split on what they wanted, and I only had a little bit of buttermilk anyway, so half of them ate French toast and half ate buttermilk waffles.
I thawed some local sausage too, and fried it up.
(On nights like these, I'm always grateful to have started the day with a fruit/veggie smoothie!)
Tuesday
On Monday, I'd thawed, spatchcocked and salted a chicken, so on Tuesday, I roasted it in my cast-iron pan.
I also made two loaves of French bread, cooked up some acorn squash, and made a green salad.
Wednesday
This was the day I'd planned to make a bunch of stuffed shells.
But my day went kind of bonkers, and anyway, Sonia and Zoe ate at their party, Joshua ate at a friend's house, and that left only Mr. FG, Lisey, and me.
Fortunately I'd made a big batch of Actually Tasty Chicken Broth that morning, I had some leftover chicken from the night before, and I had a few carrots and some celery.
I used all that and some noodles from my cabinet to make a small pot of chicken noodle soup for the three of us, and I made sandwiches with the leftover French bread from the night before.
I filled mine with the garlic pesto jack cheese from Aldi and it was delicious!
Thursday
We ate ham sandwiches, clementines, and chips/crackers/fruit leathers during our trip to see the Christmas lights.
Friday
It's pizza night! Joshua will be with a friend, so I'm going to poll the girls and Mr. FG to see what kind of pizza they might like.
(The last several weeks, everyone has voted for regular crust pizza.)
_________________________
Our week definitely did not go as planned, but I blame it on the hectic weeks before Christmas!
Monday I was home from work sick the strep throat (yuck!), so I threw some chicken breasts in the crockpot to cook throughout the day while I rested. I combined some BBQ sauce, Worcestershire, brown sugar and salt and made some delicious BBQ shredded chicken sandwiches.
Tuesday and Wednesday we had Christmas functions that provided food (and Christmas bonuses, yay!).
Thursday - burgers on the grill with asparagus and buttered noodles.
Tonight - we are taking our daughter and father-in-law to see Christmas lights and will grabbing dinner out 🙂
I hope you're feeling better now!
Still looks like you had a good week!
I'm curious how much you stock the freezer every week? Do you find a good price on something and buy in bulk to put in the freezer? Do you make freezer meals frequently? Or, do you mostly buy what you need week by week? (Sorry for so many questions, but I'm still trying to get a handle on our grocery budget!)
I'm pretty inconsistent with the freezer stocking. I do consistently buy a quarter of a cow every year or so, and that stocks me up on beef. I also buy a bunch of local sausage once a year, from the same farm.
And in the fall, I stock my freezer with applesauce by buying bruised apples and then making and freezing applesauce.
I used to do more freezer stocking before I started shopping at Aldi. Aldi doesn't run sales, so their prices are pretty much the same every day. When I had to rely on rotating store sales, I did more stocking up when things were on sale. The chicken I roasted this week was a rare markdown at Aldi (occasionally they mark down meat when it's getting close to the sell-by date.) So, I bought that on the spur of the moment and put it in the freezer.
I don't do much in the way of freezer meals, mostly because a lot of the stuff we eat doesn't freeze super well.
Never apologize for questions! I don't mind at all. 🙂
If I may offer another perspective:
I stock my freezer constantly but irregularly. By which I mean I'm always on the lookout for a good deal but I don't have a schedule. For example, maybe there's a sale + coupon on cheese sticks and I can get a lot of coupons, so I bought 15 packages and froze them.
My method requires you know if you have space in your freezer, and what a good price is.
It's important to know what's in your freezer or your good prices won't mean a thing. I keep a list, crossing off foods as I eat them, and take inventory every few months.
Yep, that's how I operated before I had Aldi.
Ugh, we finally moved into our house after four weeks of hotels/my parents, so this was the first week in TOO long that I actually shopped/cooked! We had basic meals, spaghetti, tacos, pizza, bratwurst, etc. but after all the convenience foods and eating out we have been doing, they felt like gourmet dinners!
It does feel wonderful to start cooking again after eating out. When we go away for even a week, I get so tired of eating out. It's nice at first, but I start to miss all the fresh veggies and fruit that we typically eat at home.
Groceries shopping was almost non-existant this last week and it will be none at all this week, because hubby and kids are leaving town tomorrow and I am following on the 24th. So I will just eat whatever is left in the fridge+pantry for the next 5 days.
Menu this week was better!
I made meatballs (+ sides), hubby made salmon (+ sides), tonight is chicken (+ sides), and I made a potatoes+sausages+carrots casserole.
I will have to use my imagination for the coming 5 days because, like I said, there is not much left in the fridge, and I commited to NOT go to the restaurant during this time. I do have a lot of potatoes, carrots, pasta, canned salmon and eggs, so I'm good!
Have a great day!
Can you please do a post on freezer stocking/cooking? 🙂
We had:
Sunday: steaks/chicken on the grill w/baked sweet potatoes and some sort of veggie (don't remember)
Monday: spaghetti and meatballs
Tuesday: crockpot barbecued chicken
Wednesday: salmon w/mango sauce
Thursday: Chipotle night ( a knock off of Chipotle's burrito bowls w/chipoltle chicken, sauteed onions, corn, cheese, brown rice, home-made guacamole, and green beans.
Friday: No idea...yet!
Good intentions that went slightly awry, for us. We ate:
--Hungarian chicken and mushrooms paprikas, once with noodles and once with bread
--spanakorizo with a side of roasted mushrooms
I'm sure we ate every day, but it was an odd week of low appetites on top of an office party (=snacky dinner) on Monday. Tonight I'm planning for a celebratory batch of spaghetti carbonara (it's my last work day of the year, woohoo!) to be served with oranges for dessert, but honestly who knows?
Some food waste: the last bits of ham that weren't frozen (a LOT of it was, but I kept out a little too much for sandwiches that I never made), one last bowl of chili with rice (because hubs canNOT eat the last of something to save his life...lol), and some radishes I'd roasted but didn't like as much as when I'd grated and "hashbrowned" them.
The real loss this week was lunches: one of our dogs enjoyed some counter-surfed snacks of my husband's sandwich bread, which means I wasn't able to make lunches after Monday. (No time to buy a replacement loaf or make one this week.) Luckily a co-worker treated him one day, and I'm pretty sure he didn't eat the other two days that were affected, because that's how he rolls on the job site. Finally got a loaf yesterday and ended the week on a high note.
Let me take a shot at guessing next weeks menu, starting with Friday.
Friday Turkey and Ham and all the trimmings. Apple pie, Sweet potato pie and Ice cream.
Sat leftover Turkey and Ham
Sun Ditto.
Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri Ditto.
Sat Pizza.
🙂
Kidding Kristen. I hope you and Mr FG and all the little FG's have a really wonderful Christmas.
David & Julia.
Merry Christmas to you too!
Hi Kristen,
May I ask you what kind of pizza cheese you use? I usually use the shredded ones, but they have a lot of additives. A couple of times I shredded my own mozzarella log but it didn't come out well!!
I almost never buy the pre-shredded stuff because it tends to be more expensive. I just buy blocks of mozzarella and shred them myself. I usually use my hand grater, but if it's a pretty soft hunk of mozzarella, the food processor makes pretty quick work of it.
My problem was that the pizza was too soggy. Do you buy low moisture mozzarella.
And also is mozzarella the only cheese you top your pizza with?
Thanks
I really appreciate that you write about when things don't go as planned, but you just modify your plans instead of throwing up your hands and ordering takeout. Very inspiring. Thanks!
Your pizza always looks so much yummier than mine. I need you to fix my pizza skills like you did my bread skills.
I didn't set foot in one single store this week. Hubs grabbed a loaf of bread at some point but otherwise it was eating from the pantry and freezer which was actually really great.
Sunday- roasted chicken, sourdough stuffing, squash and applesauce
Monday- spaghetti with local sausage, salad, garlic bread
Tuesday- several pints of frozen homemade soup with grilled cheese and fruit
Wednesday- I think it was veggie burgers and hotdogs with the last of some weird FF and slaw
Thursday- pancakes and bacon and melon
Last night- homemade pizza and veggie sticks
We had very little food waste this week as a result and after an expensive start to the month, a very slim week will help keep my grocery budget in check for the final third of the month. Thanks again for these posts!!
Ooh, good for you!
This week went much better than last week!
Last Saturday night I made brine for a pork roast, which we had Sunday night.
Monday nights I'm on my own, and made salmon (which the hubs can't stand). I did a little stirfry with broccoli and peanuts - YUM.
Tuesday - curried butternut squash soup from the freezer stash, plus salad.
Wednesday - an apple and almonds in the car on the way from work to see our niece in the church Christmas pagaent.
Thursday - the hubs and I went out for Indian food.
Friday - chicken/spinach enchiladas from the freezer stash, fresh pineapple.
When I was raising my 3 children, meal planning was a MUST! I was a SAHM and my hubs only got paid once a month. So... bills and a big grocery shopping early in the month is what I did, then only hit the grocery other times for milk, produce, etc.
By meal planning for a month at time, my big shopping was made much easier. Plus, the kids loved looking at the menu (posted on the fridge) everyday before heading out to school. I also let each of them plan a meal each week...which they loved!
Now that we're empty nesters, I don't meal plan anymore, but still do buy meat & canned tomatoes/veggies in bulk at Costco/Sam's.
My menu planning went well this week. I will definitely be trying your chicken noodle soup recipe. It looks so delicious and there is nothing better than homemade soup on these frigid days.
I made homemade bean soup this week:
http://frugalityfimc.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-nutritious-easy-cheap-meal.html
Well, I hang my head in shame -- not very frugal this week 🙁 Last week of school, too much stuff to buy and hand out -- am seriously looking at all these ideas for doing better next year (bake stuff!!) for co workers and starting early to get deals for the stuff I have to buy. Love to read everyone's entries and, FG, your "bad" week is so inspiring! Gives me hope that I can go to my freezer instead of the store !!
Foodwise, on Sunday night I made a huge cheap batch of chalupa with marked down beans (box cutter slit the plastic bag = 1 lb. red beans for 90 cents. The recipe was on the back of said bag) and a very cheap cut of pork. Sooo much food for about 7 bucks -- had to freeze at least half of it. This was dinner most days (with tortillas and salad or broccoli) except for:
1 dinner out with Lovely Grown Up Daughter and
1 night to use up mushrooms and tortilla in a egg burrito for me. Plus aging broccoli, sigh.
Lunches were salads I took to work except for Friday which was a right old bacchanalia of treats and foodstuffs as we celebrated end of term -- yay!
Now, off on a day trip to visit old friend 2 -3 hours away. Probably not frugal but definitely worth it -- cheers!
I hope you had a wonderful day with your friend! Relationships are one of the things I always think are completely worth splurging for.
not a dis at at but a question. I thought you bought crackers from Aldi. ARen't the crackers from Costco more expensive?
Yup, they are. But I needed them for our snacky dinner that night and Costco is where I was at, so Costco crackers it was!
I've been trying out meal planning. The thing that seems to be working really well is to buy more of stuff like meat when it goes on sale, portioning it and freezing it. I find that keeping a basic stock of things like flour, oatmeal, eggs, butter, milk etc I can make just about anything. With a good choice of basic things meals are really easy.