Meal Plan/Prep Monday

February 28, 2023February 28, 2023 / healthbuddymelissa / Leave a comment

But, on Tuesday, lol. I am kind of consolidating several topics into one weekly post that has to do with budgeting, pantry challenges, budget meals, meal planning, and prepping. I will try my best to always post these on Monday.

This particular meal plan actually began this past Saturday and will end on Friday. So, even though I will do the post on Monday, a few days may have gone by. The purpose of these posts is to help you find ways to plan meals for your family while sticking to a budget. We budget our food because of several reasons, to save money, avoid food waste, and just be reasonable with what we need and don’t need. Our weekly budget for 3 adults, and sometimes we have family or friends for dinner, is 100 dollars per week. We have had to adjust it a few times since I first started last fall, due to inflation. This is only for food and does not include other household items in the budget.

Here are some tips that help me to stay on budget.

Shop with grocery pickup instead of going into the store. I was doing this all the time, but sometimes I get annoyed with their choices of fresh food, so now I am back in the store.
I know you have heard this one before, shop the sales, and shop in season. While I agree with this, I don’t always do this. Just because hot dogs are buy one get one free does not mean we should be eating hot dogs all week. If your goal is to eat somewhat healthy and stay on a budget, it may be a little bit harder.
Buy what you know your family will eat. Don’t buy something just because it is a good deal and then you throw it away because no one really wants it.
Yes, beans are more affordable than meat. But, are you going to eat them? No one in my house will consistently eat beans several days a week. Yes, we would be starving if we had to. So, they are not more affordable in my house. They are just going to go to waste.
Make a list and stick to it, even if there is a good sale.
Shop your pantry first and try to find new recipes or ways to use items that maybe are not the favorites of the house.
Even if you don’t need to spend your budget each week, 100 dollars for me, do it anyway and have a stocked pantry for when you can’t have that money that week.
Skip the junk food. I know I love potato chips too, but with some simple prep work, you can have fruit and veggies all cut up and ready to snack on. Plus, fruit and veggies, for the most part, are cheaper than potato chips and other snack items. Don’t worry we eat processed foods too, though I do try very hard to limit them. You will read more about that in the menu plan.
Buy family packs of meats and then split them up into smaller portions. One portion per person per bag. Learn what proper portions are. It will save you a lot of money.
Don’t take children or spouses shopping with you. Just trust me.

You will see my full Walmart grocery haul. I don’t always shop at Walmart but I do find they have the best prices right now for my area. I live in Florida, so your prices may be more or less. I will share the cost of each dinner meal for the night. I don’t meal plan breakfast or lunch. No one generally eats breakfast, but there are always options for it. Lunch is a salad, sandwich, or soup. Last Summer I did some posts on pantry kits for hurricane prep or any disaster. I had to use one today, so it didn’t expire. I will be doing more of those soon, as hurricane season is coming fast. The prices below do not include condiments, butter, oil, etc. They are pennies on the dollar and I am not going to figure that out.

Some of the items in the meal plan I already had on hand. So, I will share the price from the Walmart app that I set up my grocery pickup on. This week I only spent 91 dollars, but last week I went over by 20 dollars, so I tried to even it out. See #10 above. I do not drink soda and I feel it is a big waste of money. See #10 above, lol.

We almost always have some kind of fresh fruit, salad fixings, and canned or frozen veggies.

Saturday: pizza. On the eves that I work, even though my husband is a fabulous cook, they often want frozen pizza. One pizza feeds them both and sometimes I come home to a piece saved for me. Cost of this meal $3.98 I do not like most frozen pizzas, but this one is OK. So, that is definitely a budget meal. They can add fruit or salad if they want to, but they won’t, lol.

Sunday: Hot dogs on a bun with Cesar salad. Ok this one is a little more expensive, but I was at work and I don’t really eat hot dogs, so there were hot dogs for lunch the next day too. This meal is right around 10 dollars for all of the items. We buy the family-size Cesar Salad kit at WM and it feeds all 3 of us, plus some leftovers for the next day.

Monday: I worked the opposite shift this day, so I was pooped. We had an easy ravioli with sauce and garlic bread. Ravioli was 4.27 which is a shame of a price, it used to be so much more affordable, with sauce at 2.24, and garlic bread at 2.24. You could choose a less expensive sauce, and Dollar Tree has garlic bread for 1.25. The total for our meal was 8.75 But, there were again leftovers to have for lunch today.

Tuesday: Today, is my first day off of the week, so we will eat a properly cooked meal. Chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. The green beans need to be used up before they expire. We used to always buy chicken breast, but I have switched to chicken thighs because they cost less and they don’t dry out as easily when cooking. I very much prefer free-range chicken and or organic. But, it does not fit in a budget right now. I buy the family pack which will range from 11-15 dollars and I split them up into smaller bags with proper portion sizes for each of us. Then I stick them in the freezer. I can get 5 meals out of that price range, which is very economical. So, even if I go with the higher price of 15 dollars for the full pack divided into 5 packs, that is 3 dollars worth of chicken for this meal. My daughter loves the Idahoan instant mashed potatoes, and you know what they are easier too. They have gone up too. I used to get them for 99 cents, but now they are 1.44 The can of green beans is 50 cents. So, the total for this meal is 4.94, and as you can see this real meal is less than the ravioli or hot dog meals. I might even throw on some gravy if I have it on hand.

Wednesday: Breakfast for dinner. I love breakfast for dinner. It is not the healthiest option but it is splendid. I always have a banana, orange, or apple on hand. Pancakes, sausage patties, and fruit for those that will eat it, so me. The pancake mix is 1.98 because I buy the Great Value brand, the sausage patties were 2.76 and I buy bananas in bunches, but according to the app they are 27 cents each. So, we will go with that. I will probably eat an orange, as well. One orange is 88 cents. Those pancakes we have had for three meals now, so that is an awesome deal. This meal will cost 5.89 a little bit more if my husband decides he wants fruit. Technically, less because the pancake mix is for more than one meal, but you get the idea.

Thursday: Chicken and rice bake with broccoli. I have not exactly decided how I want to make this yet, so the price is an estimate for the main ingredients. I already have cheese on hand and I buy it in a block and shred it myself. There may or may not be a condensed soup involved. The chicken, just like above is from my bulk chicken pack so 3 dollars, brown rice is 7 cents per serving and I make 6 servings so a whopping 42 cents, and the broccoli I buy frozen at 98 cents. This meal will cost you a whopping 4.05! Again, a homecooked meal is much cheaper than processed food items.

Friday: I work again, so another frozen pizza at 3.98

That will round out the week. We are having family over the weekend and we bought an extra turkey at Thanksgiving when they were at rock bottom price. We need to use that up before it gets too hot to run the oven. So, Saturday will be Thanksgiving in March.

Where I currently work, they feed me. It is not always a healthy option for me, so I always have fruit and a sandwich with me just in case they don’t have a salad or other option I may like and find acceptable. My husband brown bags it for lunch. You will see in the grocery haul, I allow for some snack items. Everybody can pick a reasonably priced item. But, once it is gone it is gone for the week. You will see not all of the items that I purchased this week were eaten. That is because I have items I need to use up in my fridge, freezer, and pantry. We very often eat the Cesar Salad, mentioned above as a whole meal, especially during the hot months. At 4.98 and it feeds all 3 of us, it is a good deal.

Tomorrow starts Kidney Awareness month, my favorite month to share, and I will be looking for new information to share.

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Extreme Grocery Budget Challenge Week #14 Dollar General

April 13, 2022 / healthbuddymelissa / Leave a comment

Hello, hello! Before I start my grocery haul for this week I want to remind my regular readers that the Kidney Class will begin again, after I take the updated class. It might be a couple of weeks, as I have a lot going on in other areas, but I will get to it.

This week, as promised, I decided to take my $75 dollar weekly food budget and head to Dollar General. Now, a few things to note. I was not optimistic at all as to how this would go. I either thought it would cost way more, or I would get cheap less quality food. I live in a very small town in rural Florida. There is a Dollar General in almost every town around me. About 25 minutes from me there is a Dollar General Market, which really is just like a small supermarket. You can get fresh fruit, veggies, and meat. But, I am talking about a regular Dollar General that has some freezer stuff, and the one where I live actually has a tiny area for fresh fruit and veggies. In my very tiny town we also have a Family Dollar, more on that in a minute, a small Hitchcock’s, and a Sun Stop which is really a gas station with a grocery, and deli section. I will hit all four of them, eventually with my budget.

This budget began as a 21 dollar per person budget, or 63 dollars per week. It also was a pantry challenge to see if someone like me, with CKD, could eat shelf stable foods and still feel well. That only took a couple of weeks to decide no, that is not possible. Everything is so expensive now, that I had to raise my weekly budget to 75 dollars. This is only for food, and it is to save money, spend down debt, not make new debt, avoid food waste, and just learn to be more wise with our money. I have to say, so far it has been successful, and with smart food choices, and portion control, it has not effected my health.

Dollar General is quite small, and buying groceries at these types of stores is odd, because most people probably go in and just buy a few things. The self checkout area is super tiny, and there is not a lot of place in the regular checkout, only one, to put groceries. But, we made it work, albeit with people looking at us strange. You are not going to get a huge selection, and honestly I am ok with that. Too many choices is just a pain to me.

I was pleasantly surprised by the small area of fresh fruit and veg. The grapes were way too expensive for me, but they looked good. I did get a bagged salad, some roma tomatoes, and white onions. These prices were comparable to Walmart, maybe a smidge higher. But, to not have to travel the 12 miles to Walmart is a plus. I noticed that the meat section was not horrible. I could get burger patties, ground beef, chicken breast, sausage, and various breakfast meats. I am not going to ever get organic, grass-fed meats in this town, but it is meat. The chicken breast was the frozen kind, like you can get at Walmart. The price for 2 pounds I think was 9.50. But, I had to run into Family Dollar because DG did not have the Idahoan potatoes, and the same size chicken breast was 7.50 there. I did not need any chicken and there were only a few bags left, so I did not buy any. They had no ground turkey at all, which was kind of disappointing. Family Dollar did not either. There were whole freezer sections where food had been sold out.

The dairy section was also not too bad. I expected just cheap imitation cheese, but there was actual real cheese and the price was not bad. I did need milk, and that was $4.50 which I think is way too much. I don’t drink milk, so it will last close to a week. I still have shredded cheese from last week, so I didn’t buy any more. I probably will never buy coffee creamer at these small stores. It costs way too much for a small container. But, if I am not wanting to drive to save gas, you never know I might. Maybe I will give up coffee. LOL, that is a lie.

They had lots of dry beans and canned beans. We do not eat a lot of those, and I have some in the pantry for when we do. They did not have a ton of flour, and I have some in the pantry, so again, I did not buy any. I did not see any dry rice. They had a small selection of pasta, and I did pick up one box of spaghetti which was 90 cents. We decided to try the chicken pasta in the package. I am not sure if I will have that, as it is very high in sodium. It was only a dollar, though. The canned veggies were on sale for 75 cents each, and I got 6 cans. They had no Idahoan mashed potatoes, or taco seasoning. I had to get those at Family Dollar. I already tried the sweet pickles shown, and I don’t care for them, but they will go good in chicken or tuna salad. I bought one can of fully cooked roast beef at $3.50. This was a curiosity buy to see if it is worth it to have it in the pantry. Let’s face it, even if it might be affordable if no one will eat it, it makes no sense to buy it. The bread was a decent price, but the hot dog buns were way too much. Unfortunately, it was the only kind available on this day. The Armour chicken hot dogs were only 1 dollar, which I thought was a very good deal.

You can see my whole grocery haul in the image below. My grand total between the two stores was $64.15. That means I am 10 dollars under budget this week and honestly that makes DG definitely worth it. Would I shop here every week? No, most likely not, unless I had to. But, even if I shop here once or twice a month, and get my other items that I can not get here the other weeks, it is still worth it to save the gas and wear and tear on my car. If you read last week, then you know I can get my organic meat at Winn-Dixie and if I got at a good time a lot of times it will be marked down to a reasonable price. I was very unhappy with the organic milk I got there last week, though. That might have been why it was such a good deal, because something was wrong with it. No one would drink it. I had to waste it. It was well within the use by date, so that was not the issue.

Are you joining in my grocery budget challenge? Leave me a comment to let me know how it is going.

Next week, I think I will try my budget at our small Hitchcocks to see what I can get there for 75 dollars.

Extreme Grocery Budget Challenge: Week 13

April 7, 2022 / healthbuddymelissa / Leave a comment

Hello, and welcome to week 13 of my Extreme Grocery Budget Challenge. This is a year long challenge, and possibly more. If you have been following from the beginning this started as a dual challenge at 63 dollars per week, for a family of almost 3 adults now, and a challenge to see if someone with CKD, could eat shelf-stable, convenient type foods and still feel good. The latter only took a few weeks, and I quickly decided that no I could not eat those types of foods on a consistent basis and still feel well. Now, with that said I can eat shelf-stable veggies like canned veggies that are low in sodium and no funky preservatives. I don’t prefer canned fruit, but the same ingredients would apply. I can also tolerate shelf-stable tuna, and canned chicken, as long as the sodium is within reason, and there are no funky preservatives. I looked at canned beef, I think it was, roast beef maybe, but the sodium was insane, and it was expensive. I did not even bother to try it. Mainly, when I say shelf-stable I am talking about convenience foods, such as frozen meals, and ultra processed foods. Last week, I had to increase the budget from 63 dollars per week to 75, just because of how high food prices are now. The sole purpose for this challenge is to see how much money we can save, and to take account of how much food we are wasting. 75 dollars per week is about a third of what we were paying prior to starting this challenge. So far we have had to replace our fridge, and washing machine. We also just got nailed on taxes and were able to pay the balance. We did not have to finance any of this. The fridge and washing machine were not just bought because we wanted new, both of them needed to be replaced. We are not starving, we have reasonable snacks, and still enjoy the food we are eating.

Last week, I came in at I think 5 dollars under budget. I did have to pick up an extra gallon of milk part way through the week, so that money went for that. This week, I spent 25 cents over my budget, so 75.25. Food prices are still going up, and chicken is outrageous right now. Some of this is due to the millions of chickens that have been euthanized due to a Bird Flu outbreak. Chicken is my main protein that I eat. So, that is a bit distressing.

You can see the picture of my grocery haul below. Please don’t mind the cups in the sink. I shopped at Winn-Dixie and Walmart this week. I have mentioned before that I hate shopping at two stores. But, I needed some pool chemicals, and Walmart is right across the street from Winn-Dixie. Along with prices going up, there are still bare shelves for some items. You might be shocked to know, but each week I shop, whether it is Aldi’s, Winn-Dixie, or Walmart there is always coffee creamer in short supply. Onions are very high in price, too. Cheese and lunch meat have gone way up, and most other items have gone up at least a few cents as far as I can tell.

I was kind of annoyed this week, because I go to Winn-Dixie because they mark their meats way down, and my husband prefers their meat over Walmart. I don’t know why, they all taste the same to me, unless it is organic, then it is better no matter where I buy it. But, the new weekly ad prices started yesterday, yet they did not have all of the sale signs up and I had to go back and forth between the app, and store items to figure out what was on sale. This just took so much longer, and I won’t go on a Wednesday again. Two items that were super good deals this week, were the Swerve brown sugar replacement, and the organic milk. At Walmart, last week, I paid 7.50 for the same Swerve. At Winn-Dixie for this week only, it is buy one get one free. That means each bag was 4.25. The organic milk which was not in the sale flyer was 3.99 for a gallon. If you buy organic milk you know that is a good deal. I did not buy a lot of meat this week, because the prices are high, and we have a good stock in the freezer. The ham steaks were buy one get one free, and I can make them go a long way in several meals. Lettuce and tomatoes were also very high priced at Winn-Dixie. I had to get lettuce at Walmart where the price was a little more reasonable. I don’t know how much longer I will buy fresh tomatoes, and I hope my garden will produce some. I bought more canned veg this week, than frozen because one it is cheaper and two hurricane season is coming and I don’t like to fill the freezer too much in case we lose power for an extended period of time. We will use up what is in there, and then keep bare minimum on hand. The juice was buy one get one free too.

If you are on any kind of specialty diet to stay healthy, and or manage a chronic disease you are probably feeling a pinch in your budget. Healthier foods are more expensive right now, even beans and lentils have gone up in price. Do the best you can. Decrease your portions, especially if you are overweight and can afford to decrease your portions. Don’t be afraid to reach out to community organizations that may be able to help you get the foods you need to stay healthy. Not all junk food items are cheaper. They too are going up in price. Snack type foods, like chips and pretzels, even crackers are outrageous right now. We don’t drink a lot of soda, but the price for that is also through the roof. I am surprised people are still willing to pay these prices for food items that serve no purpose to health and well being. I know some people say eggs have gone up, but honestly dime for dime they are still a great deal as a protein source. The same goes for milk. I do not drink milk, but the others in my family do.

Are you on a grocery budget, or do you just spend whatever you want? Leave me a comment and let me know. Do you use any reward cards? I have the Winn Dixie rewards card and so far I have 5 dollars saved up to use on groceries. I just signed up for the Hitchcock’s card, but I have not used it yet.

Next week, my daughter and I will be taking our 75 dollar budget and shopping at our local Family Dollar and Dollar General to see what we can get. Family Dollar I know sells frozen chicken thighs, and Dollar General does have some fresh fruit and veg, albeit very expensive. We will see how that goes. These two stores are right in our town, and we could literally walk there if we had to. I am unsure of what day this will be, but probably Friday.

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