I started looking at our budget and realized that our grocery budget had got out of control. I had always shopped at Aldi but we were wasting a lot of food and buying too many convince foods. With just a few tweaks I was able to spend less money and my family was still happy with what I was making. This was my $88 week. I bought all the groceries I needed for our family of 5 to eat for a whole week for less than $89. We also hosted game night, had an extra kid at our house for a couple of those days, and brought food to a pool party. Here's what we ate during our $88 week.
Breakfasts
One of the adjustments I had to make was to cut out cereal. Although Aldi has plenty of cheap cereal our family was consuming a lot of it and with it milk. We were spending at least $10 a week on extra milk and cereal. When we make oatmeal the kids put apple sauce in it to sweeten it and top it with blueberries and pecans. This is a much healthier choice then cereal. We already had most of the ingredients in the house. I had just been too lazy to make breakfast in the past.
This is a veggie omelet. One of the things that was costing our house a ton of money before I started paying attention was all the veggie waste. I would buy salad with the best of intentions and then end up throwing it away at the end of the week. But with spinach if we aren't eating it I can throw it in the freezer and make omelets with it. Then there is no food waste! We also make a lot of ham and cheese omelets too.
The kids love it when I make smoothies in the morning. I love it too because they are starting their day with a serving of fruit and veggies. I put spinach from the freezer, old bananas, and blueberries in with yogurt and a little milk and they love it. They typically like to have something else with it so I also made pancakes. My 12 year old son is training for a half marathon so he has a pretty big appetite these days.
The kids smoothies. They can not taste the spinach.
My kids love pancakes and they are not the healthiest way to start the morning but it is a special treat and they do love it when I make them.
Lunch
Ham is a really great versatile food. We put it on salads, in our omelets, in sandwiches, and on pizza. We typically use it as a protein in several meals during the week.
We make our own refried bean and cheese quesadillas for lunch often. I always ask our kids to put a fruit and vegetable on their plate at every meal. I don't always take a picture of the plated meal. The kids eat a lot of carrots, celery, and cucumbers. They are super cheap and last a long time.
We had pasta one night this week and with the leftover spaghetti I through in some cheese and veggies and Italian dressing and we had pasta salad for lunch this week. This is a great clean out the veggie drawer lunch.
We also had ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch this week.
The kids love to eat leftover pasta for lunch. They just throw some cheese on leftover noddles and are happy.
PB and J with a side of fruit and veggies is another family favorite lunch.
Dinner
One of the things I have learned about reducing our grocery bill is that variety is expensive. So this week most of our dinners will include chicken. I bout a pack of chicken thighs for around $6. I split the pack up into 3 even parts. Tonight we used 1/3 of the chicken to make chicken tacos. We added black beans and lots of veggies to help stretch the meat.
This is one of our favorite meals. It's egg roll in a bowl. I saved some of the sausage for our upcoming pizza night. It's just a bag of cabbage and sausage with some seasoning. It is so good and very affordable. Using less meat than the recipe calls for is another way we are stretch out budget.
Homemade Pizza night. We used leftover ham and sausage. Each kid gets to claim a portion of the pizza as their own. I also make bread sticks to go with this and we have leftovers for a few lunches.
This is one of my favorite dinners! Cajun chicken pasta. It is so good. We had leftovers too. We had it with a side of canned green beans and fruit.
Loaded fries is another family favorite meal. We use bacon bits and I just buy potatoes and cut them up. Each person likes different toppings so a big plan like this allows us to have lots of options.
We had zucchini boats tonight. I make my own sauce for the recipe which is super cheap and easy and so very good. I forgot to take a picture of the finished dinner but we had leftovers, which often happens with these recipes.
Snacks
Cutting out store bought snacks saves us money and calories. We are less likely to make and just eat homemade snacks. I did make pit wedges to have with our game night but the kids got into them early so I had to make another batch. They are basically flour, salt, yeast, and a little oil. So very easy and cheap to make and my kids loved them.
We also made homemade brownies for our game night. These were a hit too.
We made Carmel corn to bring to our pool party this week. This is cheap to make and everyone always loves it. We try to always keep popcorn in the house as it is an inexpensive treat that we can make lots of different snacks with.
This was the spread for our game night. We love the aldi lemonade packets and it is really the only thing we drink.
Comments
Post a Comment