This week begins with our oldest out of town, in the middle of the week, we are traveling to pick him up and bringing lunch for 10 and the week wraps up with a fun visit from some family. I love summer!! But our pantry is looking pretty bare this week. We've been living off it for a few weeks now with not much restocking. So I need to figure out how to pull off our wild week without blowing the budget. I think I'm going to fall back on the old "rubber chicken". Our Kroger has whole chickens on sale this week for .89 cents per pound. I'm going to get 4 and roast them, two at a time. Those 4 chickens, shrimp from our freezer and 2 pounds of ground turkey will serve as our main protein sources this week. Here is how I plan to get it all done.
Let's take a look at the menu plan:
Breakfast (we should be able to get all of these breakfasts made with things we have in the pantry and refrigerator):
Monday and Tuesday (while our oldest, who won't eat eggs, is out of town) we will have eggs and grits (already have these)
Wednesday (oldest is home) and Thursday (guests arrive) we will have whole grain maple walnut waffles ( will substitute half whole wheat flour, add a Tblsp of ground flax meal and substitute coconut oil for shortning).
Friday we will have Blueberry Baked French Toast (with a loaf of homemade whole grain French Bread, which we will make Wednesday and eggs we already have)
Saturday we will have smoothies with berries (fridge), over-ripe bananas (freezer), and homemade yogurt (fridge)
Sunday we will have homemade maple yogurt
Lunch
Monday we will have leftovers from Sunday's supper (mini burgers) and yummy locally grown summer squash.
Tuesday we will have chicken salad (.89 cents per lb.) sandwiches on croissants (5.00 for 10) with lettuce ($1.30 and some will be left over for later in the week) and cantalope from the farmer's market.
Wednesday we will have PB and J or PB and honey sandwiches (pantry - the honey is local :o) and cherries (on sale at Kroger right now for $2.99/lb).
Thursday we will have muffaletto sandwiches on homemade bread (pantry) with sliced turkey (fridge) and homemade olive salad (fridge) and what ever fresh berries we find at the farmer's market on Wednesday.
Friday we will either have leftovers from Thursday night or we will have chicken salad sandwiches on homemade whole grain French bread.
Saturday we will probably have lunch out.
Sunday we will probably go out to lunch after church.
Snacks
Kroger is having an amazing sale on berries plus we got some blueberries at the farmer's market last weekend. So Monday and Tuesday, snacks will consist of lots of berries.
Wednesday, we will do some baking for the weekend visitors (brownies- pantry. Oatmeal Cookies - pantry) so we will snack on those items.
Thursday we will have a fruit tray with strawberries (1.97), pineapple (2.99), watermelon (4.99) and any fruit we find at the farmer's market on Wednesday. There will probably be some of this left after snack time, so we may finish it up at another meal time.
Friday we will have a cheese tray with homemade cheese spread (ingredients on hand) on crackers ($1.30 each for store brand - we'll get two boxes).
Saturday we will have a veggie tray with ranch dip (fridge) and veggies that we find at the farmer's market. We'll round it out with carrot sticks from our refrigerator and it looks like we will have some cherry tomatoes from the garden then, too.
Sunday we will snack on either leftovers from one of the previous days' snacks or maybe we'll have Nutella (pantry) on graham crackers (pantry).
Dinner
Casseroles are easy and filling, but some people are turned off by the word casserole. We'll be having 2 casseroles with our guests, but they won't be called casseroles, so maybe they won't feel like tightwad food :o)
Monday we'll have roasted chicken with squash and green salad
Tuesday we'll have crock pot chicken noodle soup (stock made with the bones of the roasted chickens, leftover meat, carrots, onions, squash from fridge, noodles from pantry) with homemade rolls.
Wednesday we'll have roasted veggie pizza (crust and sauce from the pantry, veggies from the farmer's market).
Thursday we'll have chicken enchiladas (chicken .89/ lb, homemade stock free by simmering the bones from the chickens; tortillas $2.00; cheese $3.00 - I use a lot of cheese; cream of mushroom soup .75 cents; chipotle peppers in the freezer) . We'll have this with a salad ($1.29) and a veggie from the market ($$???). We will probably also have chips and salsa from the grocery store, unless someone at the market sells salsa ($5.00)
Friday we'll have lassagna (noodles - pantry; ground turkey $1.25/ lb - 2lbs; pasta sauce $2.00; ricotta - $2.00; eggs (fridge); mozzarella ($2.00); Parmigiano-Regiano cheese (fridge) ). We'll have this with steamed broccoli, breadsticks and a green salad.
Saturday we will have Shrimp and Corn Soup (shrimp in freezer, potatoes in pantry, chicken stock in freezer, cheese - $2.00; cream of mushroom soup - .75 cents; creamed corn - .75 cents; onion - pantry; bacon - freezer).
Sunday we will have leftovers.
After making my shopping list, I estimated our costs and came up with a guess of $93 before tax. This includes a few non-food items like a baking pans and laundry detergent. Without those additional items, I estimate our cost for food will be about $66 plus tax. I'll update once shopping is done, to see how close I was able to get.
Head on over to I'm an Organizing Junkie for hundreds of menus.
3 comments:
Did you get blueberries in Lafayette? If you did, I should have gone. :)
Yes, we did. Bryan came with me and he bought all the blueberries the farmer had left, lol. I had not been to that market in at least 15 years. I'm so glad we went. We met some really nice people including the grandfather of one of the farmers. He talked to "A" for quite a while.
Roasted veggie pizza...yum! Sounds like a marvelous week!
:)
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