Menu for 11/30

Another week is upon us and after the craziness of last week, I'm ready to start cooking at home again.  We are going to be at home for 5 meals this week, so planning wasn't too bad.  Since the meal plan from last week barely got looked at, there are still two meals that I was going to do that we weren't home to have.

After scanning the grocery ads for this week, I saw that other than a few stock-up items, there wasn't a whole lot that was going to help out with keeping the grocery costs down this week.  I have to check to see what we have before I go to the store, but I'm guessing that half of our protein is coming out of our freezer.  One thing that I did see on sale for this week was avocados.  I love avocados.  Seriously love them.  So one of the big considerations this week was planning for at least one meal that needed avocados.  Here is what I came up with:

Grocery costs

Well, we made it through the Thanksgiving holiday!  We had a great time with family and of course had wonderful food.  And thanks to having many meals with family, it wasn't even a challenge to stay on budget this week.  We did still have food costs, though, so here's what it looked like:

Menu for 11/23

Thanksgiving is upon us, and of course this makes for ever-changing menu plans.  I will say, it does feel a bit strange to be thinking about what to eat more than a week from now.  I realize, though, that with our holiday plans, if I don't think about the menu now, the earliest I would get to it was probably next Monday.  And that means that Saturday through next Tuesday would be a mess of trying to get shopping done and meals on the table.  So here I am planning!

The first thing for me to take into consideration for the upcoming week is that this last meal plan that I was working with got changed.  Our 6 dinners at home have now become 4.  Since I already had what I needed to make all of those meals, I had to figure out which ones to keep on schedule and which ones to move back into this coming week.

The Challenge

Once upon a time, back when I was part of a family of three, I never really thought about menu planning.  Going to the grocery store every couple of days was one way that the kid and I got out of the house.  Not to mention, there is something I like about the grocery store.  I love exploring and finding new things.  But I digress.  When our family of three turned into four, I found that it was increasingly difficult to get to the store that often.

So I had to start planning ahead.  No more choosing dinner based on what sounded good at that moment.  Well, at least not every night.  Goodness knows I go off plan.  It took me a while to find my rhythm.  About the time that I really got into regular planning, we realized that we needed to start cutting costs, and one of the areas that took a hit was the grocery budget.

Grocery costs

Alright, now that the grocery shopping is done for this week, the total cost came to $92.87.  Here is how it all broke down:

Breakfast: $6.48
Lunch: $6.28

Menu for 11/16

Here is the menu plan for this week.  I knew that we would have at least one dinner away from home, so there are only 6 evening meals planned.  We will be having:

Baked Potato Soup
Pizza