THE THRIFTY COUPLE WEEKLY MENU FOR THE WEEK OF 2/8

We decided to start trying something new and that is to share our weekly menus with you.  We are doing this for a few reasons:

1. We have always made menus and thought it would be nice to share them with you so see how we eat out of our pantry on a weekly basis.
2. Although we have always made menus, we haven’t always been great about keeping them, so this will help us to stay more on track by sharing with you. It becomes harder to make excuses 😉
3. Although we have stayed within our $240 per month budget (covers groceries, toiletries, household, and diapers), we haven’t necessarily tracked how much each meal costs us and thought it would be fun to figure it out and share it with you as well.  We will be laying out the cost of our dinners!
4. Our Sunday dinner plans are varied, we try to have guests from church over every other week, if we know in advance, we usually put a roast in the crockpot, or prepare a casserole. If it is planned last minute (as many are) we have homemade chilis and stews in the freezer to heat up, frozen entrees and sides to heat up,  or lots of pastas to quickly feed a crowd! Thank goodness for a full pantry! Anyway, if it is just us, we usually have leftovers, lunch or snack items, or simple prepared meals! So on our menu, you will find Sunday’s marked with a “?”
5. Our goal for this site is to share the deals, freebies, hot finds; but we also want to share how we live as a larger family on a tight budget everyday and ways that we try to live thriftily in every area of life….. so this would be one of them!

Okay, so I made this menu a couple of days ago, but wanted to start sharing it with you (in addition to a few recipes from our kitchen here and there)!

So here are some basics of The Thrifty Couple menu: first, we do not necessarily plan out each days’ breakfasts and lunches, mostly because it is me and 4 kids 6 and under, and just roll with the tummy desires for the meal.  For the daytime meals/snacks, we write out ideas on what we can have. Second, we do plan out our dinners from the main course to the sides (and sometimes dessert). On the dinner menu, you will find the price of eat item, and then you will see the final total and cost per serving! Please note, that nearly everything has come off a shelf or out of a freezer in our home.  We just add on the perishables that we have purchased over the last couple of weeks.

Here we go with our menu for this week:

Breakfast Ideas: breakfast cake, hot cereal with fruit add-ins, cold cereal, toast with applesauce and eggs (in whatever daily order)

Lunch Ideas: sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, soups, pasta, and leftovers (in whatever daily order)

Snack Ideas: veggie tray, crackers and cream cheese, fruit, applesauce

Dinner Menu:

• Monday: Sweet and Sour Meatballs  over rice, Grapefruit and Avocado Salad (see recipe)
• Tuesday: Sloppy Joe Pot Pie with ground Turkey (see recipe tomorrow), corn and green salad
• Wednesday: Crockpot Chicken, pasta salad, steamed broccoli, rolls
• Thursday: beef stroganoff, steamed veggies, fresh fruit
• Friday: out for family Valentine’s Date
• Saturday: couple Valentines Date in
• Sunday: ?

Monday’s Meal:

• Meatballs $1.44
• Kraft Sweet and Sour sauce .90
• 1 Green Pepper .50
• 1 Onion .20
• 1 Can chunk pineapple .50
• Rice (from a huge bag we have had forever and bought for $8.99) probably about .30
• 1 Grapefruit .25
• 2 Avocados $1.00
• Lettuce from our Sam’s Club organic Muscalin Mix  about $1.21 (this meal)
• Condiments for homemade dressing about .25
• Total Cost: $6.55 for 6 servings (plus leftovers!) – $1.10 each serving!
  

Monday’s Recipe: Grapefruit and Avocado Salad

You will need:

1/2 cup of Poppyseed dressing (we used Kraft)

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 1/2 tablespoons Safflower oil (olive oil works great too!)

few dashed of pepper

few dashes of salt

1 grapefruit sliced and peeled (or however many you would like)

2 avocados sliced (or however many you would like)

Lettuce of your choice in the servings needed!

To Make:

1. Mix the dressing, lemon juice, oil, and salt and pepper until blended smooth

2. Cut up and add the avocado in slices, mix and coat with the dressing

3. Add lettuce to the bowls, scoop out avocados onto each salad

4. Garnish each salad with grapefruit slices

5. Pour on dressing and done!

Here’s a picture of the finished dinner!

Due to the length of this post already, we will break down the cost of the rest of the meals for the week tomorrow!