Hey Friend! I hope you enjoyed last week’s meals! I share our simple and budget friendly meal plan each week in hopes it can help you in your own meal planning in some way. This is the second week of sharing them here on the blog! If you’re on IG I share more details in my stories and will normally try to share the process of cooking most nights.

My Thought Process

I have three main goals while I’m meal planning: budget, taste, and simple. You will often see meal repeaters weekly because they are a hit at my house and I could make the recipes in my sleep. When we get tired of them, we switch it up. My goal is to keep an average of $20 per dinner for our family of eight.

Breakfast, Lunch, & Snacks

I try to keep things pretty simple in this area too.

Breakfast: I make a big pot of oatmeal, sweetened with apple butter and maple syrup and fruit. I also buy a big box of bars from Sam’s for our busy mornings when we are going to church and our homeschool community day.

Lunch: I always have items on hand to make salads. This helps a lot with dinner time too! I also buy lots of fruits for the kids’ lunches and for snacks. The kids also normally eat pb&j sandwiches.

Snacks: I will buy a box of gummy snacks for the kids and we also have lots of fruit available.

Dinner Meal Plan

I’m going to try and share all the ingredients I need for each meal, but I’m also a distracted mom in a time crunch when I write these blog posts out so please double check behind me. I’m going to italicize the ingredients that I actually need to buy from the grocery store so you can see how I’m able to keep my groceries under budget. A lot of things I buy in bulk at Sam’s and I use recipes that will use up ingredients that I already have in my pantry.

Monday: Zuppa Toscana Soup. This one was a big hit last week! I actually have all the ingredients to make another batch, except the sausage, which was $7 at Aldi! Ingredients: bacon, Italian sausage ($7), onion, garlic, 2 cartons chicken broth, 5 russet potatoes, salt, pepper, sugar, nutmeg, heavy cream, kale.

Tuesday: Tacos, a weekly repeater. Feel free to change out meat, etc if you get bored with the same version. Ground beef ($11), taco seasoning, flour tortillas, hard shell taco shells, lettuce, tomato, onion, cheddar cheese, black beans, chips ($4), chip dip ($4).

Wednesday: Wraps, salad, fruit. Wraps ($4), turkey lunch meat ($9), lettuce, tomato, honey mustard, croutons, fruit.

Thursday: Spaghetti. Ground Turkey ($7), spaghetti noodles, pasta sauce ($8), French Bread ($4).

Friday: Aldi Pizza. Aldi is a grocery store that I do most of my shopping at and we love their Take & Bake pizzas. It costs around $23 to buy enough pizza for our family of eight. I can also make salads to go with this meal.

Saturday: Salmon and veggies. Salmon ($20), broccoli, peas, hummus and Naan bread ($5).

Sunday: Chicken Chipotle Bowls. These were also a big hit last week and it made decent leftovers for my husband to take to work. Just cook your rice, shred your chicken and add some lime juice, salt and pepper to it, and assemble to toppings to your desire! Rotisserie Chicken ($5), rice, black beans, corn ($1), guacamole ($3), sour cream.

I hope sharing our meal plan helps you and your family in some way! I promise I’ll try to improve these posts more and more as I get feedback and more organized. 🙂

XO,

Sharlie