All You Grocery Challenge ~ Day 9

Our menus have been less than interesting lately; but with my commitment, I shall press forward!

Breakfast this morning was leftover whole-grain pancakes with peanut butter & jelly for the kidlets, leftover sausage biscuits for hubby & me.

Lunch was bean burritos for the kids (tortillas smeared with refrieds and topped with cheese, nuked for 30 seconds) and ham/cheese omelettes for hubby & me.  We all had watermelon and grapes, too.

For supper we had a date night.  After dropping the kids off at my in-laws, my hubby took me out for Chinese to celebrate our 10th anniversary, which is Wednesday.  We are actually going on a little getaway to Branson in the next couple of weeks for our *real* celebration.  ☺

All You Grocery Challenge ~ Day 8

Okay, I know I'm behind (as usual).  Now I have to try to remember everything we ate since Wednesday!  Too bad I already chunked the menu and made this week's!

Wednesday 6/23 Breakfast:  steel cut oats

Wednesday 6/23 Lunch:  last of the spaghetti & other various leftovers

Wednesday 6/23 Supper:  barbeque muffin cups (canned biscuit dough stretched into muffin tins, mixture of cooked ground beef & leftover shredded roast with brown sugar & bbq sauce, topped with cheese), homemade french fries, grapes

Thursday 6/24 Breakfast:  sausage/egg/cheese rolls (I make the dough in the bread machine with my cinnamon roll dough recipe.  Used 2 pounds of Jimmy Dean to make a huge skillet full of sausage gravy.  Scrambled 2 dozen eggs.  Spread the sausage, gravy, eggs, & shredded cheddar on dough, rolled up, and cut like cinnamon rolls.  This made 3 dozen, which lasted us a couple days.)

Thursday 6/24 Lunch:  Leftover foil packets (beef, onion, potato, & green beans) and bbq muffins

Thursday 6/24 Supper:  Quick peanut butter & jelly sandwiches before hubby & the kids headed to his folks' to watch a movie

Friday 6/25 Breakfast:  Whole grain pancakes with homemade syrup (I used w.w. flour, flax seed, & wheat germ)

Friday 6/25 Lunch:  Made my own version of Hamburger Helper with lean ground beef, egg noodles, parsley from the garden, & spices

Friday 6/25 Supper:  roasted leg quarters, new potatoes straight from garden ("baked" in microwave and buttered/salted/peppered), green beans, then we went blackberry picking at a local nature trail

Saturday 6/26 Breakfast:  leftover sausage/egg/ cheese rolls

Saturday 6/26 Lunch:  We went to a family reunion with a huge potluck.  Our contribution was deviled eggs & gooey butter cake.

Saturday 6/26 Supper:  Leftovers from Friday's lunch & supper

Sunday 6/27 Breakfast:  Canned jumbo biscuits (like Grands) & maple sausage patties, Ovaltine chocolate milk

Sunday 6/27 Lunch:  Tuna salad sandwiches made with 5 cans tuna, 10 boiled eggs, 2 chopped apples, mayo & relish (took leftovers to a lady in church who just had surgery)

Sunday 6/27 Supper:  Totino's pizzas & watermelon ~ a really fun supper we tried last Sunday night (and now I've used all my Totino's coupons!)

I finally did my first grocery shopping that 'counts' for this challenge:  Spent $26.26 at Aldi on Friday and $11.66 at WalMart this afternoon (Wmart mostly was 'junk food' for our upcoming trip, plus our Totino's for supper).  Week's Total:  $37.92

We will be really low on groceries after this week, but we are headed to Louisiana for a long 4th of July weekend.  After we get home, I'll have to go on a big grocery shopping spree.

All You Grocery Challenge ~ Day 3

I posted yesterday about All You's Grocery Challenge, which I would *love* to win!  The top prize is $1000 grocery store gift card, and I think that prize just rocks!  It would last us about 2-3 months!  Actually, I'd probably be tempted to splurge and just use it all in a month... but I'd have quite a nice stockpile, and we'd be eating good!  :-)

I did find out that grocery purchases prior to June 20 don't count in the contest, so scratch the totals I posted yesterday.  I'm still at $0.00 for now, according to the rules of the contest.  Fortunately our garden is starting to produce pretty well, too, so that's more "free" food that we can still use in the contest.

Today's breakfast was cereal (Special K with Strawberries and Kashi GoLean Honey & Flax) for the kids, and my hubby made me and himself a ham & cheese omelette, which I ate with salsa!  <3

Lunch was leftover spaghetti ("chunky garden style") from last night.  

When everyone gets up from nap time in a little bit, we will polish off the "Fruity Banana Freeze" (I mixed plain yogurt, bananas, canned crushed pineapple, cherries, & pecans and froze it all ~ we thaw for 20 minutes before eating) and grapes.

My supper plan was *supposed* to be roasted leg quarters with leftover baked beans & potato salad... but I forgot to thaw the chicken.  So, I am headed out to the garden in a little bit to dig some new potatoes and pick some green beans.  I have some 100% beef patties that were on rollback at WalMart, and I'm going to make foil-packet-dinners with beef patties, onion slices, new potatoes, and green beans. 

Any cheap, healthy, and creative meal ideas would be welcome!!

All You Grocery Challenge

I have entered this year's All You Grocery Challenge and am looking forward to the challenge of lowering our already-incredibly-small grocery budget and shooting for a chance at the $1000 prize.

According to the rules of the challenge, I need to keep my grocery spending below $25 per week per person, which would be $175 ~ NO PROBLEM!  Ha ha, I haven't had this much to spend in a while.  Things have been really tight, as we are trying to pay off my midwife, pay off hubby's dentist, and pay for a bunch of vehicle repairs.

I did my grocery shopping for the first week this past weekend.  I spent a total of $129.25 at Aldi & WalMart, and that should *almost* get us through two weeks, I think, with a quick run next weekend for produce, milk, and bread.

The official challenge started yesterday.  We had Special K with Strawberries and bananas for breakfast (the cereal was snagged at Walgreens for $1/box after sale, coupons, and Register Rewards).  We had a Father's Day lunch at my in-laws ~ I pitched in the baked beans and potato salad, and MIL grilled chicken tenders and burgers.  For supper we had Totino's frozen pizzas, bought with a coupon, and a whole watermelon.  Yes, my crew at a *whole watermelon*!  That meal right there was $7, but it was really fun and sort of out of character for us.  My kids never get to eat frozen pizza, so they thought it was quite a treat.

For breakfast this morning we had steel cut oats with maple flavoring and brown sugar added.  The lunch plan is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with grapes or bananas; and supper is spaghetti, corn, and garlic bread.  I cooked a huge package of extra lean ground beef that I pick up reduced-for-quick-sale at WalMart the other morning.  I made two meatloaves out of it and froze them, and I browned the rest with onion.  I used a little bit of it in yesterday's baked beans; and the rest will go toward tonight's spaghetti sauce, Mexican Meatza, and bbq muffin cups.

I will be keeping the chronicles of our grocery challenge here, so bear with me for a few weeks while I post about little more than grocery budgets and really cheap meals!