As part of my Holiday Food & Financial Diet this month, we spent Sunday morning planning out three and a half weeks worth of meals to last us until we leave for Christmas. These menu plans were especially tough because I’m also putting some restrictions on my diet to ward off holiday weight gain and hopefully cancel out the damage I’ve already done.

We originally planned to reduce meat consumption, but I’m also limiting my wheat and carbs consumption (to an extent) for the next three weeks. Trying to come up with vegetarian meals with pasta and bread off limits was pretty much impossible. So we planned a pretty chicken-heavy meal rotation with a few healthy carb-heavy meals (like red beans and rice) and lots of soups for the next three weeks.

Chicken wasn’t on sale this week, but we have enough in the freezer for this week’s meals. We’re crossing our fingers that it will go on sale next week so we can buy enough to carry us through the month. (Cross your fingers for me!)

This week’s total was $52. That total isn’t necessarily true to what we spent for this week alone, though. Because we already have meals planned for the next three weeks, we picked up several sale items that we know we’ll need in the near future.

Here’s the first installment of our December meal plan:

Saturday: Thanksgiving leftovers
Sunday: Turkey sandwiches
Monday: Chicken fajita tortilla soup
Tuesday: Chef’s salad
Wednesday: Red beans & rice
Thursday: Vegetarian chili
Friday: Grilled chicken wraps

I hope you’ll come back for week two of my month-long menu plan!

Now head over to OrgJunkie for more menu plans.