Well, it’s back to reality, which means menu planning and grocery shopping. We cleaned out our refrigerator and pantry before heading out on vacation, so we had to restock meats and some staples. No worries, though. Our grocery store had chicken breasts on sale for under $2 a pound, so we stocked up with enough chicken to last us more than two months.

After replenishing our freezer and pantry, our grand total was way over budget – about $85. Yikes! But with all the meat and several items like coffee and cheese that we buy in bulk each month, I’m not too worried about it.

For almost two weeks we’ve been eating holiday foods and restaurant meals while traveling (including an entire day of fast food yesterday as we drove 14 hours in one day — yuck!). We’re both really looking forward to getting back into the kitchen to cook some healthy homemade meals.

Here’s our first menu plan of 2009:

Sunday: Roasted chicken and red potatoes (We’ll make chicken stock with the leftovers.)
Monday: Chicken quesadillas
Tuesday: Chicken fajita tortilla soup
Wednesday: Chef’s salad
Thursday: Bean and cheese burritos
Friday: Homemade sushi (more on that later :) )

Now head over to OrgJunkie for more menu plans!

Watch out! After wrapping and shipping Christmas gifts for my niece and nephew in Seattle this morning and picking up the final things on my Thanksgiving menu, my holiday spirit has arrived. My husband probably won’t find his holiday cheer until next weekend when we put up the tree. He doesn’t appreciate the pre-Thanksgiving Christmas music so much. He’ll get over it. :)

Our grand total for groceries this week was $56. Not too bad for the week of Thanksgiving. In the past, I’ve waited until the last minute to buy everything I needed for our Thanksgiving meal and ended up with a $100+ grocery bill. This time, I split up my list throughout the month of November to reduce the burden. All we picked up this week was some produce and random last minute items.

Some friends invited us to a potluck Thanksgiving dinner Thursday. We’re happy to spend the holiday with friends, but my husband doesn’t want to miss out on roasting his own turkey. So we’ll be making our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday. That means two Thanksgiving dinners for us. Fine by me. :)

Here’s our holiday menu plan:

Sunday: Strip steaks, green beans, and baked potatoes
Monday: Chicken and dumplings
Tuesday: Chicken tacos
Wednesday: Homemade pizza
Thursday: Potluck Thanksgiving with friends (We’re bringing homemade green bean casserole.)
Friday: Thanksgiving dinner
Saturday: Leftovers, because there’s no way we’re going to eat all the food we make on Friday. :)

Now head over to OrgJunkie for more menu plans. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Our total for the week was $62, which is $2 over our maximum budget. I’m not complaining, though. We walked out with a TON of food.

We shopped this week at the pricier store in our area, because they were offering turkeys for 49 cents a pound with the purchase of $25 in groceries.

We were originally going to buy just a turkey breast, but I haven’t seen them on sale this year for under $1.60 a pound. I couldn’t resist 49 cents a pound for turkey, especially since there’s only a week and a half until Thanksgiving. We also picked up potatoes for Thanksgiving as well as whipped cream for our pumpkin pie.

We also got four New York strip steaks, which we’ll freeze and use for dinners later. We split one steak between us, so we’ll stretch those steaks out to four meals.

This store takes some of the discounts off after everything is completely rang up. I was expecting to go over our budget since our cart was so full. I cringed when the total came to $90. But then she took off the discount for the steaks and the turkey, as well as a 5% discount since my husband is a student. We saved almost $30!

For our menu plan this week, we’re raiding our pantry and freezer to make the most of what we have since some of our grocery budget this week went toward our Thanksgiving meal. Most of our meals are coming from a whole chicken that’s been in our freezer for a couple weeks. Here’s what we have planned:

Saturday: Film festival dinner party (We got free tickets! Woo hoo!)
Sunday: Roasted chicken and potatoes (We need to make stock this week, so it was time for a chicken.)
Monday: Chicken fajita tortilla soup
Tuesday: Leftovers/sandwiches
Wednesday: Chicken quesadillas
Thursday: Shepherd’s pie
Friday: Homemade pizza

Now head over to OrgJunkie for more menu plans!

This week, we shopped at two different stores to get the best deal. It worked out well. Our grand total was $58, including two Porterhouse steaks on sale for $4.99 a pound as well as some ingredients for our Thanksgiving feast.

We also picked up the ingredients for our Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. Still no sale on turkey, but we’re keeping an eye out at both of our local grocery stores to wait for the best deal on a whole turkey breast.

We were on the high side of our budget this week, but we’ve tentatively planned out next week’s menu to maximize items on hand and drastically reduce our food cost for the week. You’ll have to come back next week to see how we do!

Here’s the plan for this week:

Saturday: Grilled Porterhouse steak (we split one) and baked potatoes
Sunday: Chicken noodle soup
Monday: Bacon wrapped chicken with blue cheese crumbles and roasted potatoes (we’re omitting the pecans and the cream sauce)
Tuesday: Leftovers/sandwiches
Wednesday: Pasta with meatless marinara
Thursday: BLTs with oven fries
Friday: Homemade pizza

For breakfasts we have cold cereal and oatmeal. For lunches, I bring leftovers from the night before or salad.

Now go check out more menu plans at OrgJunkie!

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After cutting back last week to try to stay within budget, we found that we needed to buy more this week to make up for some of the staples we left out of our last shopping trip. We ended up spending $62, and we’re not done yet. There are still a couple things we need to pick up at Costco tomorrow.

Part of the problem is that we cut our leftovers/sandwiches night out this week. Tony is on a fall break and will be home all next week, and we decided to make some special meals with pricier ingredients, including two types of meat. The result was a pricier week for groceries.

The good news is our Costco purchases will last throughout the month, so that money technically will be distributed throughout our grocery budget. Oh well. We’ll cut down to the bare minimum next week to make up for it and balance out the budget. That’s why I operate on a monthly budget instead of a weekly budget.

In other good news, I found out today that my reusable grocery bags will pay for themselves. Our cashier informed us that we earn 50 bonus rewards points each shopping trip for every reusable shopping bag we bring to the store with us. That’s on top of the rewards points we earn for our regular shopping (usually 500-1000 per week). Once we reach 5000 points, we can redeem them for $5 off our groceries.

I’m glad I know that now. I don’t think our cashier credited us with those points last week. Now that I know, I can be sure to remind our cashier to add those points.

We bring 5 reusable grocery bags for each trip, so we earn 250 bonus points a week. We paid about $5 for our reusable grocery bags, so it’ll be about 5 months before they pay for themselves in bonus points. We like that the reusable bags are better for the environment and reduce the grocery bag clutter in our kitchen. If they’ll eventually pay for themselves then that’s even better!

Last week I redeemed 5000 points on a week when we were struggling to maintain our monthly budget. I plan to save my rewards points for those weeks at the end of the month when we can really use a few bucks off our groceries to stay within budget.

On to our $60 menu plan for the week:

Saturday: Roasted pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes and baked apples
Sunday: BBQ pulled pork sandwiches (made with leftover tenderloin) and roasted potatoes
Monday: Italian grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup
Tuesday: Grilled steaks, creamed spinach, and baked potatoes
Wednesday: Chicken and broccoli stir fry with rice
Thursday: Potato soup (recipe below)
Friday: Homemade pizza

Mom’s Potato Soup recipe

3 pounds large russet potatoes, peeled and diced
½ an onion, diced
1 quart of chicken stock
1 tablespoon of butter
1/2 cup of shredded cheese
1 cup milk
Sour cream (optional)
Chopped chives (optional)
Crumpled bacon (optional)

Cover the potatoes and onion in chicken stock and boil until fork tender. Boil until stock reduces and becomes starchy (about 20 minutes).

Add butter, cheese, salt and pepper to taste. Add milk. Heat through to warm milk, but do not boil. Garnish with cheese, sour cream, chives and bacon.

Make sure you check out OrgJunkie for more menu plans!