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A $75 a Week Meal Plan
We Armstrong's like our food. We eat well, with lots of variety in our meals (unless it's Thursday and then it's always pizza night!). So, when a while back a journalist called me and asked me for a meal plan for the $300 a Month Food Challenge, I wasn't fazed at all.
The hard part was choosing which meal plans to send to her. Then she asked for a complete meal plan - breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. And she needed it right away.
Every month I do a meal plan, or rather a dinner plan, for my family (I share it in the Journal each month and you can find older meal plans in the Meal Plan Archive). I'm sure I've told you before how Tom loves to look at the fridge and know what he'll be eating for tea (and how he stirs me when I change it on him :) ). We all do. It's reassuring to me to be able to glance at the fridge and just know what I need to prepare for tonight, tomorrow, next week - the rest of the year actually, because I've done the meal plan right up to 31st December 2017, and it's on the fridge.
What that meal plan also does is help to keep our grocery bill low; really, really low. I budget $320 a month for groceries. Now some months I am on budget, some months I might be under by a few dollars and occasionally I go over. But at the end of the year, when I tally up the grocery tracking sheets, I always average $320 a month for groceries - we don't have the money to go over budget.
It took me 20 minutes to put it together for her, and I was able to come up with a meal plan that included three meals and a snack every day for a week. And bring it in under $75.
That was the tricky part. I'm used to working on a monthly meal plan and a monthly budget. That means I can share ingredients across a few meals, spreading the cost over the month. I couldn't do this for just a week so I had to choose cheap, nutritious meals and not go over the $75 budget limit.
Here's the meal plan I came up with, it's plain, simple food. No frills or gourmet delights but it fills tummies, is reasonably healthful and very cheap.
The hard part was choosing which meal plans to send to her. Then she asked for a complete meal plan - breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. And she needed it right away.
Every month I do a meal plan, or rather a dinner plan, for my family (I share it in the Journal each month and you can find older meal plans in the Meal Plan Archive). I'm sure I've told you before how Tom loves to look at the fridge and know what he'll be eating for tea (and how he stirs me when I change it on him :) ). We all do. It's reassuring to me to be able to glance at the fridge and just know what I need to prepare for tonight, tomorrow, next week - the rest of the year actually, because I've done the meal plan right up to 31st December 2017, and it's on the fridge.
What that meal plan also does is help to keep our grocery bill low; really, really low. I budget $320 a month for groceries. Now some months I am on budget, some months I might be under by a few dollars and occasionally I go over. But at the end of the year, when I tally up the grocery tracking sheets, I always average $320 a month for groceries - we don't have the money to go over budget.
It took me 20 minutes to put it together for her, and I was able to come up with a meal plan that included three meals and a snack every day for a week. And bring it in under $75.
That was the tricky part. I'm used to working on a monthly meal plan and a monthly budget. That means I can share ingredients across a few meals, spreading the cost over the month. I couldn't do this for just a week so I had to choose cheap, nutritious meals and not go over the $75 budget limit.
Here's the meal plan I came up with, it's plain, simple food. No frills or gourmet delights but it fills tummies, is reasonably healthful and very cheap.
This meal plan will feed a family of four for a week for $75. It will depend of course on:
1. Brands - always choose the cheapest, usually a generic, but not always. And sometimes a special isn't really a special - always check the unit price. Look for half price specials on your basic grocery items and use them to build a grocery stockpile and save you money.
2. Portion control - remember if a recipe serves six, get six serves. Put the two spare into the freezer for freezer meals - they are free dinners and will really help keep your grocery budget low.
3. Cook from scratch - no buying pre-prepared or packaged or convenience meals or parts of meals. MOO yoghurt, muffins, biscuits, pastry for the sausage rolls, dip, pita chips, gravy, wedges, pancakes and pancake syrup.
4. Making a shopping list, after doing a fridge, freezer and pantry check, only adding the ingredients you need to buy. If you only need 5 apples, buy just 5 apples, don't spend money on food you don't need.
5. Sticking to the list. If it's not on the list, you don't buy it. If you think you'll need it, find a substitute in the ingredients you already have.
6. Shop around - you won't find any one store with the lowest prices on everything. Be prepared to shop at a couple of different food stores/butchers/green grocers.
1. Brands - always choose the cheapest, usually a generic, but not always. And sometimes a special isn't really a special - always check the unit price. Look for half price specials on your basic grocery items and use them to build a grocery stockpile and save you money.
2. Portion control - remember if a recipe serves six, get six serves. Put the two spare into the freezer for freezer meals - they are free dinners and will really help keep your grocery budget low.
3. Cook from scratch - no buying pre-prepared or packaged or convenience meals or parts of meals. MOO yoghurt, muffins, biscuits, pastry for the sausage rolls, dip, pita chips, gravy, wedges, pancakes and pancake syrup.
4. Making a shopping list, after doing a fridge, freezer and pantry check, only adding the ingredients you need to buy. If you only need 5 apples, buy just 5 apples, don't spend money on food you don't need.
5. Sticking to the list. If it's not on the list, you don't buy it. If you think you'll need it, find a substitute in the ingredients you already have.
6. Shop around - you won't find any one store with the lowest prices on everything. Be prepared to shop at a couple of different food stores/butchers/green grocers.