Grocery Challenge

Sorry its been a while! I don't think we have taken any pictures lately, so not much to post! Thankfully things have been pretty uneventful around here. These two boys keep me busy though! I forgot how much babies can get into once they are mobile :) We have been having lots of fun the past several weeks since Timothy learned to crawl!

Anyway, I will post more on the boys later. This post is more of an accountability for me, but maybe it will be helpful to someone else. I entered the All You Grocery Challenge. I read about it on Southern Savers on Friday, which was the last day to enter. Basically, you have to prepare healthy meals for your family for $25/person (not including children under 1 year old) per week for 4 weeks. I had just been complaining to John about how much our groceries cost. I have even started couponing (though not as the Extreme Couponers do!) but I still haven't seen much difference. Now, a $75 budget per week for all meals (at home & eating out) seems impossible to me, so this will definitely be a challenge. I am going to post my meal plans weekly on here so that I can keep up with it. I may not make it beyond this week, but hopefully I will. If you can actually stick to that budget please feel free to share your strategies, recipes, etc! I didn't post this earlier because I went shopping yesterday & I wanted to make sure I didn't go over budget on the first shopping trip! One other thing about this challenge - you can use any food that you already have in your house.

So, here is what we are doing this week:

breakfasts: we can choose from cereals, oatmeal, bacon/egg/cheese muffins, fruit, cinnamon rolls
lunchs: Boar's Head sandwiches, PB&J, a few Lean Cuisine meals I already had, tuna salad, chicken salad, peanut butter & banana sandwiches, or maybe leftovers

dinners: Sunday - leftovers from Father's day lunch with family
Monday - broccoli & beef stir fry over brown rice
Tuesday - Spring and Summer Soup & rolls
Wednesday - roasted chicken & probably squash/zucchini ribbons & broccoli/raisin salad
Thursday - Piled High Veggie Pot Pie (using leftover chicken)
Friday - leftover pot pie
Saturday - not sure yet....probably a pasta dish

We will probably eat out once or twice (most likely using coupons from the coupon book we bought from Joshua's school).

I went to Aldi & Publix yesterday to buy everything I need for the week & spent about $55. I already had a lot of fruit that I had just bought the end of last week but I got a bag of apples & some blueberries. I bought a ton of veggies & my grandparents gave us several pounds of squash & zucchini on Saturday. I haven't shopped at Aldi in a while but I thought I would give it a try again since I needed to pick up some sugar, honey & eggs in addition to lots of produce. I know they have much lower prices & I think their veggies are usually pretty good (I haven't been a fan of their fruit though).

I plan to do some baking for snacks. My favorite lately is this Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Banana Bread. I also plan to bake this Whole Wheat and Honey Zucchini Bread (thanks to all of the zucchini I have to use up!). For lunch today I made these Cinnamon Sugar Sweet Potato Fries. To my delight (& huge surprise) Joshua liked them & asked for more!! We will be making these again. (click on the link & the recipe is at the bottom of the page...I substituted ground oats since I didn't have any ground flaxseed)

Again, please feel free to share any of your secrets with me!