(Don't worry. His daddy was holding his hand! I added a baby, but I accidentally omitted milk from this picture.)
My husband got his first full paycheck since the July yesterday, and it felt GREAT! My grocery budget is still $50 week, but I unfortunately went a little bit over. It was, thankfully, a pretty good sale week, so I went ahead and bought the items I knew we needed and would use along with a few items to fill in the gaps to make complete meals with some of items I already have. My grand total came in at about $67 after taxes. Depending on how the week goes, I'll decide if we have to make do with what we've got an only spend $30 on groceries next week or evaluate if I can spare the extra $20 from our spending money. Either way, we'll manage.
Our meal plan is as follows,
Saturday - apples and yogurt / homemade chicken noodle soup / snacky dinner
Sunday - cereal / brown bag lunches on the way to the circus/ philly cheesesteaks
Monday - yogurt / brown bag lunches / fish sticks and fries with fruit
Tuesday - 100% whole wheat cinnamon toast / brown bag lunches / chicken salad sandwiches (this was a hit last week!)
Wednesday - cereal / brown bag lunches / chicken nachos
Thursday - smoothie popsicles / brown bag lunches / spinach and chicken tortilla bake
Friday - 100% whole wheat cinnamon toast / brown bag lunches / something from the next week's groceries
Snacks will include fresh fruit, frozen veggies, pudding, yogurt and whatever else I can come up with!
I'm planning on trying several new recipes this week, and I'm definitely planning on sharing the ones that go over well! We've had a few misses lately, like last week's cinnamon roll cake. It baked up like butter soup!
On a sugar note, you may continue to notice some changes in the way I am shopping and cooking. My middle daughter has continued to have major dental problems, so along with weaning her, we are really cutting down on the sugar in our house. I'm on the fence about what to purchase that is artificially sweetened. I don't like feeding artificially sweetened products to my children, but I also do not like and can't afford for their teeth to be rotting out of their face! We'll still have some goodies around, and I will ALWAYS love baking. We're just making an extra and more contentious effort to cut down in the sugar in all of our diets.
Along with the reduction in sugar, I'm also just generally trying to do a better job of nourishing their bodies from the inside out! I've been spending a lot of time (and grocery budget money) to add to my repertoire of dinner entrees, and I'm really happy with the the progress we're making. As a result, we're eating more complete meals and spending more time at the table,and it has been great for us! We're also no longer buying juice or sweetened milk. The options at our house for now are either milk or water, and no one is complaining!
See other meal plans at www.orgjunkie.com.
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This effort to cut sugar (hello, my 3 yr-old is a juice addict!) is something I am going to aspire to as well. And it feels SO comforting to hear that you occasionally have food prep fails ... part of why I don't expand our family dinner repertoire is for fear of the exact same thing. If you can fall and recover, surely I can too! XO
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy reading your blog and your little one (all 3) is soooo cute!
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading!
ReplyDeleteWe would rather see the baby instead of the milk any day! It probably felt great to have the money to buy groceries again. If I go over one week, I just try to make up for it the next week. Keep up the good work. Come by and link up if you would like to!
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I use natural sweetners such as berries and fruit. When making brownies or other desserts I use pureed strawberries. It tastes like you are eating chocolate covered strawberries. I also will add applesauce for a sweetner in desserts. I don't like anything artificial either. Fruits have sugar and it is natural.
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