Grocery Spending/Menu Plan | Plus the Money Saving Mom winners!

On Saturdays, I share my menu plan for the upcoming week along with a photo of my groceries and a tally of my spending. My goal is to spend $100/week for our food, toiletries, and cleaning products. I’m currently in the midst of trying to buy more local, sustainably-produced food while sticking to my budget. Can it be done? I don’t know, but I’m going to try, and I’ll share what I learn as I go along.

Congrats to Sheila G. and Michelle R.! You’ve both won copies of The Money Saving Mom’s Budget and you’ve been emailed.

By the way, I must say that I love you, readers, for your enthusiastic response to book giveaways. You tend to enter more for books than for $100 Visa gift cards! 😉

If you didn’t win the book, but are still interested in reading it, check to see if your library has a copy. Or buy a copy of your own! Crystal is giving all of the proceeds from her book to Compassion International, so by buying her book, you’re helping to support a good cause (and by reading it, you’ll likely learn how to save at least $8.40, which is the price of the book.)

Ok, on to groceries! I was feeling too lazy to get my zoom lens out, so not everything is visible in this picture.

Here’s some of the stuff that didn’t make it into the first frame.

I spent $50.08 at Weis and $64.71 at Aldi. And then I had to stop at our local grocery store to buy a few things, and that bill was $13.71.

So, my total is $128.50, and I’m not sure whether to say that’s on budget or not, because Mr. FG and I still need to sit down and rework our budget. One of the things I’m hoping to squeeze in is a bit more grocery money. I think I’d really like to have at least $125/week instead of $100.

Oh! I just remembered that I bought two dozen eggs from my local blog reader (Hi, David!), so add another $6 to my total.

What are we eating this week?

Since Mr. FG works second shift, we eat our dinner meal at noon during the week, and at night on the weekends. And our lunch meal happens at night during the week and at noon on the weekends.

We do eat breakfast in the morning, though, all week long!

Breakfast options are homemade yogurt, granola, scrambled eggs, oatmeal, fruit, and cereal.

Lunches will be comprised of sandwiches made with whole wheat bread, homemade yogurt, yogurt smoothies, cottage cheese, fruit, raw veggies, nuts, cheese, and leftovers as necessary ( Mr. FG takes the previous day’s leftovers to work most days.)

Here’s the dinner meal plan:

Saturday

• Takeout date night for Mr. FG and me, something easy for the kids

Sunday

• Not positive about this meal yet. I need to talk to the kids and Mr. FG and see what they want to eat.

Monday

• Sloppy Joes
• carrot sticks
• fresh pineapple

Tuesday

• Tortilla Soup
• Sweet Corn Muffins
• green salad

Wednesday

• Dirty Rice with Shrimp
• roasted green beans

Thursday

• Fish Sandwiches
• spinach salad

Friday

• Thin Crust Pizza

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Today’s 365 post: Bare

Joshua’s 365 post: A Nerdy Narwhal