Menu for what's on sale Aug. 12-Aug. 18

I intended on getting this done on Wednesday. HA! With running to the stores to check out prices, taking the car in to have the A/C fixed, monitoring the house A/C which decides intermittantly to pop off lately, attending to children who have started school and now have a whacko schedule again and emotions flyin, feeling the need to can four pork loins, and a large package of hamburger, enjoying the rain yesterday morning, it just didn't get done before now.

So....when I first started creating budget menus, just mainly to see if I could do it, and posting them on CouponSense, I usually came in under $50 for a week's worth of meals. And I was inspired and touched by posts on the CouponSense message boards of women asking how to feed their family on $20 or $40 for a week or two weeks or until the next payday. I come nowhere close to those figures. Can it be done? Most probably. The Hillbilly Housewife says that you can. Well, she says that you can do it for $45/week. But you'll be eating alot of beans and lentils and hot rice with milk. If that's your thing or if that's what you need to do, http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/ . Actually, in checking out her website for this post, I noticed that she now has a $70/week menu. And note that I don't think that her prices on foods are all consistent with Arizona prices, but it's a good website. She is very "granola", you can learn a lot of self sufficient living from her and other fine blogs or websites out there.

The first budget meal menu I worked out was $36-something for that week(it was a great coupon shopping week). They have consistently gone up in price and I don't think that food prices have changed that drastically, but I do throw a cookie in for lunch now and again or a soda here and there whereas before the menus were bare bones, survival food. Oats for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, mostly vegetarian main dishes. And you can do it cheaper yourself if you use coupons, cut out a few things that might be unnecessary or veer towards the cheaper foods this week. This is just a guide or inspiration or a pat on the back that YOU CAN live within a food budget and not die from lack of creativity. I am not an expert at anything, this is just for fun. This week's menu is a little over $65....AGAIN. Feel free to pull anything frivolous out to make it cheaper.

$67.68

Here are the Menus for the week:

Breakfast
1-Breakfast Tacos (flour tortilla, scrambled eggs, cooked sausage. If you want cheese, you will have to spend .99 extra or pull something else from the grocery list and replace it with cheese as in trying to keep costs down, I didn't allow for cheese for this dish)

2-Cold Cereal, apple juice

3-Cold Cereal or Corn pancakes or waffles (use the recipe on the side of the Jiffy corn muffin mix for corn pancakes or waffles)

4-Cold Cereal

5-French Toast, bacon if any is left

6-Cold Cereal

7-Cold Cereal, apple juice

Lunch
1-Ham or turkey Sandwich, celery sticks

2-PB&J sandwich, pretzels, cookie (there are 32 cookies in the Kroger Value cookie package)

3-Ham or turkey sandwich, grapes

4-PB&J sandwich, pretzels, cookie

5-Ham or turkey sandwich, grapes (Serving size on the package of ham or turkey states one slice per serving with 14 servings per package)

6-Chicken Noodle soup

7-Tomato or Chicken Noodle soup, carrot sticks if any carrots are left

Dinner
1-Swiss steak, canned vegetable, jello, corn muffins. For a swiss steak recipe see http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Slow-Cooker-Swiss-Steak/Detail.aspx

2-So, two options here. You can either have the leftover swiss steak and corn on the cob and french bread stick, or you can freeze the leftover Swiss Steak for dinner sometime next week and make a pot of Cheddar Corn Chowder http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/cheddar-corn-chowder-recipe/index.html (Barefoot Contessa version)
You should know that I did not put potatoes or half and half on the grocery list. Or chicken stock, but....I figure if you wanted to you could buy six extra cans of Campbell's chicken noodle soup at .50/can, strain out the noodles and chunk of chicken, yes the one chunk of chicken and that would probably work? Don't you think? You may have to add water, so maybe six cans is excessive, you'll know better than I. If you don't like guessing games, then buy some chicken stock. Serve the soup with the french bread stick. This sounds like it makes a lot of soup, you may want to halve the recipe, then again, you'll know better than me. Using milk in place of half and half would be lighter. If you choose not to buy potatoes, I think that it could still be a great soup.

3-Food Club Skillet Classics, their version of Hamburger Helper, green salad, pudding for dessert. Food club Skillet Classics offers these flavors: Stroganoff, Zesty Italian Pasta, Chili Mac, Salisbury Pasta, 3 Cheese Pasta, Beef Taco. They make 5 cups and suggest one cup servings to serve five people.

4-Grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup

5-Baked chicken, Knorr side dish, steamed carrots

6-Several options here also. Spaghetti and red sauce. Or Spaghetti and Alfredo sauce, with broccoli in it. Or...if you wanted to spend $1.79 for a package of Food Club lasagne and another .99 for a package of cheese, you could make a delicious vegetable lasagne. I would cook up half of the lasagne noodles and then layer with Alfredo sauce, some steamed broccoli and sauteed onion and continue layering, then top with cheese and bake. Kind of an italian inspired mac and cheese with broccoli thrown in.. Serve with a green salad.

7-Stuffed green peppers, four halves stuffed with a Knorr rice side dish and any leftover cooked ground beef, canned vegetable.


Here's the grocery list:

Albertson's
Whole fryer, .57 lb., aprox. 3 lbs. at $1.71
If you choose not to get the grapes at Bashas, you can get them here at .77 lb.
Corn on the cob, 6/$1, buy 6
Calidad flour tortillas, 10/$10, buy one
Brown n serve sausage or Farmland sausage at 10/$10, buy one
Kraft American singles, 2/$4, buy one
Carrots, .99 for 2 lb. bag

Bashas
Boneless Round steak, $1.37 lb., package I got was $5.86 (and enough steak to feed some third world countries. You're saving over $13 on a package this size!). Aprox. 4 lbs.
Green seedless grapes, .79 lb, package I weighed was $1.64, a tinge more than 2 lbs.
Large slicing tomatoes, .88 lb., one .36
Food Club shredded cheese, .99, buy one (if you don't make the Cheddar Corn Chowder, you can use the one bag of cheese for the breakfast Tacos, if you do make the chowder then you will need at least one other bag of cheese and if you make the Vegetable Lasagne you will need another bag. Totally confused? Me too.)
Bar S Extra lean sliced turkey or ham, $2.88. Package states 14 servings at one slice per serving. Campbell's tomato or chicken noodle soup, 20/$10, buy 6 cans
Jiffy corn muffin mix, .50, buy 2
Food Club gelatin or pudding mix, 2/$1, buy one of each
Hunt's diced tomatoes, $1, buy 2 cans
Food Club strawberry preserves or grape jelly, 2/$4, buy 1
Food Club canned vegetables, 5/$3, buy 2 cans
Food Club Skillet Classics, $1.25, buy 1
Green bell pepper, .49 ea, buy 2(use four halves)
Bashas medium eggs, $1.49, buy 1
French bread stick, $1.49, buy 1

Fry's
Milk---milk, milk, shmmmmilk. .77 for a 1/2 gallon. It's going to be cheaper for you this week at a 4 limit to pick up four 1/2 gallons of Fry's milks than it is to buy 2 gallons at $1.99 ea. Buy 4 at $3.08
Super lean gr. beef, $1.77 lb. in a 2 lb. chub at $3.54 [If you have a problem with chub meat, some people do and I am one of them, ask your butcher nicely and with a smile on your face, at Bashas to grind up some round steak into hamburger for you(Bashas)]
Knorr sides, .88, buy 4 pkgs. These have 2.5 servings in them with 1/2 cup being a serving.
Kellogg's cereals, buy four, save $4, soooooooo buy four, $1.37 each, $5.48 total
Broccoli, $1 lb., the bunch I weighed came to 1-1/2 lbs. which means, $1.50
Kroger Value cookies, $1.19, buy one. I counted out 32 cookies in one pkg. They have about four kinds to choose from
Fry's apple juice, $1.25
Yellow onion, .69 lb., the onion I weighed was a 1/2 lb., so .34 (If you make the Cheddar Corn Chowder, you may want more onions than just one.)
Kroger peanut butter, .99 (18 oz.)
Kroger Value Bacon, $1.77
Kroger Value bread, .88, buy 4 at $3.52(a loaf of KV bread has 20 slices in it counting the heals. If you make four sandwiches six times and make french toast with 8 slices, you will use 56 slices of bread. So you decide whether you get the fourth loaf of bread or not. You may need to have some toast with cereal on some mornings?)
Fry's pretzels, $1.29
Ragu Alfredo sauce or red sauce, $1.50 (Kroger Value red sauce is $1.15)
Kroger Value spaghetti, .88
Iceberg lettuce, $1
Celery, $1

Other good values this week which are not on the grocery list:
Chunk light tuna, .69-Fry's
Kroger Value animal crackers, .99-Fry's
Kroger Value vanilla wafers, $1.27-Fry's
Fry's pasta, .99-Fry's
Fry's spaghetti, 10/$10-Fry's
Fry's rice, $2.49 for 2 lbs.-Fry's
Big K soda .77-Fry's
Fry's chocolate milk, .77/1/2 gal.-Fry's (NOTE: that there is a four limit on the milk, so you can't buy four regular milks and then a choc. milk in one transaction, just be aware.)
Youplait yogurt, 10/$5-Bashas
Hillshire Farms Deli Selects, $2.88-Bashas, there's bound to be a coupon for this, knocking it down to $1.88, check your coupons
Chorizo, $1, -Albertsons

Items not on the grocery list you might already have:
Mayo, coffee, flour, sugar, condiments

See how you can save more on groceries, at http://www.couponsense.com/