Thursday, December 15, 2011

2 Week Menu

We did pretty well with the food budget this last month, especially considering we had a holiday feast. But we still feel overwhelmed by bills and the food budget is the one area I can really control.

So, I'm going to try a 2-week menu/shopping plan and see how that goes. My goal is to keep us at $50 a week. Using cash only. I hope this will help.

My goal this month is to also up the fruits and veggies and eliminate a lot more sugar. I'm planning to get a $15 produce box from Bountiful Baskets and use whatever comes in it to add to soups, as side dishes for dinners, etc.

We all eat more sugar this time of year. Everyone is different and I just happen to feel like total yuck when I have a lot of sugar at breakfast. So, I'm cutting back on things like pancakes for awhile. One of my favorite breakfasts are bagel melts. Sliced tomato, avocado and melted Swiss cheese on a bagel. Toasted under the broiler---it's a breakfast of champions!


Breakfasts:

Bagel melts :)
Blueberry whole wheat muffins
Huevos-Reeos
Make-ahead muffin melts

Lunches:

Having frozen homemade soup to pull out during the week has been awesome. It's cold, so soup pretty much always sounds good! We decided to try having soup and half a sandwich for lunch each day. I picked 3 soups to make big batches of and freeze in small containers.


Chicken Vegetable Soup

Tomato Soup 

White Chicken Chili


Dinners

12/15: Beef and Bean Burritos

12/16: Christmas party

12/17: Sweet Chicken

12/18: Sour Cream Noodle Bake

12/19: leftovers

12/20: Crockpot Chicken with Black Beans & Cream Cheese

12/21: Tacos made with chicken from previous day, freezing last third of chicken for next week

12/22: Sloppy Joes, veggies, applesauce


12/23: Connor's 2nd birthday!! Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce

12/24: leftovers

12/25: Christmas dinner (not sure yet. A meat-maybe ham or brisket. Scalloped potatoes and a veggie. Keeping it simple! Dessert will be something fun. Probably a pie that Nick will really love!)

12/26: leftovers

12/27: Salsa Chicken (filling for burritos)

12/28: leftovers

12/29: Chicken Chow Mien and egg drop soup

2 comments:

Karen Butterworth said...

You've got some good looking recipes that I'm going to have to steal. :) (Although one of these days I'm going to have to come up with *something* to sub for Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce. I haven't figured out a good sub for either yet).

Tara said...

Thanks, I hope you like whatever you try. A few of these are new for us too. :)

Have you checked to see if you can eat fish sauce?

I think liquid aminos is a healthy substitute for soy sauce. I haven't tried it myself yet but I want to. Check out this link: http://bragg.com/products/la.html