Meal Planning

We have an almost processed food free home- I do all the cooking and it's from scratch.  Occasionally a can of mushroom soup may slip in or K might have some KD for lunch- but these events are few and far between.  As I have stated in lots of my blogs, our budget is tight.  So it can be a challenge to find delicious, new recipes that fit within our limited meal budget.  This past month I tried something new- usually I do week by week meal planning but this time I did the whole month. 

Now it did change a bit as the month carried on and I saw different things on sale or our budget got smaller or whatever.  But it was helpful to have a better idea what was going on in the month so I could stock up on good sales and prepare for the upcoming meals.  It cut the cost of the protein portion of our meal down considerably.  Also, you can group meals with like ingredients close together and take advantage of places like Costco for bulk produce. 

Here is our meal plan/recipes for September.  Maybe you can take some of my ideas and use them for your own families.  We aim for an average of $10/dinner and this generally feeds a family of four (I like leftovers for lunch).  September we bought a lot of chicken and ground beef to portion out and for October we've bought one of those full pork loins from Costco for $16 and portioned it out for 7 different meals- that makes the protein cost less than $3 per dinner...can you beat that??  We would love to always shop at places like Nesvog, but at this time in our life we can't.  For September I managed to make a different recipe for every meal- the reason there aren't 30 is some of them weren't worth mentioning, I was out of town for 4 days and some of them we had 2 nights in a row.  I took pictures for almost all of the recipes.

Click on the name for the recipe:

Lime Mustard Chicken + Cheesy Zucchini Rice
Southwest Quinoa Salad
Greek Meatballs and Toasted Feta Orzo
African Palava + Salad with homemade Avocado Dressing
Chicken, Bacon, Brie Salad
Pulled Pork + Potato Salad
Broccoli Cheddar Soup + Jalapeno Popovers
Hot Sausage & Chicken Stew
Korean Beef
Tortilla Soup
Salmon Cakes
Burritos with Roasted Salsa and Black Refried Beans and Mexican Rice
Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad
Cashew Quinoa Salad
Chicken and Dumplings
Perfect Autumn Quinoa Salad
Roasted Garlic Potato Soup (add cumin) + Cheese Biscuits
Chili and Buttermilk Cornbread
Chicken Bruschetta Melts

For October we've already had:

Sweet Tomato and Basil Bisque
Sweet Potato Latkes with Poached Eggs
Spicy Thai Peanut Stir Fry

Our meal plan for the rest of the month (it may change, but if you see anything you like check my food blog occasionally- I'm keeping it pretty up to date these days):

Shredded Pork Tacos with Mango Salsa and Pico de Gallo
Shredded Pork Quesadillas
Cheesy Cauliflower Soup
Shepard's Pie
Cheesy Corn and Potato Chowder
Chipotle Chicken Taco Salad
Lasagna
Shrimp Scampi
Homemade Pizza Pockets
Challupas (crockpot mexican pork and beans)
Garlic Chicken + Zucchini Cakes
Chili+Cinnamon Pork Loin with Apple Salsa
Tuna Melts with Homemade Garlic Cilantro Fries
(plus a bunch of repeat soups/salads from last month + Korean Beef *we have this every month*)