One thing that this family does not have – is a good grasp on food and making our grocery trips the best. Part of my budgeting is couponing. Part of my couponing is not buying things we don’t need. Part of my problem is I don’t know what we really do need..

So to solve this problem I made lists upon lists upon lists: Are you ready for this?

First off – I grocery shop every two weeks or less if possible. So I needed to make 14 different meals for each three meals a day.

Breakfast:

1. Waffles
2. Cereal
3. Pancakes
4. French Toast
5. Sausage Biscuits
6. Bacon Egg & Cheese Sandwhiches
7. Oatmeal
8. Muffins
9. Banana Bread
10. Yogurt & Granola
11. Cream Cheese Bagel
12. Oatmeal Smoothie
13. Breakfast Bar
14. Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Then I separated lunches in two sections. One for the girls and one for me because we obviously eat different lunches!! Brian’s left out of the lunches since he buys lunch each day at work and he has his staples on the weekends that are always in the house.

Girls Lunches:

1. Pizza
2. Fish Sticks
3. Ham & Cheese
4. Quesidilla
5. Hot Dog
6. Raviolis (Mac N Cheese)
7. Chicken Nuggets
8. PB & J/Banana
9. Cheeseburgers
10. Chicken Noodle Soup
11. Egg Salad Sandwiches
12. Meatball Mini Bites
13. Tortilla Roll Up
14. Pasta Salad

Lunches for Me! (Note: There are a few main course meals in here because Brian refuses to eat them – so I make them for lunch and just portion myself appropriately)

1. Chicken Potatoes & Carrots
2. Chicken Rice & Veggies
3. Enchiladas
4. Taco Soup
5. Beanie Weenies
6. Rotel Chicken Wraps
7. PB&J
8. Ham & Cheese
9. Pizza
10. Vegetable Soup
11. Quesadilla
12. Egg Salad
13. Tortilla Roll Up
14. Leftovers

And finally the easiest to think of meals – but the hardest to get myself to cook them.. Dinners!

1. Spaghetti
2. BBQ Chicken & Pasta
3. Steak Bites & Potatoes
4. Tacos
5. Baked Ziti
6. Teriakyi Chicken Rice & Corn
7. Lasagna
8. Breaded Chicken & Pasta
9. Sloppy Joes
10. Chicken Cacciatore
11. Shredded BBQ Chicken Sandwhiches
12. Quesadillas
13. Chicken Cordon Bleu & Pasta
14. Easy Chicken

You’ll notice some of these meals are repeats of lunches but since I have two weeks I can do one meal for lunch and the next week for dinner. That way we don’t get sick of it but honestly they could be eaten for lunch or dinner!

Okay!! So now that I have the list of food and my grocery list all set I needed to come up with a prepping plan to make it easier for the rest of the two weeks easier.

Prepping Plan: I hope to do a majority of my cooking on Sunday. The meals that probably won’t get prepped on Sunday will just be made the day I want to eat them and the leftovers saved for another meal 🙂

Fully Prepped Meals:

Chicken Potatoes & Carrots (throw everything in the oven and cook for 30 min)

Chicken Rice & Veggies (will probably be made the day I want to eat it and saved for another day of eating)

Taco Soup (This batch makes enough to last a loong time and is frozen. Will only have to make this every 3-6 months.

Enchiladas

Vegetable Soup (again frozen)

Tortilla Roll Ups (refrigerated and easy peasy)

Muffins

Banana Bread

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies – which might be knocked off my list depending on how irritating they are.

Partial meals to prep:

Meat Sauce: (3 meals)

Red Sauce: (2 meals)

Crockpot chicken in broth for meals: 8 meals worth (lunches & dinners) this makes it easy to pull out a cooked piece of chicken, shred it, and cook it in a quesadilla with some cheese and veggies. Same with other meals – just heat up with whatever sauce you use and it’s ready to go. I think I’ll be splitting this up into a weekly event where I crockpot four meals worth and divvy it up for certain meals then repeat on the next Sunday.

Hard Boiled Eggs: 6-8

Along with the meals are of course, fruits, veggies, pretzels, crackers, and a few other snacks/sides! But now that I have a serious list of what we are going to eat for the next two weeks and enough choices to not get sick of things, I am thinking our grocery list will dwindle down without all those unnecessary foods that never get made into meals or go bad before I actually use them.

Let’s see how this goes 😉

On Wednesday I’ll be posting about my prepping that I did all day Sunday 🙂 and I’ll let you know if it was worth all the trouble.

Thanks for stopping by!

Love Always,

J

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Tags: Boiled egg, chicken, Chicken nugget, cleaning, cook, daily life, dinner, family, food, Grocery store, Home, Macaroni and cheese, Meal, money, organizing, Personal, random, Shopping, stay at home mom, time management, Toddlers, Tortilla