Now that we’re in the new house and have settled into a good rhythm and routine, I figured it would be fun to share what meal planning and grocery shopping look like in our household. This is going to be a series I plan to keep up with, since I’m really, really trying to get a fool-proof system in place between the grocery lists and meal planning.
For reference our household consists of two adults and two very small children: me, my husband, our just-turned-two year old daughter, and our seven month son who is happily joining us for meals, because he basically baby led weaned himself at five months. He’s eating like a growing teenager and watching him chow down on take-out BBQ is slightly terrifying. (We also have two cats).
Note for this series: I’m not including cleaning supplies, diapers, cat-food, laundry detergent, or other items to run the household. This figure solely includes ingredients for breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks! Oh, and all the butter and dessert ingredients too. We make a lot of homemade cookies and donuts.
GROCERY SHOPPING = $229.43
Spending over $200 on groceries in one week is a lot higher than I typically incur. I happened to stop at Costco to restock Nutella, whole peeled tomatoes, coffee pods, chicken broth, etc. My bill at Trader Joe’s was ~$120 for the week.
TAKEOUT = $22.42
Takeout was quite light this week, with only one stop at Chick-fil-A and zero BBQ orders.
MONDAY LUNCH
Trader Joe’s frozen Indian dishes with naan and home-cooked jasmine rice. Nothing fancy, but it’s a great and easy. Pro tip: take the extra time to cook them in the oven it makes a HUGE difference.
MONDAY DINNER
Oven roasted salmon with lemon-honey-butter pan sauce, a mixed green salad with beets, tomatoes, and cucumbers (all salad ingredients were from last week that needed to get used up) and yesterdays left over linguini. I try to incorporate fish at least once a week.
TUESDAY LUNCH
Sandwich day! Kings Hawaiian rolls, deli turkey, potato chips, pickles, and yesterdays left over salad.
TUESDAY DINNER
An easy one! Trader Joe’s has an awesome frozen kit of Asian vegetables with a sauce, I pair it with freshly made rice and sautéed chicken breast.
MOM HACK: since I’m sautéing chicken already, I batch cook the rest of the chicken I bought at Trader Joe’s. I purchased roughly 3 pounds of chicken breasts, which equated to 8 thinly sliced breasts. I simply season with salt and pepper, sauté with olive oil. I use two pieces for tonights dinner and portion out three pyrex containers for three other nights of chicken dishes this week.
WEDNESDAY LUNCH
Chicken noodle soup and sandwiches! I made a decent sized batch of chicken noodle soup yesterday afternoon, it yielded eight lunch portions. Half went into the fridge for this week and the other half went into the freezer for next week.
WEDNESDAY DINNER
Chicken & Thangs — we eat a lot of chicken breast around here. It’s always paired with a pan sauce, a vegetable, and a starch. So we’ve named that trio ‘chicken & thangs.’ Tonights was chicken (cooked and prepped yesterday) with a tomato-balsamic-butter pan sauce, oven-roasted broccoli, and Israeli couscous. Pretty simple to throw together!
THURSDAY LUNCH
Another U-Pick-2 at home lunch. We had the last of this weeks chicken noodle soup and two sandwiches. Though the baby ate cheerios the first half of lunch and nursed the second half.
THURSDAY DINNER
Meatballs with homemade vodka sauce and rigatoni. The meatballs were cooked and frozen last week, the sauce was cooked tonight (large batch, so I froze another meals worth) and of course cooked the pasta tonight as well.
FRIDAY LUNCH
I just couldn’t. So after I put the baby down for his midday nap, I threw my toddler in the car and picked up Chick-fil-A for everyone. Our toddler loves their kids meals.
FRIDAY DINNER
Friday nights are Shabbat and their special to us. We do the works: light candles, drink wine, and eat challah in addition to our meal. Tonight was chicken piccata with mashed potatoes and peppers and onions. The chicken was batch cooked and ready to go from Tuesday. I whipped up the piccata sauce while the potatoes were boiling and the peppers and onions were sautéing.
Saturday Lunch
We had a really late breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon, toast, and fruit so I didn’t really do anything for lunch. At some point my husband snacked on left over pasta and meatballs from earlier this week. Our toddler ate two homemade cookies and I held out until dinner.
Saturday Dinner
Sesame Ginger Beef with Rice. It’s been a while since I’ve made this and I was pumped to add it to the weekly rotation! I chose to make this meal because we had left over ginger from last week that I didn’t want to go to waste.
Sunday Lunch
Everyone did their own thing with leftovers. My husband killed off the last of the pasta and meatballs. I had leftover broccoli, couscous, and a hardboiled egg. I made a PB&J for our toddler and our baby napped while we ate (score).
Sunday Dinner
Chicken piccata, using the very last of the chicken I cooked earlier this week. When I made piccata sauce on Friday night, I poured some over these chicken breasts as well before popping back into the fridge. Our sides are left over vegetables and various starches from earlier this week. Which means… no sautéing or cooking anything tonight! It’s purely a reheat night, super simple, perfect way to close out the weekend.
My goal for Sunday night is to have a majority of our leftovers finished up, even if that means Sunday night is a hodge-podge of protein-vegetable-starch and everyones plate looks a bit different. If not, I incorporate them into the upcoming weeks meal plan. It helps to minimize food waste and I feel better knowing food that was planned, purchased, and prepared gets eaten.