In today’s fast-paced world, finding ways to save money without sacrificing the quality of our meals is a valuable skill. As a budget-savvy food enthusiast, I’m sharing my surefire plan for eating well on a limited budget. In this $80 grocery budget meal plan, I’m taking you through my strategic meal planning for my family of 5. I’m feeding my husband, myself, my 7 year old son, my 5 year old son, and my 1 1/2 year old son. But if your family is a different size, or your budget is different, you can still apply the same principles to your meal planning and have success. Budget constraints don’t mean compromising on taste or nutrition.
Step 1 to Create a Budget Meal Plan:
Shop Your Pantry, Refrigerator, and Freezer
Start by taking stock of your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer. This particular week, I had a surplus of apples, and lots of kids snacks. My veggie drawer in the fridge was also full with carrots, cucumbers, lemons, parsley, and onions. I find it’s important to use what’s leftover from the past week if not just to save money but also to not waste food. I feel very blessed to have the food that I do and I would feel irresponsible if I didn’t make use of it. Utilizing what you already have before heading to the store will maximize your savings.
I always keep my bread, wraps, rolls, or buns in the fridge or freezer. I did read an article about this and some things do say that the bread gets stale in the fridge, but I believe stale is better than moldy. That is just my opinion. I also had cottage cheese, cream cheese, and mini bagels in the freezer. So basically, when it comes to breakfast, I was already covered.
Additional Pantry Shopping Tips and Tricks
Another thing I try to do when shopping my pantry is find ways to utilize condiments and leftovers. I had two meals on my list right away that I knew I wouldn’t need to purchase anything for. It’s my recommendation, if possible, to make 3 meals around what you already have. For this week, I decided to make Big Mac Bowls and ham and pineapple fried rice. The Big Mac Bowls utilized Thousand Island Dressing, a half eaten jar of pickles, and frozen ground beef. The ham and pineapple fried rice utilized frozen ham from easter, a discount can of pineapple in my pantry, and rice from my pantry.
For lunches, I found some cheese and deli meat I’d already purchased on discount and stashed in the freezer and some ground beef to make a beef based dish for myself and my husband.
Shopping your shelves also helpful to see what you are running low on and what you have plenty of. This week, I noticed I needed almond milk and cheese sticks for the kids. I noticed that some cheese I’d planned to use, had gone bad, and I had plenty of butter so I didn’t need to purchase any extra. By identifying the essentials and avoiding unnecessary purchases, I can ensure that my budget remains intact.
Making the Budget Meal Plan:
I always start with my pantry meals so on my meal plan went the Big Mac Bowl and the ham and pineapple fried rice. Next I shop my local sales flyer to see what is on sale and see what meals I can make around that. I enter everything I need to buy and everything I’d like to buy based on what is on sale into my excel spread sheet. I did make a free downloadable version of this spreadsheet that you can use yourself! You can get it here.
This particular week, Zucchini was on sale so I decided to plan a bit around that. Watermelon was also on a discount and a few other items that I added to the list. You can see me making the entire list in my youtube video where I go over the entire process.
I also like to make sure there is some variety in our week, so if I can plan to use a gift card or coupon to eat out or get takeout one night, I’ll do that. This particular week, I had a gift card to a local butcher, I won in a PTA raffle, so I was able to use that for one special meal.
This week wasn’t exactly typical for a person not creating Youtube videos. I was also filming a $10 dinner video in which I created 3 meals for just $30 so this was part of my $80 budget. You can read about exactly how I did this here and watch my youtube video on it here.
The Full Plan:
So based on all of this and one night that we knew we had plans with friends, this ended up being my meal plan:
Breakfast: We had a choice of eggs, oatmeal, cereal, bagels, and fruit.
Lunch: The boys had turkey and cheese sandwiches and lots of snacks from their snack drawer with fruit. We also always have peanut butter and jelly on hand, if they prefer that.
My husband and I ate a mixture of ground beef, zucchini, mushrooms, and onions. This could easily be placed over pasta with sauce or rice to be a more filing option for you.
Dinner:
Monday: Big Mac Bowls
Tuesday: Taco Bowls
Wednesday: Butcher meal
Thursday: Chicken and Veggie Kabobs and garlic butter rice
Friday: Ham and pineapple fried rice
Saturday: Dinner with friends
Sunday: Garlic Butter Chicken and zucchini rice
Sticking to the List:
Here are the items I ended up purchasing based on what was on sale with the initial $50 budget and what I needed to re-stock my pantry. This does not include the list of items I purchased for the three meals for $30. You can find that list here. Had my budget been a little bigger, I would have set aside 20% of the budget to stock up on sale items and buy more clearance markdowns.
- Market Basket brand almond milk
- Cage-free egg whites
- Soy sauce
- Bananas
- Tomatoes
- Cheddar cheese (block)
- 2 containers blueberries
- Cucumber
- Lettuce
- Zucchinis
- String cheese
- Watermelon
- Peppers
- cat food
Cooking the $80 Grocery Budget Meal Plan
This $80 grocery budget meal plan was relatively simple. I find that the smaller the budget, the more creative you have to get. And creativity sometimes = time. Luckily, we came out somewhere in the middle this week and it wasn’t too labor intensive.
Ground Beef with Mushroom and Zucchini Skillet
For the ground beef, mushroom, and zucchini lunch, it’s kind of one of those recipes that isn’t really a recipe but I did the best I could to share the basics:
Ingredients:
- Ground beef
- Onion, sliced
- Zucchini
- Mushrooms
- Italian seasoning
- Steakhouse seasoning
- Salt and pepper
- Red pepper flakes (optional)
- Garlic (optional)
Instructions:
- In a pan, cook the ground beef over medium heat until it starts to brown.
- Add the sliced onion to the pan and continue cooking until the onion is translucent.
- Slice the zucchini and mushrooms, then add them to the pan with the ground beef and onion.
- Season the mixture with Italian seasoning, Steakhouse seasoning, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes (if desired). Stir well to combine.
- Cook the mixture until the ground beef is fully cooked and the vegetables are tender.
- If desired, add some minced garlic to the pan during the last minute of cooking for added flavor.
- Remove from heat and serve the ground beef mixture as is or with your preferred accompaniment such as rice or pasta.
- Enjoy your delicious ground beef with mushrooms and zucchini!
Big Mac Bowls
This one is one that needs to be remembered so I did type this one out in a printable format for you here! This is something I’ll make again and again! It’s the taste of McDonald’s without all the calories and cost! I even saw a Tiktok about a girl who lost 50lbs eating these.
3 Meals for $30
You can get the recipes and more details on the Chicken Kabobs, Taco Bowls With Fresh Pico, and Garlic Butter Chicken here!
You Can Do It!
I feel confident that using my surefire plan, you can shop your own shelves, be resourceful, spend less, and eat well if your on the $80 grocery budget meal plan or any budget you have. To see the full video where I do this click here. And to download the free grocery budget calculator click here! Happy shopping!
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