Our Menu Plan for the First Week of the Low Spend Grocery Month Challenge

We will be starting our low spend month challenge tomorrow. As you can see, I have my $250. ready to go for shopping this month. It is 1/2 of what I normally spend. For those who are new and don’t know, there is just Hubby and I in this household. Our children left and married a very long time ago and have their own families.

So to get ready for our low spend month, I looked at my inventory and menu planned yesterday for the next week.

We only eat two meals a day. We have breakfast, lunch, or brunch late morning. Then we have dinner between 5PM and 6PM. 

Most of the time we each fix our first meal ourselves. Sometimes we want the same thing and one of us cooks. Dinners, we both take turns cooking. 

We usually pick from this list for our first meal of the day:

Sandwiches: Chicken, tuna, BLT’s, or cold cuts 
                   Soup
                   Leftovers from dinner
                   Hamburgers or cheeseburgers
                   Hot Dogs
                   Eggs
                   Pancakes or Waffles
                   French Toast
                   Salad
      


Here is our dinner plan starting tomorrow:

Sat. Homemade Pizza, salad
Sun. Shake n Bake Chicken,broccoli
Mon. Chef’s Salad
Tues. Spaghetti and Meatballs, garlic toast
Wedn. Leftovers
Thurs. Fish sticks, brussel sprouts 
Fri. Taco Salad made with ground turkey 

We rarely have dessert. Once in a while I will make SF jello or pudding or we have a little ice cream.

We drink iced tea or water with our meals. Sometimes if it is a special dinner like steak or lamb chops, we will have a glass of wine.

In the summer, I try to make simple meals. I cook them the cheapest way I can to save on my utility bill. For example, sometimes I cook pizza in the toaster oven if is a frozen circular one. My homemade one is rectangular and goes in the oven. The shake n bake chicken will get cooked in the air fryer. 

I have a bag of leftover broccoli in the freezer that I want to get rid of so that will be cooked in the microwave. The same for the brussel sprouts.


I make my own garlic toast out of leftover hamburger buns and bake that in the toaster oven. 

The spaghetti sauce and meatballs will be cooked in the microwave. The spaghetti is leftover from another meal and is in the freezer. It will be warmed up quickly in a skillet. I cook cauliflower rice for me in the microwave. 

I will tell you a secret. I hate fish sticks. Hubby loves them. They are leftover from the week that I was in the eastern part of the state. So I will eat them this week because I want to get rid of them. Yuck! 


We always have leftovers hanging around so we always have a leftover night or two.


I cook the taco meat on the brown cycle in my pressure cooker and season it too. 


We have everything that we need for this week’s meal plan in the fridge, freezer and pantry. So if I shop this week it will only be to pick up an exceptionally priced item that I can incorporate into a future meal plan. I may need produce also for the next week. So I don’t plan on spending much of that $250. next week.