I have found the best possible way to save money is to plan larger meals with the goal of having leftovers for the following days' lunch. This is especially helpful while traveling as it saves me a lot of time cooking and and I can halve the number of meals I have to plan and shop for.
We had two items left over from last week that we are going to use. A half a bag of rice, and one jar of pre-made pasta sauce. Although I'm only going to be using a leftover portion of these this week, I'm adding the total cost of both items (off of last week's receipt) to our cost for this week $7.48 because I would have bought these for these recipes anyway.
$34.31 + $7.48 in leftover food = $41.79
Here's what we will be eating this week:
Breakfast
Cereal with whole milk and bananas
Lunch
Leftover's from the previous night dinner
Dinner
Mac and cheese
Veggie Sheppard's pie
Ramen and veggies
Cream of mushroom soup over rice with grilled mushrooms
Twice baked sweet potatoes
Spaghetti squash alfredo with grilled "chicken"
Snacks
Hard boiled eggs
Popsicles
Banana's
Teriyaki noodles for Greg
Monster energy drink for Greg
This will make a total of 6 meals per day for 4 people, a total of 72 meals for this week (plus snacks) which brings our total cost per meal to $0.58. We're still averaging about $15 per person when we eat out. At this average spend, we will be saving approximately $4,278.21 this week. This might be a little more boring of a week for meal variety, but they will still be delicious and filling. And financially speaking, this will be a great week for us to put some money into savings.
Why are we saving so much on our meals this week?
It's not because the food costs were lower! We did our shopping at the Piggly Wiggly and were surprised to find the food costs were still pretty high compared to what we are used to paying. I think it came in a lot lower this time because our meals don't include meat (which is so expensive!) and also because we were able to buy larger portions of items which brought the overall cost down. More variety = more money.
We are so excited to be here in Laurel and hope we can get outside to enjoy the amazing, warm, 70 degree weather this week!
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