Menu and Shopping List

As promised, I have taken inventory of our latest trip to Aldi and decided to share the menu we based our list off of, as well as the shopping list itself and the cost of our purchase. Keeping track of where you shop and how much you spend is such an easy, yet effective, way to track prices for things you buy regularly, and it can help you get organized when it's time to head back to the store.

For the next few days and the following week our menu consists of meals that can easily be used for leftovers; we try to incorporate at least 2 or 3 of these during every 2-week period. It's just so much easier to have hot lunches that require minimal assembly, and it keeps us from having to spend extra money on sandwich meats and other lunch foods. Anything that gets leftover that we're not ready to eat right away goes into the freezer, and we save those for busy (or lazy) nights.

Here is what our menu looks like for this week and next (I'm going to include a full 2-week menu to give you an idea of a realistic, easy, affordable and delicious meal plan):

Sun: chicken-fried steak, macaroni and cheese, broccoli
Mon: burrito bowls (like at Chipotle)
Tues: BBQ pork fajitas and rice
Wed: spinach-alfredo pasta with sausage
Thur: honey-mustard chicken cutlets, leftover macaroni and cheese, honey beer bread and broccoli
Fri: lemon-dill salmon, baked potato, squash
Sat: chicken penne pasta with white wine tomato cream sauce

Sun: We're going out to dinner! (We try to plan for these meals as well)
Mon: spaghetti and meat sauce
Tues: homemade chicken-noodle soup (this makes a large batch)
Wed: leftover chicken-noodle soup
Thur: homemade chili, biscuits
Fri: cajun chicken pasta
Sat: any leftovers we haven't eaten yet

As you can see, there are some meals that are really quick and easy (like spaghetti and meat sauce) and some that are more labor-intensive, like salmon. We plan these meals around my class schedule since my classes are all at night and we try to eat dinner before I go to class instead of after, which would put us at the table at 10:00 p.m.

Now, here is a disclaimer: we had about half of the ingredients we needed for these meals before we went to Aldi, so our purchase consisted of a lot of other elements like fruits and meats for future menus. Here is what we bought! (And what it cost)

Milk
2 bags of tortilla chips (we go through these like nobody's business)
2 1/3 lbs. ground beef
1 package of 5 pork chops
1 bag of frozen chicken breasts
broccoli
yellow squash
3 small cans tomato sauce
4 roma tomatoes
1 package of strawberries
1 package of blackberries
1 bag of salad
1 avocado
unsalted butter
1 bag of onions (about 5 small ones; they freeze well)
1 bottle of dried parsley flakes (great for adding to pastas and soups!)
honey
2 boxes of white cheddar macaroni and cheese (for when we're too lazy to make the homemade version)

Our total: $45.00!

Basically, we are able to complete our menu for the next few days and the whole next week, plus we now have extra pork chops and chicken on hand--- for less than $50. While that isn't a terribly "cheap" amount compared to the extreme couponers out there, it's a big deal for us. We base our menus off of what we already have, so the extras we bought today are going to help us build our meals and save us from buying more later.

Bottom line: On average, Eric and I can eat very well (hello, we're having salmon!) for 2 weeks for about $50-60.

Like I said, check out your local discount grocery store-- you'll be amazed at how doing this can empower you to be able to eat what you want AND save your money.