~$50 a week: Week 1~

My groceries for the week, not including the meat I purchased.

It's been a while since I've been shopping at Aldi. I couldn't remember everything they carry (or things they don't carry), so I made my shopping list as best as I could. As I was shopping, I was trying to remember why I stopped shopping at Aldi in the first place! Their prices are so much better than Meijer.

My menu for the week (salad and/or veggies with each meal):
(M) red lentil soup with biscuits
(T) Cherokee casserole (very similar to this recipe)
(W) potato frittata
(T) grilled chicken and oven fries
(F) chili and cornbread
(S) roast chicken and rice

On Sunday we eat leftovers for both lunch and dinner, from Friday and Saturday. This saves me from having to cook on Sunday.

Breakfasts will be hot cereal, granola, and eggs and toast. Snacks (for my daughter) are popsicles, smoothies, cookies, energy balls, and popcorn (I'll make everything I listed). My husband takes leftovers from the night before for his lunch. If there is enough leftover I'll have those, or PBJ sandwiches or eggs and toast (I love eggs! :) ). My daughter isn't keen on leftovers, so she'll have PBJ, and I also have hot dogs I previously purchased, or a "muffin tin lunch".

This week I spent $51.54 at Aldi. I was kicking myself because I figured everything up except the bananas, and since I had what I thought was wiggle room, I threw in a package of grapes at the register. So those grapes put me over my $50 target.

I did have to go by Meijer. I had $21 in rewards to use, and bought canning supplies as well as apples and ginger root. I spent $4.26 out of pocket at Meijer but since this is my game/my rules, I'm counting that toward the canning supplies, not my groceries. ;-)

Week 1 TOTAL: $51.54

I had a lot of ingredients on hand for this week, so I'm sure this will get more challenging as the weeks go by!