We Did Our ENTIRE Grocery Haul on a Budget + Meal Plan & Lunch Recipe

Hey there friends, welcome back. So this past week has been absolutely crazy for our family. We had someone in our extended family get married and so there's been a lot of family in and out and we just need to recenter and get our meals planned and shopped for for the week. So of course I've had a running grocery list going, but I also want to check out the deals and kind of work off of that as well because when things are on sale, it's really nice to be able to plan meals around those good deals. So we're going to head to the stores and then we'll come back, do a haul, I will walk you through my entire meal plan for the week and we're going to make a really yummy lunch that you're going to want to stick around for. I do actually have a budget that I want to stick with for this week. I'm hoping to come in under $150 for this week. We have a family of five and so we'll see how it all plays out. I do have a few odds and ends that I do have to get as well. Like we need pencils and a pencil sharpener because we home school, all that good stuff. The strawberry matcha hyperfixation continues. If you guys didn't know, I did share this recipe in one of my last videos and it is so delicious. So I have my muffin list from my small shop here that I am working at adding things to. We like to keep this on the refrigerator just to add as the week goes on and my daughter actually reminded me that lately we for some reason have been really low on spoons. So we are going to pick up some spoons. We are going to be heading to Aldi which is one of my favorite spots for budget friendly things. I feel like I find stuff on sale and score there so often and then we'll also need to go to Walmart as well because Aldi doesn't carry everything. I am planning our meals a bit around proteins this week. We do have a good bit of meat and things in the freezer, so I was going through our freezers this morning just making sure that I can kind of plan my meals around what we have. So, that's going to help out in the budget department a lot this week just working from freezer / pantry um and doing minimal shopping to some degree. The other thing that we are going to be shopping for is I am doing a freezer meal prep later this week, which you guys will get to see and I there is a few odds and ends that I need for that and those recipes as well. So, we have a lot to cover today, but I am really curious to see if we can stay within that $150. One other quick note, if you're completely new here, which if you are new, you can subscribe. It's free to join my channel, but we also have a few people in our household that eat gluten-free. It's not their whole household is gluten-free and it's not an allergy, it's a sensitivity. So, a few of us eat gluten-free all the time. The rest of the household sometimes has wheat in their recipes and so I feel like my recipes often hit a lot of categories. So, if you have some gluten sensitivities or things that you need to deal with in your home, this might be a helpful video for you. I love this section right inside the door here because it always has a lot of things on sale and mushrooms are actually on my list to make Salisbury steak this week. So, that is fantastic that they are on sale. I actually have two meals where I was planning to do stir-fried green beans, but since the zucchini is on sale, I'm going to go ahead and swap one of those out for this. I do need strawberries for something in our freezer meal prep and they are only $2.09 this week. I need two containers, so I'm going to go ahead and look through here and just find the best looking ones. I love it when they have the herbs that I need, fresh herbs, because we all know those are not always budget friendly. But, at 95 cents, and we're going to use this in our lunch recipe today. I have a snack list for this week that I'll show you guys when we go over our meal plan, but one of the things is apples on that list. In my last grocery haul and shop with me, we got these, and we've been on such a kick. It's specifically the sweet kale version. They have different chopped salad kits, but this one is so good, and it holds up well if you have leftovers in the refrigerator. We are going to have a taco night this week, and I just like to use a regular head lettuce for that. This one here looks pretty good. And you can see that it is $8.89, which is fairly good. I mean, sometimes they do go on sale and they're closer to a dollar, but I'll take it at that. I need some cherry or grape tomatoes for our lunch recipe, and they have kind of a variety here, like up here they have ones that are multi-colored. This brand is organic. We've got this down here, which would be more of a brand name. Then I think these are like more of an Aldi brand name. They are not organic, but what's taking my eye are these ones called sweet bites that are on the vines. I think we're going to try these out just for the flavor. I feel like they are going to be really yummy. Plus, they're so cute. I mean, adorable. Grabbing just one block of cheese. I really like to get their cheese here. Um, I feel like it's a good price. I like how it's packaged like this. It's a good portion size, but we're going to need to shred this up for our taco night. And another cheese item for on my snack list is string cheese. And sometimes I do get these other places because I can get a bigger pack, but this snack list is specifically for me this week, and so I'm just going to get these since it'll just be me eating them. Okay, so these are such a great price here. They definitely beat out any other grocery store that I have near me. Um and they are something else on my snack list for this week, and that is just rice cakes. I love using these as a vehicle for so many things. You can literally make peanut butter and jelly on top or pile them up with things like salmon or other good proteins, and it's just something that I've been trying to keep on hand a lot more lately. Sometimes they are out of their sweet potatoes, and I think it's because they are such a good price, but I need some of these for the freezer prepping this week, and also for a meal I have on my weekly meal plan. So, we're going to get two bags of these. We need purple onion for our lunch recipe today. They had these in over Mother's Day, and I'm just seeing they got some more back. Absolutely beautiful, and they have other colors as well. I think these would make a great housewarming gift for someone that is moving into a new house. They have so many fun summer items here, and one of them that is taking my interest are these big utility totes, particularly this one. I love foodie things, and it's so cool that they have other prints. They'd be great for the pool or the beach or picnicking, taking your things with you throughout the summer. They also have different types of beach towels, and they have this style, and then there's some others down here. They have things like this fun picnic table that you can put into the sand, and snorkels and goggles for all the summer activities. For the freezer meal prep, I need four dozen eggs, and I'm just going to get their regular style eggs. Sometimes I do the free-range or the organic, but today we're just going to do this because we need four dozen. And I always check them to make sure that we don't have any breaks or cracks. This pork sausage is pretty good. All right, I have great news. We are definitely going to come in under budget on this because I got a majority of my list here, and I only spent $85. So, I'm super confident with the few things I need to get at Walmart that we are going to come in under budget, but we'll wait and see till it all comes together. But, I'm opening up these really good snack bars from Aldi, and they are really low sugar, which is one of my goals right now with my nutrition is to stay low sugar, and these are really yummy, and they're going to get me through the rest of this shopping trip. >> [music] >> I am so happy for this week's haul, especially considering that this is a weekly meal plan grocery haul as well as groceries that I need for a freezer meal prep. And so, I feel like that I have gone beyond being under budget. I'm definitely so thrilled with all that I got. So, as you all saw from Walmart, I did pick up a few things and I've been really loving these Bloom drinks. Um they seem to sit with me a little bit better than even coffee when it comes to caffeine. And so, since I know I've got a meal prep this week and other things going on, these are going to be so nice to have on hand. And we've got the wraps again for stuff with the freezer meal prep as well as chocolate chips. I got these at Aldi and we are going to use some of this pre-made chicken for our lunch recipe that we'll be doing here in just a minute. And I was in debate on these two things whether to just get some more pencils with sharpeners or mechanical pencils. We have used both, but as my children are getting older, some of their work involves filling in smaller spaces and so having the mechanical pencils is kind of nice for that. And got spoons. Again, the sharpeners. You all seen a lot of this in store. I'm not going to be too repetitive here on all of this. Got some lemons for what we're about to make for lunch. Our goodies, my treat that came in handy >> [laughter] >> whenever I was running around town doing all of my errands. These here are for the freezer prep stuff. And so you guys are getting to see kind of the back end of some of the freezer prep. I don't often show the shopping part for freezer preps, but I want to show that more because that is a part of the whole process of creating a freezer prep day. Over here we have sour cream for our taco night. We'll talk about our weekly meal plan here in just a minute. I did pick up the cottage cheese as part of my healthy snacks list that I'll share with you guys here in just a bit as well. And so you're going to see those things kind of popping throughout this. But, I was really glad that my mushrooms were on sale. I already needed those. It's always such a score whenever I find things that I already needed and I'm able to get them for a cheaper price. Because I often get asked questions about gluten-free options, Jovial is our favorite gluten-free pasta. It is actually from Italy and it just wins 10 out of 10 in flavor and texture. Walmart does carry it. It doesn't always carry all forms of it. So, like if you wanted the ones that are for lasagna, that type of thing, just depending on what store you're at, they don't always have everything. But, we need this for our recipe we're about to make and I was so glad they had it in stock. Okay, so before we jump into our meal plan and whipping up some lunch, I want to tell you guys about something because I think it goes hand in hand with what we're doing today. So, as you guys know, I spend a lot of time thinking about what we're eating, whether it's meal planning, grocery shopping, meal prepping, even the freezer prepping, all of it. And something that Corey and I have been talking about a lot actually lately is we're buying all this food, we're planning all these meals, but is what we're eating actually good for us? Like, are we getting the right nutrients and are we doing right by our family's health, not just taking care of the hunger aspect? And so, that's where Nourish comes in and I'm genuinely excited to share this with you guys. A big thank you to Nourish for sponsoring today's video. So, Nourish is a program that connects you with registered dieticians. You can use their app, which has a many tools, but what had me excited was that I was talking to an actual human being, not some quiz that spits out a PDF. You are getting someone hearing your needs and giving you sound advice. And since we're talking about budgets, Nourish guarantees that your appointment will never cost more than the initial estimate. Plus, if you check with your insurance, it may be covered. The Nourish app has tons of recipes and you can also use their AI chat to make grocery shopping so much easier. You all heard me talk about my snack list and that is actually something that my certified dietitian was able to send to me after we had our initial call, just guiding me in the right direction because I can tend to be an under eater most of the day because I'm busy and doing different things and she really helped to guide me even in putting in small snacks through the day if I don't have time to stop and make a whole meal. Honestly, my experience with my dietitian was amazing. She helped me see just a few of the obstacles that I have with my relationship with food and it was so helpful and enlightening. The Nourish app keeps everything in one place between sessions, which as a busy mom, that is super helpful. From there, I can track my macros, message my RD, and monitor my progress. I can even view my lab results and play around with the recipes that are tailored to our needs like being gluten-free. Check out Nourish in the link below and build a grocery list that actually works for your goals. Book in under 5 minutes. I know that you will appreciate Nourish as much as we have. It is a super, super helpful tool. Let me walk you through the meal plan that we put together for this week. Get some lunch made because I am so excited to eat this recipe that I'm about to prep for lunch. While I make this pasta dish that, spoiler alert, turns out absolutely amazing and I will leave the recipe linked below. I thought I would chat through this week's menu, so you guys have some good ideas off of what I am making this week. So, Monday we are going to be doing Salisbury steak and there is so many simple recipes on Pinterest if you just search Salisbury steak, plus it's super budget friendly and we're going to do up some mini potatoes roasted in the oven along with the stir-fried zucchini that we found on sale, just because I was going to do green beans kind of both Monday and Friday this week, but since we have that zucchini, that'll break things up, plus I saved a few pennies as well. Tuesday we're going to do a taco bar where I basically just fry up the meat. We have a lot of ground burger in the freezer right now and then we just use all the toppings like sour cream, my homemade salsa, sometimes we do jalapenos, lettuce, tomato and those types of things for tacos. That is a meal that we often lean into just because it is really gluten-free friendly. Then we have Wednesday where we're going to do a grilling night. We'll get the grill fired up and we're going to do some grilled chicken in marinade as well as sweet potatoes on the grill, as you all saw us do in our last grilling video. This is where I'll be using the chopped salad kit I picked up and then Thursday we're going to be doing a crock-pot meal with a beef roast from the freezer along with carrots, potatoes and onions and that's a nice dump and go meal, especially for busy days. Friday we'll be doing a baked creamy parm chicken. So, basically I usually take some cream cheese and mix it up with whatever cheese I have around and I did happen to have some parmesan and then I just put it on to some chicken breasts and roast it in the oven and we're going to be roasting brussels sprouts as well as doing the stir-fried green beans. This recipe was so simple to put together. Those tomatoes were absolutely amazing and you could really add in a lot of different types of veggies to this salad, but one of the things I did swap out is I didn't have rice vinegar, but I did have balsamic vinegar on hand, so I did use that in place of that. It did tint the whole salad just a bit because the balsamic vinegar has that dark tone, but it didn't change the flavor and then the bow tie pasta topped it all off and made it so yummy. The original pasta recipe does not call for chicken, but I wanted to add protein to this to make it a nice rounded out meal, so I picked up some shredded pre-cooked chicken while I was at the store and this gave great protein and flavor to this salad. >> [music] >> Okay, so that meal was absolutely delicious. That's the first time that I've made that version of a pasta dish like that and I feel like it would be so amazing to take either on a picnic or if you're sending it to school with your kids or if you have to take lunch with you to work and keep it cold. It is just perfect. One little tip I will give you about the pasta, particularly for the gluten-free pasta, is I did pull it off like a minute and a half before the box said. So I think it was supposed to be 9 minutes that you boiled it and I pulled it around 7 and a half or so just because I've noticed that that bow tie pasta tends to get a little soft if you cook it all the way through and I know especially for this style dish that I would want something that was a little more tougher that it would hold together just a bit better. So I thought I would take a minute to chat with you all a little bit about the prep of this week if you're going to be prepping things ahead. And of course, Monday, if you're grocery shopping on your Monday, you're going to go ahead and just make that meal last in your meal prep because by then, I'm sure it'll be dinner time and you'll be ready to make all of that. Um but for tacos, if you guys haven't seen me prep tacos before, I usually will fry up the ground beef, put in my homemade taco seasoning, um which is one of my favorite pantry items, by the way. So, if you go back some videos, you're going to find that cuz I do make it on a regular basis. Um so, I would do that. I would cut up my lettuce, shred my cheese, put everything into individual containers, so it's really simple to just pull out and have your little like taco bar ready to roll when dinner time rolls around. Now, my grilled chicken, I will put into marinate today because I want that to sit and that will give it about 3 days to sit before we put it on the grill. And I'm thinking I may do something lemon pepperish. There's always things in your pantry that you can whip together to make a great marinade. You just usually need some oil and vinegar as your base, and then you can add in seasonings and other things like fresh pressed garlic, fresh herbs, or even lemon juice. Like I said, on Wednesday, we do also have sweet potatoes, and they are really easy to dice up, toss in some oil, and put in a sealed Ziploc bag in the refrigerator. So, very simple to prep ahead. If you guys watch my freezer meal preps, then you know that prepping a roast with veggies is fairly simple as well. Kind of the same idea as what I just said with the sweet potatoes. You would just cut up your potatoes and carrots and onions, put it all into a bag with your roast. And even if the roast is a little bit frozen, you can still put it all in the refrigerator and then it's ready to dump into your Crock-Pot. So, it would be considered a Crock-Pot dump meal and it's just easy if you're already prepping everything else, you get that done, too, and you don't even really have to worry about dinner that day. You just dump it in the Crock-Pot and it's ready at dinner time. So, for the creamy parm chicken breast, I basically just make a mixture with cream cheese, a little bit of mayo, and some seasoning. I'll coat that on the top of the chicken breast and then bake it. So, what you would do is get it to the point of being able to be baked. In fact, a lot of delis sell chicken breasts just like this. They'll call it like loaded or stuffed chicken breasts and basically they're taking some sort of cream cheese or cheesy mixture with herbs and seasonings and they're putting that inside of the chicken breast. So, you can do the same thing in your kitchen on the day that you are shopping and prepping and then all you have to do is pop it in the oven the day you want to eat it. So, as I said earlier, I spent $85 at Aldi and then I spent $60 at Walmart. So, I know that I landed well within budget and within that was of course the things for the freezer meal prep later this week, our weekly meals, as I just showed you, and then also some odds and ends like pencils and spoons and pencil sharpeners and just a few other things that we needed. My little treats of like my special drinks that I got were in there. I think I am really thrilled that I was able to pull all of it together and use a lot of our proteins out of our freezer. So, our grand total came in at $145 and technically I would say that a few of those things didn't count towards groceries, so we definitely came in well under budget and that makes me very happy and I'm so excited to do more of this style video where I tell you my budget, I tell you what I spent, and we just work on staying in that grocery budget together. I know so many of you are doing the same thing, and I'm here for you. I totally get it, and that is my goals as of right now. Just to be able to save a bit more money, especially with summer hitting. We have lots of little trips and things we want to do, summer activities, and so you always want to make sure your pennies are stretching. If you're new here, like I said earlier, it's free to subscribe, and you can join my channel for a lot more just family style meals and family meal prep that is, of course, aiming for budget-friendly, but also aiming for healthy. We want to make sure that we're getting all of our good nutrition, and we want to make sure that everyone is staying healthy. Let me know in the comments what you're making this week, or maybe something that encouraged you out of this video. I love hearing from you all, and I do my very best to to respond to as many comments as I possibly can. And don't forget to check out Nourish. Like I said, it is an amazing tool that we have really been using, and I'll see you guys in the [music] next one. >> [music] [music]