Feeding a family of 7.....and trying to stay in budget

Hi, y'all.  Happy Sunday!

I don't usually go grocery shopping on Sunday, but this weekend seems to be shaping up to be one of those weekends where we make an exception.  After being seemingly healthy this last week and into Saturday, Baby Girl had a really rough night on Saturday night (she just couldn't seem to get comfortable), and then woke up on Sunday morning with a rash that looked very similar to what I remember chicken pox to look like.    She's not running a fever or really even acting like she doesn't feel well, but the rash is still there and I'm just planning for staying home all week to keep her away from the general world.

Anywho, the possibility of a self-quarantine means that my normal Monday grocery shopping trip might not happen, and I needed to go today while Mike could hang out at home with the rascals.  

I sat down after Mike and the boys got home from mass (Ruthie and I stayed home this morning to keep her away from others) and started my weekly routine of taking stock of what we had in the pantry and forming our weekly menu.....and building the all-important grocery list.  

It's hard to stay in budget, and it seems to be getting harder and harder.  One of the things I miss most about living in Arizona would be the cost of groceries - it was pretty easy to stay in budget out there, and even throw in some "special" items throughout the week.   Back here in New England?  Not so much.   Things are pricy....and getting worse.

I recently bumped up our budget to $150/week for feeding the family of 7.  This is supposed to include things like the baby's formula and paper products.  I've switched to buying both of those things at a wholesale club in town, which helps immensely, but it still takes some planning and commitment to trimming waste.  We use every single morsel of food that I buy, even if it means that the chickens are eating it instead of us.   Waste is a four-letter-word around here!

Add to that the fact that the two older boys are in the height of their gymnastics competition season and working out HARD and competing even harder and......well.....we're eating a lot of food.   Which means that I'm buying a lot of food.   Keeping it to that $150/week for all 7 of us is hard, but I'm managing, even with allowing us one "going out" meal a week.  (I put it in quotations because it's technically take out from the local Thai place, but we call it our "night out" meal.   That runs us $32/week, so I'm really working with about $120/week for groceries).

Here's how I did this week:

The Menu

Sunday:

Breakfast - scrambled eggs, fruit (dozen eggs, produce)

Lunch - leftovers (we always start the week trying to clean out the fridge) or hummus wraps

Dinner - Roasted butternut squash and apple soup, salads (just needed to buy produce)

Monday:

Breakfast - smoothies (frozen fruit and veggies, almond milk)

Lunch - pita tunafish sandwiches, salad, fruit (pita is homemade from ingredients I keep on hand, in bulk, purchased tuna and produce)

Dinner - spaghetti, green salads (1 jar of spaghetti sauce, fresh mushrooms and tomatoes and frozen spinach to bulk it up, store-bought noodles)

Tuesday:

Breakfast - pancakes (all things I have on hand)

Lunch - Quinoa fried "rice"  (quinoa I buy in bulk and keep in the freezer, veggies will be whatever I need to use up, soy sauce and garlic I keep on hand always)

Dinner - sloppy joes, sweet potato fries (I did splurge on this one and bought real ground beef at Joseph's request ($8 for just over a pound!!!!! Yikes!  Normally I'd not spend that and we'd just do lentil sloppy joes, at a much much much cheaper $2/lb)   I had to purchase the meat, buns (because I'll not be home to make our own), and a sweet potato to bake up

Wednesday:

Breakfast - oatmeal (bought one box of instant oatmeal - it will give us two breakfasts)

Lunch - make your own salad bar with green salads, black beans or garbanzo beans, hardboiled egg, almonds, and sunflower seeds (bought both kinds of beans to replace the ones that I'd be using up this day since they were on sale, but I didn't *need* to buy them for the week)

Dinner - Burrito bowls using this bean recipe and this rice recipe  (I bought another jar of salsa, bag of rice, bag of beans, and tub of sour cream to replace what we'd be using up, but it wasn't necessary.   I had a bit of wiggle room this week, so I used it to replace things).

Thursday:

Breakfast - smoothies (using frozen fruit and almond milk)

Lunch - homemade "lunchables" with homemade pita wedges,  hummus and veggie sticks (carrots and celery), fruit   (bought cans of garbanzo beans to replace what we'd be eating and another bag of carrots and celery and fruit)

Dinner - this is our splurge take out meal.  We always get Thai food on Thursday.  I'm pretty sure that the boys all think that "Thai Thursday" is the actual day of the week......I bolster it with a choice of salads or fruit so that we don't have to order as much food, but the main dish is something from the restaurant

Friday:

breakfast - scrambled eggs (bought a dozen eggs) and fruit or oatmeal (they can choose)

Lunch - bean and rice burritos, made with the leftovers from Wednesday night, salad and fruit

Dinner - If Baby Girl isn't sick, we might go to the parish Soup and Stations, but I bought food as if we weren't going to go.  Our back-up meal will be Southwest Salads (bought an extra ranch dressing for the pantry in case we used it before).

Saturday:

Breakfast - pancakes 

Lunch - Chickpea "chicken" sandwiches, either on leftover pita bread or tortillas, fruit

Dinner - We're going to try this falafel recipe, with big green salads.   It's a lot of chickpeas in one day, but I really want to try them and Saturday's the best day for me!

So, there you have it.  I spent $85 at one store and $19 at another, so with our planned Thai, that leaves me at $146/week.   Not bad - maybe I'll use that extra $4 to splurge a mid-week treat or something for the kiddos.   It's definitely much harder to stick to a budget now that the kiddos are bigger and eating more food (especially since prices are going up, too!), but I keep trying.   What are your tricks for staying within your planned budget?   Any go-to inexpensive meals?  Share in the comments below or on Facebook!

Alright, my workout awaits me!  Have a great night!