Meal Planning

Weekly Menu Plan #98 + a look at the weekly grocery shopping for our family of 7

Happy New Year weekend! We are repeating a few of the same appetizers from Christmas Eve (we prepped extra when we made them the first time) plus we are adding in french fries and mini tacos in place of meatballs and shrimp. But that’s about as exciting as we get around here. The kids will still be in bed at a fairly normal hour and while we might see midnight, it’s mostly because we don’t need to leave the house the next day and not because we we want to see the year switch over. 

Is it possible to eat healthy on a budget?

Now, I’m not a dietary expert. Heck, I’m not much of an expert on anything – other than maybe rocking some awesome colored hair – but we have a fairly limited grocery budget (we stay under $90 each week for our family of seven) and still manage to eat a mostly balanced diet. Could we do better? Always! But over the last nine years of menu planning and frugal shopping habits I’ve learned a few tricks for eating well on a budget.

Weekly Menu Plan #96 + a look at the weekly grocery shopping for our family of 7

(Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Possibly several of them. I will earn a small commission if you use my links to purchase a product but your purchase price does not change. Check out the disclosure policy to find out more. Thank you for supporting My Joy in Chaos.) A peek at our weekly grocery …

Weekly Menu Plan #96 + a look at the weekly grocery shopping for our family of 7 Read More »

Weekly Menu Plan #95 + a look at the weekly grocery shopping for our family of 7

I’m excited to start prepping more food for our holiday menus! We will be spending a bit more this week because I wanted to buy the brisket now for our Christmas dinner. I budgeted $40 to be sure we’d have enough for the giant slab of meat. In order to offset what we spent extra this week we’ve been setting aside a little from each week’s trips that were under $80 to put towards this month’s groceries. Even a couple dollars each week can add up quickly! 

Weekly Menu Plan #94 + a look at the weekly grocery shopping for our family of 7

I screwed my whole shopping trip up this week, you guys! I made this list of everything we need for the month of December for meals and normal groceries. Well I didn’t think closely enough about the extras we need – like produce! Ugh. Thankfully Micah had an hour or so to kill while the kids were at dress rehearsal for the Christmas pageant at church and we got to run out for the forgotten items. That’s what I get for trying to overplan – I completely missed the basics!