Meal Plan: 8/3/09 – 8/9/09

I am now participating in the Menu Plan Monday meme which I’ve learned a lot of other bloggers do! {YAY!} I’ve been posting my meal plans and grocery lists mainly in an attempt to be held *publicly* accountable which makes me more likely to stick to the monthly food budget I’ve set for my family! Soooo, for those also participating in Menu Plan Monday, be sure to link to your menu plan using the Mr. Linky at the bottom of this post!

For those who missed the first meal plan I posted, hop over there and read my notes real quick. {It tells more about why I started doing this and provide a few more details and tips than I am giving here!}

As you all know from last week’s meal plan, I had gone over budget every week until last week! I came into this last week with $35 left in my budget for this month (my “month” started on the 12th since that is when I started doing the menu plan)… I’m actually going in 4-week cycles, not full calendar months.

To stick to my budget, I had to use a little culinary creativity to make due on what we’ve got left in the kitchen to reduce the required purchases for this week! The steps involved in my meal planning process for this *special* week are:

1- Go through the cupboards and the refrigerator - determine what ingredients are already present.
2- Using the list of available ingredients, decide what we are going to eat this week – breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner – for each day, considering meals which require minimal additions to what we already have.
3- Create a detailed list of all the ingredients I am lacking to make each meal, then compile that into a clean grocery list.

In case you failed to realize this, what I’ve basically done is my normal three steps in reverse. Rather than starting with a meal plan and ending up with a list of needed items, I am starting with a list of available items, and ending up with a meal plan and essentially a supplemental grocery list of a few missing items. I normally use coupons from the previous week’s Sunday paper as well as printed coupons from SmartSource and Coupons.com for the items I purchase {and typically buy a newspaper to snag new coupons for the next week} but unfortunately, I didn’t have any coupons for the items I needed this week and since I was strapped so close on my budget, I couldn’t afford to add any “happies” to my list just because I had a coupon. :( lol

Click the image above to download this week’s meal plan (8/3/09-8/9/09) – some of what you see will end up in a recipe post, so you’ll get some recipes out of the deal as well! :) Just keep checking back!