🌟REALISTIC BUDGET MEAL PLAN $100 for a WEEK of FAMILY MEALS // $3 a Day per Person!

today I have another budget family meal plan for a week to share with you guys I'm showing you how I fed my family of five for right around three dollars per person per day it comes out to just over a hundred dollars for a week's worth of meals [Music] when I am planning for these budget Meal videos a lot of times I choose Walmart because I can get pretty accurate pricing in the Walmart app and make a plan with Aldi I can check instacart but the deal with instacart is that there's a markup on every price and that's you know how instacart makes money one of the ways that they make money so as I'm going through my list here I did use instacart to plan but I knew that I would probably be seeing lower prices and so far I am almost everything on my list so far is less here in the store than it is on the instacart app so just something to think about if you're using that for planning purposes also I usually plan not to film in store in Aldi because it's usually pretty crowded it's a small store and it's pretty noisy it is Monday morning actually the day before Valentine's Day which reminds me I need to pick up something for my kids for Valentine's Day I mean I guess maybe I should get something for my husband but I don't know we've just never been Valentine's Day people it's Valentine's Day all year long in our marriage just kidding but anyway it's Monday morning and there's like nobody here super quiet so I don't know I guess I just hit the Aldi shopping jackpot today so they have a few different kinds of granola here they have 12 ounces here for 265 and a couple of different flavors they also have a gluten-free kind in my store which could be useful for a person who is needing to eat that way they also have a pound of granola for 369 but then right next to it they have a pound of granola for 2.99 and it's actually the kind that my kids would probably prefer are the oats raisins almonds and honey so this is the one I'll pick up you could also do what I'm doing with the granola you'll see for breakfast with you know a kind of cereal they have this kind here is really good with granola they have plain old Cheerios here or their store brand of Cheerios for a dollar 45 a box so you can shade a little bit off of your total if you wanted to pick up one of these instead of the granola so far almost everything is coming in so much lower than when I priced it out on instacart that I'm going to be able to get more protein so bigger cuts of meat than I had intended like the two pound bag of tilapia fillets that I'm buying for 8.99 instead of the one pound bag that I had intended to buy and it also means I'm going to have a few extra dollars to spend on more fruits and veggies yay I was going to put on the applesauce because they don't have any of the unsweetened and that's what I prefer to buy these the strawberry and cinnamons are a really good price and there's actually only five grams of added sugars one teaspoon of sugar per each cup so I might go ahead and get those for lunches a year ago if you'd have told me I'd be jumping for joy when I see eggs at this price 3.82 cents I would have thought you must have the wrong person but I'm so glad to see this price today five pounds of yellow potatoes are actually less than five pounds of russet potatoes and I actually would like to use these in some of the recipes that I'm doing you can make it work with russets you can also get 10 pounds of russets for 4.99 I don't need that many potatoes so I'm going to stick with the five pound bag you guys okay can't believe I did this blueberries everywhere here we go folks I am very pleased with what I was able to pick up for right around 100 at Aldi today including produce I usually spend about 25 on produce fresh and frozen of these hundred dollar challenges that is or I should say 25 of My overall budget I have some romaine hearts so many solids can be made from these three little romaine hearts that are in here after they're washed and chopped I have two pints of blueberries I have three peppers A package of three Peppers my nectarines there showed you the potatoes I have two English cucumbers it's winter time the Cucumbers didn't look that great so these are like Greenhouse cucumbers my kids love to take those in their lunches two pounds of carrots what a great deal I think it was 1.89 for two pounds maybe less than that was a dollar 69 something like that I'll pop it up on the screen here you'll see I have a package of zucchini here this is about one and a half pounds of zucchini plus I have two packages of frozen veggies I went for mixed veggies and green green beans today and my applesauce pouches back there I have my granola I also have a package of saltine crackers a box of Saltines I should say because I had planned to buy pretzels or crackers or some kind of chip or something crunchy for the kids to take in their lunches but they didn't have any regular plain pretzels so I decided that I would get these and we're gonna make some firecrackers for the kids to have in their snack we'll show you how I'm doing that a little bit I also have a box of couscous and be aware that the plain couscous is a 10 ounce box that has four and a half servings the flavored ones are about half this size and serve like probably less than three people a half gallon of whole milk I almost got half and half but whole milk will work I would not use Like A reduced fat or a skim milk for what I'm going to use it for in this particular meal plan but you can watch and see if that's something you want to substitute I personally wouldn't recommend it I'm realizing now that I picked up regular yogurt instead of Greek yogurt I meant to get Greek yogurt this is whole milk milk yogurt it is vanilla you could get plain if you wanted and just flavor it yourself there are 11 grams of added sugars per serving but a serving is three quarters of a cup which is a lot I did mean to get Greek yogurt I would recommend that I'm going to use this to make breakfast parfaits but we'll still eat it it'll be fine you can get plain and you can flavor it yourself I have a package of ramen back there I have about a two and a half pound chuck roast and I have how many pounds is this about four pounds of chicken legs here chicken drumsticks my son is going to be so excited he loves chicken drumsticks I have some sliced cheese some cream cheese and one block of sharp cheddar they did not have any turkey lunch meat they just had chicken and ham so I got chicken breast one package of turkey smoked sausage my two pound package of tilapia fillets I am trying in these challenges to pick up one or two Pantry staple or just kitchen staple items so today I picked up flour and powdered sugar if you already have these things maybe you would want to pick up some spices or maybe you need ketchup or Worcestershire or maybe you want to pick up a broth base they had both chicken and beef bouillon in stock at my oldie today one package of ranch dressing mix one pound of butter one dozen eggs one loaf of bread and my pizza and I have to say this was an incredible value it is a really big pizza and it was only 7.49 I think maybe it was 6.49 today they had several different kinds and different sizes I got this so that I could bake it slice it and then store it in the fridge for the kids to pack in their lunches because this is a really inexpensive lunch option for them to take I knew there was something missing this was in the bottom of one of my shopping bags I picked up a three pack of active dry yeast this was 79 cents at my Aldi one thing that I had to stop by Walmart to pick up because they don't carry it at Aldi was one of these containers of quick grits it's a 24 ounce container and I find these at my Walmart for two dollars and 18 cents at the time that I'm filming this so with that added to my Aldi receipt my total came out to 105.69 we are standing by my spice rack because I will be using some of these items I'm going to keep it very basic where the seasonings and the condiments and just the kind of standard kitchen Staples are concerned you'll notice that I picked up a few of those items in my haul like flour and sugar and butter and eggs if those are things that you don't need maybe there are some items I'm using that you could stock up on instead just have a look at the meal plan and the recipes and even if there is a seasoning that I'm using there may be something you have that you could substitute or a good old salt and pepper goes a long way speaking of seasonings I'm using some of them right now to mix up a copycat version of the Italian dressing mix that comes in a packet I was actually just going going to get a packet of it at Aldi because it's like 55 cents but they were out so fortunately I can you know make this from just basic seasonings that I have on hand in the pantry and then I can you know adjust some of the seasonings to my taste as well so I will leave that Linked In the description box below it's coming from my friend carry it eating on a dime or you can just pick up a packet of Italian dressing mix if you want now I am actually going to use the Italian dressing mix to make a roast to make the roast in the crock pot but I am going to be making dressing for the salads this week I just use oil some kind of vinegar and then some kind of emulsifier usually it is Dijon mustard for me and then you can add whatever seasonings you want to it what I usually do is about half a cup of oil and then about three tablespoons of vinegar I really like just olive oil and balsamic my husband is not a huge balsamic fan so sometimes I'll use a different kind of vinegar like an apple cider vinegar or there's a champagne vinegar that I sometimes Buy find that he really likes but it's really really easy to make homemade salad dressings especially if they're just vinaigrettes you can look up some recipes sometimes people use citrus sometimes people add a little bit of sugar I'll leave a couple recipes Linked In the description box below for favorites of ours I have the chuck roast cooking in the crock pot right underneath where the camera is sitting I like to use a packet of Italian dressing mix or sometimes to make it from scratch which is what I did today I used a teaspoon each of salt onion powder garlic powder oregano and sugar and then I used half a teaspoon each of basil and Thyme I put my chuck roast in the slow cooker with a little bit of minced garlic and then sprinkle that seasoning over the top and then I use a cup of beef broth which I just make from broth base if you are using water instead of beef broth you might want to add an extra teaspoon of salt now I cook mine a long time I like to cook it on high for eight to ten hours or on low for like 16 hours sometimes I'll get it going the night before and just let it cook all day because I like my chuck roast really really tender like completely fall apart once it's done cooking that long now because I cook my roast in the crock pot so long I don't like to do my veggies with it because they just get kind of overdone in my opinion so in this little bowl I have about a pound and a half of my yellow potatoes and I diced those up into little cubes and then I also used about half of my carrots and just peeled and chopped those into little chunks and I'm going to keep this really simple I am just going to drizzle some oil over these you could use butter I bought butter melt some butter and drizzled that over the top but you're going to want some kind of oil probably I'm going to toss in some fresh minced garlic and then just salt and pepper I'm going to stir these all together I'm going to put them onto a cookie sheet and I'm going to roast them at 400 until they are done will probably take at least 30 minutes I'm just going to check on them after that time basically I just want them to be fork tender the yellow potatoes cook faster than russet potatoes if you're using russet potatoes you probably want to um peel them I don't have to peel yellow potatoes yay now I only planted five dinners because that is plenty for my family for the week given our schedule we usually will get take out or go out to eat once a week which comes from a different part of our budget and we will often eat leftovers one night of the week or maybe we have a dinner that's scheduled outside of the house like a dinner that's at church or a birthday party or a gathering at a friend's house that's planned also I chose vegetables that my family likes to include as veggie sides for the week you could swap them out with different meals if it's a different time of year and something else is in season you could feel free to make adjustments to those I just chose stuff that was available that was inexpensive that I know my family likes that I could use in a variety of ways across these meals tonight for dinner we are having one of my kids favorite foods chicken legs or chicken drumsticks and I'm going to press the easy button and get these going in the crock pot because it only takes about three and a half to four hours for these to cook on low in the slow cooker they'd cook even faster on high and all I do is put them into the slow cooker and then season them however I like tonight I'm going to use two teaspoons each of paprika salt Italian seasoning garlic powder and onion powder and I just sprinkled that over the top pop the lid on and get them cooking I don't put any extra liquids in these because drumsticks or chicken legs are a little bit of a fattier meat so they render plenty of juices while they cook I thought about making mashed potatoes to go with the chicken legs tonight but I decided I'm gonna make kind of some scalloped potatoes some creamy scalloped potatoes so I sliced up about a pound and a half of my yellow potatoes and I put those in a casserole dish and now I'm making a roux on the stove with a quarter cup of butter melted and a quarter cup of flour now I'm gonna whisk in about one and a quarter cup of milk like one a little more than a cup of milk I want this to be a little runnier than like a traditional Bechamel I'm going to stir this over medium low heat just until it starts to thicken up it's starting to thicken up a little and I'm going to add two ounces of cream cheese and then I thought about seasoning this with just some garlic salt and pepper but I'm feeling kind of adventurous I'm going to use some of this everything but the bagel seasoning a little bit of plain Salt and Pepper would work too I'm going to use about a tablespoon of this I think and I still think it's going to need just a little bit of just plain old salt too since I didn't use any chicken broth or anything in this I'm just going to keep stirring this until the cream cheese melts and is incorporated if I need to thin this out a little bit I can add a little bit more milk or water then I'm going to pour it over my potatoes in my casserole dish and I'm going to bake those at 350 until the potatoes are done and how long I bake it really depends on the potatoes because I'm using yellow potatoes they cook a little faster than russet potatoes it also depends on how thick or thin you slice the potatoes how many layers of potatoes are in your casserole dish basically once I stick a fork in them and they're tender they're done dinner tonight I have my chicken legs my potatoes I have a salad with some homemade vinaigrette and even some toast I made with homemade bread yummy since I was purchasing flour this week I decided to go ahead and pick up a package of yeast so that I can make some homemade bread this is totally optional if you wanted to just pick up a couple loaves of bread for toast or just go without it all together you could I just thought it would be fun I like to make bread using my bread maker on the dough cycle and I just follow the instructions for whatever kind of bread I want to make a basic white bread I use like milk and flour salt a little sugar some yeast a little butter and then I will move it to a loaf pan and bake it in the oven just because I like the way it bakes up that way better than when the bread maker bakes it but I am also doing just the basic four ingredient bread which is just flour salt water and yeast and I'm not using a bread maker for that just doing it the old-fashioned way and my friend Christine actually has a really great tutorial about how to make this bread if you've never made it before I'll leave it linked in the description box below but it's easy doesn't take any special equipment and it even doesn't take very much yeast if you have time for the bread to rise and it makes a really delicious crusty bread that goes with a lot of different kinds of dinners and also makes really great toast for breakfast foreign I have my stand mixer out because I thought I would whip up some shortbread cookies today normally when I do these types of budget meal plans I usually try to throw in like a cake mix or a brownie mix or something that we can use to make a sweet treat to go along with a meal plan but since I bought butter and powdered sugar I thought this would be a good option this time if you don't want to do this you don't have to it's totally an extra thing and if you wanted a sweet treat but you wanted something easier and just wanted to throw a cake mix or something in your cart you you definitely could but I'm going to show you what I'm doing today to make these I have in my stand mixer here a cup of butter softened which is two sticks and I'm adding half a cup of powdered sugar it has to be powdered sugar for this particular recipe and I'm going to pop this little lid thing on to keep it from dusting everywhere and I'm going to whip this I'm going to beat this probably for a couple of minutes until it is really really fluffy I'm going to scrape down the sides Here and Now I'm going to add a teaspoon of vanilla and a quarter teaspoon of salt one and a half cups of flour and a quarter cup of corn starch Yes you heard that right corn starch if you don't have corn starch you could maybe look up a recipe for just traditional short shortbread this is like a whipped shortbread I like this recipe because it tastes a lot like the cookie part of the thumbprint cookies they sell at a local bakery here called merits that I really like I have dropped these onto a cookie sheet using a little one inch cookie so called a cookie scoop so these are pretty small and I'm just using a fork dipped in flour to kind of flatten them down one of the things I like about these cookies is that they don't require any chill time you don't have to make the dough and then wait a few hours or overnight to make the cookies you can just drop them right onto the cookie sheet and then bake them in a 300 degree oven yes that's 300 degrees it's Valentine's Day today when I'm making these and I thought it was so appropriate that I happen to have a package of red sprinkles in my pantry but upon closed examination these are not in fact Valentine's day sprinkles I don't know if you can tell let me open them up these are in fact little stockings like little Christmas stockings they are not Hearts I mean they kind of look like hearts if you like turn them that way right we're still gonna put them on here and then pop them in the oven now since these are baking in a cooler oven they're going to take just a little bit longer to bake I'm gonna check on mine after about 14 minutes I don't like giving finite baking times or cooking time sometimes because how things cook in your kitchen might be different than in mine or you might like your cookies a little crispier as opposed to really soft these are meant to be pretty soft little cookies I also like that this recipe doesn't use eggs so not only can I save my eggs for breakfast I can enjoy the cookie dough not that I wouldn't anyway and yes I do know that the flour is also raw but let me just tell you if it's flour that gets me it's just my time to go if it's flour of all the things on this planet that can kill me right now if it's flour that takes me home to Jesus it's just my time y'all it's just my time tonight I am making tilapia for dinner I got that two pound bag of tilapia for a really great price at Aldi and I have five of my fillets that I'm cooking tonight and there were eight in the bag so I still have three that I could use for lunches or just make another week if you are not a big fish fan tilapia is a great jumping off point because it is very mild it's a farmed fish it doesn't have a real fishy flavor you know it doesn't have a real fishy smell and it will basically take on the flavor of whatever you cook it with whatever however you want to season it I just seasoned mine with some of this blackened seasoning that I had in my pantry I mean you could probably use all different kinds of seasonings if you have an all-purpose seasoning if you just want to use salt and pepper if you kind of want to come up with a spice blend if you want to use taco seasoning I think there's lots of ways that you could season this and I just decided to cook it in the skillet I could have put it on a sheet pan you know use some oil with the seasoning but I just put a few tablespoons of butter in my Skillet here and I am just cooking it on the stove for you know five or six minutes on each side and then flipping it Cooks relatively quickly I'll use my thermometer to make sure that it is fully cooked on the center and it'll be done to go along with this I'm making the couscous that I bought and I just made it according to the package directions just follow the directions on the box I did add a little garlic salt and pepper to it to season it gonna keep it pretty plain and I am roasting my zucchini in the oven it usually takes about seven or eight minutes at 400. this is going to be a dinner that comes together really really quickly as well even though it has a lot of ingredients that I need to cook it all Cooks pretty fast my kids love these spicy crackers that my dad makes all the time and they snack on while they're visiting my parents I've sometimes heard these called Alabama firecrackers I make them using one whole box of Saltines and then a cup of oil a packet of ranch dressing mix or three to four tablespoons of homemade a teaspoon each of onion powder garlic powder and then red pepper flake to taste some people like them spicier some people like them more mild I mix all that together and then I pour it over the top of the crackers in a two gallon Ziploc and I just give it a shake gently and then they just sit out on the counter for about a day or so and every time I walk by I just give the bag a little Shake maybe turn it over and then the next day I move them to an airtight container the ingredients for these are so inexpensive and this recipe is so easy it's an easy no-bake snack recipe that even my nine-year-old son can make these himself my kids need a few different kinds of lunch options throughout the week sometimes they pack their lunch because they're going to school and other days of the week like the weekends they're at home so I did buy bread and lunch meat and cheese slices so we could press the easy button and just take some lunch meat sandwiches along with maybe some fruit or veggies and some of those spicy crackers and maybe one of those delicious little shortbread cookies I also bought a large take and bake pizza from Aldi for lunch packing because I figured I can toss it in the oven I can slice it up let it cool down a little bit and then store it in the fridge and the kids can actually pack that in place of a sandwich in their lunch some days also most of the dinner recipes that I make produce a few servings of leftovers that we can eat for lunch or it produces something that I can recreate into a lunch meal the next day for instance the roast that I made in the crock pot had quite a lot of meat left over after that dinner and I was able to turn that into some really delicious salads for my husband and myself when we were home for lunch using a homemade vinaigrette I bought this big 12 pack of ramen so we would have some more lunch options throughout the week and there are so many ways that you can upgrade this I can take leftover meat and veggies from dinners the previous night and make like a ramen noodle stir fry I can also take the noodles and crush them up and toast them and use them as a Salad Topping today I'm going to make the Mayo Ramen with some added vegetables and give it a little protein kick with an egg let me show you what I'm talking about I've got some water coming to a boil on the stove and I added a handful of frozen veggies to that as well and once it starts boiling I'm going to add my brick of ramen while that's cooking I am whipping up the sauce to go along with it so I've got my little like Flavor packet here you can leave this out and season it yourself if you want I'm gonna add one egg and just a couple of teaspoons of mayo I'm gonna whisk that all together and once the noodles are cooked you'll see how we're going to combine this with the hot noodles and the boiling water which will help to cook the egg for us my noodles and veggies just came off the stove and I like to add just a little bit of the hot broth here to the egg mixture to kind of temper the eggs so that they don't like immediately scramble whenever we add the hot noodles and now I'm just going to add the noodles and the veggies I could drain some of the water off in the sink but I'm being lazy I'm just gonna fold them in like this there you go I'm actually going to let this sit here for a few minutes because it's way too hot to consume now and also it'll help bring to temperature kind of help cook that egg mixture that's in there but that's it yummy by the way in case you're curious I use my little digital thermometer to see what the temperature was in this bowl after I mixed everything together and it was 159 and supposedly you're supposed to temper eggs to about 160. I mean I think that that's you know kind of debatable according to who you are but I thought some of you might want to know like what temperature this is that the eggs are sitting in because some people are particular about that other people are not but 159 is close enough for me so I'm going to let this cool down and then I'm going to enjoy it yum if you would like to purchase a printable pdf version of this meal plan with my grocery list my meal ideas meal planning templates and the recipes that I featured in this video you can follow the link in the description box below it will take you to my gumroad website where you can purchase this this meal plan for just five dollars tonight I am making a super easy sheet pan meal I am just going to dice up my smoked sausage and chop up my Peppers probably just a couple of my red and yellow peppers and I also haven't made my green beans yet yeah I still have a package of frozen green beans in here so I'm going to probably toss those in the microwave for a couple of minutes so they're not totally frozen I'm gonna put all of them on a sheet pan I will season the vegetables with a little bit of oil and salt and pepper get those going in the oven at we'll do them at 400 we'll probably only take about eight to ten minutes and while those are in the oven cooking I'm gonna make cheese grits on the stove yummy what I have going on the stove here is one and a half cups of water and one and a half cups of whole milk and then some salt and pepper used about a teaspoon of salt and then some fresh cracked black pepper and I've been right here with it it's on medium low heat I'm always nervous about cooking with milk on the stove because it burns so easily this is about to come to a simmer and so I'm going to pour in one cup of my grits and this is actually a little bit more liquid than the directions call for the directions it's two to one liquid to Grits I'm using three to one because I feel like they're too thick whenever I just use two to one I'm also going to add two ounces of cream cheese and I'm going to let that all cook over low heat for about five minutes or so or until they start to thicken up until they're you know to the desired consistency and then I'll stir in one cup of shredded cheddar cheese yes I do know that no self-respect in Southerner would use instant grits were these Magic Secrets but I'm not really from the south we're more south adjacent as I like to say because we're just kind of next to the South here in Oklahoma so some of that influence makes its way here I'm just gonna use the quick grits instead of the like you know Long Way grits I don't even know if I can buy grits that aren't quick grits in my grocery store I don't know that I've ever even seen them the last dinner that I plan to make with this meal plan is potato soup and you have seen me make this several times on my channel in fact I'll leave a link in the description box below to a short that shows how I make potato soup in the crock pot the only thing I would change with that recipe for this particular meal plan is that I would not be using any sausage so I would probably just use some extra salt and pepper and Seasonings and just have plain potato soup without any meat in it or I could throw in some leftover roast beef or if I have any meat from the chicken legs left over you know I could probably kind of change it according to what I might have left from previous meals but basically it's just potatoes maybe some onions and garlic some seasoning some broth and a little bit of cream cheese and then at the end after everything's cooked I add in a little milk or half and half some extra seasonings if it needs it and then we can have that with shredded cheese with toast with a side salad so easy and so delicious if you like this kind of content make sure that you are subscribed to my channel because I do a lot of videos like this one in fact I did another 100 budget weekly meal plan a few weeks ago you'll find it right here if you haven't seen it already or check out this video and I'll see you there foreign

Channel: See Mindy Mom

Views: 175,581

Keywords: seemindymom, see mindy mom, see mindy mom youtube, budget, frugal

Id: Ja5GNXFxdSE

Length: 27min 38sec (1658 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2023