EXTREME BUDGET GROCERY HAUL & MEAL PLAN // $50 FOR FAMILY OF 5 // WW PURPLE

hey you guys welcome back to my channel I'm MIDI today I have a WW friendly family friendly budget grocery haul and meal plan for you guys to stay tuned so why I'm sitting outside of Walmart and I'm going to go in and spend $50 on groceries for my family of five it's my husband myself and our three children who are ages 10 7 & 6 and in addition to that I'm going to try to make these you know fairly nutritious healthy meals and meals are friendly to the WW purple plan because that is the plan that I am working myself so the idea behind this is to see how well and how much I can feed my family if I just had 50 dollars in just a few general staples like seasonings and cooking oils at home per the usual any recipes that inspired me I will leave linked in the description box below and I will do my best to explain to you how I'm making those things because I tend to make a lot of substitutions for our own personal preferences and to help me still stay within my own boundaries within the wwr plan so let's go in and see what we can find [Music] okay you guys here's how I spent my $50 and I'm hoping that this is going to feed my family of five for five days first of all produce we have some bananas and watermelons were on sale for only three dollars and sixty eight cents apiece and if you're wondering how to choose a watermelon I try to make shoot sure I always choose one with a big yellow spot like this and some brown spots that means that it was able to ripen on the vine and so it should be sweeter and then I have some carrots a squash a zucchini two little Roma tomatoes some celery a package of frozen green beans and a package of frozen broccoli florets some plain ol white bread 88 cents at Walmart a big five-pound sack of self-rising flour I'm going to be using this for a few different things this week I realize this is kind of a pantry staple for people so if you haven't you don't have to buy it but I felt like because I'm using it for several different recipes I should go ahead and buy it just to kind of keep myself honest I did not however buy sugar and a few of the recipes I'm going to use call for just a little bit of sugar you'll see so if you don't have that you might need to add it to your grocery list I have some yellow popping corn and I got this because if all else fails we can have this for snacks and almost always we have stuff on hand in the house to season it and flavor it like butter salt and pepper different seasonings in the spice cabinet so it's just it goes a long way and it's super cheap but dollar sixty six for a two pound bag some peanut butter a jar of salsa a two pound bag of brown rice and a one-pound bag of black beans I'm going to make these in the crock pot a bag of tortilla chips these are for the kiddos one package of rotini pasta one package of whole wheat pasta and then back here is some apples and cinnamon oatmeal my husband likes these for breakfast and requested them this one comes with eight packets so actually I will be able to eat a few packets of these for breakfast as well and these are three smart points apiece on the purple plan of course it's a better deal for me to make my own oatmeal because plain oatmeal is zero points but whenever we're trying to stick to a budget sometimes we don't get as many choices now if you don't care about the smart points value the regular ones that aren't sugar free are 10 it's for the same price and so two people could have breakfast for five days with just one box of that and then I have some turkey smoked sausage a package of cream cheese I do buy the third less fat not the fat free but the third less fat an 8 ounce block of sharp cheddar and a 16 ounce block or 1 pound block of part-skim mozzarella a small container of turkey lunch meat 2 small containers of plain Greek yogurt I caught the right one this time you guys now this is whole milk yogurt it's technically not 0 points but I am using this in a few different recipes some tomato paste a can of corn I did buy the no salt at it it's not any more expensive to buy the no salt added and then a jar of this pasta sauce you guys I can't make marinara I think for cheaper than this stuff is it's 92 cents and looking at the ingredients I was pretty impressed it does have a little high fructose corn syrup but it doesn't have any oils in it so I was super pleased with that I'm going to use that to make like a chicken parm recipe and then a dozen eggs they're always pretty cheap at my Walmart 95 cents and then this is a huge package of chicken breast I think this is about four pounds of boneless skinless chicken breast and I'm going to use this for three different dinners plus I'm hoping it will produce leftovers for lunch and here is my total before-tax 4909 I'm actually kind of mad at myself because I left $1.00 around the table y'all I may have to go back into Walmart and spend my 91 cents this week on something so now I will try to take you guys through the week with us and show you how we're using some of these things to feed our family and I'm gonna do a little prep work first so I'll show you how I'm making like some pancakes and how I'm making my beans in the crock pot to kind of prepare for the week ahead and then I'll jump into what we're eating for breakfast lunch and dinner and hopefully that gives you some ideas by the way you guys if you like the t-shirt that I'm wearing been doing mom stuff all day it came from thread tank and I will leave the link in the description box below they are a company based out of LA and they make a lot of really cute t-shirts they're themed t-shirts or seasonal t-shirts and so there's really something for everybody I think on there and if you use the code Mindy 10 I check out you will get 10% off but if you were interested in this t-shirt or another one be sure to check them out below the first thing I'm doing you guys is getting these black beans going in the crock pot you actually can't even tell they're in because my crock-pot insert is black so but there are beans in there and all I do when I cook beans in the crock-pot is rinse them really thoroughly in a colander in the sink and then I dump them into the crock pot and I season them however I want this time I just kept it really simple with some garlic salt pepper and onion powder and then I start with about 6 cups of water per pound of beans and since this is a pound of beans I put about 6 cups of water in there but I will check them occasionally while they're cooking and make sure that there's still plenty of water I don't want them to dry out and soak up all the all the water in there I actually want there to be a little bit left over when it's done cooking I'm gonna cook these on low and I'm gonna set it for 6 hours actually I'm gonna set it for 8 hours but I'm gonna check it after 6 hours and see how they're doing and hopefully they'll be finished then so I'll show you right here what they look like when they're done because I'm gonna use these for a few different recipes this week easy peasy it is day one of this little feed my family for $50 challenge and I am in the kitchen just doing a little work preparing for the week I cooked my beans yesterday in the crock pot and they are finished so I thought that was ready to go for the recipes I'm going to use those forward I have my rice cooking on the stove I'm cooking about three-quarters of that bag of brown rice and then I need the rest of it I can consept the rest later this week remember that huge bag of self-raising flour that I was able to get at Walmart for like a dollar fifty I'm using that to make pancakes and the recipe that I am using comes from this cookbook the Better Homes cookbook I feel like everybody had this cookbook when I was growing up like my mom's friends and family members I saw this in everybody's kitchen leave me a comment below if you have this cookbook or have seen it and you know you know what I'm talking about when I pull up this cookbook so I can't share with you the particular recipe since it's in a cookbook and it's copyrighted but if you don't have that cookbook and you just do a quick Google search or you go on Pinterest you can find really easy pan recipes it does call for just a little bit of sugar which I did not buy I'm only using a little bit so I didn't purchase it and if you don't have sugar maybe you have a sugar substitute or something you can use instead or you can borrow a little bit from a neighbor the other thing that I did not buy was milk and this recipe does call for milk so I used half milk and half water because that's what I had of course if you don't have any milk maybe you have nonfat dry milk that you can add to your batter but I also searched for no milk pancake recipes and several things popped up two that were just really simple recipes that use water originally I had a complete pancake mix in my cart at Walmart it's only a dollar sixty four for a box of pancake mix that only calls for water but when I decided that I was going to make pizza this week and I wanted to make a pizza crust I decided to go ahead and just buy a big bag of flour and I would just make the pancakes from scratch because besides the milk the rest of it is you know pretty much pantry staples now this is self rising flour and really the only difference between self raising flour and all-purpose flour is that this has salt and baking soda in it or baking powder I think is baking soda so I just cut back on those things in my recipe if they call for them I just cut those ingredients in half so this will make a giant batch of pancakes and the reason I like this is because I only have to make them once and then I'll put the rest in the refrigerator or I can put a few in the freezer as well and then my kids can make these themselves in the morning they just put if you want to play it and warm them up in the microwave for a few seconds and then we're gonna top them with a little bit of peanut butter in about half a banana and my kids can fix that for themselves so it's a lot of work here up front on day one but then they'll be ready and the kids will have these for breakfast this week the other thing that I think I might make is just a really simple cinnamon sugar mini muffin for the children make a batch of those so that they can have those with their lunches again it calls for sugar and a little bit of milk and I didn't buy those things but you know those are kind of kitchen staples if you have them on hand you can do that and I will leave the recipe that I'm using linked in the description box below I'm sorry I cannot remember the name of the website I think it's kitchen cent kitchen cents but that is what I am up to the this morning and husband already had his oatmeal that's what he's going to have all week long for breakfast good breakfasts for my husband and myself this week as you saw my husband ate this oatmeal every morning and that's pretty much his usual he's not a huge breakfast eater this is just one of those pop it in the microwave with a little water and you know if you want to add something to it your own sweeteners or some fruit or some nut butter of course you could do that if you have it on hand he ate this every morning and then I ate this a few mornings because there was some extra packets and then on the mornings when I did not have oatmeal I just made myself kind of an egg scramble this is something I do all the time especially on the purple plan because brown rice and beans are zero smart points and of course eggs are as well so I just throw some brown rice and some beans in the skillet to heat up season them how I want and then add an egg and then I'll just put that in a bowl and top it with a little bit of salsa or if I have you know nonfat Greek yogurt instead of sour cream and that's just a really common breakfast for me on the regular not just turning this challenge I am throwing tonight's dinner into the crock-pot and in the bottom of my crock pot are three of my big chicken breasts from that big package that I purchased I seasoned it with a tablespoon on a tablespoon a teaspoon of garlic powder a teaspoon of onion powder and a teaspoon of chili powder and salt and pepper and then I put in about half of my black beans that I made a pretty hefty portion half of the jar salsa that I purchased and this bag of frozen corn because I figured out you guys this was where my missing dollar was I was adding things in my calculator as I put them into my cart and I knew that I wanted to buy some of this for this recipe and so I added the 80 cents to my total but I never got it out of the freezer section so I went by Walmart and picked up the bag of this so that's where my other dollar was so now I'm basically at 50 dollars because this is 80 cents per bag of it but I put that in there and I'm going to pop the lid on and cook this on low for about six hours and then I will shred up the chicken and put it back in there and we'll have some yummy fajitas slash taco chicken to make taco chicken bowls and is going to be not just for dinner tonight but it's gonna produce a lot of leftovers so my husband and I can take it for lunch several days this week so that's why I'm making a whole lot of this here is what it looks like all finished up you guys I took the chicken out shredded it and then put it back in and just kind of stirred it all together and it made a bunch and everything in here is actually zero points on both blue and purple and I'm gonna serve this over brown rice which is also zero points I am a really leery of the zero point meal so I usually try to add something like cheese or sour cream or chips or something like that just to make my serving like points but this is so easy and versatile and just kind of a go-to for us dinner tonight is going to be a really really simple chicken parm you guys I mean really simple I have one and a half of my big chicken breasts from my package that I bought and here at the bottom of the crock-pot and then I just opened this can of hunt's pasta sauce the traditional flavor and I poured that over the top and all I'm going to do is pop the lid on this and set it on low and let it cook for six hours and then when the chicken is done I will take it out and shred it and put it back in and I will just serve this over pasta tonight so I'll show you what it looks like when it's finished okay you guys here's what it looks like I'm actually having mine early because I've got to go into work this evening and work really late and I used some rotini with mine because I only needed half of this box of rotini for the recipe I'm making later this week so I've been using the other other half for my lunches and meals when my husband gets home later with the kids he will make up half of this box of spaghetti and that is what they will eat theirs on and I'm also reserving some of that block of mozzarella for my pizza later this week but I did have some left that we can use to top this little you know chicken parm kind of concoction so I have shredded up some of that I'm having some of my green beans with it I've been eating these at lunchtime but my husband will pop these steamed in the bag broccoli florets into the microwave for himself and the children and so that is what they will have later and I've just got it all ready it's all warm in the crock pot but I made mine this way and that way they can have a full serving of the spaghetti and we'll still have the eight ounces that I need for the other recipe I'm making later this week this is lunch for my kids probably for three days this week we call this kind of lunch a snack plate and leave it or not this is one of their favorite things I have some watermelon here that I chopped up for them and then I have some celery and peanut butter and Blue Door not this was a request from my son he loves this so chips and salsa some cheese cubes and then a couple of the little mini cinnamon muffins that I made these are not overly sweet but you know they're so kind of a nice little treat and I find that this kind of lunch for my kiddos it lets them have some of the snacky things that they really like and it's actually a good way to use up stuff in the refrigerator from time to time so I usually you know put some kind of chip or cracker on there some kind of fruit and vegetable some deli meat or cheese or something like that but since I had these things in this grocery haul this is what I planned to do for them for lunch for three days this week believe it or not it's really tasty and one of the one of their favorite things to have for lunch snack plate this is what the children are having for lunch two days this week this is a turkey sandwich and we use some cream cheese on this actually my little helper over here helped me make these because they're taking these tomorrow for their lunches poor child care at the church and then some chips and salsa and some watermelon in two of the little mini muffins so that's going to be their lunch for two of these five days I mean you know not this one will make another one but they'll eat this same lunch twice you get what I mean we have another busy night so I am getting dinner ready ahead of time so that we can all have it whenever we're ready to eat we may be eating in shifts tonight and I just cooked up the rest of my rotini it was about half of the box that I had left and then I drained that let it cool off a little bit i drained my can of corn and added it in here I added some of my black beans it's prob about a cup and a half of my black beans that I made in the crock pot earlier the earlier this week and then iced up my two roma tomatoes and I also diced up my turkey smoked sausage and threw it in there and then I'm just making a little dressing for this from one of my cartons of Greek yogurt and a little bit of homemade taco seasoning this is just my own mixture of chili powder onion powder garlic powder salt and pepper paprika and a little oregano I'll leave a recipe linked in the description box for homemade taco seasoning but I just kind of played around with it until it's the flavor that I like and then some salt and pepper so I'm just gonna toss this in here and mix it all up together and pop the lid on and put it in the refrigerator and then we will eat this tonight with just the rest of our watermelon and I feel like it's one of those all-in-one meals because the veggies are right in there with the meat and the starch and we'll just have a side of watermelon with it and it'll be a great summer meal for lunch for myself the first day during this challenge I made just a really simple pasta marinara dish I cooked up some of my rotini pasta and then when it was done cooking I drained it and put it back in the pot while it was still hot and threw in an egg and covered that and let the steam and the heat from the pot and the pasta cook the egg and then I made a really simple marinara sauce from just a tablespoon of my tomato paste reconstituted with a few tablespoons of water and then just some salt and pepper Italian seasoning I topped my pasta with that and then I cooked up some of the steam in the bag green beans and served that on the side and that was what I had for lunch the first day when there weren't any leftovers to consume and then the other days I just ate leftovers my husband too and here are some pictures of some of the leftovers that I dished up for myself at lunch time this is very much normal for us and routine for us just eat up the leftovers from our dinners for our lunches dinner is going in the crock-pot for tonight and it is from the website five dinners one hour I'll leave it linked in the description box below I've made it before it is a ranch chicken spaghetti all I have in here is the rest of my chicken breast I had one and a half of those big chicken breasts that I bought left and I put that in the crock pot with some ranch seasoning which I make homemade if you want to you can buy a packet of it from Walmart it's 50 cents or if you don't want to make it you can just use some garlic powder onion powder salt and pepper and a little dill I think that that's you know that's basically what I put in my ranch seasoning but I'll leave that link in the description box below I have half of my block of cream cheese and then I'm going to add 4 cups of water you can use chicken broth if you had it I don't have any so I'm just using a little bit of broth base if you don't have that you can just use a little extra salt and pepper and I'm just gonna cook this on low until the chicken is done and then I'm going to take it out and shred it up and then I will stir in eight ounces of spaghetti noodles and turn the crock-pot too high for about thirty minutes and it will finish cooking and that's gonna be it for my dinner tonight and the only thing I have to count on purple is the cream cheese and I used 1/3 less fat cream cheese if you were on blue you would have to count the cream cheese and the whole-wheat pasta that I'm using and if you were on green you would have to count the cream cheese the chicken and the whole-wheat pasta but I'll try to pop up some points here depending on how many you make it serve obviously I'm gonna make this serve five since we have five people and I'm going to serve this with some veggies on the side which I will show you here in just a minute I'm breaking the rolls again you guys I broke the rules earlier this week by using milk I did not purchase in my grocery haul to make some pancakes and some muffins for my kiddos now I am going to make a little bit of bread for my family and remember that we have this big bag of self-rising flour and I'm using a very simple bread recipe that I saw over on fit frugal mom I will go ahead and link that video in the description box below but it's just four ingredients flour water salt and yeast and that's the rule that I'm breaking I am using some yeast even though I did not buy that in my grocery haul but I did plan to use some tomorrow to make a pizza crust as well and I guess let's face it this is my own personal challenge so I guess I get to make the rules but I did leave the salt out of this bread dough because self raising flour already has salt in it if you don't have yeast like I said you can live without this this is just an extra thing I'm doing to go along with the dinner that we're gonna have tonight and I wanted to try baking this up in my crock pot because I have seen that you can do bread in the crock pot you guys know I love everything crock pot recipes rice and I just like using it in the summer especially because it does not heat up my kitchen like the oven does I am gonna roast some veggies a little bit later but that only involves having the oven on for 15 minutes bread baking takes a while so I figured I'm just gonna put this in my oven to proof because I have a proof setting on my oven it doesn't really heat up that much and then I'm gonna drop it into the crock-pot to bake and we'll see how that goes you guys it works totally bakes the bread it's a weird shape because I'm using a bigger crock pot but I think it would work even better if you have like a smart crock pot I think this is a 6 quart if you have like it's a little three or four quart it would bake the bread like in a little little round kind of low but I think I can still make this work I can slice it up I also think I could have let it rise a second time a little longer and it would be you know a little bit puffier but I just put it on high for two hours and it totally baked the bread I'm gonna slice this up so I have peeled and chopped my 1 pound bag of carrots and I have chopped up my zucchini and my squash as well and this is actually going to be enough for 2 nights worth of a side of roasted veggies for the family so I'm gonna roast half of them tonight with this dinner and half of them tomorrow with the pizza that I'm gonna make so here is dinner tonight and here's what the chicken spaghetti looks like all hooked up I just sprinkled a little bit of parmesan on mine and then I have a side of roasted veggies and the children are having some of the homemade bread toasted with their dinner as well okay you guys the final dinner for this $50 family grocery budget challenge is going to be just a very simple cheese pizza alongside some veggies and I am using the my busy kitchen two ingredient dough recipe for pizza dough and it's technically not two ingredients I guess because she does add some water and some yeast to it as well so that it's more like a traditional pizza dough and I will leave that link in the description box below I actually saw this originally over at my friend Molly's channel classically Molly's so be sure to go and check her out and I have just topped that with a little bit of pizza sauce that we made from a few tablespoons of this tomato paste and a couple tablespoons of water along with some Italian seasoning and some salt and pepper and my little helper in the kitchen helped me spread that across the pizza dough and then I just added the rest of our mozzarella cheese which was probably 11 or 12 ounces that we had left from this week and I'm just going to pop this in the oven and then I wish show you what it looks like when it is all finished okay you guys here is my dinner tonight my veggies are zero because I just used some olive oil spray and some salt and pepper to roast those and then if I were to divide this pizza into five servings that comes out to eleven smart points per serving if I am just going by the ingredients that I used so my dinner tonight is 11 smart points yay okay you guys that's what I have for you this week I hope that that was helpful or at the very least entertaining I realized that my kids are younger and some of you who have older kids especially teenagers might be thinking gosh that would never fly this portion sizes are very small and the purpose of this exercise is not so much to see how much can we eat it it's meant to be an exercise and could we get by if we absolutely had to I would love to have been able to serve everybody bigger portion sizes but you know nobody was complaining about being hungry I realized too that I didn't show any snacks we mainly ate microwave popcorn or the kids ate some more celery and peanut butter or maybe a piece of peanut butter toast or slice of watermelon but you know this is just the season that we're in and what works for us and this was meant to be an exercise and could we get by if we absolutely had to so hopefully that gives you guys some ideas thank you so much for stopping by I will be sure to check in with another video very soon you

Channel: See Mindy Mom

Views: 147,094

Rating: 4.9037876 out of 5

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Id: lJXDIEoIhOg

Length: 24min 23sec (1463 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 29 2020