EXTREME GROCERY BUDGET CHALLENGE// $50 FOR 80+ MEALS

hey you guys welcome back to my channel and if you're new here welcome to see mindy mom today i am bringing you another extreme budget grocery challenge for my family of five so stay tuned [Music] all right you guys i am actually sitting at walmart i just picked up my groceries i actually tried to come yesterday and purchase my groceries in person i kind of had a plan for what i wanted to get and i was coming here to get something else anyway however as i was looking around yesterday i was noticing a discrepancy between the online price and the price in store for several items and it was going to push me over my 50 budget so i decided just to go ahead and place the online order and come back today and pick it up per the usual with this challenge i am going to utilize only the things that i purchased plus just a handful of kind of like standard kitchen staples just very basic seasonings maybe a few basic condiments some cooking oil i am trying to feed my family of five breakfast lunch and dinner plus hopefully some snacks for five days and these meals may not be the absolute best when it comes to eating healthy but i do try to balance kind of the cheaper more inexpensive fill the belly foods with more nutritious foods like fruits and vegetables so you will see fruits and vegetables in this haul and in this meal plan i will also warn you that this meal plan is going to require a little bit of prep work sometimes saving money means exchanging time we have to decide sometimes if our time is worth more than our money and we can sometimes save a lot of money on our grocery budget if we are willing to do a little bit of the work ourselves preparing foods from scratch instead of buying them already made for instance i had bread and tortillas in my cart and then i realized that flour is a really good price at walmart and i was already buying eggs and milk and i could probably go ahead and make those things from scratch myself and save myself a few extra dollars to buy produce so they just loaded up my groceries i'm going to go ahead and take these home and i will show you guys what i got and then we will jump into the meal plan for the week all right you guys here is what my fifty dollars got me at walmart actually my total was 49.84 so not too shabby i'm starting with this three pound bag of cuties and by rough count from what i can count in the bag there's about two dozen cuties in there so even though the price might seem kind of high that's enough for my kids to have two of these every day for four days i have eight bananas one onion and one garlic clove one cucumber and a bag a one pound bag of carrots eggs were an amazing deal at my walmart i know that eggs and dairy are very regional when it comes to price but i can only shop where i live for these challenges you guys so don't hate me for this but these eggs all together were two dollars it was one dollar for an 18 count i ordered two of them so i paid two dollars for three dozen eggs which is going to come in handy for breakfast and some of the meals i'm making this week i also got one package of butterball turkey smoked sausage a two pound block of colby and monterey jack cheese which i will be using in multiple dishes some margarine yes i would much prefer butter but i couldn't afford it with this grocery trip here i have some crunchy honey oats i have purchased this before i think the last time i did one of these challenges this is a great deal it is a dollar 33 for this entire box and there's only seven grams of added sugars in a serving and a serving is one cup i actually got this as a breakfast backup or a snack for my kids so really inexpensive and i'm all right with the sugar content in that compared to other cereals a five pound bag of flour which i'm going to use to make multiple bread items this week some pepperonis some cream cheese this is the third less fat kind two big cans two of the 28 ounce cans of italian style petite diced tomatoes whenever i'm doing these challenges specifically i try to buy stuff that is pre-seasoned because sometimes that can cut back on the amount of seasonings you need to purchase or if you don't have them on hand it's a way to still have seasoning in your food two packages of this moderna pasta i find this in the hispanic section at the grocery store and i like them because they're only seven ounces and they are super inexpensive they're only 27 cents a package so a regular package of just traditional pasta at walmart is i think 72 cents for 16 ounces but i paid 56 cents for 14 ounces and that's all i need for the dish that i am making so i thought that was a good deal one box of saltine crackers one box of brownie mix which i know you might be thinking mindy why would you waste money on a brownie mix and i feel like when you're on a super tight budget if you can work in a small treat like this it can really help you get through the week and i know that my kids will appreciate having these in their lunches and i was already buying eggs and i already have oil on hand so i know that i'm going to be able to make those for their lunches a two pound bag of brown rice and i thought it was really interesting that the two pound bag of brown rice was actually cheaper than the two pound bag of white rice i don't know why but it was and i ordered a two pound bag of pinto beans but i guess they were out of them so they subbed just two one pound bags which is fine they still charged me the price for the two pound bag which was a dollar forty eight one package of ranch seasoning i make my own ranch seasoning but i am going to use some in a recipe this week so i went ahead and bought a packet just to stay honest i know that ranch seasoning might not be a staple in people's kitchen but if you have ranch seasoning or you make it you don't need to buy this some bouillon cubes just again i already have chicken broth base but i'm going to be using chicken broth in several recipes so i just bought these so i can make it and use it in my recipes one half gallon of whole milk one jar of classic alfredo pasta sauce the great value brand this is the small jar i ordered five packages of ramen so i could do like a stir fry this week but they actually gave me six so yay for the bonus thank you walmart grocery pickup two bags of frozen broccoli one three pound bag of frozen chicken breasts a bag of cut green beans a bag of corn and then one pound of ground beef this is the highest fat content and it's the cheapest ground beef that i can get it's the 73 27 but i'm actually going to use this in two different recipes so only half of this is going in each one of those so i'm not really worried about the fat content in fact i picked it on purpose because it's going to add a lot of flavor to the dishes that i am going to be making so it is the day before i am going to implement this budget meal plan and i am in the kitchen doing some prep work as i stated i saved a little money this time by planning to make several things from scratch first off i did cook my beans in the slow cooker overnight whenever i make my beans in the crock pot i just rinse them really well and then i put them into the crock pot season them however i want and then i add about eight cups of water per pound of beans i used a tablespoon each of garlic powder chili powder onion powder and then about a teaspoon of cumin in my beans and i did cook a pound and a half of beans i didn't cook my whole two pounds that i purchased because i thought that that would be too much for what i needed them for but i didn't think a pound would be quite enough and i cook those on low for anywhere from eight to ten hours but when i'm cooking them overnight usually they come out just fine i also cooked up my brownies just according to the package directions super easy it's just water oil eggs and then the brownie mix so those are ready to go and i will slice those up for the kids lunches this week i am also attempting to make tortillas from scratch now when i look at tortilla recipes online um they're they don't vary very much i mean it's pretty much the same ingredients even in the same amounts a lot of the recipes that i was looking at anyway so i will leave one of those linked in the description box below but what i ended up doing was using three cups of flour one teaspoon of baking powder one teaspoon of salt and kind of mix that together and then add in about a third of a cup of vegetable oil and mix that together until the mixture is crumbly and then i slowly added in one cup of very hot water until the dough came together it was a little bit sticky but it wasn't like messy it had definitely come together and when i pressed on it it kind of sprung back a little bit so then i rolled those into little balls and i left them on the counter covered them with a tea towel and they are resting for about 30 to 60 minutes before i will roll them out and make tortillas my biggest worry about tortillas is that i don't have a cast iron skillet and that's how you're supposed to cook them so i'm hoping that i can cook them on my griddle and that they will come out okay but my backup plan at the tortillas don't work out is to make biscuits so we'll just have to wait and see now i am going to make soda bread and that is a no yeast bread if you have yeast in your house and you want to just make your favorite yeast bread recipe you absolutely can this uses just really basic pantry staple ingredients it is flour milk vinegar a little bit of sugar a little salt and baking powder and then some vegetable oil so i am starting with one cup of flour a quarter teaspoon of salt half a tablespoon of sugar a quarter teaspoon of baking soda and i'm just gonna use my fork and kind of like whisk all of those dry ingredients together a little bit i'm gonna go ahead and use the dough hook on my stand mixer and i'm going to add half a cup of milk with one tablespoon of vinegar which has been sitting over here so that the milk curdles this is basically a substitute for buttermilk i use this in in recipes whenever it calls for buttermilk so i will add half of that and let my dough hook kind of work the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients and then i'll add the other half of the milk and see how that comes together okay so my dough has come together this is going to make a very small loaf which is fine for me i just wanted to test it out but i did have to add about a quarter cup more flour to my dough mixture it was just way too wet so now i'm just kneading that a few times and i'm gonna form it into like a little ball like this and it does say not to make it too tall like you don't want it to be like a dome you want it to be more like an oval like this and i'm going to pop that into the oven at 400 for about 20 minutes and we'll see how it turns out okay so my soda bread is done and it did rise in the oven i'm actually pretty impressed mine was a little bit lopsided and of course it made a very small loaf but i will be trying that out tomorrow for breakfast and if i like it then i think i can just double the recipe and make a little larger loaf and cook it for longer in the oven jerry's out on that but we will find out tomorrow and my tortillas are also finished i just rolled the little dough balls out and then i put them onto my griddle and i cooked them for about 60 seconds on each side and i think they've turned out really good hindsight's 20 20. i could have made biscuits instead of tortillas and i probably would do that knowing what i know now because i think the tortillas were definitely a labor of love they took a little bit longer than i had planned i still have lots of flour so i can make more bread i can make biscuits i'm planning to make egg noodles later on in the week but i did get all of those things done and the rest of the week there's not going to be quite as much prep happening so here we go good morning i am in the process of making breakfast and if this works out i should be able to make breakfast all at once today for the entire week for the children so i already ate my breakfast i had a couple slices of the soda bread that i made with a little bit of margarine and i also scrambled one egg and i have enough eggs for my husband and i each to have one egg for the entire week i only like my eggs scrambled you could hard boil them or you could make them over easy and it's up to you but there are enough eggs for my husband and i each have one and then still have some left over for other things and now i'm making breakfast burritos for the children and i'm going to use those tortillas that i made yesterday so i have beaten 12 eggs with a little bit of milk and some salt and pepper a little boy in the background there it was halloween yesterday so we're all kind of tired i also sliced up and diced up those turkey smoked sausages that i bought i put half of them aside because i'm going to use half of them for another recipe but the other half i have in here in my pan with my eggs i've got eggs scrambled salt and pepper dash of milk some sausage in there as well and i'm just cooking those up on the stove and then when they're cooked i'm gonna make some breakfast burritos for the kids today and then i'm going to try to make the rest of the breakfast burritos for the week so that the kids then can just keep them up in the microwave and have breakfast i have enough bananas for them each to have half of a banana with their breakfast burrito every morning for dinner tonight i am attempting to recreate a ramen noodle stir-fry that i did as part of another video i did a video where i fed myself for three days with just five dollars i've done that a few times but in one of them i made this ramen stir fry with vegetables that was really really good so i'm trying to just recreate that recipe and kind of scale it up to feed more of us i have made a little sauce from vegetable oil and soy sauce i used about a third of a cup of vegetable oil and then the rest of the soy sauce i have left which was probably about a quarter cup i wish i had just a little bit more soy sauce but that's what i had left and then i also added three packets of the ramen seasoning also i pressed a couple of garlic cloves into that as well and set that aside i peeled and chopped about half of my carrots so i cooked the carrots for about five minutes and then added the broccoli and i'll let it cook for another five minutes and then i will add five bricks of ramen and i will let it cook for just about 90 seconds or so i don't want it to cook very much i'm going to drain that and reserve just about half a cup of the starchy water from the noodles and i will put that back into the pot along with my sauce and let my sauce and the water kind of heat up a little bit and then i will throw my noodles and vegetable mixture in with that i'm also going to scramble five of my eggs and set those aside and then i will add them also to the stir fry mixture whenever i put the noodles and stuff back into the sauce and that is going to be our dinner tonight so here is my ramen and i have already tasted it and i am very pleased with how it turned out there's a serving of veggies in here there's some protein from the eggs and it's just a very filling meal that comes together really quickly so i'm very pleased with that lest you think that everything i'm making this week involves a lot of work and cooking from scratch or rest assured i have several really easy dinner dishes planned for this week and some of these are things that are just tried and true recipes and meals that i keep coming back to tonight i'm making a really simple chicken alfredo casserole so what i have here is some shredded up cooked chicken i just cooked this in my crock pot i used two of the chicken breasts from my three pound bag that i bought i just throw that into my crock pot yes frozen i seasoned mine with a little bit of onion powder garlic powder salt and pepper just a skosh of water to give it some moisture and i let it cook on low for six hours it's all shredded up ready to go cooked through i have my two packages of elbow noodles here so this is 14 ounces total of pasta a one pound package of pasta would be just fine i've got a cup of shredded cheese and i have my jar of alfredo sauce so what i'm going to do is i'm going to cook my pasta on the stove to al dente and drain it and i'm going to reserve about a half a cup of that starchy pasta water and then i'm going to put the pasta back in the pot add the cooked chicken add my jar of alfredo sauce and then what i like to do is put that starchy water into the jar once it's cooled down a little bit and i shake that up really good so i can get all of the sauce out of the jar and then pour that into the pot add the cheese stir it all up and then i will pour it into a casserole dish and bake it in the oven about 30 minutes at 350 until it's kind of cooked through and bubbly so here is my dinner and i know that it doesn't seem like much i mean it certainly isn't going to win any like cooking awards or anything but man this is such an easy meal and it's so good everybody eats it everybody likes it it produces leftovers it comes together really quickly so yay dinner all right you guys let's talk lunches for a minute so lunches this week primarily for my husband and myself are leftovers that is typically the case if my husband doesn't have a lunch appointment he takes his lunch but i also know that because my husband and i are both eating lunch this week from home that i would probably need to supplement with a little bit of a lunch prep so i have made some bean and meat burrito bowls the inspiration for this actually comes from a recipe that i found on moneysavingmom.com years and years and years ago i will see if i can find it if i can i will link it in the description box i browned my pound of ground beef and i set aside half of it because i'm going to use that half for a dinner recipe later in the week to that i added some of my pinto beans i made about a pound and a half and i'm using about a third of those beans in this recipe i did mash them up a little bit with a fork so that they would have more of like a refried bean consistency but not like completely creamy and then i added to that half of one of my big can of tomatoes but i did go ahead and put that into my ninja blender and just pulse it a couple of times and then the original recipe actually calls for enchilada sauce but i did not buy that because it was fairly expensive i mean at least it was gonna bust my 50 grocery budget so instead of adding enchilada sauce i used two of my ramen noodle packets because i don't need all of the flavoring packets not the noodles just the flavoring and then i added a tablespoon of chili powder and then i let that simmer on the stove for about 20 minutes just so that all of the things kind of combine and then i ladled that over the top of several containers of brown rice which i have already cooked ahead of time for my kids and this is the fun part because people usually have some opinions about what i feed my kids and how i feed my kids but this is what i decided to do this week two of them typically eat the school lunch because we have a rule in this house that if you want to take your lunch to school you have to pack it and of course we set some parameters for that but they pack their own lunches when they go to school but two of my kids will mostly choose to eat the school lunch but for this challenge i did go ahead and buy things so that i could pack my kids lunches for five days now if they were not in school in person i would definitely choose something else like maybe some canned soup and some simple grilled cheese sandwiches or some mac and cheese or something like that or an easy pasta dish but since they're in school in person i needed to have things that i could pack so i will show you um the things that i have been sending in their lunches this week and again my kids are young i understand that they don't eat as much as older kids but in my school lunch when i was a kid my dad packed crackers and cream cheese an applesauce cup a small bag of chips and a treat so and and i did fine okay i did not go hungry my kids are not going hungry but i will show you what i have been sending with them this week for lunch here is a lunch option for the kiddos i made some extra tortillas from the breakfast burritos so this is a pepperoni and cream cheese roll-up i have this block of cream cheese i only need half of it for the dinner recipe i'm using so that means i have the other half i can use for other things so i have a tortilla with some cream cheese and some pepperonis rolled up and two clementines and then some crackers and a brownie and i have enough to make this lunch twice for my kiddos so this is an option for lunch for my kiddos for this week and i have enough to pack this lunch three times except on the third day i would pack cucumbers instead of clementines because i would be out of clementines at that point so it's kind of like a build your own lunchable i have a bunch of crackers and some pepperonis and cheese and then my clementines and then a yummy brownie and i know that this doesn't look like a lot but remember that my kids are pretty young and when you think about a school lunch tray they have an entree they have a starch they have a fruit or a vegetable and then sometimes one other item in milk my kids are not huge milk drinkers so i don't send that they just drink water but this is a lunch for them that would certainly tie them over until snack time whenever they get home from school and again i have enough of these items to pack it three times except the last time with a sliced up cucumber instead which my kids love cucumbers so they will not be sorry about that at all dinner tonight is a tried and true family recipe i have made this over and over again on my channel if you watch my channel you've probably seen it at least half a dozen times it is cream cheese chicken chili earlier today i put into my crock pot a couple of my frozen chicken breasts my bag of corn half of one of my big cans of tomatoes about half of my beans that i have left after i made burrito bowls the other day a tablespoon of chili powder one of my chicken bouillon cubes either a packet of ranch dressing dressing mix which i purchased or if you make homemade ranch dressing mix i used a couple of tablespoons of that then i also added two cups of water and half of my brick of cream cheese all of that went into the crock pot and you can cook it on low for about six hours or high for three to four hours then i just take the chicken out and shred it put it back in and stir it all up and it is ready to go obviously if you have chips or you have extra cheese lying around i'm wanting to use my cheese for another recipe this week so i saved it i did cook a little brown rice to put on the bottom of my bowl but obviously you can supplement with things that you have on hand if you have them but this is always a hit in my house super easy and it usually produces at least one or two bowls of leftovers that we can have for lunches this week dinner tonight is going to be very easy because the ingredients have all already been prepped we're going to have chili and it's going to be my own little spin on the way that my dad makes chili so i have the rest of my pinto beans i will probably not use all of these because i think this is just a tad much i will probably use maybe two cups or so of these beans and leave some of them in the container i have the other half of my one pound of ground beef that is already cooked i have the other half of my turkey smoked sausage that i already chopped up the other day i used the first half and the breakfast burritos i made for my kids and the other half is going into this chili i have my other can of tomatoes i'm going to use one of my chicken bouillon cubes and then i'm gonna use about a tablespoon or so of chili powder i will put all of that into the crock pot and then add about three to four cups of water and let it simmer on low for about three to four hours because everything is already cooked i'm basically just reheating it and then just allowing it to kind of simmer together and get really flavorful now the way that my family has always eaten chili is with rice so i still have plenty of my two pound bag of brown rice so i will probably cook some of this up on the stove and i do still have a little bit of my two pound block of cheese left so i can shred that up and we can use that to go on top of the chili as well the only thing about this is that when i was making this meal plan i did not realize how similar this meal is going to be to the lunch prep that i have already done that was like the burrito bowls but that's okay we can suck it up and still eat it sometimes variety is a luxury that we can't afford whenever we're on a budget so we will be just fine the kids will be home from school soon and this box of cereal has served a great purpose as a snack for the kiddos they're gonna finish it up i've had to be a little bit stingy with the milk but that's okay and they can use up the rest of it today because i set aside what i needed for our last dinner recipe but it's been really great to have this and it's been a nice snack for them when they get home from school and before we head out for activities for our last dinner for this challenge i made a homemade chicken and noodles and this was kind of a chaotic night so i just got some b-roll and i'm coming back now to do a voice over and let you know how i made this in my pot there i have the last of my frozen chicken breasts there were three left and i am putting in my onion that i purchased i just peeled it and chopped it in half and then i am adding about three cloves of garlic because mine were a pretty good size you might want to do four if they're small and to that i will add two of my chicken bouillon cubes and then i'm just going to season it with some black pepper and also just a little bit of italian seasoning because i have that on hand you can season it however you like i decided not to put any extra salt in this because i can always add salt later and i knew that the bouillon cubes would have a lot of salt so i put in about six cups of water i brought that to a boil and then i covered that and turned the heat down and let it simmer for about 45 to 50 minutes and this is going to do two things it's going to cook my chicken and simultaneously create a chicken broth that i will use to make the rest of the dish i'm also going to peel and chop my carrots the rest of the carrots that i have for my little one pound bag that i bought i used some of them earlier in the week in the noodle stir-fry and i'm going to use the rest of them tonight i'm just going to set those aside until later and now i am going to make the egg noodles so i started out with one and a half cups of flour and to that i'm gonna add a teaspoon of salt and kind of take a fork and sort of stir that up together and then i made a well in the middle and i cracked two eggs into that well and then i added two tablespoons of milk and sometimes you have to add a little bit more flour sometimes you have to add a little bit more moisture sometimes it depends on how humid it is where you live when you're working with bread and noodles and pasta sometimes you just have to you know kind of add whatever you need to to make it the consistency that you need to so i'm just stirring that up until it starts to combine and gets kind of crumbly and i did add just a little bit of extra milk to mine maybe another tablespoon or so because it was a little bit dry i rolled that out onto a floured surface and then i just used my hands to knead it i probably needed it for about two to three minutes just until all of the ingredients were combined and it makes this nice little dough ball and i let that rest underneath a tea towel for about 30 minutes before i rolled them out into noodles so once i was ready to roll the noodles out i will say that it definitely took some elbow grease to do this the dough wanted to spring back it was very springy so i had to work kind of hard to get that dough to roll out but eventually i did win the battle with the dough and i was able to roll it out to about the size of my cutting board there though i do wish that i had just rolled it out on the counter and rolled it out a little bit thinner because my noodles were just a tad thick so i'm just going to use my pizza cutter to slice up those noodles to the size that i want and then i just sprinkled a little bit of flour on top of them as soon as i was done slicing them all up and i just kind of gently sort of separated the noodles and piled them into a pile in the middle of the cutting board until i was ready to put them into my soup so there you see my noodles all ready to go and now i'm going to come back and make the rest of my soup so my broth is done and i'm gonna go ahead and remove the chicken breast from the broth and i will just shred that up and set it aside so that i can add it back into the soup later it shredded up beautifully my broth smelled absolutely delicious it was delicious and it's ready now to make the rest of the soup so i am finished with my onions so i just used a slotted spoon to take those out of my broth and the garlic i wasn't worried about but i didn't really want a lot of you know chunky onion pieces in this soup so i just used the onion for flavor now i am bringing my broth back up to a boil and i am adding my carrots into it and what you don't see because i didn't get it on film was that i also added about three quarters of a cup of milk whatever milk i had left and i let that all cook for about 10 minutes so that the carrots would get soft before i added my noodles in and then i just let my noodles cook until they were finished mine were a little bit thicker so it took about six or seven minutes but if they were thinner i think they would cook much faster these types of noodles they they cooked up much faster than like the dried noodles that i would normally buy at the store but this was really really good everybody liked it the only thing like i said that i wish i had done is rolled my noodles out a little bit thinner and i had intended to serve this with the green beans that i purchased you don't see them there because by the time we were getting around to eat it was pretty late because my younger daughter and i had a very long wait wait at the walmart grocery pickup so by the time we were walking in the door i was just like okay everybody just needs to have something to eat so this is what we ate and it was really really delicious so there you have it you guys that is five days for my family of five with 50 plus just a few things that we had on hand at the house just basic seasonings and spices and staples and i hope that you found this video enjoyable and found something helpful in it thanks so much for watching and i'll be sure to check in again with another video very soon bye

Channel: See Mindy Mom

Views: 562,158

Keywords: extreme grocery budget challenge, grocery budget challenge, extreme grocery budget, budget grocery haul, budget meal plan, cheap family meals, cheap dinners, cheap family dinners, budget meals, 50 dollar grocery haul, extreme budget grocery haul, family grocery haul, cheap grocery haul, saving money on groceries, eating healthy on a budget, cheap healthy meals

Id: zL_Euye2HW4

Length: 27min 50sec (1670 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020