FEED YOUR FAMILY ALL WEEK FOR 50 CENTS PER MEAL-- EXTREME GROCERY CHALLENGE SUCCESS! #budgetmeals

hey y'all welcome back to homemade simple if we've not met before I'm Lori today it's time for another extreme grocery budget video and I am at a neighborhood Walmart y'all know if you've seen my other videos I have sort of an attitude problem about Walmart so I chose to go to this neighborhood Walmart it's a little bit smaller and so it should be a little easier to navigate I have our menu and my grocery list all put together honestly I have no idea how much these groceries are going to cost I've really given up on trying to estimate the cost of groceries before I go into the store because it just fluctuates so much in today's economy I'm really hopeful that this menu plan is really affordable but I'm going to be as surprised as you are with the total I will give you the rundown of the grocery list and the cost of each item and then we will get busy making the items when we get home foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] well I don't know if I should be disappointed or excited I think that was pretty good it ended up being just over sixty dollars I think that's pretty good that's gonna feed all six of us all three meals all seven days so I feel like it's really hard to get much better than that but sixty dollars that's that's ten dollars per person for the entire week I think that's really good and and I think that these meals are going to be feeling nutritious and far from boring so I'm excited about sharing these recipes with y'all let's get home and get these groceries put away and start cooking before we get started making these meals I wanted to make a couple of observations first of all I was really surprised at the amount of food I was able to make with this 65 grocery haul even though it cost ten dollars more than the 55 dollar meal plan that I had done a while back I'll link that here I feel like it was a really good use of ten dollars to up that meal plan into this plan I feel like this was a really good use of sixty five dollars and really when you think about it getting a week's worth of meals for your family even for a larger family like ours and be able to feed everyone for 50 cents a meal or for a dollar fifty every day the the thought of that is really remarkable especially when you consider the inflation that at least we're experiencing here in the Southeast so just in a dollar for dollar cost analysis I feel like this meal plan really did provide substantially more in terms of available food and available energy from that food another thing I wanted to mention was that when you saw the amount of food that I purchased that was to feed my family of six that was to make sure that I had six servings per meal at the very least so if you are feeding a family of three or four you are going to be able to lower the number of items that you have to purchase for example I had to buy two bags of oats and the reason that I had to buy two bags instead of one was because of the size of my family so if your family is smaller you actually can reduce the total cost in this meal plan you won't have to buy two bags of oats and you won't have to buy as large of a bag of rice or as many canned tomatoes so there's a lot of room in this meal plan for you to reduce your cost even more if you don't have to feed as many people as I do so with all that being said let's get into making these meals we'll go breakfast first then lunches and then I'll put the dinners at the end to make sure you watch to the end because there's a little bit of a surprise thrown in at the end of the video for the last dinner so I hope that all of this is helpful and useful to you now let's get started we always eat breakfast at different times so I'm just gonna make three servings of Oats this morning but for oatmeal it's a two to one water to oats ratio so you just put half a cup of oatmeal and one cup of water for each serving [Music] I like to put a pinch of salt that's completely optional I'm going to microwave this for about two or two and a half minutes you can also cook it on the stove but this is just the easiest way today that actually took a good bit longer than two minutes probably more like three and a half or four but after you get them into the right consistency I'm just gonna add some brown sugar today if we're not on an extreme budget I would add brown sugar walnuts Chris likes raisins but this is gonna be really good and this should last us all morning we're at the end of our week but we still have a little bit of ham and some eggs left so I've been going to fry up some of this ham get it browned on both sides and then scramble some eggs [Music] okay the ham has browned up I'm going to remove it from the skillet but I'm not going to rinse the skillet out and we will use all of this ham flavor that has seasoned the skillet allow that to season our scrambled eggs [Music] thank you [Music] this is really the way a country grandma would make her breakfast she would season her eggs with whatever meat that she cooked so even though this doesn't look typical or normal it really does have a good a good flavor so I think you would really enjoy it it's time for lunch and one of the lunches that I have planned for this week is do it yourself Lunchables there's lots of different ways that you can do this obviously lots of different things that you can add but with our budget this week I just decided to use a block of cheese that I'm going to slice up ham that I found for a really good price and then these saltine crackers for Lane I'm going to cut these pieces up really small but obviously for big people you don't have to do that lane won't eat any more than that so cut a little bit for me thin slices would be ideal but we just sometimes have to do with what we have be resourceful that's a good theme of being able to stay on a budget is just being resourceful and using what you have the best you can I'll put the meat and cheese on this side this is Lane's favorite Parts the crackers so I'll make sure I give them plenty of those why do we pay so much money for a Lunchable when it takes just a few seconds to put together another option for lunch that I put in the meal plan was ham and cheese sandwiches um make sure to buy some mayonnaise and so everybody could do their sandwiches like they prefer the best but on this day Chris and I wanted to have a grilled cheese sandwich so instead of using the mayonnaise we use butter and heated it up in the skillet oh foreign [Music] besides leftovers the final lunch that I had planned for this meal plan was to throw together some spaghetti noodles and tomato sauce the two pound box that we purchased is enough for 16 servings so there's definitely plenty but we didn't need all of those servings on this one day so I just made a few at a time about three or four servings of pasta while the pasta was boiling I drained one can of petite diced tomatoes that were seasoned with Italian seasoning I heated up about a tablespoon of butter in a skillet and then poured in those diced tomatoes that had that I had drained I added about a tablespoon of brown sugar toward the end of the cooking of the tomato sauce just to sort of simmer down some of the acid flavor and to give it a more sweet flavor that is totally optional when the noodles were done I drained off the water and returned them back into the pot and just combined the spaghetti and the tomato sauce mixed it around and this made for a really quick and easy lunch option now we can finally move into the heart of the meal plan and that is the dinner meals first up is a very inexpensive but very filling meal and that is ham and lentil soup to begin I chopped four ribs of celery and about half a pound of carrots I diced them pretty small and then softened them in a dutch oven in about a tablespoon of butter while the vegetables were sauteing I diced up about a pound of ham into relatively small pieces I'm gonna add six cups of water one large can of diced tomatoes two teaspoons of salt about two cups of ham one cup of rice and one package of lentils this is a 12 ounce package so for about an hour and a half or so until the rice and the lentils were both tender this tasted really good and it made a ton of servings next up are veggie fajitas this is a really simple and delicious meal to throw together on a busy weeknight started with chopping one onion and two bell peppers into slices and I sauteed them in two tablespoons of butter in my iron skillet I added one tablespoon of cumin as well as a tablespoon of salt if you don't have cumin on hand you can just salt them and that will be fine but the cube the cumin gives it a more authentic flavor while the vegetables were cooking I cooked up some rice and black beans according to the package directions once the vegetables are very tender and soft I opened up our bag of tortillas and placed a small amount of the vegetables on the tortilla I added the beans and rice to the inside of the fajita but it's perfectly fine to leave them as a side dish I spread on a little bit of sour cream and rolled it up as best as I could but I always tend to overfill these small flour tortillas this makes a really quick and easy weeknight meal and I hope that your family enjoys it as much as we do we're gonna slice this cheese really thin and we're gonna spread this butter made you want to put the cheese on here put your cheese right here on your scent on your sandwich bread that's good we kind of put this piece right on top no no no no no put it right here put it right here good job oh good job all right now mama will make all the rest of them hi Bob [Music] my friend has told me about a game-changing way to make grilled cheese and that is to make it an air fryer I've never tried this before so I'm just gonna see how it goes I've got it preheating 400 when it gets there I'll put it in okay let's see the ones on the top look really good okay the grilled cheese turned out really good it's nice and crispy and brown it didn't take but like I don't know probably less than five minutes to make all of our sandwiches and you're just gonna have to put on your thinking cap and be creative about this side we're working with a small budget so normally I mean I would have chips and a pickle with a grilled cheese sandwich or maybe even tomato soup we don't have that in the budget this week what we did have was a huge five pound bag of rice and so I thought rice is filling I mean it's not gonna flare it up or anything but it's just going to make it more filling so this is the kind of thing that when we're on a really tight and strict budget we're going to have to do we're gonna have to be willing to eat strange things together like rice and grilled cheese if you have a little more in the budget totally go for some tomato soup or even some chips but I think this rice is going to be just fine we decided tonight would be pizza night we wanted to watch a movie as a family and so we always like to make pizzas or buy pizzas on family movie night tonight we are going to make our pizzas out of these flour tortillas and we're going to use our ham some vegetables we're going to make our own sauce to make our sauce I'm going to pour half of a can or 16 ounces of diced tomatoes into the skillet I'm going to add salt and some Italian seasoning if you don't have Italian seasoning in your pantry you can just go without this this time and then next time you can add it you'll still get the sauce just not quite as flavorful and while we let that cook down we're gonna chop up all of our ingredients for our pizza the toppings that I've chosen are just to use half of a bell pepper and chop up half of an onion I'm going to use some of this spiral sliced ham and then we're going to shred our mozzarella I'm gonna sprinkle it's probably a teaspoon of our brown sugar into the pizza sauce stir it in and let it sit while we finish up the toppings that's optional but I do find that it really helps take out some of the acid taste of the tomatoes this might be time for transparency I really have not tried this before but it seems like it would work and it seems like a good idea so I'm gonna go for it I've melted a couple of tablespoons of butter I'm just going to brush the the side of the tortilla that's going to go on the pan I feel like that will make it sort of crispy I don't know we'll see this is a really fun meal for kids to get involved Lane is really too small the girls are really too old they don't care about it so here I am doing it all by myself but maybe your kids will like to make their own pizzas I'm gonna start with those three because that's all my cookie sheet will hold I'm just gonna spread like two teaspoons of this sauce on each tortilla in a Sprinkle about a tablespoon of cheese on each I'm gonna put onions on two of them and I'm gonna put peppers and some ham I'll put a little ham on mines and then I'll just top it with a little more cheese I'm going to put these in a 400 degree oven until the bottoms are nice and crispy and the cheese is good and melted I'm actually feeling really good about how this turned out I put some butter on the edges of the other ones that I'm cooking now that are in the oven so I'm hopeful maybe that will add a little bit of crisp to the tortillas so let's see how they turn out y'all these look really good nothing budget about these pizzas this is exciting I think that I think that little bit of butter on the edge help to crisp it up a little bit more make it a little more golden brown I cut up some of our celery to have with it we always like to have a crispy side with our pizza we normally juice chips but I didn't have money in the budget for chips this week so we're gonna pair it with some celery next up is dirty rice this is such a simple and easy recipe but it's really amazing how inexpensive it is to put together this ended up making at least eight servings it was really good and it was really simple to put together I'm going to start by putting some rice in the instant pot two cups of rice four cups of water I just turned the valve on to seal and I put it on the automatic rice setting I'm going to chop up one half a bell pepper one half an onion and four ribs of celery okay we're going to heat up one tablespoon of butter and when that melts we're gonna saute the celery onion and bell pepper in that before we add the sausage our vegetables have sauteed until they're pretty soft so now we're going to add three different seasonings if you do not have the seasonings just cooking it without it will be just fine because the tomatoes and the sausage are going to add plenty of flavor I'm going to add one teaspoon of salt one teaspoon of Italian seasoning and half a teaspoon of paprika I'm going to stir that in and let that cook for about 30 seconds and while that's cooking I'm going to open up my package of sausage get it ready to put in a skillet I'm gonna just put in a sausage I wash my hands make sure that whenever you're touching raw meat it's always the best to be extra careful wash your hands make sure you're not getting any of the bacteria on your utensils or on your surfaces that's a good way to prevent foodborne illnesses I'm just gonna break up the sausage a bit okay the sausage is nice and brown all of the pink is gone I've got it chopped up really fine and this vegetables are very soft so now I'm going to add 16 ounces of diced tomatoes to keep the budget as low as possible I got the largest cans of tomatoes that I could find and we're just going to divide them among the different recipes that we need them for so this was one half of the large can of tomatoes okay and last step is to add the rice those two cups of rice turned into over four cups of cooked rice it's going to make a lot of servings I'm gonna incorporate that Rice into the meat and vegetables I'm going to turn off the heat this meal is going to end up being a family favorite for all of us I'm just sure because it's so simple to put together but it's also just really flavorful and filling it turned out to be one of the best meals for the week the next recipe we're going to make is fried rice we are going to use our day-old rice that I cooked when I made our fajitas so make sure you have plenty of old rice that has been in the refrigerator at least a day it will cook up a lot better in this recipe if it's not fresh so I've got probably three or four cups of rice already ready to go I've chopped up my carrots if you have a little extra in the budget you can also caramelize some onions and put in this recipe or some sweet peas will be really good in this recipe but we're just going to use carrots I've got two tablespoons of butter melted in this tall on Skillet I'm going to put my carrots in to let them soften while I get the eggs ready so because this is homemade simple We're Not Gonna highly complicate this this is just going to be sort of whatever floats your boat but I'm going to use five eggs for our family if you want to load up on a lot more eggs that's your choice but I think I'm gonna do five eggs for the amount of rice that I have which I think is about four cups I'm just gonna crack the eggs and then we're gonna sort of make scrambled eggs foreign for the carrots to finish up and then we'll cook our eggs these are good and soft I think salt enough anyway so I'm going to transfer them to a bowl and then I'm going to cook the eggs in the same Skillet I'm going to add just another half tablespoon of butter let that melt and then I'm going to pour in the eggs just gonna give it one last good scramble and then I'm going to pour it in I'm gonna let it sit and let it get some structure on the bottom before I start moving it around at all Kelsey is the one who taught me how to do this recipe and she said be careful not to make a lot of like sudden fast movements with it and scramble it all to pieces I don't know why y'all can ask her I'm just doing what I'm told okay you want them to be a little wet still so I'm going to go ahead and pour in the rice foreign we're gonna mix it all up and then we'll add the soy sauce I'm gonna start with two tablespoons of soy sauce this is the budget friendly version if I wasn't trying to be on a really tight budget I would use these Liquid Aminos instead um just because it's non-GMO that's my first choice but Soy Sauce will be fine and we're looking for I'm sure y'all know what color fried rice is so that's that's when we'll know that we have enough I've I've started with three tablespoons we'll see how that does in this amount this is one of those we don't really have a recipe kind of meals it's just gonna be whatever turns out to work with the amount that you have I'm gonna add the fourth tablespoon and I think that should do it this is very simple and easy to put together but there is a lot of nutrition in this meal even though it doesn't really look like it or you might not think that way especially if you are sure to add some vegetables it's got plenty of protein the rice will give it plenty of staying power and there's a lot of flavor you'll know that we're just real and raw here so here's the real Raw Deal I marked everything with an X so maybe nobody will get any of the groceries okay well I got to my last meal we have company coming and I wasn't going to change anything I wanted it to be authentic we can have a budget friendly meal and still have company we already had company when we had the lentil soup it turned out fine but here's my problem um I don't have enough of those potatoes left we were gonna have baked potatoes with ham and cheese and sour cream and butter as toppings that was the plan but um not enough potatoes so here's what we're gonna do I'm just gonna make soup with it now that that means that I'm gonna use some milk and I didn't buy milk you're just gonna have to find some grace and mercy in your heart and understand life happens the main reason I didn't want to run to the store was because this is real life this really happens and if you get in a pinch you need to know how to sort of adjust and recreate your menu with the things that you have available I was just a minute ago talking to my friend about what she terms contentment meals and that is going in your pantry and finding what you have available and making something out of that and being happy and thankful that you had that food available that's what we're gonna do so this is not what I had planned what I had planned was baked potatoes I mean y'all know how to do that so y'all don't really need to watch me do that anyway so I'm going to tweak my menu make a soup instead and it's going to turn out fine but just as an explanation that's why I'm having some of these ingredients added in this meal that weren't included in the budget plan so I've given you the normal budget plan now I'm giving you this is what we're having to do because we're having to adjust please just understand this is our house this is our life we all live here we all share the same Pantry I have teenage kids they like to cook and bake and make their own food sometimes and so this is what happens so this is a bonus enjoy this bonus recipe and let's just get started making this soup before our company gets here we need to start by cutting up four ribs of celery and half an onion I'm gonna heat up two tablespoons of butter in a dutch oven or a large Soup pot will be fine and I'm gonna saute the celery and onions in the butter while those vegetables are sauteing I'm going to dice up the potatoes that I do have left I'm gonna just leave the peels on and I'm also going to dice up about a pound of ham I'm gonna take about three tablespoons of flour and I'm going to cook this in with the sauteing vegetables to try to take out some of the raw flour flavor I don't have chicken stock so we're just gonna use our fresh milk this is one benefit of having a homestead even if things don't quite go right or we run out of a particular thing we'll at least have something available and that's something right now is going to be milk so I'm sorry again for the change in plans and that I didn't include the milk in the meal plan but really everything else is pretty much what we bought so we can still make it work um if you just have a dollar a couple of dollars to add a half gallon of milk I'm gonna add probably a cup right now and whisk it in real good to try to prevent it from clumping I'm gonna add about two more cups of milk and I think to keep from using quite so much milk I'm going to add about two cups of water now I'm going to add the potatoes I'm gonna add about a tablespoon of salt and plenty of pepper I'm gonna put the lid on this and let the potatoes cook and then when they finish cooking I'll add the rest of the ingredients I'm going to use this Masher to sort of mash up the potatoes and thicken the soup if you don't have one of these Mashers you can just use any kind of spoon and sort of smash the potatoes against the edge of the pot that will work just fine but this is going to give the soup a little more body and it will make a thicker end result when you have the soup to the consistency that you like go ahead and add the ham and make sure that you allow the ham to simmer in the soup for at least five or ten minutes to be sure that all of those ham flavors are incorporated into the soup itself I decided to top the soup with shredded cheese and sour cream and the end result was delicious that was a lot of food and a lot of cooking but it was I think a big success I feel like the meals that we made on this extreme budget meal plan were all really good they all tasted really good they were all very very affordable there was nothing that was hard about any of the recipes which is a total must in my family so I'm really glad and thankful that you came along with me making these meals today I hope that you will try some of these or all of these recipes and that it will help you to be able to make the most of your grocery budget if you know someone who could really benefit from an extreme budget meal plan like this one I hope that you will share I hope that you will share this video with them and also if you have not subscribed to the channel I hope that you will take a second and do that as well I have also begun putting out a new meal plan every Sunday afternoon so if you're interested in that be sure to click that Bell icon so that you can be notified whenever any new video comes out if you have any suggestions or recipes or Frugal grocery tips I would love to hear them and I know all of the homemade simple Community would love to see them as well you are all so good to share all of your wonderful ideas and tips with me and with the rest of the community and I really appreciate it I'm really thankful that you were here today I hope that you have a wonderful week I love you and I will see you again next time

Channel: Home Made Simple

Views: 52,568

Keywords: home made simple, budget meal plan, extreme grocery budget, extreme budget, budget cooking, budget recipes, cooking, recipes, cheap meals, cheap meal ideas, meal planning, grocery, shop with me, cook with me, frugal meal, frugal, frugal meal plan, grocery haul, frugal living, budget challenge, cheap dinner recipes, grocery shopping on a budget, extreme budget meals, grocery haul on a budget, food budget challenge, grocery challenge, food budget, home made, homemaker, home

Id: _ylts3Kolz0

Length: 35min 51sec (2151 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 24 2023