How to Eat for $50 a Week!

hello everybody and welcome back to Dollar Tree dinners my name is Rebecca and today we're starting season 4 of my budget grocery week series I got a message from a follower who said that she has about $50 a week to feed two people and the only store she has is Walmart I know there are already a lot of channels that do Walmart meal plans and there are a lot of great resources out there but this person came to me directly and I like to try to help as many people as I possibly can and I know that the criteria that I follow is a little bit different than the criteria that some other creators follow so for example the only things that I can use for my own Pantry are oil salt and pepper that means that anyone can pick up one of these meal plans with $50 in their pocket and almost nothing in their pantry and still be able to replicate what I'm going to be doing I'm also trying to take into consideration factors like cooking experience trying to make as easy meals as I possibly can and I did go a little unhinged with my Dollar General Series so I might redo that at some point in the future future to try to make it a little bit more realistic because for the sake of being creative I think I lost some of the realism in that specific Series so this is supposed to be a very easy to follow meal plan and it's going to actually be a little bit different this go around in the past when I have done these series I have done the seven days and then at the end of the seven days I either talk about what I have left over or try to make a couple of extra meals out of what I have left but this time I want to try to do this for 2 weeks in a row that means that at the end of this 7 Days any ingredients that I have left over are going to funnel into next week's meal plan to show you how to make the best use of what you have left over at the end of the week for the sake of budgeting it is my goal in this year to do more of these incorporating more stores more price points more household sizes trying to get as many of these kind of budget meal plans out as possible it is also one of my goals for this year to potentially get a website up and running where you can reference some of these meal plans with printables and things like that but that is something that I'm going to be working on in my downtime as you can see I have the entire haul laid out in front of me this was just under $50 let's go through everything that I got and their individual price points and then we can get started on our meals for the day I'm going to cover the price of each item but I will also put something up on screen that kind of shows a rolling total as we go through the haul and how it all adds up to $50 starting with how I shop for breakfast the first thing I picked up was milk margarine and eggs cuz you're going to need that for a variety of things including a lot of mixes the milk was $11.92 the blue bonnet margarine was $143 and the 18 pack of eggs was 3.48 next up we have coffee and coffee creamer these are technically non-essential I think it's important to budget in something that you look forward to and enjoy each day and for me that is an iced coffee the coffee was $ 4.47 and the creamer was 268 next up we have oatmeal now technically you can do unflavored oatmeal if you have things like brown sugar and cinnamon but again I'm not not assuming that you have any Pantry items on hand so I went with a flavored variety you can do any flavor that you want but keep in mind the package sizes the apples and cinnamon and the maple brown sugar each come with 10 packets whereas a lot of the other flavors only come with eight so if you're looking for bang for your buck I would go with one of those two flavors but again bearing in mind that you can still have personal preference even on a budget so go with a flavor you're going to enjoy the most the oatmeal was $182 I did grab a couple of bananas these can be for snacks or they can be for breakfast and they're 78 cents a pound this was 45 you can use the little scale to weigh the bananas while you're at the store to try to get an accurate idea when you're trying to budget I also got muffin mix now this does need milk and eggs to prepare it which we already have this muffin mix was 98 and again this can be a breakfast or it can be a snack so I'm trying to get things that are kind of versatile we also have a loaf of sandwich bread I like to have toast with my eggs in the morning or you know bread and butter butter can also work as a side dish for various things so I think that bread even if you don't get stuff to make sandwiches which I did not bread is a good breakfast item or a side item as well the bread was $132 for the loaf so that pretty much covers breakfast now let's move on to kind of our dinner or lunch options 10B bag of chicken leg quarters this was $7.7 so that means it was about 77 cents a pound you are not going to find a better price on any meat in the grocery store we do have to do a little bit of prep work with this but it's going to be really simple otherwise this is going to be our meat for the entire week but we're going to change it up quite a bit so that we're not eating the same thing every day that's where your seasonings come into play I got some lemon pepper seasoning this was $112 I got some parmesan garlic and some jerk seasoning these were $122 each brown gravy mix this was 48 and taco seasoning this was 52 all of these will be used to season our chicken so essentially we have five different different meals right here that are all very different so we can work in a lot of variety next up we have our bases now whenever I'm structuring a meal I structure them into bases vegetables Mane and then flavor enhancers so the seasoning would be the flavor enhancer the main is the chicken quarters now we have our bases these kind of bulk out our meals and make them feel more filling this is our carbs essentially so we have a 2B bag of white rice this was $ 1.77 we have a box of pasta was 98 I did get a box of chicken stuffing mix this was 93 a 5 lb bag of rusted potatoes this was $283 and then a package of flour tortillas you can also do corn we prefer flour the tortillas were $1.98 so this is going to give us a lot of Versatility we can kind of mix and match things those are our bases I did get pasta sauce for the spaghetti and I found one that has meat already integrated into the sauce this is the prgo mini meatball sauce and this was was $238 this saves us from having to buy a pound of ground beef and we've already got meat in the sauce so we're going to try that I also like their Italian sausage and garlic sauce next up we have our vegetables and the name of the game is versatility here so I have two bags of frozen green beans those are one of my favorite vegetables and I feel like they go with a lot of things these were 98 cents a bag I also got a bag of frozen broccoli fettes now cuts are cheaper but again you can still have personal preference on a budget I'd rather have the fettes I prefer the texture and flavor of them overall and that was $116 two green bell peppers these are priced per bell pepper so try to find the biggest ones that you can find these were 86 cents each so two bell peppers came in at $1.72 and lastly a bag of onions this is also very versatile we can toss it in just about anything this was $218 for a 3B bag the last thing I got is totally optional but I do like to try to incorporate snacks and desserts whenever I can so I got a box of strawberry Jello-O and that was 83 I feel like that's a lot of food for $50 our pre-tax total is$ 4955 now depending on the area that you live in you might also have to pay sales tax on top of that only 13 states charge sales tax on unprepared food but if you do live in an area with tax then just factor that in maybe you have to cut out the Jello-O or something like that so that takes care of the haul and let's go ahead and jump on into breakfast for day one I'm going to Keep The Upfront prep work relatively minimal but when it comes to eating on a budget there is going to be some unavoidable prep first thing are these chicken leg quars now you're more than welcome to just divide them out and cook them whole but generally speaking I find it easier to make a menu when I take the time to at least separate the legs from the thighs these 10 lb bags of quarters will usually have about 11 whole legs this means 11 legs and 11 thighs and what I like to do is separate these into two packs one with 11 legs and a small thigh and the other with the remaining 10 thighs size this will make more sense as we get into the specific meals but if you wanted to freeze these I would recommend dividing it just a little further into a bag with six legs and a bag with five legs and a small thigh the legs all typically cook whole I've never really found a better way with chicken legs than to just leave them in their natural state whereas the thighs I will typically boil them and shred them this is just because it's easier to divvy out shredded chicken across multiple meals than to try to split whole thighs between servings plus then you also get the chicken broth that you can use in a variety of things so now that we've talked about the what and the why let's talk about the how separating the leg from the thigh can be done a few different ways but the way I always do it is to pinch the leg and the thigh together and cut where I can feel a little notch in the joint long Smooth Cuts at least until I'm past the joint and then I lay it on my cutting board and cut the rest of the way through to boil the chicken thighs I add them into a pot except for the one small one that I reserved with the legs cover them with water and I should have used a bigger pot but bring this up to Bo oil and reduce it to a simmer in the first 15 minutes or so take some time to scoop off any foam that you see floating on the top this is called scum and all it does is make your broth cloudy so it's more of an aesthetic thing but it won't impact the flavor of the broth I let this simmer for an hour and then I remove all of my chicken thighs and let them cool for a good while and then shred them take your time here especially with these quarters as they do have the ribs attached and you don't want any little bone surprises in your shredded chicken once I have all of my chicken shredded I divided this into three containers for three separate meals I personally like to add my bones back into my broth and cover this and let it simmer a lot longer you don't have to do this but if you wanted to I recommend simmering it all day as long as you can and sometimes overnight the goal is for the bones to be brittle and crumble easily that way you know that you've pulled out all of the proteins and collagen from them I did around 8 hours and this wasn't even long enough but it was all the patience that I had that day then strain your stock I run it through a colander and then a fine mesh strainer and I chill it with an ice bath because Alton Brown says to do so for food safety reasons and lastly pour it into some jars and store it in the fridge or you can freeze it if you prefer if you have the time and the means you can also prep little things in advance like the muffins the Jell-O and even pre- chop some peppers and onions to keep in the fridge this will just potentially make things smoother throughout the week moving on to breakfast for the week and I made a really simple but delicious menu I started each day with iced coffee with flavored creamer now you can do hot coffee if you prefer and I definitely was happy that I budget it in coffee as it made this week a lot nicer For Me overall here's how I make my iced coffee I fill up my coffee pot halfway with water this is a standard 12 cup coffee pot so I pour water to the seven line then I add my coffee filter and 3/4 of a cup of ground coffee but each scoop is slightly rounded on top so it's a little over 3/4 of a cup I brew it on Bold and I'll be honest with you I have no no idea what difference that makes but I always do it and then when it's done I add ice until the coffee gets up to the nine line on the pot so in a nutshell you're making a regular pot of coffee but with half the amount of water then adding ice to chill the coffee but since the coffee is initially brewed extra strong the ice doesn't water down the coffee instead it dilutes it to the correct ratio I did work at Starbucks for a year and that's how it's done there so that's how I do it at home the first breakfast was fried eggs on toast quite simply to fried eggs served with two slices of buttered toast margarin toast doesn't flow quite the same but I did indeed use margarine for the eggs and the toast this was my breakfast twice but I spaced it out so I wasn't eating it 2 days in a row next we have oatmeal and I did this two ways the first was a normal oatmeal two to three packets each depending on how filling you want this I used hot water you can also use milk you can add some coffee creamer to it and I took one of the bananas and I sliced it up and and mixed it into the oatmeal for the second oatmeal variation I made a baked oatmeal and this turned out pretty fantastic it tasted like a neutr grain bar I mashed one banana and I mixed this with one egg half2 cup of milk and three packets of instant oatmeal pour this into a greased baking dish and bake it at 350° for 20 minutes then cut it into slices and this is something you can make in advance and just store it in the fridge until you need to go to work which brings me to the next breakfast I'm using this Jiffy muffin mix this calls for milk and an egg to prepare it and with this you can either make regular siiz muffins mini muffins or pancakes with it so it's up to you I made mini muffins because I like that they're bite-sized and that makes it a little more fun for me it made 23 mini muffins so you could have some for breakfast and save some for snacks going into day six breakfast I only had six eggs left so to bulk them out I'm making hash browns with my potatoes sort through the bag and pick out two to three small potatoes and Shred those up with a grater to keep them from turning brown place them in a bowl of cold water until you're ready to fry them up I also change the water a couple of times at least until the water is clear to remove extra starch into a skillet I preheated 2 tbspoon of margarine and 2 tbsp of oil I added a handful of diced peppers and onions to sauté for a couple of minutes then I added my drained hash browns give them a toss to coat in the oil mixture and spread them out onto an even layer season them well with salt and pepper and let them fry undisturbed for 6 to 8 minutes if you them they will not brown and crisp then flip them over and repeat this on the other side and I served each portion with one fried egg on top and the seventh and final breakfast was migas this is a Mexican breakfast and it starts off with tortillas I cut four flower tortillas into squares and into a skillet I preheated 2 tablespoons of margarine and 2 tablespoons of oil I added a handful of diced peppers and onions to sauté for a couple of minutes and then I added my cut up tortillas season this well with salt and stir them every few minutes and wait for them to get nice and brown and toasty cracken scrambled my last four eggs and I added some milk to my eggs and then I poured them in with the cooked tortillas this was by far my favorite breakfast of the whole week the hash browns were my second choice but this was amazing and it was so simple but insanely delicious I'm going to interject briefly here I just want to mention that the USDA publishes a monthly cost of food report this is available for free on their website and it's a really good place to start if you're new to budgeting and trying to figure out exactly what your household grocery budget should be the publication includes a chart based on each individual household member so for example I am 31 years old Michael is 32 years old we would go with the male age 20 to 50 and the female age 20 to 50 and there is a weekly and a monthly number associated with each of those people so in my case the male age 20 to 50 would be 6940 a week and the a female age 20 to 50 is 5550 a week their own words is that this is based on a nutritious practical and costeffective diet and there's also some subtext if you scroll a little bit further down talking about how these numbers the base numbers are based on a four-person household and how you have to adjust based on your household size so for example each person less you're going to add on an additional 5% that's because buying in bulk is categorically cheaper so it's typic Ally cheaper and easier to feed a four-person household than it is to feed a twers or even a oneperson household so a single individual would increase those numbers by 20% a two person household is going to increase them by 10% three person is going to increase them by 5% and to take it even a step further there is reductions based on increased family size so it says for a household of seven or more to deduct 10% for example if I were just looking at myself based on these numbers and the 20% adjustment for a single individual that means that according to the USDA a nutritious practical and cost effective diet should cost me on average $66 a week I am feeding two people for $50 a week with this meal plan now if I were to add Michael into that and do the 10% adjustment for a twers family size then that means that according to the USDA I should be spending $137 a week on groceries now these are numbers from our own government and this is a third of that so just want to put that in perspective that according to our government a nutritious practical and lowcost diet should cost $137 a week for two people and a lot of people only have $50 I opening it best and I thought it was important to include in this video and I hope that information was helpful I really would have loved to have utilized a tool like this cost plan when I was in my early 20s and kind of learning how to manage my finances and learning how to budget voiceover Rebecca returns for the lunch and dinner segment which I am lumping together because each dinner that I made I was sure to make enough to have leftovers for lunch the following day and this is something that I have always done especially when I've needed to pack a lunch on the go for work cook once eat twice is definitely one of the best ways to save time and money I have also attempted to make this the easiest possible meal plan I did this in two ways the first is that the majority of meals that I made were simple one pan or one pot meals and the second way is that I designed this meal plan based on the seasoning packets that I got so pick a packet and that's what's for dinner the first meal was garlic parmesan chicken and potatoes pick out four decent sized potatoes wash them and dice them toss them into a baking dish along with a half a bag of frozen green beans I also decided to slice up an onion and I toss that in as well add a good drizzle of cooking oil and season this liberally with salt and pepper mix this well to make sure everything is well coated take six of your chicken legs and toss them in the packet of garlic parmesan seasoning mix if desired you can reserve some of the seasoning to add to the potatoes and green beans but I didn't find that made much of a difference lay your chicken directly on top of the potatoes and vegetables and you can add a small amount of margarine to the top of each leg to assist with Browning and crisping bake this uncovered at 400° for 50 to 5 minutes in the last 10 to 15 minutes remove the chicken and give the potatoes and vegetables a quick toss then add the chicken back on top turning the chicken over so that it Browns on both sides and return this to the oven to finish baking it is up to you how you divide your six legs I did two legs for Michael and one leg for me or you can do two legs each for dinner and one leg each for lunch I tried to make sure that the portions were as reasonable and realistic as possible the second dinner was a chicken fajita rice Skillet which I then made into tacos this one started by dicing up one bell pepper and one whole onion saut those together in a skillet preheated with 2 to 3 tablespoons of oil just until the onions start to soften add in the packet of taco seasoning one of the containers of shredded chicken that we prepared earlier and one cup of dry rice let this all sauté together for 3 to 5 minutes or so then add 2 cups of liquid now this can either be water or the chicken broth that we prepared or a combination of both give do the stir and let it come up to a boil then reduce heat to Low cover and simmer this for 15 minutes after that turn off the heat and let it rest undisturbed for an additional 15 minutes serve this Taco Style on some tortillas Brown them up in a dry skillet for some better texture and flavor I will be the first to admit that this could have used some kind of a sauce be it sour cream or salsa or even cheese but it was a perfectly suitable meal without it and of course you can use anything you already have to improve the base recipe day three was definitely my favorite dinner just chicken and gravy with stuffing mashed potatoes and green beans peel and dice four potatoes a smaller dice will cook a lot faster than a bigger one and as a bonus you could save the peels just store them in cold water in your fridge and if you're ever craving a salty snack you can whip up some crispy potato skinned chips put the potatoes in a pot of salted water and bring it up to a boil then simmer until the potatoes are fork tender for me this was only 10 minutes because of how small I diced them drain and add them back to the pot with plenty of salt and pepper 4 tbsp of margarine and about 1/4 cup of milk and mash This Together cover this set it aside and prepare the stuffing according to the box instructions you can even replace some of the water with our prepared chicken broth then we're going to mix the gravy mix and heat that until thickened along with one container of shredded chicken you can sauté or roast the green beans if you want for added flavor I'm using a whole bag of them and I was trying to keep this quick so I just steam the bag in the microwave and then I season them with salt and pepper and this meal makes six servings so we have extras for later on down the week to break up the chicken monotony I had spaghetti on the fourth day right in the middle of the week and this one's really simple because it's just spaghetti but I did add some sauteed peppers and onions into the prepared sauce when it comes to Sauce ratios I find that a jar of sauce isn't quite enough to fully coat a whole pound of pasta if you use the whole pound it does get kind of dry so instead I only mixed about 3/4 of the cooked pasta into the sauce and then I divided this into four servings for the rest of the pasta I added some margarine a couple of spoonfuls of the pasta cooking water and some of that lemon pepper seasoning to make a makeshift lemony pasta sauce so I got an extra two servings out of this meal as well and for something I just kind of threw together it turned out really good I did put a little bit of chicken on it but it was better without the chicken this prgo mini meatball sauce was pretty good but it did remind me of beeron or Chef Boyard so if you wanted a slightly more adult tasting pop pasta sauce if that makes sense I would probably go with the Italian sausage sauce instead for day five we're making a one pot jerk chicken and rice using the rest of my chicken legs and that one small thigh I added a drizzle of oil into the bag along with a packet of jerk seasoning and I mixed this to fully coat the chicken you can just let that chill in the fridge until you're ready for dinner I finally diced one onion and in a skillet I preheated some oil I pan fried my seasoned chicken legs for six minutes on each side what works for me is just to set a timer and walk away let the pan and the heat do the work for you and you'll get some really nice caramelization after cooking on both sides remove the chicken and then add the onion along with that second half of the bag of frozen green beans from day one saute these together and this will also deglaze the bottom of the skillet add one cup of white rice and continue to sauté for a couple of minutes then add two cups of liquid I might sound like a broken record but this can be broth water or both I use broth let this come up to a boil and then add back in your chicken legs cover this and simmer for 15 minutes turn off the heat and let it rest for 15 more minutes that's it I promised you these dinners would be easy so being honest here the six dinner was my least favorite I have made something before that I really enjoyed but this version that I made was just okay and that's okay on a budget not every meal is going to be award-winning especially when you're getting towards the end of the week and you're kind of just using up odds and ends but I made a lemon pepper chicken broccoli rice Skillet and this is pretty much the same process as the other two rice Skillets I've shared in the same video and I should have went with my gut instead and made this as a meal with diced potatoes baked in the oven the same way I did with the first dinner I also think this would have been better with whole legs instead of the shredded chicken but we work with what we've got I'm only mentioning this because maybe you have legs in your freezer and I think that would turn out much better and that is a wrap up of my $50 Walmart meal plan now they were only six dinners in that meal plan that's because at the end of the sixth dinner you still have the leftover lemon chicken and rice with both the stuffing meal and the spaghetti meal I made six portions of each so you should have two of each left over so plenty of food for technically the 7eventh day but I do have a suggestion and it's based on just treating yourself I think that that seventh day you should go out to eat if you can and it doesn't have to be expensive it can even be getting a $5 frozen pizza take a break from cooking you do have plenty of leftovers I integrated that into the plan but if you can find the extra $5 I think it's worth getting a pizza or something like that and just taking the time to relax unwind after a long week I also have to talk about what ingredients we have left over to roll over into next week I definitely depleted a lot of ingredients particularly the meat and the vegetables we are going to have to repurchase almost the entirety of that and I'm going to try to steer away from chicken next week as much as I can but chicken is cheap and it's really hard to find something else that's equally as cheap but I will do my best so we're pretty much out of chicken we're pretty much out of vegetables I do have three onions left about 2 cups of white rice looks like I have about six small potatoes two packets of instant oatmeal and a half a loaf of sandwich bread as well as four flour tortillas of course I have almost the entire jar of lemon pepper seasoning we could roll that over into some new meals next week do have enough coffee and creamer to get me through next week so I won't need to repurchase those the creamer usually lasts me a month and the coffee lasts me about 2 weeks I do have one stick of margarine and a half gallon of milk and I think that about sums it up so I'm going to attempt to kind of use those ingredients to make next week's meal plan and I hope this video was helpful I hope you're having a fantastic week and I will see you again next week

Channel: Dollar Tree Dinners

Views: 342,998

Keywords: how to eat for 50 a week, Is it possible to eat for $50 a week?, How to live off of $50 a week?, What to buy for $50 a week in groceries?, What is a realistic weekly grocery budget?, How can I reduce my food bill?, How much should 2 people spend on groceries?

Id: KcBGa0FrcU0

Length: 25min 55sec (1555 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 07 2024