SUMMER BUDGET MEALS That Won't Heat up Your Kitchen!

I know inflation has been absolutely brutal but I am leaving Walmart with two bags of groceries I spent right around thirty dollars and we're gonna see how many meals I can get for my family at five with this grocery Walmart oh right here starting with yummy produce a bag of romaine hearts two ears of fresh corn if you want to get just a can of corn that would work too but the fresh corn was pretty cheap today in my Walmart I have two English cucumbers because I did the math weighing them out and I actually get a little bit more buying the English cucumbers than buying plain cucumbers but plain ones will do just fine I have two Roma tomatoes a lime the smallest Red Onion I could find because I don't need a lot of it I just need a little bit one little well it's actually a pretty big jalapeno one bulb of garlic so yeah head one head of garlic and I was really looking for some fruit tab with one of the meals so I was delighted that pineapples were on manager special for 98 cents I have a 20 count of the fajita style flour tortillas now the burrito size tortillas and the taco size tortillas are the same price 1.98 in my Walmart right now but when I do the math ounce for ounce and powd per pound I actually get more tortillas more tortilla when I buy by the fajita size so that's why I got those we had two dead pine trees in our backyard that have to be removed so if you hear if you hear the saw the chainsaw going they're here taking the trees down a pound of pasta probably not even gonna need all of this one pound of sour cream 16 ounce container sour cream a can of salsa verde and I find this size in the Hispanic food sections in my grocery store and it's just the right amount that I need instead of buying you know a big jar of it I also have a can of diced tomatoes with green chilies and this was a mistake I did not mean to get jalapenos I meant to get diced green chilies fortunately I have a can in the pantry it's from Aldi not from Walmart but if you're going to follow this meal plan I'd pick up green chilies instead of the jalapeno peppers diced in the can one pound of Monterey Jack cheese one package of cream cheese I got the plain regular cream cheese you could get the third less fat kind I think it would work just fine a package of ranch dressing mix these are only 50 cents and because of the cost of the buttermilk powder to make homemade ranch seasoning it's not really that cost effective for me anymore so press an easy button we're gonna make some Chewy's jalapeno lime ranch and then I have three pounds of chicken breast I just got the Frozen bag three pound bag I say that one of my guiding principles on my channel is to be realistic and what is more realistic Than People chopping down trees in my backyard when I'm trying to film don't you people know who I am I'm just kidding even I don't know who I am most of the time but real life right here we're gonna press on have my receipt right here and before tax I spent 31.34 so just a little bit over 30 and I'm gonna be able to get three dinners I think out of this little grocery haul but I also decided to throw a few extra things in my cart just four ingredients for one of my favorite summertime desserts you've probably seen me make it many times before but if you're new I'm gonna make it for you today and those ingredients only cost me around four bucks so for around 35 and some change I'm gonna get three dinners plus dessert let me show you how I'm doing it in my slow cooker I have three chicken breasts this is probably about a pound and I'm going to add in my can of diced green chilies my can of salsa verde maybe if I get it open a tablespoon of cumin and that's about all that I have left in here so I'm just gonna go for it and I'm gonna add a little salt and pepper to taste and I'm going to pop the lid on this and get it cooking three to four hours on high six to seven hours on low or until the chicken is ready to shred and you're gonna see what we're gonna make with this we're gonna finish it up into a delicious white chicken enchilada casserole it's so good I've had this before it's coming from my friend Carrie's website at lazyday cooking club it's a winner Carrie's primary website is eating on a dime I think she also has grilling on a dime desserts on a dime she told me about a new one she's kicking off very soon that I'm excited to see so you can check out some of what she has to offer for free on the internet if you have access but lazy day cooking club is something that she does with her sister Christina and this is a subscription recipe service for crock pot recipes but what I love about it I've never seen anything like this is that these recipes are designed not just to cook in the slow cooker but to prep for the freezer beforehand so you can like batch prep these meals pop them in the freezer and then the directions come with exactly what to do on cooking day they tell you exactly what to do to cook them from the freezer they even have a place on their website where you can like build shopping lists where you can print the recipes where you can favorite all of your recipes they drop 20 new ones every single month into their member dashboards this is not sponsored Carrie is just a friend of mine who is always so gracious about letting me share these recipes even though they're behind a paywall so if you want to know more about lazy day cooking club you can check out the link in the description box I've got a code there that gives you 50 off your first month you can cancel it at any time Carrie is such a talented entrepreneur she and I go way back we've been friends for a long time we were in the fostering and adopting process at the same time and in fact Carrie is a mom to eight children so if anybody knows how to get people fed how to get it done in the family kitchen it is Carrie so thank you Carrie for letting me share these recipes and if you want to know more about lazyday you can check them out in the description box below I am making copycat Chewie's jalapeno Ranch so in my little Ninja blender cup here I have about a cup and a half of sour cream that is not quite all of the container that I purchased it should be about three quarters three-fourths of the container I'm also going to add just a few tablespoons of mayo even though I can't stand it I don't mind it being in dressings and that's basically what we're going to use this for I'm going to use just half of my jalapenos since it was so large and also the garlic clothes were gigantic this is actually just two garlic clothes they're huge I need my packet of ranch seasoning flip the juice from one lime oh this is a juicy one and then just a skosh of milk to thin it out just a few tablespoons of milk you can always add that later too I'm gonna pop this into my blender and blend it up and then I'll just put it in the fridge until we're ready to use that and you'll see how I'm going to use that in a variety of ways in this meal plan I'm very carefully shredded it with two forks I have to be careful with this particular slow cooker because it has a non-stick surface and I want to be gentle with the fork so I don't scratch it but now I'm going to stir in eight flour tortillas that I cut up into squares using a pizza cutter and I'm also going to stir in half a cup of sour cream I'm just going to pop the lid back on this I'm going to let it cook I'm gonna bump it down to low and just let it cook for another 20 or so minutes that should help the tortillas to soak up a lot of the moisture that is in here and I'm also going to top it with some shredded monterey jack cheese I am going to shred half of my block so eight ounces that'll be eight ounces half of my 16 ounce block and pop that on the top here and it should be ready to eat along with a little side salad with my romaine and some cucumbers and some of that creamy jalapeno Ranch it's gonna be delicious I wanted to get a head start on the other two two dinners that I plan to make with these groceries so while I was making the chicken enchilada casserole thingy medoodle and the crock pot today I took out my other crock pot and I put in the rest of the chicken my can of Rotel I seasoned it with a little homemade taco seasoning but you could just use salt pepper onion powder garlic powder chili powder a little bit of cuminum paprika or just plain old salt and pepper and I let that cook until the chicken was tender and ready to shred up I removed two of the chicken breasts shred those up and just put them in a little container popped them in the fridge because we're going to use that to make a pasta salad later on with what was left I took my hand mixer to it and I used the hand mixer to mix everything together and Shred the chicken at the same time because it's going to make filling for these little like chicken salsa pinwheels that I'm making now I am turning the chicken mixture into pinwheels using the rest of the tortillas that I didn't use for the enchilada casserole so I just take a tortilla I put it on a piece of cellophane like this cellophane you know like plastic wrap whatever it's called and then I spread a really thin layer of the chicken and cream cheese mixture here you don't want it to be too thick because it'll be really hard to roll the tortilla up if you make the layer of chicken too thick and I just roll it up like so and I like to wrap it in plastic wrap like this and then pop these all into the fridge once they're done and I need to let them set up for a few hours it's much easier to slice them into little pinwheels if you do it that way so I'm actually making these up tonight because we're going to have them for lunch tomorrow my kids love these for lunch you can do this with like turkey lunch meat too but I like to do it with chicken and salsa and cream cheese oh so delicious and I'm going to slice up that pineapple and I will still have plenty of Romaine to have another salad along with this and it'll make a really really refreshing lunch that we can throw together quickly since I'm doing a lot of the work ahead of time tonight by the way if you're wondering what to do with your pineapple core I will often drop mine into my water bottle and drink pineapple infused water all day long yesterday I made one of my favorite summertime desserts I've made this many times before I like it because it's super easy comes together quickly and it's just four simple ingredients that are also very cheap it's one box of yellow just the standard like small box two containers of flavored yogurt not Greek style just regular flavored yogurt and you know you want to try to get the same flavor as the jello one eight ounce container of whipped topping and one prepared graham cracker crust all I do is dissolve the jello in about a quarter cup of boiling water just enough to help it dissolve then I whisk in the two containers of yogurt and just whisk that with the jello until it's combined then I fold in the entire container of Cool Whip the eight ounce container of whipped topping and then I pour all of that into a prepared graham cracker crust and I pop it into the freezer to set up at least for a few hours I usually like to make this a day ahead of time if I can besides it being a limited number of very inexpensive ingredients I also love the versatility of this pie I made an orange one this time with orange Jello and orange creamsicle flavored yogurt but the lime flavors are really good I've tried it with strawberry you can kind of switch the flavor up depending on the kind of jello and the yogurt that you use I am whipping up some pasta salad I already cooked my pasta earlier today I actually didn't even cook the whole box I just cooked like three quarters of that box so about 12 ounces dry of pasta I also cooked my corn and I cooked it in the microwave several of you have suggested this before cooking corn on the cob in the microwave since I just had two ears to cook I popped it into the microwave husk and all it needed about five minutes and then when it was done I just chopped the end of it off and it slid right out of the husk fully cooked so I'm gonna cut that off the cob here in just a minute and right now I am chopping some veggies I have my tomatoes I have most of one of my cucumbers left I also have my red onion I'm probably just going to use about half of that I almost forgot I have eight ounces of Monterey Jack cheese left for my one pound block so I'm actually going to slice that up into little bite size pieces and toss that in as well and instead of dressing it right away because I'm gonna use the jalapeno Ranch that I made I've decided to wait until I'm ready to serve it so everybody can just dress it themselves because I'm afraid that that cream style dressing will leave the vegetables like really soggy when I'm using an oil and vinegar-based dressing I do go ahead and dress it and let it sit in the refrigerator for a few hours to kind of marinate everything together but I'm going to serve the dressing separately and we're gonna have this for lunch today really easy meal really refreshing here in the summer and I'm looking forward to it you guys are not going to believe what I did or I guess you will because maybe you've already figured it out it's been just a couple days since I filmed that pasta salad recipe and I was rummaging through the refrigerator for some leftovers to get out for lunch and shredded chicken on the top shelf and I thought oh what was that for then it dawned on me on me I was supposed to put this in the pasta salad I specifically set aside shredded chicken from when I made the pinwheels so that I could add this protein to the pasta salad and I just forgot I just Mom brain I guess it was the last day of school when I was filming that recipe my parents were coming into town brick had a swim meet Ruthie was leaving for camp and I did not even occur to me I mean I forgot the cheese first and then I just left the chicken out completely fortunately I still have a helping in there that I could plate up here and show you but just do as I say and not as I did and remember to put the chicken into the pasta salad or to serve it along with the pasta salad to up the protein a little bit for more meal ideas on a tight budget check out one of these videos to watch next foreign

Channel: See Mindy Mom

Views: 83,475

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

Id: a90v-pWJ8oM

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 15 2023