My first week’s meal plan worked out really great!  While I didn’t enjoy sitting down to plan the meals, I did enjoy seeing your guesses, seeing what I actually spent, and not having to worry about what to cook each night of the week.  So before we get to week two’s meal plan, let’s find out what I actually spent for the first week and who won the Chef’s knife with the closes guess!

I was able to get everything on my list except hot dog buns, which I had to come back and get later in the week.  Next time I do this, I’ll make separate transactions and keep my household stuff separate so that you can truly see the total.  Here is the receipt and prices for the ingredients for week one.

So on the first receipt, I had a subtotal of 43.51.  On the second receipt, the subtotal is 2.50.  The grand total is……

$43.51 + $2.50 = $46.01 

The winner of the Chef’s knife is Melissa Miller with her guess of $45.76 (Val, you were soooo close too).  Congrats Melissa!!!  I really think the hot dog buns were high but since I don’t buy them often, it might be normal. I bought all my stuff at Walmart and used no coupons. Thanks for playing along y’all and I hope you participate in more!

JANUARY WEEK TWO MEAL PLAN

To recap things you should know:

A couple of things you should know; 1) I have a family of 5 – me, my husband, 18yr old, 15yr old, and 5yr old.  We live in the middle of Texas.  2) Our beef is part of our income so we have a chest freezer full of it.  Most recipes will include beef but I’ll throw in chicken and such from time to time. 3) All the kids are in school so these meals are for our evening supper.  Me and the hubs will eat whatever we can find during the day.  If I have extras that need to be bought that week, I’ll post them as ‘ingredients’, which you’ll include in your total when calculating cost.  If I have coupons, I’ll let you know.

Week One, January 8-14 2012

Menu

1. Calzones
2. Baked Chicken
3. Brisket
4. Ghoulash
5. Combo burritos
6. Stir Fry
7. ‘find your own meal’ day lol

Ingredients to Buy

• Crescent Roll Pastries (probably 2 cans)
• 2 pkgs of Deli Ham
• Bottle of Italian dressing
• 6 cans of tomato sauce
• 5lb bag of flour
• container of mushrooms
• bottle of barbecue sauce

Extras to buy for the week

• 2 loaves of bread (we go through a lot of bread)
• Peanut butter/jelly jar (both mixed together)
• 2 pkgs of sandwich meat
• Kraft Mayo with Olive Oil and Cracked Pepper (WE LOVE LOVE LOVE this!)

How much do you think those ingredients will cost?

In a comment below, leave your best guess of what you think these ingredients will cost.  The person that comes closes without going over, will win the Robin Takes 5 Cookbook; 500 recipes, 500 calories or less, 5 ingredients or less, 5 nights a week at 5:00pm.

You have until Friday evening of January 13th, 6pm CST to take a guess.  Good luck!  Also, if you have a budget friendly meal idea, please share along with your guess. I’d love to have more ideas for my future meal planning!

P.S. Again, congrats to Melissa Miller!  She was the winner of the Chef’s Knife!

2011 has been full of ups and even more downs.  Me and the family have been focusing on each-other and our future for the past couple of months and plan to start 2012 fresh in all areas, including financially.  We are starting Dave Ramsey’s financial plan beginning of 2012 and that means cutting costs everywhere, including groceries.

I’m a horrible meal planner to be quite honest but I hope, with your help, I can become better at it.  I realize it’s an essential part of saving money so I’m determined to make it work.  The meals will be basic most of the time but you gotta do what you gotta do to make the budget work right?

To make it more interesting for you guys, I’ve decided to make this a weekly post for accountability for me, and I’m gonna do something fun for you!  This is how it will work!  Every week, I’ll post my weekly meal plan.  I’ll provide you with a list of ingredients that I’ll have to buy to make the meals and the person who comes closes to the actual amount spent without going over, will win a small prize.   I’ll share my receipt and all so that you can see it.  During the next week (every Saturday), I’ll share who won, the actual cost, and the next meal plan..so on and so on.  This will encourage me to buy ONLY the ingredients I need to make the meals, stick to my budget, provide you a little fun, and a chance to win a prize.

A couple of things you should know; 1) I have a family of 5 – me, my husband, 18yr old, 15yr old, and 5yr old.  We live in the middle of Texas.  2) Our beef is part of our income so we have a chest freezer full of it.  Most recipes will include beef but I’ll throw in chicken and such from time to time. 3) All the kids are in school so these meals are for our evening supper.  Me and the hubs will eat whatever we can find during the day.  If I have extras that need to be bought that week, I’ll post them as ‘ingredients’, which you’ll include in your total when calculating cost.

Week One, January 1-7 2012

• Pot Roast, Mash Taters, Corn
• Hot Dogs
• Fajita Steak Sliced & Cooked with Bell Pepper with Rice and Brown Gravy
• Enchiladas and salad
• Hamburgers & Fries
• Slow Cooker Short Ribs with cubed/baked tater chunks
• Hot Roast Beef Sandwiches

INGREDIENTS TO BUY

• 10lb bag of Taters
• Rice
• Green Bell Pepper
• Campbell’s Brown Gravy & Onion
• 1 package Hamburger buns
• Sub type rolls for roast beef sandwiches (probably 2 pkgs, not sure how many come in one)
• 1 head of Lettuce
• 6 tomatoes
• Package of sliced cheese (24)
• 2lbs of cheddar cheese
• 1 package corn tortillas
• 160z sour cream
• wieners
• can of chili (family size can)
• 1 garlic cloves
• Campbell’s condensed french onion soup

Extras to buy for the week include:

• 2 Loaves of bread
• Box of Cold Brew Tea
• Stick Butter (2 pkgs)

How much do you think those ingredients will cost?

In a comment below, leave your best guess of what you think these ingredients will cost.  The person that comes closes without going over, will win this sharp Chef’s knife from Chicago Cutlery.  It’s professional stainless steel, forged blades, 8″, and has a full lifetime guarantee.

You have until Friday evening of January 6th, 6pm CST to take a guess.  Good luck!  Also, if you have a budget friendly meal idea, please share along with your guess. I’d love to have more ideas for my future meal planning!

P.S. Congrats to Mary G from North Carolina. She was the winner of the Clorox Gift Basket and Williams & Sonoma Gift Card! 

Menu planning is essential for keeping your pantry stocked and budget in check. I don’t know about you guys but with the kids out for Summer, they are eating EVERYTHING in sight which means I’m spending more on food. I’m terrible at menu planning and prefer to fly by the seat of my pants when grocery shopping or have a menu plan made for me.

This is where Kraft & Sam’s Club come into play. Both companies have partnered together to bring you a 2-Week Meal Planner. Their goal is to get you to the store  once and have meals to last 2 whole weeks, saving you money on frivolous grocery spending and gas to go back and forth! As an added bonus for Sam’s Club members, you can create a personalized cookbook!  If you’re not a member, you should be.  You can find a location near you with your zip code.  We love shopping at ours and it’s very handy for us to buy in bulk since we live out in the boonies so to speak.

Back to the meal planner.  I have downloaded it and already begun to make the recipes included in it.  They are very easy and have been very good!  I love that I have the meals all planned out for me but most of all, I love that they are easy to make.

Our first night of cooking with the meal planner was actually quite surprising. We chose to make the Di Giorno Pizza with BLT Topping.  We never buy just a cheese pizza, we always buy one with tons of toppings but this recipe called for the Rising Crust-Four Cheese.  It never occurred to us to add fresh toppings like the recipe called for which was a great way to add a little coolness during the hot day, not to mention the addition of veges.  My husband insisted that we start making our pizzas this way instead of buying one that’s loaded with other toppings. WHOA!  I think he must have fell in love with the bacon and ranch, don’t you?

Di Giorno Pizza with BLT Topping

INGREDIENTS

• 1 Di Giorno Rising Crust Pizza-Four Cheese
• 1⁄2 cup shredded lettuce
• 1⁄4 cup chopped tomatoes
• 4 slices Oscar May er Bacon, cooked, crumbled
• 2 Tbsp. ranch dressing

DIRECTIONS

Heat oven to 400°F.  Bake pizza as directed on package.  Serve topped with remaining ingredients.

I’ll be sharing more of the recipes over the next couple of weeks but I hope that you’ll go and download the 2-week meal planner yourself so we can try them together!!  How fun would that be. Then when I talk about one of the recipes, you can tell me if you’ve tried it and how you liked it!

OVER TO YOU

Are you a meal planner?  If not, do you think having a meal plan at your fingertips would make a difference, cooking & budgeting wise?  I love that it gives me new creative meal ideas for the future because I’m always running out of ideas on what to cook.  I’d love to hear your thoughts!

OVER! Thanks for entering:)

First and foremost, I have 2 winners to announce!  The Wilton pans winner & the Barbecue sauce winner:) 

1. The Wilton Pans prize package winner is Kathleen from Katydid and Kid.  Woohoo!  I was really surprised that a blogger won because I had sooooo many entries that were non-bloggers!
2. The Barbecue Sauce winner is Brandi Lowe!!! 

Both of you need to contact me with your 411 and claim your prize.  You have 1 week to do so.  This information is also on the current giveaways page.

Secondly, it’s time for my next giveaway!
Every week from today until July 31, I’ll be giving away a prize.  Let me tell you people, you won’t wanna miss this.  I gathered up some great prizes from cash, gift sets, magazine subscriptions, and even a KITCHENAID FOOD PROCESSOR:) !!! 
The best way for you to keep track of each weekly giveaway, is to subscribe to my feed via RSS reader or by EMAIL.  If you choose email, you MUST confirm your subscription or you won’t get any updates.   I promise you will receive NO spam!  Only email updates when I make a new post here. 
I’ve made it VERY easy to enter so everyone can win.  What is that you ask?  Do I ship anywhere?  ABSOLUTELY!  I have always made my contests & giveaways eligible to everyone no matter where you live.  If UPS or USPS can deliver there, I’ll mail it there. 

WHAT YOU GET!

2 winners will receive a 10 year membership to the emealsforyou.com website!  Not only do they have a slew of recipes, they do meal planning as well.  The recipes are wonderfully easy to make and you’ll have tons of choices.  You have a “Favorite’s Box”.  Within that box, lies your recipes, pantry planner, meal plans, & shopping list.  One of my favorite things about this site is the recipe finder.  You can search by ingredient or recipe collection but the ingredient is my fave.  How many times have you sat there with an ingredient wondering what you can make with it!!!???  I know I have a million times but this will help you find a recipe. 

Meal planning made easy!  They offer a Quick and Easy meal plan and a Special Occasion Meal plan that you can choose from if you need something fast.  Otherwise, you can create your own meal plan using their recipes.  What’s even cooler, is that you can scale down your recipe to whatever serving size you need and it automatically adjusts!!  How cool is that!  Wait, it only gets better:)  When you have created your meal plan, you will be able to print your shopping list for all those meals!  Gosh this is a cool site! Imagine the time you’ll save!

There is soooo much you can do at emealsforyou.com so I encourage you to join today.  Remember, if you use the coupon code MYWSPN-37, you’ll save $5 bucks of the membership price.   By the way, a portion of your subscription to them goes to the breast cancer initiatives.

HOW TO ENTER:

I’ve made it super simple to enter.  You can do one or all.  You get 1 entry for each one you do, with the exception of the banner.  Please try to leave everything you’ve done in ONE comment.  It makes it easier for me to keep up with;)

1. Leave a comment telling me why you would like this.  Only ONE comment per person will count! 
2. Blog about this week’s giveaway linking to this prize page OR my home page.
3. Stumble this post.  You must be a member of Stumbleupon.  Don’t lie and say you did because I can track everyone who stumbles.  Besides that’s not fair to the others  who really did stumble.  Don’t know what Stumbleupon is?  Read about stumbling here. 
4. Feed my Piggy   You really don’t have to do anything but visit the pig.  Come back here and let me know what you think about my pig’s appearance!..LOL

BONUS entry:  Add a banner  to your sidebar for the duration of the giveaways (which is 3mths) and I’ll automatically give you 5 extra entries into each giveaway that you choose to enter!  I MADE FOUR BANNERS THAT YOU CAN CHOOSE FROM.  CLICK HERE!

Another Bonus entry: Since I started a forum, I thought I’d offer you a chance to get 5 extra entries by registering and posting a topic in the Cook’s Corner section or any other section you like! 
The Fine Print
Every week, the 4th (optional) entry will vary.  Number 1,2, and 3 will always remain the same.   If you choose to blog about it, you must do this for each prize, each week.  Each winner (each week) will be selected randomly.  The winner will have 1 week to claim his or her prize.   You MUST contact me to claim your prize!!
THIS WEEK’S PRIZE GIVEAWAY WILL END ON JUNE 22TH, 2008 AT ABOUT 10:00PM CST. 
 Good luck to all who enter!!