Okay, full honesty here: I’ve gotten into a rut when it comes to meal planning. I feel like I’ve just not been inspired or motivated with cooking ideas. And we’ve been having a lot of the same things over and over again.
So when I met up with Laurie from Passionate Penny Pincher a week ago and she gave me a 5-Ingredient Meal Plan Box, I decided I’d just try it for a week. I did a grocery pick-up order last week for the ingredients and we ended up loving the recipes so much that we are using Week 2 this week.
I love that the recipes are all planned for you, the grocery list is made for you, and the recipes that we tried were so yummy! In fact, every one loved them — which rarely happens with new recipes! And the whole family was excited for me to try it again for a second week!
The ingredients for the recipes are a little more than I would typically spend (because I usually base our menus upon what I have on hand and what’s on sale) but I’m having fun getting creative to see if I can work them into our grocery budget.
By the way, in full transparency, the meal plan box is expensive and I probably would have never purchased it had Laurie not given me one. That said, I see the value in them now that I’ve used one for a week! (Laurie said you could use code MONEYSAVINGMOM to save 15% off if you were thinking of possibly purchasing it.)
Here’s everything I bought at Kroger! My total was $104.
I was super excited about that deal on eggs!
There was also a great deal on pineapple — but there were exactly two left, so I just bought one! 🙂
On the menu this week:
- Pan-Seared Garlic & Butter Steak
- Crunchy Onion Barbecue Chicken
- Montreal Pork Tenderloin
- Slow Cooker French Onion Chicken
- Spaghetti
- Leftovers/Fend For Yourself
- Dinner Out
