Inspired by a cookbook novel written in the mid-1880’s by Catherine Owen featuring a housewife who shares her menus, grocery lists, and monthly budgets, I thought I would share my own menu and grocery bill for this week.  Based on this week’s sales, I spent $109.22 and saved $41.31 and used one coupon that entitled me to one free package of frozen fruit for $4.29.  I was able to stock up on some meat, including whole chickens at .97 per pound.  I decided to cook the following for this week:

1. Slow Cooker Baked Beans with Keilbasa and Carrots with Veggie Cornbread (plus some leftover to freeze)
2. Roast Chicken with vegetables
3. Roast Pork Loin with braised red cabbage, sweet onions, and apples
4. Middle Eastern Kibbeh (sort of like a spiced meatball) with cucumber salad and pita (this is a new recipe I’m trying or else I would double it, freezing the rest for a quick weeknight meal)
5. Three Sisters (corn, beans, tomatoes) burritos
6. Raspberry and Strawberry Custard Pie (technically not a meal, but I have planned on having neighbors over, so I needed a nice dessert to prepare)

This menu follows my “rules” for weekly menu planning and grocery shopping.  Every week, I try to pick menu items that keep my grocery list basically the same with the addition of a few specialty or seasonal ingredients.  Now I can’t eat the same things every week, and as you can tell by my menu, I like to have a fairly varied menu, a little comfort food, some Middle Eastern, a little Southwestern/ Mexican to prevent that food fatigue.  I also like to plan on using the slow cooker at least once during the week, choosing at least one or two nights for a vegetarian or bean dish, and doubling recipes where I can.  I try to choose menu items along food genre and cooking method lines:

1. Ground Meat: meatloaf, meatballs, ziti, bolognese sauce, chili, tacos, taco salad, shepherd’s pie
2. Roast Meat: roasted chicken, pork loin, beef with veggies (ultimate one-pot dinner)
3. White Sauce: mac ‘n’ cheese, primavera, alfredo, carbonara, shepherd’s pie (if milk is on sale or if you have some leftover, make a batch of classic white sauce and freeze in 1 - 1 1/2 cup portions)
4. Sandwiches: sausage and peppers, brats, portobello burgers, meat burgers (beef, turkey, bison, fish)
5. Vegetarian: succotash, ratatoille, roasted vegetable medley, three sisters
6. Stew/Braise: Mexican pork/chicken stew, coq au vin, beef bourginon, beef and barley
7. Bean: pea soup, lentil and tomato soup, minestrone, Italian bean and sausage soup, dahl

Hope this gives you some ideas!   Add your own suggestions to help others in the comments box.

And taking a leaf from Julia Child’s book to make sure her PBS audience could relate to her, she always allowed mistakes to be left in the show; in that same spirit, in my haste to get dinner prepped for the slow cooker, I grabbed what I thought was worschestire sauce and gave it a good shake before realizing I had dumped about 3/4 cup of steak sauce into the pot.  So I rinsed the veggies off and started over, more slowly and double checking my labels!

Share/Save