Menu Plan Monday

First to make some clarifications. Several people have asked me to "share my secrets". First off, they're not mine, second, they're not secrets!!! I get almost all of my tips from Money Saving Mom's blog. She is the one who started the $35/week menu planning, and she has several menus stored on her site to give you some starter ideas. The main idea is that you buy things for the week that are on sale and that you have coupons for, and you plan your meals accordingly.

Yes, I really do go to "all those stores" :). Our Wal-Mart does price match, but they don't do double coupons, so, for example, this week I have a coupon for Totino's Pizza Rolls for $0.40 off. Meijer has those on sale for $1, and they double coupons, so I can get them from there for $0.20. If I went to Wal-Mart, they would be $0.60 - not a huge deal, but since I have several items like this, it's definitely worth my extra stop. All of these stores are in a strip, so I go to all of them in one day, head to the one that's farthest away, then work my way up. (They are all on the same street).

One more clarification before I start: Brad and I are trying to stretch our $35/week to cover personal care items and paper goods. We started doing this because we were getting most of these items for free or almost free from CVS anyway, and since we bought a quarter of a beef last year, we knew we wouldn't have the expense of meat to add in, and figured they balanced each other out. If at any time we see this not working, we will simply change the $35 budget to cover food items only. And, by the way, Money Saving Mom is also the one helping me with my CVS trips. Over to the right on her blog is a tutorial explaining way better than I could how it works :).

My breakfasts and lunches will basically be the same things that I posted last week, mixed and matched, so I'm not going to plan those unless something special comes up - I'll just make sure I have things on hand for them.

Monday: Spicy Vegetable Soup, Garlic Cheese Biscuits

Tuesday: *eating at some friend's house

Wednesday: Poppyseed Chicken, 30-minute rolls, peas & carrots

Thursday: Pizza with sausage, pepperoni, and green pepper (had 1/2 left over from last week), Breadsticks, Salad (I'm making this meal to share with the Babcock's)

Friday: Tacos