What does a family of 5 eat while saving money and eating healthy? Here is exactly what we bought and what we ate in the first week of our Real Food Cheap challenge.

$20 Grocery Haul

This week, we only had $20 for groceries (read or watch why here) so here is what we bought:

Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean we only spent $20 on all of our food this week. Rather, we spent $20 on a few sale and supplement items. We mostly built the menu off of food that was dying in our fridge or in the depths of our freezer. Building our menu this way and spending minimal grocery money helps us save a lot of money and avoid food waste.

Kroger Haul

• Organic baby greens (clearance) – $2.99/lb

Total spent at Kroger: $6.35

Aldi Haul

• Butter – $2.55/lb
• Whole milk – $2.29/gal
• Sour cream – $.89/lb
• Cream cheese – $.89/8-oz
• Eggs – $.88/doz
• Tortilla chips – $.89/13-oz

Total spent at Aldi: $13

Total spent this week: $19.35

Budget-Friendly Menu Plan

While we made a menu plan here, I rarely follow our plans exactly. That was especially true this week. So check out our plan here, but here is what we actually ate in real life!

Snacks

Throughout the week, the kids are allowed to eat snacks as long as it is a fruit, veggie, or nuts (this has been our snack rule for years). This week they mostly ate apples and peanut butter, sometimes celery or carrots.

We had green smoothies a few times between meals, and we frequently eat a fourth small meal (tea time?) early afternoon that involves leftovers from lunch or dinner.

Monday

Breakfast

• Apple breakfast cake (totally made up recipe – it was just okay. Nothing exciting)
• Green smoothie
• Leftover air-popped popcorn from the night before

Lunch

• Red beans and rice, salad

Dinner

• Chili, brown rice (mostly meatless – I use about half of the meat that the recipe calls for – and I usually make up the recipe, using whatever we have a good basic chili recipe like this)

Tuesday

Breakfast

• Muffins without the muffins tin (“mookies”)
• Apples with peanut butter

Lunch

Snacky lunch (more ideas here)

• Bread
• Block cheese, sliced (buying real cheese in blocks is more budget-friendly than cheese sticks or pre-sliced cheese)
• Veggies
• Apples

Dinner

• Leftover chili
• Tortilla chips

Snack

• Apple butter on bread

 

 

 

 

 

 

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No waste green smoothies! If you have leftovers, you can save it – use it in popsicle molds, pour it into a glass jar and refrigerate it (keeps best if jar is full and made of glass), or fill an ice cube tray, freeze it, and use it in your next smoothie. . . . I have a lot of money-saving tips for smoothies 💰. Just go to my site and search “cheap smoothies!” . . . •••• What’s your favorite kind of smoothie? . . . #greensmoothie #healthybreakfast #savemoney

A post shared by Steph Jenkins • Save 💵 • Eat 🍎 (@cheapskatecook) on Oct 22, 2018 at 9:32am PDT

Wednesday

Breakfast

Kids fed themselves! We have frequent mornings like this. They just find whatever they like and make themselves breakfast.

• Celery
• Pickled carrots
• Muffins
• Apples with peanut butter

Lunch

• Last of the chili
• With bits of snacky lunch to supplement

Dinner

We had a crazy day, and I didn’t record what we ate for dinner. Probably another snacky meal.

Being okay with Snacky Dinners – a random assortment of food for dinner – helps us avoid the drive-thru or feel discouraged that we didn’t make a real dinner. If we are fed, we are grateful and happy.

Thursday

Breakfast

• Oatmeal

Lunch

• Homemade pizza with clean & cheap 40-cent pizza sauce
• Salad

Dinner

• White bean chili 

Friday

Breakfast

• Scrambled eggs
• Oatmeal

Lunch

• Kids had leftover white bean chili
• I had a green smoothie

Dinner

• Homemade hamburger helper (I didn’t follow a recipe, but I like this one)
• Salad

Saturday

Breakfast

• Cereal (yay weekends!)

Lunch

• My son and I had brunch at Chick-fil-A (I had a salad and he had a kids meal with fruit).
• Everyone at home ate leftover hamburger helper

Dinner

• Dinner with friends!

We hosted dinner, and I’ll share what we made below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Deceptively fancy breakfast: Leftover dinner and Kroger markdowns (the spinach) with an egg. Even the imperfections – lukewarm because it sat out forever (#momlife ), totally overcooked egg, bacon was stone cold. Still delicious. Food doesn’t have to be perfect to be good. . . . ••••• What is your favorite “healthy” breakfast? (We must specify because if you ask me what is my favorite breakfast I will say eggs and toast and bacon and cinnamon rolls at my grandma’s house. Let’s speak truth: Favorite and favorite healthy will always be different.) . . . #healthybreakfast #goatcheese #turkeybacon #imperfect

A post shared by Steph Jenkins • Save 💵 • Eat 🍎 (@cheapskatecook) on Oct 21, 2018 at 8:50am PDT

Sunday

Breakfast

• Eggs, oatmeal, green smoothies
• I had leftover squash, sauteed peppers and greens, and a fried egg

Lunch

• Hamburger helper, leftover spring mix salad

Dinner

• Spaghetti with “pumpkin” marinara sauce (just leftover mashed butternut, crushed tomatoes, and Greek seasoning. It was fantastic!)
• Me: spring mix salad with chicken

Follow what we ate other days on #RealFoodCheap on Instagram.

Feeding Guests on a Budget

We love having people over for dinner, but planning a menu can get tricky. We want to serve them good food, keep it simple, and honor any food allergies or special diets are guests have. And let’s be honest dinner guests always have special diets these days.

Usually, my go-to dinner is a big pot of soup and homemade bread. This works for many families.

But when it doesn’t we have a fallback!

When we did our Cheapskate Whole30, we developed an allergy-friendly meal we nearly always serve to guests now. This meal feeds a lot of people with plenty of leftovers, it avoids the top 5 allergens (dairy, eggs, nuts, wheat, soy), can be paleo, whole30, and Keto compliant, and none of it is weird unusual food.

We can also change it up for each season of the year without changing the core meal.

We fed 9 people for $10 and were still eating leftovers 2 days later. This is what we served:

Here’s the video update if you prefer. You can like it and subscribe to our channel here!

Real Food Cheap for a Family

So far, so good! I think we did a good job sticking to our guidelines and eating a healthy balance of whole foods.

Budget-Friendly Meal Prep

Next week is a little different.

We plan to bake and freeze a pound cake for my son’s upcoming birthday. Normally, we make Wacky Cakes, but I wanted to fit something a little special in the grocery budget. Plus Sour Cream Pound Cake makes other cakes not worth eating.

We are also camping with friends for part of next week. Each night, two families team up to provide dinner for everyone. Our group has a bunch of food allergies to work around too.

For our allergy-free camping dinner, we are making loaded Burrito Bowls (here’s when we made them while camping over the summer). It’s one of our favorite camp meals because it’s cheap, easy to make, and everyone loves the leftovers. I even included it in our free Budget-Friendly Camping Menu Printable (get that here!)

Next week, I’ll share what we pack and make while camping and eating real food on a budget!

What About You?