A $75 a Week Meal Plan

We Armstrong's like our food. We eat well, with lots of variety in our meals (unless it's Thursday and then it's always pizza night!). So, when a journalist called me late yesterday afternoon and asked me for a meal plan for the $300 a Month Food Challenge I wasn't fazed at all.

The hard part was choosing which meal plans to send to them. Then they asked for a complete meal plan - breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. And they needed it right away.

Every month I do a meal plan, or rather a dinner plan, for my family (I share it in the Member's Centre). I'm sure I've told you before how Tom loves to look at the fridge and know what he'll be eating for tea (and how he stirs me when I change it on him :) ). We all do.  It's reassuring to me to be able to glance at the fridge and just know what I need to prepare for tonight, tomorrow, next week - the rest of the year actually, because I've done the meal plan right up to 31st December 2015, and it's on the fridge.

What that meal plan also does is help to keep our grocery bill low; really, really low. I budget $320 a month for groceries. Now some months I am on budget, some months I might be under by a few dollars and occasionally I go over. But at the end of the year, when I tally up the grocery tracking sheets, I always average $320 a month for groceries - we don't have the money to go over budget. Right now I'm using my grocery budget to build our grocery stockpile for the changes we're facing next year.

Well it took me 20 minutes to put it together for them, but I was able to come up with a meal plan that included three meals and a snack every day for a week. And bring it in under $75.

That was the tricky part. I'm used to working on a monthly meal plan and a monthly budget. That means I can share ingredients across a few meals, spreading the cost over the month. I couldn't do this for just a week so I had to choose cheap, nutritious meals and not go over the $75.

Here's the meal plan I came up with, it's plain, simple food. No frills or gourmet delights but it fills tummies, is reasonably healthful and very cheap.

	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Breakfast	Pancakes & Syrup	Weetbix & Milk,  1/2 sliced banana	Boiled egg, toast, fruit & yoghurt	Weetbix & Milk, sliced peaches	Boiled egg, toast, fruit & yoghurt	Weetbix & Milk,  sliced peaches	Baked beans on toast, fruit & yoghurt
Morning Tea	Muffin, milk	Trail Mix	Carrot & celery sticks, dip	Trail Mix	Carrot & celery sticks, dip	Trail Mix	Muffin, milk
Lunch	Toasted cheese sandwiches	Chicken salad sandwich,  carrot sticks, dip	Sausage rolls, muffin, apple	salad wrap, mandarin, Lunchbox Cookie	Cheese & Vegemite sandwiches, mandarin, muffin	Egg sandwich, apple,  yoghurt	Salad sandwiches
Afternoon Tea	ANZAC slice, milk	Pita chips, dip	Pita chips, dip	Pita chips, dip	Pita chips, dip	Pita chips, dip	Chocolate cupcakes, milk
Dinner	Roast chicken, baked potato, peas, corn, carrots, gravy	Rissoles, mash, peas, corn, carrots, gravy, apple sponge, cream	Spag bol, salad, Tinned fruit & custard	Grilled sausages, potato bake, peas, corn, carrots	MOO Pizza & garlic bread, Fruit & jelly	Tuna Casserole,  green salad, wedges	Tacos

This meal plan will feed a family of four for a week for $75. It will depend of course on:

1. Brands - always choose the cheapest, usually a generic, but not always. And sometimes a special isn't really a special - always check the unit price.

2. Portion control - remember if a recipe serves six, get six serves. Put the two spare into the freezer for freezer meals - they are free dinners and will really help keep your grocery budget low.

3. Cook from scratch - no buying pre-prepared or packaged or convenience meals or parts of meals. MOO yoghurt, muffins, biscuits, pastry for the sausage rolls, dip, pita chips, gravy, wedges, pancakes and pancake syrup. 

4. Making a shopping list, after doing a fridge, freezer and pantry check, only adding the ingredients you need to buy. If you only need 5 apples, buy just 5 apples, don't spend money on food you don't need.

5. Sticking to the list. If it's not on the list, you don't buy it. If you think you'll need it, find a substitute in the ingredients you already have.

6. Shop around - you won't find any one store with the lowest prices on everything. Be prepared to shop at a couple of different food stores/butchers/green grocers.