Hi! I'm Sydney. I'm a stay-at-home mom of three and I make homemade meals for my Colorado family every week.
Although my current phase of life is a stay-at-home mom, I've also been a college student mom, and a full-time working mom — and each stage taught me valuable lessons around feeding myself and my family.
One of those lessons has been that meal prep and planning are essential for running a smooth household with three kids under ten. Figuring out all the meals ahead of time allows me to save time and stick to a consistent budget: $120 per week.
Each weekend — with that budget in mind — I plan all my family's meals for the upcoming week. This includes choosing the recipes I will make, plus the actual shopping. I cook pretty much every meal every day due to a severe peanut allergy in my household. We don't rely on much takeout for this reason.
When planning each week, I start by looking at my local grocery store's weekly sales so I know what items will get me the most bang for my buck. This first step is critical for my planning and budgeting.
With meal planning, up-front preparation is key — but it's also the most challenging thing. Here are a few tips and tricks that I use each week:
1) I pick recipes with ingredients that can be used for multiple meals (and in multiple ways). This also includes getting creative with leftovers. Sometimes, eating leftovers all the time can get old, but I try to remember that I can always use different components of my leftovers to create new meals.
2) I prioritize what's on sale. I switched out a few things this week to optimize my savings and make my money stretch for certain recipes. I was able to save almost $20 this week just by utilizing the sales my store was advertising. One of the best marketing strategies grocery stores use is having great sales, but then anticipate you spending more on non-sale items once you're in the store. The key is to play into these sale items, stick to your plan, and don't fall for the trap of buying/spending more than you need.
3) Clip your digital coupons. You can find lots of additional savings by clipping digital coupons (found on store websites or apps). Some items may not be on sale, but they could have great savings with a coupon. Conversely, some of the advertised sales state that you need the digital coupon to take advantage. This is easy to miss, especially if you're shopping in-store. When you look at the fine print, you often see that even though the item is advertised as "on sale," if you don't have that digital coupon clipped, the price can be a lot more expensive!
Also, my kids are small! They do not have the same appetites as teenagers or fully-grown adults. I'm aware that my grocery budget will need to increase as they get older.
Lastly, I'm not a chef. I'm a mom who cooks meals for her family. I learn things as I go and pick recipes that seem manageable for me to keep up with — as I also try and be present with my family.
After making my plan for this week, my total sat at $129.37. Like I mentioned earlier, I was able to save nearly $20 from utilizing the items that were featured in the sales flyer for the week.
Most weeks, I get my groceries delivered to save me time, gas, and impulse buys. (I also opt for delivery because if you've ever taken multiple young kids grocery shopping, you know the struggle!)
Now, as you continue to build your pantry, it's easier to spend within budget because you'll utilize staples you have already acquired. But for the purpose of this post, several pantry staples (like oats, flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, etc.) were included in the $129.37 I spent. Due to the fact I didn't use any pantry staples I already had, I felt okay that my bill was in the high $120's. The only staples I did not include were oils and spices.
Here was this week's grocery haul:
Here's how the week went! (This week starts on a Wednesday because we were out of town for a wedding so our normal week started late!)
After getting the kids off to school and unloading the groceries, I focused on mundane tasks that are just easier to do when there isn't constant chaos around you —like laundry and digging sticky hands out of the robot vacuum. (Which is way grosser than you'd think, why was it so goopy??)
Before I started thinking about school pick-up, I wanted to make sure I started the week prepared with a snack option. I decided to make Chewy Homemade Granola Bars. It can be a real challenge to find granola bars that are friendly for a nut allergy so making these homemade is not only extremely cost-effective but also an easy, safe-for-us solution.
I really wanted to start a good stash to have on hand for snacks all week so I made a double batch of these. I think you could use a bit less salt than the recipe calls for, but they are delicious nonetheless. One other tip is to really press these down hard before putting them in the fridge. This will ensure that they stick together instead of crumbling apart!
These sat in the fridge for a couple of hours, and it was perfect timing for when the kids got home from school! They dug into these right away.
My family and I just came back from a close friend's wedding where she amazingly blended her Persian culture into the big day. I haven't stopped thinking about the salad they served at her reception, which led me to make Classic Fattoush Salad for dinner with Easy Persian Chicken Breasts.
The recipe says to marinade the chicken for 24 hours, but we weren't playing with that kind of time today. I needed this salad ASAP. So, I got the chicken in the marinade first and let it sit for the next best thing: 30 minutes. 👀
I cut each piece of chicken down the middle to create several thinner pieces and cooked them in a skillet for three minutes per side. This dinner came together quickly!
My favorite part of the fattoush salad is the pieces of fresh mint, such a great way to make the romaine base ~pop~. The dressing calls for pomegranate molasses, but I wasn't able to find that at my store. A quick search told me that red wine vinegar was a good substitute so that's what I went with.
Oatmeal is a regular go-to for us at breakfast, but I wanted to make it a little extra special today. Cinnamon Roll Oatmeal caught my eye immediately.
Just as I suspected, happy bellies all around.
My older kids are out the door for school at 7:30 a.m., so I also packed lunch boxes while I made breakfast. I added in some leftovers and I thought that we needed some hearty carbs in the mix. Thankfully, this morning they had big bowls of oatmeal, but I put the task of making up something carb-rich on my to-do list.
For lunches at home, we followed suit and also ate leftovers. I threw my chicken on top of the leftover salad and ate it that way.
After lunch, I got around to that to-do list. I wanted to make something that would be easy to throw in lunch boxes. I decided on Homemade Wheat Thin Crackers.
This recipe was extremely simple and only had a few steps: add all the ingredients in a bowl and mix until crumbly. Add water and gently form a ball. Then simply roll out and cut with a pizza cutter!
I ended up cooking four different sheet pans starting with the lowest time given in the baking directions. I'm glad I did a test batch first because the results were very different. In the end, though, I was surprised at how much these tasted like the real deal.
Shepherd's Pie was my dinner plan for tonight. This recipe had several ingredients, which can sometimes make it seem daunting when trying to budget. However, I try and take a different approach to these types of recipes. It's very rare that you will use all of the ingredients so instead of shying away, I know that I will have various ingredients to help me later in the week. (For example, carrots and celery for snacking and lunch, cheese to use in other recipes, etc.) I also switched up the meat and used one pound of ground beef and one pound of ground pork, the latter of which was on sale.
In hindsight, I wouldn't necessarily think of this recipe as a weeknight meal because the cooking time was pretty long. Still, while my meat mixture simmered for 45 minutes, I made the mashed potatoes.
While I was cooking dinner, my kiddos helped themselves to those Chewy Homemade Granola Bars I made the day before.
Now is she a beaut, Clark? Maybe in a Griswold kind of way... but in the traditional sense? Definitely not, ha. I skipped adding the extra cheese on the top because my husband isn't a big cheese guy and I think if I had sealed the edges better with the potatoes the liquid wouldn't have risen up over the top so much.
However, once we got it all plated it didn't really matter. The flavor was great and my husband was still raving about it the next day.
Breakfast on Friday morning was more Cinnamon Roll Oatmeal. We had a fun morning of watching a hot air balloon right out of our window as we ate breakfast and headed off to school.
After a little R&R, it was time to hit the ground running again with a day filled with activities. First stop: gymnastics.
We kept things easy for lunch and worked on the huge amount of leftovers we had of Shepherd's Pie.
And then off to gymnastics — round two!
Just as I thought we made it through the week and we'd settle into a relaxing evening at home... Disaster. I love a Friday slider night and I planned to make Hawaiian Havarti Pork Sliders. I wanted to make homemade Hawaiian Sweet Rolls so I made sure to start the dough before heading to gymnastics to ensure a quick and easy dinner assembly.
Uh, honestly? I have no idea what happened. It's not just that they didn't rise/bake properly. They also tasted TERRIBLE. 🤣 I'm still trying to figure out where I went wrong with this one.
A fresh start and a new day! My kitchen helpers and I started making something extra special for a Saturday morning: Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Biscuits.
Biscuit dough is surprisingly easy to make and I love that they require cold butter, because remembering to set butter out to come to room temp is, for me, one of the hardest parts of baking.
While the biscuits cooled a bit, I made some scrambled eggs.
For lunch on Saturday, we finished off the Shepherd's Pie and after a day of running some errands and picking up around the house, I made a dinner perfect for a lazy Saturday night: Moroccan Spiced Vegetable Soup
One thing that caught me off guard in this recipe is that it mistakenly doesn't list the grain on the ingredients list. I didn't catch this when making my grocery list. Thankfully, I had quinoa in my pantry.
In moments, dinner was on the table and the kids excitedly talked about the special Christmas ornaments they each got to pick out at the store earlier.
Speaking of ornaments, after dinner we decorated our tree for Christmas and read some of our favorite stories.
We happily reheated the leftover biscuits for breakfast on Sunday morning.
We also kept lunch simple with reheated soup.
Sunday night we were able to hang out with friends, eat delicious snacks and make smores.
When we got home later in the night, no one was hungry except for my son. I pulled out the few ingredients required for Bean and Cheese Burritos.
This whole recipe entailed of adding the refried beans, seasonings, and salsa into the bowl, followed by spreading the mixture onto a tortilla with cheese.
My son certainly approved of these and since no one else needed to eat after the party, we had plenty left to help out with lunches tomorrow.
On Monday I wanted to utilize some of the ingredients that I didn't end up using from the Hawaiian roll slider mishap. I found the perfect recipe for Ham & Cheese Scones.
I added all of the ingredients into a bowl and used a pastry blender to carefully mix everything together.
I made the dough into a disc and tried to cut equal wedges.
Thankfully, I recently got a silicone mold specifically for scones, which helps them come out amazingly uniform with the perfect thickness every time.
I set the sheet pan into the fridge to chill for about 15 minutes to make sure everything was as cold as possible before hitting the oven.
After breakfast we kicked off the week of school with a trip to the theater. The show was great!
Everyone was starving by the time we got home for lunch, so I did a quick reheat of the Bean & Cheese Burritos.
The last planned meal I had for the week was Chicken Taco Casserole. Although the recipe itself was very simple, it did call for cooked chicken. The first thing I did (earlier in the afternoon) was to cook the chicken in the Instant Pot, shredding it with my standing mixer.
After baking for 30 minutes, dinner was ready. I topped with green onions, cilantro, sour cream, and salsa.
For Tuesday's breakfast, we finished the scones before they started to lose their luster and freshness.
At lunchtime, I utilized our leftovers. I pulled out the leftover Chicken Taco Casserole. Since we ended up eating this recipe as more of a dip, I wanted to use it as a quesadilla filling.
We spent the afternoon at our local library.
Now for dinner, I had to put on my thinking cap. I was running low on supplies, but I still had a decent pantry stock and quite a bit of ham. So, I turned dinner time into a meal and a family activity: homemade pasta!
My girls absolutely loved watching the pasta dough get rolled out and then cut into noodles. Although I said, "Don't poke it!" more times than I can count, we had an absolute blast with this!
I used pasta attachments on my stand mixer to roll and cut the pasta, then looked up recipes for pasta and ham and came across Creamy Ham & Cheese Pasta. I used a deep skillet and made the creamy sauce with garlic and cream while starting a pot of water to boil.
Fresh pasta only takes a minute or so to cook, so just as the cream sauce thickens, I add in the pasta. (I opted against the Parmesan on top just for personal taste!)
For the last breakfast of the week, I made pancakes.
After breakfast, I read my daughters a yoga story where they gave it their best shot...
To end the week, we simply pulled out the leftovers from the pasta the night before. I was a little "hammed out" but this point, but sometimes you just have to work with what you got — and this was how it shook out this week!
We spent the rest of the day getting out as much energy as possible — since we were preparing for a winter storm the next day.
And that was my week!
I hope this was helpful! Again, I don't share these plans assuming people will replicate them exactly. Every household is SO different — from palate preferences to cost of living to the amount of time available to cook. Still, I hope this provides some inspiration for new recipes, new planning ideas, or how to work with whatever your budget may be. You can find more of my articles with weeks worth of plans here!
For more, follow me on Instagram at @sydneyinsuburbia. That's where I give step-by-step breakdowns about how I plan my weeks, shop, and cook — hopefully helping you do it, too!
