Hi! I'm Sydney, a stay-at-home mom of three, and I make homemade meals for my Colorado family every week.
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.
Each weekend, I plan all my family's meals for the upcoming week. This includes choosing the recipes I will make — via the internet and cookbooks — plus the actual shopping.
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. For example, this week I was able to find berries for $1.67 and coupons for many of my items.
3) I buy the cheapest store brand most of the time. Unless it's something that I'm unable to use due to the peanut allergy (or if a different brand is on sale), store brand it is.
4) I ask my kids to help me! Feeding kids is a challenge. They change their minds constantly, and they seemingly get new taste buds every meal. When I ask them to help pick out recipes (usually by them looking at pictures), I find that they are more excited to eat them.
Also, I'm lucky in that all my kids are small. All three are seven and under, so I'm able to make our meals really stretch, portion-wise.
After making a plan and writing out my grocery list, I went searching for my ingredients on my grocery store's app. This week my groceries came out to $105.53. This includes all my ingredients for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. (It does not include the delivery fee or the tip to my shopper.)
I find that 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 article, several pantry staples (like flour, oats, and brown sugar) were included in the $100 I spent. The only staples I did not include were olive oil and spices.
Before I really get into the thick of things, I want to address a comment I've sometimes seen on some of my past weekly meal plans: that I don't spend enough.
I just want to reiterate that choosing to spend an extra few dollars to have more options, less leftovers, or better ingredients is a privilege. I'm of the belief that everyone should be able to eat well no matter their budget. If you're feeling that you would have just spent the extra money, please acknowledge that some people do not have that choice, and have to stick to a budget — and that's what you'll see here.
Moving on! 😌 Here was this week's grocery haul. I get my groceries delivered because it keeps me from impulse purchases, saves me a lot of time, and if anyone has ever brought three young kids to a grocery store, well... you know it's a losing game.
Two other things to mention when it comes to portioning out meals in my home: My oldest eats lunch at school, so that's one less serving to worry about. My husband comes home for lunch every day, but he doesn't eat breakfast every day — which, BTW, I 100% disagree with because breakfast is the best.
Here's how the week went!
(And one thing different about this week was I was out of town on Monday and Tuesday — so this week-long recap starts on a Wednesday.)
On Wednesday morning, my son requested oatmeal for breakfast. These are ingredients that I always have in stock because oatmeal is a hot commodity around here.
During the week, I generally just ask my kids what they want for breakfast and oatmeal gets picked very often.
Once I got my son sent off to school, my younger two and I stayed around the house. We typically like to head outside in the mornings, but it has been a little cold lately, so we have had to rearrange our days.
Since the morning didn't exactly consist of large energy expenditure activities, we kept lunch light. I was still pretty content from the oatmeal — and my toddler insisted she wanted "turkey, but not a sandwich."
In the afternoon, I took my daughter to gymnastics to help get some of that toddler energy used up.
When it came time for an afternoon snack, the kids picked bananas. Easy enough for me!
Now with dinner on the horizon, I was admittedly nervous on how tonight's meal, Ratatouille, would play out for a couple of reasons. The first: it has a tomato base — not my son's favorite thing. Second, it only consisted of vegetables.
I called up the recipe and pulled out all the ingredients needed.
One thing I will note: the recipe calls for the vegetables to be sliced 1/16th of an inch. However, the video of the recipe shows much thicker slices. I opted to use my mandoline to keep consistency with the written recipe. But next time, I think I will just slice thinly with my knife and call it a day. 1/16th seemed much too thin.
I sautéd my onion, garlic, and peppers, then layered my sliced vegetables on top.
I sliced and warmed a baguette to serve on the side.
Thursday's breakfast was avocado toast. My kids don't love avocado on its own — but they do like guacamole. I saw these single-serving, everything bagel-seasoned mashed avocado cups and thought we'd give them a try.
In true mom fashion, I put mine together as a sandwich and ate as I went along getting everything else ready for the day.
After breakfast and school send off, all the girls headed outside for some fresh air. A nice thing about where we live is that it is typically always sunny, the sidewalks are usually clear, and the views are always beautiful.
We spent the entire morning on our walk so when we got back to the house we were all ready for some lunch and warmth. I kept thinking about the ratatouille from the night before and thought it would be complimented nicely with a grilled cheese sandwich. Lunch was served!
Dinner meal prep that night actually started during breakfast. I made up a marinade for Easy Sticky Chicken Drumsticks and put the bowl in the fridge until it was time to cook everything.
Once it came time to start cooking dinner, I put my drumsticks in a Dutch oven and browned them on the stove. I removed the chicken from the heat, poured in my marinade, brought everything to a boil, and let it all thicken.
Once my marinade turned into a thicker sauce, I added the chicken back, tossed the lid on, and set a thermometer.
While the chicken was in the oven, I prepped some broccoli with olive oil, garlic, and salt. I also started some rice on the stove.
I love how this meal came together. Once I added all the components onto plates, I sprinkled with chives and sesame seeds. If I made this meal again, I would try it using boneless chicken thighs instead of drumsticks.
We had plenty of leftover meat and rice — so that went into the fridge for later in the week.
Once again, breakfast was oatmeal with milk and brown sugar. However, this time I ended up having quite a lot of leftover oatmeal. Knowing that it could be utilized in some way, I grabbed some additional ingredients and set out to make something similar to Blueberry Energy Bites.
I figured I didn't necessarily need the almond butter because my oatmeal was already cooked and sticky.
My 3-year-old requested a honey sandwich for lunch and thankfully, I had all those ingredients. I served it with some fruit, veggies, and cheese to round out the meal.
When it came time for dinner Friday night, I wanted something quick with limited effort. This Skillet Chicken Pot Pie recipe fit the bill perfectly!
A quick note: in my photo I have sour cream. This recipe does not call for sour cream. When I pulled out all of my ingredients my brain read "heavy cream" as "sour cream" so it made it into the photo. I didn't realize my mistake until cooking had commenced.
Anytime I have a rotisserie chicken delivered as part of my grocery order, I always pull the meat off the bone shortly after it arrives — because it's easier to do that when the meat is still warm. For dinner, I grabbed the containers that I stored the chicken in.
The first step of this recipe was to make a roux. After that, everything else gets added to the skillet then topped with pre-made crust.
While the pot pie was cooking, we got our kitchen cleaned up.
This meal was very simple and comforting. The pot pie came together very quickly, especially since my chicken was already pulled apart.
On Saturday morning, I woke up craving eggs. My newest "hack" in the kitchen has been to air fry my eggs to get a nice and easy hard boil.
I wasn't sure how long my oatmeal bites were going to last so I served them with the eggs and fresh fruit.
We had a lot of leftovers from the pot pie, so we ate some of them for lunch on Saturday.
On Saturday afternoon, some of our friends stopped over and the kids had a playdate. Needless to say, it was fairly busy so I didn't have much time to prep or cook dinner. This recipe for One Pot Spinach and Tomato Pasta was the perfect remedy to still have dinner on the table at our normal time.
The ingredients were minimal and my chicken was (again) already pulled apart.
The only thing that was really required of me for this recipe was to chop an onion. Everything else was just opening containers. (Also, I know that the jarred minced garlic is frowned upon in cooking but sometimes I need to save time — and this is an easy way to do it.)
This meal came out looking really great — but I don't know if I would make it again. And if I did, I would leave out the chicken.
On Sunday morning, my kids requested oatmeal and for lunch, we ate up the remaining chicken drumsticks and rice.
Sunday night dinner was One Pan Sausage and Veggies. We had eaten a lot of chicken so far in the week (oops) and I was ready for a change.
This recipe called for yellow squash, but as mentioned earlier, my store was out. I added an orange pepper instead.
Pictures of this recipe show the meal served over rice. I decided against this since it already had potato. I'm happy I went with this route as the meal was very filling as it was.
The kids loved the sausage, potato, and zuchinni. The other vegetables were met with some skepticism.
By Monday morning, I was ready for a change from oatmeal. I used my mashed avocado singles and made some avo toast and eggs for breakfast. I let my kids decide how they wanted their eggs — and I made mine into a full on sandwich.
For lunch, I took out the pasta and sausage and veggie leftovers. Nobody really felt like either of these so I pulled out different components from each. I used some of the noodles and then the sausage and veg to make up a new little pasta dish.
During the day on Monday, we spent the afternoon baking a cake for my husband's birthday. Although some of the ingredients were not on my shopping list this week, I did have them in the pantry.
Dinner was Maple Bacon Sweet Potato Soup. I should have double checked my shopping list before placing my order because I realized I forgot to add maple syrup. Thankfully I had a tiny bit in my fridge. My backup plan was to try and use honey.
I peeled and sliced my sweet potatoes, then threw them in a pot on the stove. Once the potato was softened, I blended everything down with an immersion blender. I also had my bacon cooking in the oven during this time.
For the kids, I ended up serving their bacon on the side — which was the highlight of the meal for them, of course. This meal needed something else to help bulk it up a bit. Whether that be a side of bread or dressed greens, something added in would have been beneficial.
Still, it ended up working for us in the end because we had birthday cake for dessert!
Tuesday breakfast will surprise no one: oatmeal. But hey, we are creatures of habit!
We had poor weather on Tuesday so we spent the majority of our day inside. We played games, colored, worked out, etc.
I'll say it flat out: I was NOT looking forward to eating the leftover pasta for lunch. I didn't really love it the first time, but we had a lot leftover. We also had zero leftovers of other meals. So here we were.
By Tuesday night, our rations were low. I did have some leftover odds and ends — so I decided to throw them into a quiche. This recipe is a great one to follow as a template!
I always think quiche is a fantastic way to use your leftovers in a new way. All I did was scramble eggs, add leftover veggies, and top with cheese!
After a couple of disappointing dinners and lunches, I was happy to end the week on this note. Pie crust is always so delicious and comforting — how can you go wrong?
