Even though the No Spending Month is over, we are still sticking to our weekly meals. Saving money by meal planning is one of the easiest and most important things we can do to stay on budget – or even under budget! We hope you can find some inspiration with our meal planning ideas and will want to try it out yourself.

Our weekly budget is usually $100, but we’ve been trying to reduce this amount during winter since we aren’t working as many hours as the rest of the year. With that in mind, we’ve picked 7 different recipes to make; one for each day of the week, leaving us leftovers for lunches.

Meals:

• Mom’s Choice (we are in Halifax today and my mom is cooking us supper!)
• Stuffed Potatoes & Salad (we didn’t make this last week because we went up to Halifax)
• Soup & Sandwiches
• Slow Cooker Coconut Curry with Basmati Rice
• Macaroni Casserole
• Roasted Butternut Squash with Salmon
• Risotto with shrimp & side of broccoli salad

Complete list of all ingredients:

• Potatoes
• Broccoli
• Cheese
• Lettuce
• Simulated Bacon Bits
• Soup (pre-made, in freezer)
• Bread
• Eggs or Tuna
• Miracle Whip
• Quinoa
• Chickpeas
• Red Pepper Flakes
• Sweet Potato
• Onion
• Diced Tomatoes
• Coconut Milk
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Tumeric
• Tamari
• Miso paste
• Basmati Rice
• Macaroni
• Butternut Squash
• Olive oil
• Salmon
• Risotto Rice
• Mushrooms
• Vegetable Broth
• Shrimp
• Red Onion
• Peas
• Nutritional Yeast
• Lemon Juice
• White Wine

And our final grocery list:

• Lettuce ($1.99 for two heads of Boston Lettuce at Costco)
• Simulated Bacon Bits ($5.99 for large No Name Brand @ Superstore)
• Chickpeas ($0.72 for 115G at Bulk Barn)
• Sweet Potato ($1.50 at Farmer’s Market)
• Red Onion ($0.25 at Farmer’s Market)
• Nutritional Yeast (Wasn’t able to purchase yet, as it is on backorder at Bulk Barn)
• Milk ($6.49 for 3 bags at Superstore)
• Cheese (went down from $7.99 to $6.89 at Costco!)
• Blueberries for snacks/breakfast ($4.99 at Costco)
• Cantaloupe for snacks ($3.99 at Costco)
• Salsa – Max always eats nacho chips and salsa as a snack (2 jars on sale for $6.99 at Costco)
• Nutrigrain Bars ($8.99 for 40 bars at Costco)
• Butter x3 ($3.89 each at Costco)

Our final amount spent on groceries: $62.86 with taxes.

Let us know how your meal planning is going and what your favourite meal is for this week!