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From Crystal: What We Ate This Past Week + What We Bought at the Grocery Store

From Crystal: What We Ate This Past Week + What We Bought at the Grocery Store

This post is going up much later than I’d planned because I ended up getting stuck in the Dallas airport on Sunday (on the way home from visiting my parents) and ended up needing to unexpectedly spend the night at the airport. I had Micah with me, so got a total of about 20 minutes of sleep that night (gratefully, he slept pretty well in my arms much of the night!)

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday getting caught back up on life, sleep, and work. Our kids also have been off school all week because of the snow and ice here, so that’s made for lots of fun and family time — but also a very unusual schedule!

Anyway, I’m finally sharing what we ate this past week plus what we bought at the grocery store. I was at my parents’ house two of the days of the menu plan listed below, but the family had leftovers and fend for yourself night on those nights to keep it simple!

As I mentioned last week, I don’t do a rigid meal plan most weeks; I usually just make sure we have enough on hand for 8-10 different dinners and then I plan that day what we’re having based upon the time I have and what sounds good.

I know that this system doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s worked pretty well for this season. I also make sure to have back-up emergency dinner options in the freezer (chicken nuggets/strips + frozen pizza) so that if I just don’t feel like cooking at all or run out of time, we still have options that are much less expensive than takeout.

If you are the type who needs a structured meal plan and you feel stuck in a rut, check out my 10 Weeks of Money-Saving Menus for some of our very favorite inexpensive and easy recipes — all done for you, complete with grocery lists! (And you can also download my FREE 60 Meals to Make Instead of Getting Takeout list for some great last-minute dinner ideas.)

Monday: Chicken strips, pasta, and green beans

Tuesday: Bean soup and Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Wednesday: Pancakes/Bacon

Thursday: Marinated Chicken & Twice-Baked Potatoes

Friday: Leftovers

Saturday: Fend for yourself

Also, one of my goals for 2024 was to learn how to make sourdough bread. I ordered dehydrated starter from Acts of Sourdough and started my starter last week!

I was so excited when it quickly got bubbles and was doubling by the third day!! While I was in Kansas, Jesse was so kind to feed the starter every day in preparation for me baking my first load of sourdough bread when I got back. Stay tuned for my update next week on how the sourdough bread-baking went!

Last Week’s Kroger Order: $124.41

We mostly stocked up on butter, laundry soap, Gogo Squeez pouches this week. We’re still working on eating up a lot of food we had stocked up on from sales and deals last year. We’re slowly eating it down so we can start fresh in the new year, so I didn’t buy that much this week for the week because of that.