Meals on a Budget

Cheers to extra time to enjoy this view! 

It's Wednesday evening and I'm able to enjoy a relaxing evening here at my desk indulging in my favorite hobby, bloggin. Why am I not exhausted and tired? Why am I not stuck in the kitchen doing dishes until all of hours of the night? Well people, it just happens to be a little thing I call meal planning. Two posts back I gave you a peak at what a typical weekly menu looks like for me. Well this past weekend I did a little budget work to go along with that planning. Next week, I'm having a non-invasive outpatient surgery and I needed to ensure my funds could cover the pre-op testing and out of pocket costs that come with any medical treatment. And looking at my measly budget I realized something had to give. Unfortunately, that was my grocery allowance. I looked at my typical spending on food in a month and I nearly passed out at the astronomical numbers. I mean no one said eating healthy was cheap or easy!!

So I pushed up my sleeves crunched some numbers and decided I could only spend $37 on groceries this week :/ AHHHH... Now, I have literally never walked out of a grocery store spending less than $60-75 on my weekly rations. I know I'm only one person, but I workout for a living and need to replenish the calories I burn throughout the day. This girl needs some mental fuel! I had no clue how I was going to pull this off. Luckily, I had some chicken in the freezer and a flank steak that was yet to be cooked so my protein was pretty much covered for the week. Protein being the most costly items on my grocery list, I thought I would be set. But that still left all my vegetables, eggs, coffee, and staples. Hmmm...this was a problem I was sure I couldn't overcome.

If this were TV I would now tell you that not only did I stay within budget, I happened to be two dollars under!! HA! I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I didn't quite make it. I stuck to my grocery list, used by savings card, bought items on sale and still was over budget by $20. Ughhh real life... That being said the total rang up to about $57. This did include olive oil which cost about $8 that I was not planning to get. So, without the olive oil my total would have been $49. Not too shabby! I could eat for the entire week and not go hungry. That is a victory in my book. I'm going to continue my master budgeting and weekly meal planning and hope that at some point it doesn't seem so daunting. Lucky for me, Mom is coming down next week to take care of me post-op. And when she's in town you know I will be eating well. Wish me luck on the surgery! Sending you all lots of love!

This week's meal prep included: Garlic Cauliflower Rice, Chicken Sausage Sweet Potato Hash, Chicken Panang, Hard Boiled Eggs, Brownie Roll Out Cookie Dough (courtesy of the Smitten Kitchen cookbook), Steak with Asparagus and Potatoes