Realistic Budget Meal Plan- Under $100 for a week of Family Meals – at Walmart!

I have a $100 grocery budget and want to make breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, and a sweet treat that a Family of Four will actually eat!

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hey everyone it’s Jen and welcome back so this week we have yet another $100 or less meal plan this one is kind of a mix of some old favorites with some new favorites and I just think it works really well if you’re a family of four you don’t have time to you know coupon and shop for deals and you know maybe you don’t already have a stocked Pantry this is a very simple meal plan that you could follow for breakfast lunch dinner snacks and a sweet treat and it would cost less than $100 at your local Super Walmart so let’s dig into this this here is the overview of the whole week in one spot now you may notice that I changed up the lunches just a little bit I put all of the items that we would actually make specifically for lunch at the beginning of the week when you’re less likely to have options for leftovers and I left all the dinner leftover options towards the end of the week but you can totally mix and match this to work for your family so now let’s look at the grocery list so here is our grocery list you may notice that I separated it out into each different section this is called a strategic um grocery list this is so when you go to the grocery store whether it be Walmart or any other store you’re going to go to the produce section and you’re going to get everything you need for produce and then you’re going to go to the meat department then you’re going to go to the p uh the pantry which is like the dry goods section and then you’re going to go to Frozen and for dairy and this way you’re not having to Circle back because you missed something it just makes your trip much more streamlined and efficient if you will now there are some items on here that you may already have at home and that’s totally fine you can just check it off and then your total is actually going to be less now our total did come out to $973 this was at the Austin Texas area Walmart now normally my prices are a little bit lower but I pric these out a different high cost of living areas so depending on where you live it could be less than that now there are some items on here that you may already have you may already have white rice you may already have some ramen noodles or some microwave popcorn so it’s very easy to get this total lower it’s just that I like to be extremely realistic to where anyone could replicate this now there’s a few items that I’m assuming you already have at home these are items that we had on previous list or just really The Bare Basics that you should always have on hand that’s going to be your favorite cooking oil whe whether it be veggie oil canola oil olive oil whatever doesn’t matter just as long as you have some oil to cook with of course your favorite seasonings because honestly everybody has different like flavor profiles and tastes that they like with seasoning so I make sure that you do have some seasonings that are required but anything else you would just already have we’re going to need a little bit of white sugar we’re going to need some vanilla whether that be vanilla extract imitation vanilla whatever and then um either some butter or margarine that’s been on a bunch of previous lists and you’re just going to need a little bit of flour and that’s also been on previous lists now I wanted to go over some visuals and explain why I chose what I did so the first one is this little frosting normally frosting is 14 to 16 ounces but we’re frosting cookies so we don’t need a whole bunch so I opted for the little bit smaller one that’s up to you um this is parmesan cheese that’s already grated um my kids really like the powdery type stuff but for a lot of recipes when I’m cooking I do like to use more of the the um the cheese you would get like in the in the dairy section these are crescent rolls um I do specify that you would need at least an eight count on those this is turkey lunch meat um the deluxe D fry they had about three different options so pick whichever one you like they’re all about 20 o and they’re all about the same same price the next one is teriyaki sauce you’ll find this over by where like the soy sauce is and it does have soy sauce in it but it just has a little bit more complex flavor the next one is a boneless porkloin in the past we’ve used some of the pre-marinated or pre-f flavored ones this is a bigger porkloin and it doesn’t have flavoring already on it we’re actually going to um make our own cuts to this we’re going to do some of the french fried onions you know the kind that you usually use for green bean casserole this was an interesting find it’s Hungry Jack H hash brown potatoes and you’ll find it over by where the instant mashed potatoes are it’s hash brown potatoes that are Sim IL to like the Oren potatoes where they’re dehydrated so you pour water on them and let them sit so they rehydrate and then you use them just like you would the Frozen or the refrigerated kind um we are going to use some ramen noodles this week and I would just say get a chicken flavor I like the creamy chicken flavor or you can just do plain chicken for the broccoli um this is actually Tuscan flavored frozen broccoli so it has a sauce on it and we’re going to use that to our advantage because sometimes sauces can be really expensive so if you buy something that already has the sauce on it you don’t have to go buy special ingredients to make that sauce we’re going to use orzo pasta um it looks very similar to rice but it has that same kind of more squishiness to Pasta um I love parois and we talked a lot about parois this week on Facebook so we’re going to include those um they come in two different sizes this is just the regular size if you like a ton of parois obviously go with a bigger size for um our tomato based dish we’re going to do a combination of just an 8 oz plain can of tomato sauce and then we’re going to mix it up with Italian style diced tomatoes this is another way that we’re going to get the flavor in without having to purchase flavoring separately and then this is the boneless skinless chicken breast available at Walmart it comes out to about 5 and 1 half pounds and this week we’re going to do sweet potatoes and it did come out cheaper to do a three pound bag so let’s get into the the daily breakdown of this menu okay so day one typically falls on a Sunday at my house so I’m going to do things that maybe take a little bit more time versus during the week when I’m trying to get kids off to school so for breakfast we are going to do a raspberry cream cheese danish I love sweets and this is just a super simple fun one that I actually let the kids help me with now we are going to buy some fresh raspberry so what we’re going to do is we’re going to use a fork and we’re going to squish them up we’re going to mix them with some cream cheese and then we’re going to use those crescent rolls it makes about eight of them and I didn’t really have this set up to be a leftover breakfast because honestly they’re so good typically Everybody Eats too and it’s a really good breakfast for lunch we’re going to do some bean and cheese wraps um basically think of it as like a bean and cheese burrito with reffed beans and some cheese and then we’ll serve that with apple slices is for dinner this is a really good one it’s a crispy onion chicken with green beans and rice now with this uh like I mentioned these these fried onions are typically used in greeny casserole and then you have them in your pantry and you don’t know what to use them you can actually use them in a lot of different things so this is just an idea of a way to use them and then we’re going to use the seasoning packet from from one of our ramen and we’re going to use that to flavor the rice and this actually comes out very similar to those little $1 packet of rice it’s about the same thing if you think about it so this one’s super easy I will mention though these chicken breasts typically are fairly large so you can slice them in half long ways and then even slice them again so it’s almost like quartering your chicken and then it’s going to make it cook faster and then it’s also going to help kind of portion control because one of these breasts is huge and that’s way too much for like a child or even an adult now the prep ahe head that I would do this week since we’re already going to have the oven on for the the crispy onion chicken I would just go ahead since I’m already opening up my pack of chicken go ahead drizzle some oil and some seasoning on the rest of the chicken and bake it off so that way all the meals that need chicken for the rest of the week it’s already cooked you’ve saved yourself half the time so for day two for breakfast we’re going to do just some simple scrap scrambled eggs with some cheesee put in a wrap served with some banana super quick and easy in the morning for lunch this is actually one of my favorite lunches I probably have it every week um we’re going to do a grilled turkey and cheese sandwich with some apple slices now I will mention that I was you know pretty typical and I spread the butter on the bread and do the grilled cheese that way and my son was like it’s too greasy and so I was trying to think of ways to do that and my husband had this brilliant idea to start putting the sandwiches in our George Foreman Grill kind of like a panini press so we’ve done it that way and now it gives that nice crunch flavor and I honestly don’t miss all the extra butter in there so that’s just a cheap way to still get all the flavor but not necessarily use up a ton of butter um for dinner we’re going to do a Parmesan pork with a sparagis and baked sweet potatoes now that pork Lin is really large it’s like 4 and2 lounds so what we’re going to do is we’re going to take it out of its package we’re going to go ahead and slice our own pork chops but we want to make them nice and thin so depending on you know how many you think that your family would eat I would cut like six to eight slices and they’re kind of large so if depending on which one you get you’ll have to determine what size you want and then we’re going to save the other half as a roast so you just either put it in a Ziploc bag or wrap it in some plastic wrap and put it back in the fridge and this came out really really well the other thing is we’re going to go ahead and bake all of our sweet potatoes at one time which three pounds usually typically comes out to maybe four or five sweet potatoes and they’re kind of big so honestly I don’t even give a whole sweet potato to everybody even myself I only ate about half of a sweet potato and then my kids I kind of cut one in half and if they want more we can always do more but this really kind of usces the food waste and this is going to save us time because we’re going to need that for another breakfast and we need them to kind of already be baked so then once they’re baked I just go ahead and put them either wrap them up or put them in a tupperware and put them in the fridge for later now for the dessert this week I found this um cake mix it was a pineapple cake mix and I just thought that sounded really really yummy and I have seen recently where you can make cookies out of a cake mix so I decided to try it out with this pineapple cake mix and really you just add some oil and some eggs and then you just need frosting yes you can make frosting yourself but in this instance it just came out cheaper and quicker to buy it and so you make the cookies you let them cool and then you just um I just use a butter knife and I just put some um frosting on top and then I just I have a really big tupperware container that I use for sweets and then I just kind of line them all out there and it’s kind of a nice little sweet treat it reminds me of those those cake cookies with the the frosting on top I actually call them crack cookies cuz you really really got to commit because it’s so yummy and it’s so good and actually I’m okay with just eating one cookie because it is so sweet so any that’s me so for day three for breakfast we’re going to take some of our vanilla yogurt and we’re going to just add some of our mixed berries we’re going to have strawberries we’re going to have raspberries we’re going to have bananas I just slice them all up and and then we can do a side of toast sometimes my kid want my kids want toast with breakfast sometimes they don’t so you just play it by ear for lunch since we’re going to have about a half of a cream cheese mixture or just cream cheese we’re going to make a mixture where we basically take our chicken that’s already cooked some cheese mix it up with the cream cheese and then we spread it out on a tortilla fold it in half and then we have like a super creamy yummy um chicken quesadillas and if you have some salsa or actually it’s so creamy you don’t really need to dip with it but you could dip it in sour cream it’s really good then for dinner we’re going to have chicken bacon Ramen carbonera and do not skip this just because it has ramen noodles if you don’t like Ramen noodles it’s totally fine you could easily do this with angel hair pasta but I will tell you that we’re going to use three packs of ramen noodles and it made a ton okay I’ve adjusted this recipe a little bit to where it um the original one didn’t call for a chicken and I really think it needs a little something in there but honestly if I had not known what was in this I would have thought it had like an alfredo sauce but the sauce is actually made with eggs and parmesan cheese and let me just tell you it was so good and I couldn’t stop eating it and I actually had a I was actually over full for um for the night so I would start small on your portion here and then if you want wait a little bit and then go back for seconds all right let’s go to the next one okay so for day four we are going to do this is really interesting it’s called a bird’s nest and I hadn’t seen this one before so I definitely had to try it we’re going to use those dehydrated hash browns and you just kind of rehydrate them with hot water and then you drain the water out and then you just put them at the bottom of muffin tins and I was able to stretch this to be about 12 muffin tins but it’s really going to be about the size that your pan is and basically it’s just kind of like the bottom is a nest of hash browns and then you do some bacon and some cheese and some eggs on top and it was really good and it was just a different shape and size so the kids really liked it um here’s where we’re going to start having um some dinner leftovers for lunch we should have a bunch different options here and then for dinner we’re going to have a zucchini and perogi bake I love parois and I traditionally do it where you boil them and then sauté them so I wanted to try out something new so in this case we’re going to take our zucchini and we’re going to slice it into nice thin slices and then we’re just going to kind of shingle it um I did it to where like I did like a row of parois and then a row of zucchini and then a row of perogi and a row of zucchini but you could kind of mix them up in there doesn’t really matter and then we do that tomato sauce on top with some cheese and it was just really really really good it was almost like a stuffed shells and it’s a nice all-in-one dish so you don’t have to make multiple dishes for the night so for day five in the breakfast we’re going to have a sweet potato and apple Skillet with fried eggs so this is where precooking those sweet potatoes comes in handy because the morning of this all you would need to do is just kind of pull all the um the skin off of the sweet potatoes and then chop them up and then you’re going to take one to two apples depending on how big they are go ahead and chop them up about the same size as the sweet potatoes and then we’re just going to fry it like um like Homestyle potatoes in a skillet with some oil and then once those are nice and crispy then we’re going to do you could do scrambled eggs since I already have the pan here I’m just going to do like three or four fried eggs and it is so unbelievably good it’s kind of that that sweetness but it also has kind of that hardiness I don’t know it’s just a great flavor combination uh we’re going to do dinner leftovers for lunch excuse me and then this is where we’re going to do the other half of the pork line we’re going to do a pork roast in the slow cooker with some teriyaki sauce and let that cook um I put on here two different ways you can do it you could do it on low for 8 to 10 hours I usually do it on high for about four to five hours and then for the vegetables you can either steam them in the microwave cook them on the stove top or just go ahead and add them to the slow cooker for the last like 30 to 45 minutes because really all they’re already cooked you’re just kind of defrosting them and then I just use forks and shred this and then I serve it over rice and then you can just add a little extra Teryaki sauce if you really like that flavor I’ve also included some different snack ideas that you can do with the items that we have but I also suggest that you go and look at what snacks you may already have on hand because you may already have popcorn you may already have um some things like peanut butter or Nutella you really just want to look at what’s in your pantry and just use it to the best of your ability so for day six breakfast this is typically going to be on a Friday and I am all about super easy on a Friday so we’re going to do that vanilla yogurt with some fruit and toast again we’re going to do dinner leftovers and then we’re going to do this really yummy pasta okay so what we’re going to do is we’re going to cook our pasta our chicken if it’s already cooked super easy if not you can just cook it in a pan as you go and then we’re going to use that tusin flavored broccoli as our sauce now I’ve tried this with a couple different brands of broccoli and some of them have plenty of sauce some of them don’t so depending on which kind you use you may want to beef up your sauce a little bit and you can do that simply with some lemon or lime juice you could add some Italian seasoning or you could just add some um vinegar and oil you know just to kind of give it that little extra boost but some of them I used turned out completely fine and I had plenty of sauce you’re just going to have to play that by ear the great thing about this pasta is you can serve it warm and I really like it that way but then the next day I had it and I didn’t have a chance to heat it up and it was kind of like a pasta salad and so either way whether you serve it warm or cold it is really good so if you’re um like a sports mom like a soccer mom or a football mom and you want to have a dinner that you could actually just take to the ball field this is one of those you could prepackage it in a couple different Tupper wees and then right after the game if your kids are super hungry they can eat and it’s filling and then you don’t have to wait till you get all the way home but that’s up to you now I do want to remind you you that you can do these in any way that you like there’s no wrong or right way I’m just showing you how I would do it you can do it to suit your family now you may be wondering where day seven is day seven is on a Saturday for us and we typically are going to do a full fridge cleanout so for breakfast lunch and dinner on this day I’m going to look at every possible food that I have left over from the week and I’m going to make sure that I eat it so I may have one kid eating this another kid eating this dad’s eating this I’m eating that we’re just going to have kind of aoras Borg of leftovers and we’re just going to try to use up as many ingredients as possible so that way our fridge is nice and clean and it’s ready for the next week’s worth of groceries now some items do carry over and that’s fine but we just want to minimize our food waste as much as possible because if we have to throw food away we might as well have just thrown money in the trash because it’s not helpful but if we’re eating it nourishing our bodies we’re getting the most bang for the food that we bought now in the description below I have put a link to our website where you can see all of the slides you can also do the free printable pdf version because I know a lot of people like to have like an actual real version they can have in their hands plus a lot of people have told me that they’ve started adding it to their binders so that way they have a whole meal planning system I want to let you know that if you sign up for our weekly email newsletter you will actually get first dibs at looking at the menus before it’s released anywhere else so if you love the menus definitely sign up for that I also go ahead and share some highlights from the week I don’t spam you or try to sell you anything I’m just trying to help give you information you can always find us on Facebook just search loo family we have a page there we have lots of fun discussions over there we also have a Facebook public group where you can go and ask any questions you have about meal planning if you want some help or inspiration or recipes to use up certain ingredients so don’t be stuck alone come over there everybody is super nice and friendly there’s no food shaming so just come on over and join us and we will help you you know make sure that you get your meal plan done you can share share your meal plan I love it when other people share theirs so I hope you guys have a wonderful week have a great Easter your kids might be out on spring break so I hope you survive a week because that’s how my week’s going to look so I’ll see you guys later have a wonderful week