Grocery shopping and menu planning

I've been thinking about reviving my posts about grocery shopping and meal planning, at least sporadically on the weeks that I feel like I'm up to it. Then last night my mom saw my meal plan posted on the fridge and she said I should really be posting that on my blog each week so she can take ideas from it, so here goes.

Now that we've had a few months in our new house and we're getting a feel for our increased expenses related to that I'm feeling the need to renew my efforts to keep our grocery bill as low as possible. At least for this month, my intent is to spend only $30 each week on groceries. That does not include baby items or household items - just groceries.

So this week I went a little over and spent a grand total of $37.05 which means I'll have to make up for that in the coming weeks. I went to Aldi, Target and Walmart earlier in the week but I wasn't able to take a picture of those shopping trips because I didn't have access to my camera then. The picture above is just from today at Rainbow. Wednesdays are double coupon day there and I decided I probably need to try and take advantage of that again. I haven't done a double coupon day in quite awhile. I spent $15.54 there, but without sales and double coupons all that would have cost me $30.45. That's a savings of almost 50%!

And here's our meal plan for this week:

M- Leftover taco soup, bread w/butter

T- Love soup (terrible name but it tasted good), homemade bread

W- Red beans & rice, cornbread muffins, orange slices

Th- Salmon, roasted broccoli spears, baked potatoes

F- Spaghetti & meatballs, salad, homemade french bread w/garlic butter

Sa lunch- Tuna melts, chips, apple slices

Sa dinner- Steak, baked potatoes, steamed veggie

S lunch- leftovers or maybe omelets

S dinner- homemade pizza, veggies and dip

Several friends have asked me how I pull off spending so little on groceries. I definitely don't have all the answers and I know there are plenty of people that do better than me on this subject, but I'll try in the coming weeks to share some of my strategies here.