The $25 Grocery Week

It’s the last 10 days of the month and it’s just that long until payday too. And guess what!  We super over spent on groceries this month. Like way over what we had budgeted.

Some of this was due to buying relatively expensive vitamins to help with the ol’ husband’s cholesterol and part of it was due to running out of really expensive staples in our diet (nutritional yeast is expensive ya’ll!). I keep telling myself that buying him a $20 supplement every 30 days is better than him being on more medication!

Back to the budget… needless to say, our grocery budget to get us through the last 10 days is very small. $25 or less. TWENTY FIVE BUCKS FOLKS.

I did some hard digging through Pinterest for cheap meal ideas and sorted through our own cookbooks and recipe binder and found some pretty great things. And only one of the dishes is pasta. Which is amazing for us! AND the only potatoes we are using are sweet potatoes. Which is, again, amazing because we are potato freaks…. that’s probably not a good thing.

Everything I bought is from our local Sprout’s Farmers Market on 8/20/16.  I used 1 coupon and got 2 bag credits. Total = $24.25 with tax
1 lb bag of carrots – $0.79
Cauliflower 2.7lbs – $2.37
On-Vine tomatoes 1.45 lbs – $0.69
Crimini mushrooms 1 lb – $3.99
Hass avocados 2 – $1.00
Organic Italian kale – $1.49
Sweet potatoes 3.48 lbs – $3.45
Bananas .83 lbs – $0.42
Baking soda – $0.99
Unsweetened cashew milk (shelf stable) – $1.68
Ripple dairy-free milk – $2.99 (used $1 coupon)
Red lentils 1 lb – $0.99
White long grain rice .69 lb – $0.35 (to top off our jar)
Frozen shelled edamame – $1.99 ($3 cheaper than the refrigerated kind!)

It doesn’t look like any of this can form a meal, right? Think again! We are heavily utilizing our pantry these last 10 days for every single recipe. Below is our meal plan for the up coming week. Each meal will have what ingredients are used minus spices. I will post all the recipes as the week progresses. The things we have in our pantry already will be marked with a *.

Breakfasts: 
2 x biscuits and gravy – flour*, baking powder*, baking soda, dairy free milk
daily smoothies – frozen fruit*, bananas, avocados, dairy free milk or juice*

Snacks:
Mixed nuts*
Peanut butter and oat bites*

Lunches:
Mostly leftovers
PB and Js – homemade bread, jelly*, peanut butter*
Mixed nuts with raisins*

Dinners:
Mushroom rice with salad – crimini mushrooms, vegetable stock*,  worcestershire*,  onion*, garlic*, lettuce (from previous weeks)
Kale and sweet potato hash – Italian kale, sweet potatoes, white beans*
Crunchy tacos – taco shells*, cooked black beans*, onion*, garlic*, frozen corn*, white rice, tomatoes
BBQ cauliflower – BBQ sauce*, cauliflower, onion*, bread crumbs*, flax meal*, frozen corn*, lettuce*, tomatoes
Chickpea Curry – canned chickpeas*, curry powder*, vegetable stock*, sweet potato, carrots
Brown rice carrot cakes – brown rice*, carrots, ginger*, flax meal*
Carrot helper – literally Hamburger Helper* with carrots instead of meat.
Spicy lentil cakes – bell pepper*, onion*, red lentils, flax meal
Sweet potato Buddha bowl – sweet potatoes, edamame, couscous*, kale, black beans*
Crunchy tacos – again
Sheppard’s Pie – homemade biscuit mix*, canned and frozen veggies*, dairy free milk, whatever else is left in the fridge (this is for day 10!)

It’s going to be quite the challenge but I think that we are up to it!

Want more money saving ideas and recipes? Check out these posts!

The $50 Grocery Budget Challenge

10 Frugal Vegan Meals to Make When You’re Broke