Meal List for December

Meal List for December

When I do my grocery list, I usually figure out how many meals we need for the month and construct a list to shop for the entire month. Our current monthly budget is $200-$300 for the 3 of us. That includes dinners, lunches, breakfasts, snacks, pantry staples, as well as any health and beauty products such as toothpaste, lotion, toilet paper, etc. for the entire month.

First I start by figuring out what meals we currently have. I look through the pantry, cupboards, and fridge to see what we have that can be made into meals and I make a list of those meals.

Then I count the amount of days in the month from the day that we will be going grocery shopping. I then subtract the number of meals we currently have from that number to decipher how many meals are needed for each day of that month. For example, if i currently have 5 meals and we go grocery shopping on the fist of the month in a 30 day month, I will subtract 5 from 30 coming up with 25 meals that we will need. (I base the number of meals off of dinners only because we utilize leftovers for lunches and then purchase some contingency meals for lunches and breakfasts)

Then I go through the sale ads and/or my Favorite Couponing Blogs to see what is on sale at the time. I will construct a list of meals from the items that are on sale or from our Goto Cheap Meals List. Once I have come up with the amount of meals that we need, I will go through the list and create another list of the items we need to purchase to make those meals including any coupons that are needed. Then I add some contingency breakfasts and lunches to the list such as oatmeal, waffles, cereal, eggs, soup, sandwich stuff, peanut butter, etc. We usually have quite a bit of breakfast and lunch items already since we use leftovers for lunches on most days.

I then will hang my meal list on the fridge so that I can see exactly what meals I have to make and can just pick whichever one sounds good for any given night and cross it off the list.

Here is my meal list for this month:

We had enough items in our stock already to get us through until today (12/15) so that is when we did our shopping. Part of my list includes items for Christmas so I will not be including those as they are not part of our normal meal list. However, that does mean we can take 2 less meals off our our normal list (Christmas Eve and Christmas Day) so for this month we only need 10 dinners. That way I will be able to stretch our budget to be able to pay for the Christmas items that we need. :)

• Rice and beans (we use black beans and brown rice)
• Black Bean and Egg Burritos (using left over rice and bean mixture mixture from previous meal) and salsa - check out my Stretching The Leftovers post
• Grilled cheese and tomato soup (x2) <---this indicates I will be making this twice
• 2 family meals (sometimes we do contingency dinners for the nights I work early and don't have a lot of time to cook. These are usually some type of frozen pizza or microwavable family meal)
• Beef Stroganauff (ground beef, noodles, and cream of mushroom soup)
• Eggs and Hashbrowns (x2)
• 6 can soup with biscuits (2 cans of corn, 1 cans of chili beans, 1 can of diced tomatoes, 2 cans of broth - can use your own homemade stock to make even cheaper)
• Tuna  melts and chips (x2)
• Stove top chicken (2 boxes of stove top stuffing - make it & put it in a 9x13 baking pan. Cut up raw chicken breasts into thin strips and place on top. Pour 1 can of cream of chicken soup mixed with milk over the top and bake)

I added a couple of extra meals just in case we do not have as many leftovers from Christmas as I am planning. If we don't end up needing them, we can just add them to next months list!