30 Days of Real Food Challenge–Menu Plan Week 1

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30 Days Menu Week 1

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Just incase you missed my earlier post about my new 30 days of Real Food Challenge–catch up on the details HERE

I wanted to share with you just exactly what my hubby and I will be eating this week to get us started.  I still wanted to keep some meals simple–especially Thursday nights as I don’t get home from work until 7:30 or later and the last thing I want to do is slave over a meal.  So here is what we will be eating this week:

Breakfasts:

Fruit Smoothies, Oatmeal with fruits and berries, Greek Yogurt with Granola, Scrambled Eggs, Whole Wheat toast with Peanut Butter

Lunches:

Veggie Wraps with Hummus, Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches, Salad, Leftovers from dinner

Dinners:

Tuesday–Chicken Quesadillas with homemade Guacamole, Salsa, and Flour Tortillas

Wednesday–Chickpea Chopped Salad

Thursday– Spaghetti with Whole Wheat Pasta and Homemade Sauce, Salad

Friday–Crock Pot Chicken and Brown Rice with Veggies

Saturday–Burgers with homemade buns, and homemade Sweet Potato Fries

Sunday–Chicken Skewers, Salad

 

Ok so, it’s not a WHOLE week of foods, but close.  I like to start my Menu with Mondays, but since today is Tuesday..you get the point.

We spent most of our morning grocery shopping–which my husband just LOVES–and much to his dismay, we ended up going to 3 different stores.  We had planned to get the majority of our foods from Trader Joe’s.  I was super excited to check it out because I had never been to one and always heard great things–whether from friends in the Chicago area, or from other bloggers.  I am sad to say, I was pretty disappointed!  The only TJ’s that is open currently in Austin is TINY.  While the prices were OK, there was just not much for STUFF.  So we headed to Sprout’s Farmers Market that was just a little bit away.  This is actually where we got most of our produce and bulk items.  You should have seen my hubby when he discovered the bulk section.  He was like a kid in a candy store filling up bags of this and that.  At least he was getting good things, like beans, lentils, quinoa, and granola.  Up until this point in our grocery shopping he was just aimlessly wandering the aisles waiting for me to be done 😉  Turns out we couldn’t get everything on our list at TJ’s and Sprouts so we went to the good ol’ Walmart in our small town to finish off the list.

Here is the break down of what we spent.  We knew that we would need to raise our budget some from $250 to $350/month.  (Keep in mind this also includes the cost of feeding all of our critters too which isn’t cheap)

Trader Joe’s—$55.29

Sprouts—$71.39

Walmart–$22.26

Target–$32.11 (from my trip Sunday where I got grass-fed beef)

Total–$181.05

I say we didn’t do terribly.  We had to get a lot of Pantry items, like whole wheat pasta, organic canned tomatoes, organic peanut butter, all natural jam etc.  I will just need to watch what I spend when I go back in a few weeks, and actually plan out coupons and such–Hopefully I will only need to restock on produce, eggs, milk and yogurt–fingers crossed anyway 🙂

We got A LOT  of produce–things like a seedless watermelon, mangoes, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, romaine lettuce, spinach, peppers, avocados.  Seriously, just about any kind of fruit and vegetable imaginable!  We have so much, our refrigerator is bursting!  I can’t wait for my peppers and tomatoes to start really producing so I can spend less!

We also purchased some cartons of yogurt, all natural organic butter, organic (no growth hormones) milk, cage free eggs, among other items.

When we finally got home, I set to work making all of the homemade items we would need for the week.  Things like whole wheat hamburger buns and bread, salsa, guacamole.  I also cut up fruits to make them easier to grab and hard boiled eggs.  I had planned to make some blueberry muffins, and hummus but ran out of time–and whole wheat flour for the muffins.

Oh well, tomorrow is another day right?

 

Want to know how the rest of our weeks went?
30 days challenge Week 2

Week 2

30 days Week 3

Week 3

30 days challenge week 4

Week 4

30 days challenge final days

Final Days

Real Food on a Budget

Real Food on a Budget Challenge

 

2 Comments

  1. Amanda, what is your goal? Eliminating chemicals and preservatives from your diet? Losing weight? Or both?
    We’ve basically eliminated process foods from our diet, other than canned legumes, tomatoes, and jarred tomato sauce. The chemicals, dyes, hormones and antibiotics, partially hydrogenated oils, and all the corn by-products (high fructose syrup) are wrecking havoc with our metabolisms. This is recognized as one of, if not THE major cause in obesity among children and young adults.
    Good for you, and good luck!

    1. Kathy, our BIG goal is to ultimately be healthier overall–by losing weight, boosting our immune systems and increasing our metabolisms. We are planning our start to this by eliminating all chemically altered food from our diets. No artificial sweeteners, flavors, dyes, nothing GMO, and we are cutting out the pesticides used on most produce using the “dirty dozen, clean fifteen” method. If our budget will allow (which I am working hard to make sure it does) we also want to cut out the growth hormones, antibiotics and everything else getting put into our meat and dairy animals by only purchasing grass fed beef, free range chicken/eggs, and milk with no added hormones. It’s a start, but we are learning a lot!

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