I’ve had some inquiries as to what our menu this month looks like. The funny thing is, our no-spend month menu doesn’t look too different from our menu in a regular month.
We regularly feed our family of five on less than $300 each month. Much of our food budget is used to stock up. When there is a good price on peanut butter, I might buy enough so that we don’t have to buy it again for 6 months. We also buy fresh produce and other staples with our food budget. If we ever eat out (which is very rare) the money either comes from our food budget or we use a gift card.
So far in our no-spend month, this has been what we’ve eaten.
Breakfast
- Pancakes— We make pancakes regularly from our homemade pancake mix.
- Strata— We recently tried a breakfast casserole with milk, eggs, cheese, and bread that was getting dry. It wasn’t as good as the strata I remembered from my Girl Scout days, but we’ll work with it. Maybe it just needs some sausage.
- Zucchini Bread— At the beginning of the month I made three loaves with frozen shredded zucchini from last summer.
- Oatmeal— If we eat it too many days in a row, everyone gets tired of it, but we try to keep oatmeal exciting with some fun mix-ins (fresh or dehydrated fruit, berries, raisins, sometimes even mini chocolate chips).
- Puffed Pancakes— Pretty much the same as German pancakes, it’s made with eggs, milk, flour and sugar. My kids LOVE it. I’ll share the recipe soon.
- French Toast— Nothing beats French toast made with homemade bread. It’s the best thing to do with the last loaf of bread (since I make 4 loaves at a time, the fourth is always a little dry by the time we get to it).
- Fruit Sauce— We have home-canned applesauce, pear sauce or plum sauce with our pancakes or French toast.
- Bananas— We’re almost out, but we had bananas for the first week of our no-spend month.
Lunch
- Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches— I make everyone sandwiches with homemade bread with homemade jam. Even my husband takes PBJs to work.
- Apples or Bananas
- Dehydrated Pears and Craisins— We dehydrated pears last year.
- Homemade Yogurt–– I can send yogurt in my husband’s or daughter’s lunch using these containers
because they don’t leak.
- Zucchini Muffins— I use the zucchini bread recipe, just in muffins instead.
- Pumpkin Muffins— If I feeling nice, I put in mini chocolate chips.
- Quesadillas— We either make triangle pieces or cheese-roll-up style.
Dinner
- Tomato Soup— I made from tomato puree that I canned.
- Potato Soup— We love potato soup. I use potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, bullion, and spices with a little cheese and sour cream (or yogurt) on top.
- Meatless Taco Soup— I use tomato puree, pinto beans, white beans, onions, spices, sour cream cheese. I cook beans in bulk in the crock pot, then freeze them in about 2-cup portions instead of using canned beans.
- Homemade Pizza— We use homemade tomato sauce made from our canned puree. Usually we just put pineapple on them. I buy the #10 cans of pineapple at Sam’s club and freeze it in smaller portions, which is cheaper than individual cans of pineapple.
- Bean Burritos— We have dehydrated refried beans in our food storage. They are so yummy. With cheese, sour cream, and lettuce from the garden, these are something we all enjoy. When tomatoes are in season we add fresh tomatoes as well.
- Creamy Tacos Casserole— This is a family classic comfort food. I made sure that we had some corn tortillas so that cream tacos could be a part of our no-spend month.
- Mock Lasagna— This is another comfort food for us. I made sure we had some cottage cheese before we started our no-spend month so that I could make (and share) this recipe.
- Leftovers— I always make a lot, so most dinners last two nights. I try to mix it up though, so we don’t have the same thing two nights in a row.
Side Dishes
- Asparagus— My father-in-law shares asparagus fresh from the garden with us.
- Green Beans— We have plenty of canned green beans from last year’s garden.
- Green Smoothies— We have a smoothie with dinner nearly every night. You can read about how we save money on our green smoothies.
Snacks
- Muffins— We make zucchini muffins and pumpkin muffins on a regular basis using frozen zucchini or frozen pumpkin puree.
- Apple Slices— We’re almost out of apples though.
- Dehydrated Pears— We dehydrated pears last year when pears were in season.
- Frozen Peas— My kids think these are fun. They don’t like them as much when they are cooked, but they like them frozen.
- Graham Crackers— Sometimes I frost them or put chocolate hazelnut spread (I found some cheap at Grocery Outlet)on them .
- Marshmallows— At Christmastime I got bags of gingerbread and snowman marshmallows for 50 cents a bag. They were a potty training treat for my 2-year-old and now they are an occasional snack.
- Homemade Cookies— I like to try out new cookie recipes. Sometimes they are healthy-ish, sometimes they are just plain good 🙂
You carnivores are probably noticed something is missing. For my dad, a meal wasn’t a meal without meat. For us, meat is an occasional treat. We have some in the freezer, but we usually only eat meat once a week, though some weeks we don’t have meat at all.
What are your frugal, go-to meals? We’re always open to new ideas!
Other Articles in the No-Spend Month Series
- Planning a No-Spend Month
- No-Spend Month Update
- No-Spend Month Update- Easter Edition
- Does a No-Spend Month Really Save Money?
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Linked to Thrifty Thursday, Family Fun Friday, Put a Bird on It
Featured in Lifestyle Carnival #102 at My Life, I guess, Personal Finance Carnival at Aspiring Blogger
I love these ideas! Our family is doing a No Spend month this month as well and these are great ideas! I plan to share them on my own blog (giving you credit of course!). Thanks for sharing!
I like to make spaghetti with homemade pasta. I add carrot, squash and zucchini chunks to it as well. Another is stuffing. I am a big vegetable eater and so is my husband. I make stuffing with a lot of carrots and celery. It is probably 1/3 vegetables. I also keep the ends to all my vegetables that I cut off and freeze them. If not used for things such as the green smoothies, I make vegetable broth with it. The vegetable broth is great when used in the veggie dressing!
Great tips Amber! I’m not very good at eating plain veggies, but I love putting them in with other foods. I love stuffing, but I’ve never added carrots! I’ll have to try that!
My husband’s philosophy is that there has to be meat on the dinner menu, but he doesn’t realize that I’ve found some tricks for extending it:) For example, when I cook with boneless, skinless chicken breasts I cut them in half, so he’s eating half of what he thinks he is; I also cut bacon in half too and cook a 1/2 package, thereby creating 4 breakfast meals from one 16 oz. package. There are times that sirloin is on sale cheaper than ground beef, so I’ll buy that and slice it into thin strips for stir fry or Philly cheese steak sandwiches, and can usually create 3 or 4 meals from the original 1 package. After 28 years he hasn’t figured out that he eats less meat than he intends or expects.
Way to go Karen! Those are some great ways to stretch meat. Thanks for sharing!
One trick I’ve learned to help make my ground beef stretch a little farther for my family of seven is to always add chopped onions. No matter what the recipe, onions and ground beef always tastes good together. While the onions provides a bit more bulk for just pennies.
Thanks for sharing via Family Fun Friday!
YES! We use onions, as well as carrots and other veggies to stretch our ground beef!
Looks like a great variety of food there! One of my favorite frugal/tasty dishes is pasta with a homemade sauce. I use a recipe that is loaded with veggies in it. It’s not super cheap because it uses wine and ground meat, but I usually make a 12 quart stock pot, freeze the sauce and it lasts for months. Yum.
That’s great to make your sauce in bulk like that! I bet it makes for a fast pasta meal! Thanks Leslie!
Your menu sounds varied, healthy and delicious!!! Like you, we enjoy meat, but don’t feel that we need to eat it daily. Such a treat when we do have it.
Two of our favourite frugal meals are pizza on wholemeal pitta bread, topped with veggies and cheese (I find it a great way to use up any veggies lurking in the fridge) and also scrambled eggs, toast and salad (so quick and tasty).
We haven’t had pita bread in ages. That’s a wonderful idea! Scrambled eggs is a favorite around here too. We have “breakfast for dinner” pretty often.
I love this meal plan! My usual frugal menu usually contains a lot of carbs which I combine with vegetables, I also eat fruits for snacks. I’m not a vegetarian so I still eat meat which is quite expensive, but I try to eat less of it to reduce expenses and eat healthier.
We’re vegetarian and happily enjoy the benefits of not having to pay for meat, that stuff is expensive! But I also know a lot of vegetarians who eat meal alternatives which can be the same, or worse, on your budget.
At our house we eat a lot of produce so it’s tough to stock up on that because I swear the second I bring it into the house it goes bad.
We commonly have spaghetti nights, taco nights and then I base all other meals off of what is on sale that week. Between the two of us my goal is $50/week and I usually make it!
I’m sure you can save a lot if you don’t buy meat and you avoid the pricey alternatives! What do you eat on tacos? Just curious. 🙂 That’s great that you can stick to $50 per week!
Thanks for sharing with us! I love it how we both have the same attitude that meat CAN be considered an extra or basically that a meal can be a meal without meat. My sister doesn’t understand how we can possibly survive without having meat at EVERY meal, let alone dinner. But when I grew up (big Italian family), food was the center of everything and meat was not only included at every dinner, but lots of times for appetizers and snacks! Thankfully I married a man who has the philosophy opposite of my family where he believes that “food is fuel” and only that. Whereas my family thinks “food is a party.” I’m totally with you on this one. It saves SO much money!
That’s great that you and your husband are on the same page. That makes it so much easier. We both like meat, but we can do without it too. When we have meat, it’s such a special treat that it tastes even better than normal! 🙂