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This is a combo post for you. It’s our meal plan and details on our first $100 grocery challenge. In an effort to get our budget back on track, I’m attempting to only spend $1oo per week on groceries. For some, this may be really easy, but I know our usual spending is far above that. We eat mainly organic produce (I follow the EWG list in order to decide what we buy conventional) and aim to buy all organic meat. If you follow along on Instagram, you can see exactly what we buy via our stories. Let me tell you, organic and allergy-friendly isn’t a cheap combination. Enter the $100 grocery challenge.
What I’ve learned after one week is this is going to be HARD. And we didn’t even make it this first week… I ended up spending around $140. I did buy four packages of marked down organic chicken breast, so I’m hoping that might help future weeks. Even so, the $100 grocery challenge won’t be easy. It requires a serious commitment to meal planning, sale scouting, and restraint while shopping. I do think it will help us eat healthily and reduce waste. For instance, instead of grabbing a bag of chips to go with sandwiches for lunch this weekend, we stuck with produce we had at home. Even if we don’t make it every week, I’m hoping the $100 grocery challenge might help us figure out some more money-saving tips week to week and get things back on track before the holidays.
friday:
turkey burgers and sweet potato fries
We originally were supposed to be traveling this weekend but plans changed last minute, so this dinner was bare bones. The turkey burgers didn’t even have buns. Everybody was happy and fed. I’m calling it a win!
saturday:
pasta and salad
Another easy one. We had family over and needed a simple, affordable, and easy meal. A giant container of organic spring mix from Costco will be used for salads and smoothies all week. Perhaps some green muffins too!
sunday:
stir-fry
Originally, we were going to try a tofu stir-fry for the first time. I couldn’t find the tofu brand I wanted at the store and found organic chicken on sale, so it will be a chicken stir-fry instead. Probably quinoa, chicken, onions, carrots, broccoli, and some sauce.
monday:
potato leek soup
This soup is easy and a great way to sneak in vegetables as we add cauliflower. Ollie usually LOVES it. He’s known to eat multiple bowls of it in one sitting. Sometimes, Erik and I spice it up with a little hot sauce on top. Once, we cooked and crumbled bacon on top. SO GOOD!
tuesday:
thai chicken
If you go look at this recipe, you’re going to question why it’s on our meal plan. It is Slow Cooker Thai Peanut Butter Chicken. What I’ve found with recipes and meal planning is I don’t often look for allergy-friendly recipes. I look at just about any recipe and figure out how to make it work for us. This wasn’t a huge hit with Ollie last time, but we always give a recipe a few tries with him. Erik and I LOVED it.
With this one, the substitutes are quite easy. Don’t Go Nuts soy butter instead of peanut butter and CoYo natural yogurt instead of greek yogurt. Last time, I did also add a bit of red wine vinegar to my cabbage as I found the dressing a little thick. We didn’t make quinoa – I personally thought the chicken and cabbage were more than enough.
wednesday:
chicken fajitas
We will be at our first Halloween event this evening, so we need a quick and easy crockpot dinner. For this, we just put chicken, peppers, onion, chicken broth, and taco seasoning in the crockpot. We add everything to wraps with few dollops of guacamole and we have a meal! We will eat it with leftover quinoa from the stirfry earlier in the week. Whenever we make quinoa, I always make sure there is extra in the fridge as an easy side for another meal.
thursday:
quesadillas
Another easy meal. And one that helps with the $100 grocery challenge by using leftovers from the night before. The chicken and veggies will go in wraps along with some kidney beans and this cheese sauce from Veggie on a Penny. There probably won’t be anything on the side of this meal, just some guacamole and salsa to dip in.
friday:
TBD. I stopped after seven meals!
There you go. That’s our allergy-friendly, $100 grocery challenge meal plan for the week. Like most weeks, we also cut a bunch of fruit and made granola. New this week was the addition of roasted veggies. We roasted sweet potatoes and brussel sprouts to have on hand for lunches and sides throughout the week. My hope is it helps us eat healthy and avoid buying extra snacks. Stay tuned for next week. I really hope I can beat the $100 grocery challenge!