How you can feed a family of 7 on $50-$75 a week. Eat things like parmesan chicken, spaghetti, chicken and noodles, turkey tenderloins, pork tenderloins, ranch steak, turkey tacos (or beef) so you can see you eat pretty good, For breakfast, the kids have cereal and juice, or pancakes. Lunch is leftovers or a sandwich, tuna noodles, hamburger helper (homemade). Every meal includes milk, 2 vegetables, bread or rolls and a fruit or desert. I do alot of cook once, eat 3 times meals. Chicken and roasts work very well for this. For chicken, the first night is chicken, 2nd night is chicken and rice and then the rest is chicken noodle soup. Same with a large roast (usually around $10), first night is plain (well not exactly plain the way I cook it), then beef and noodles and last is beef stew. Sometimes I freeze the meat and broth for later in the week so it isn't always in a row. I can even make them stretch 4 meals. In the summer time, it goes up a little but not much. DO NOT buy premade foods like boxes of tuna helper or hamburger helper. You can save alot of money by looking on line and finding out how to make these from scratch.
Not included in the above money is snacks which usually run me about $10-$15 a week. For snacks, our kids have cheese, fruit, raw vegetables, popcorn, homemade muffins or cakes etc. When I find a good buy I do go over my "weekly" amount but that actually helps i the long run. I found extra large cans of Country Time lemonade on sale for $1 and had several coupons for $1 off so I bought 20 cans. I usually buy the marked down meats since I freeze everything. Once a month I buy 20lbs of hamburger (our Walmart had 5lb chubs marked down to $4 two days ago so I bought 60lbs), I go home and cook up 30 pounds, make 6 meatloafs, 6 batches of taco meat and 6 batches of meatballs. I then froze all of it and this is enough for 2 months.
Provided by Becky a mother of 5 who makes this work on a weekly basis and so can you.
