Day 1 - Planning, Shoppping and Meal Prep

I know, the program as written encourages a couple days of planning, but I do my implementation before I've burned all my energy for a project. Therefore, Day 1 is planning, shopping and meal prep for the week.

Before shopping the list looked like this:

• canned sweet potatoes
• almond flour
• fresh parsley
• scallions
• dried dill
• whole chicken
• cabbage coleslaw
• sesame oil
• 2 doz eggs
• frozen vegetables


After shopping:

• Eggs 18ct x 2 @ 1.76ea   
• These were 20 cents more than the 12ct packages, so I bought a little more.  I'll either eat more eggs this week or have a dozen or so to carry over to next week.
• 3 lbs sweet potatoes for $2.94,
•  all the canned sweet potatoes were in syrup and a no go.
• Red Cabbage 1.8lb for 1.51
• cheaper than the preshredded coleslaw for a larger amount and I like cabbage.
• 1 bag frozen chopped spinach @ 1.44
• 1 bag frozen green beans @ 0.98
• 1 bag frozen kale @ 1.44
• 1 bag frozen carrots @ 0.98
• looking back buying whole carrots and cooking them would have been cheaper at 1 lb for 0.76
• light olive oil @ 3.92
• sesame oil was double that, this will work
• whole chicken 5 lb @ 1.07 lb
• I'm going to make bone broth this week and store it for soups in future weeks.  Otherwise the whole chicken isn't a good bang for your buck.  

Why the differences?  Well, sesame oil turned out to be $8 a bottle at the cheapest I could find it.  Dill was $4 for a teeny bottle and I don't use it that often, it was just for one recipe.  Since I didn't get the dill, the recipe I was using it for was out and I no longer needed almond flour or parsley.  The scallions would have been nice, but I didn't see them at Walmart and I was close enough to my budget that a bundle would have put me over.  

This week's grand total:  $24.79

I also inventoried my pantry and fridge/freezer to find out what I already had.  This influenced my shopping.

In the freezer:

• 2.5 lbs of boneless, skinless chicken breast
• A large but unknown quantity of pork roast
• 1/2 lb hamburger divided into 2 single servings
• a bag of green beans that is 1/3 full

In the fridge:

• fermented green beans 1 qt
• fermented carrots 1/2 quart
• compliant hot sauce

In the pantry:

• tomato sauce 
• canned pumpkin
• 2 cans wild caught salmon
• cacao powder (It is 100% cocoa)
• sesame seeds
• coconut oil
• spices that I haven't inventoried yet.
• tea

The meat especially puts me on track to make it through the month, the pork roasts are huge and while I'm not a fan of pork, I won't have to buy as much meat as I thought for at least a couple of weeks.  This week I used the extra to buy a whole chicken for bone broth.  Next week, I might invest in some dill and almond flour for the salmon cakes printed in It Starts With Food.

What I plan on eating this week is Chicken Chili Verde using a recipe from my childhood, substituting sweet potato for the beans and Egg Roll in a bowl.  I still need to plan a 3rd meal with what I have on hand, because I don't really want scrambled eggs in the morning.  I might actually eat the chili in the morning and save the eggs for the evenings.  

And that's what week one on $25 a week looks like.