The Gentle Haven

I try to choose my meal plans in two-week chunks so I can save money by limiting the number of emergency grocery trips outside our grocery hauls. As a family of 5 we set our grocery budget at $250 per trip, $500 total. This budget typically includes our essentials as well (toilet paper, paper towels, laundry soap, etc.). Setting a budget and planning where we are shopping has helped our meal planning, especially for a busy family.

Example 1 (Chicken soup):

If we buy two rotisserie chickens from costco I can typically make 3 meals out of one crock pot prep day.

I first prepped the chickens by stripping as much meat as I could from the bones and placing the meat in the fridge for later, then started a chicken stock with the bones in my crock pot, a couple of handfuls of celery and the last of the carrots from the previous grocery haul, cut an onion in half and threw it in and peeled a whole clove of garlic and covered everything with water and set it to simmer for about 6 hours.

Once everything was soft I picked out all the vegetables and placed in a blender then strained out all the bones from the broth. The blended vegetables adds flavor, color and thickens the broth (and helps hide the vegetables from picky eaters).

I place the broth, blended vegetables and chicken from the fridge back in the crock pot and simmer for about 20 minutes and season to taste.

I used broth to go over rice the first night, used half the left overs the following day for chicken noodle soup by adding more vegetables and noodles then used the last half of leftovers on the third day to make chicken and dumplings by adding vegetables and drop biscuits.