E-mealz Week 2 and Week 1 conclusion

Week 1 conclusion: The meals were all good! We did not have to return to Wal-Mart (with the exception of one trip for items needed for Will's class party and one trip for a teacher appreciation gift...I'm excluding those for the purposes of this trial;)

Having all the ingredients there and recipe has made things easier for Ted on the cooking front. "What's for dinner?" has already been answered. The recipes are all fairly simple and don't require a lot of cooking time with the exception of a few crock pot meals which are basically "set it and forget it" type meals.

Only complaint on the meals from the kids were on the Ham scramble dinner. To be honest it was my least favorite meal of the week...it had mushrooms and zucchini in it which are not my favorite....William does not like eggs much so he wasn't into eating it. One of those meals that if your kids don't like their food to touch they aren't going like that dinner.

Week 2

Did Wal-Mart actually have everything on the list? Yes

Were the prices listed accurate? Yes, and as with last week we were actually under their total cost for dinners because we already have meat in our freezer and so did not have to purchase the ground beef or the chicken they had on the list.

Did we save money? Still not really sure. I will say that we are staying out of Wal-Mart for the most part thus cutting down on the "extras".

Total spent this week: $173.01

I budget $200 per week for Wal-Mart stuff...food, hygiene items, cleaning products etc...this week there were actually quite a few non-food items purchased and we were still well under the $200 mark. So for the two weeks combined we are up $60...some of those dollars have already been used for other things but still the dollars were there available to be spent!:)

Ingredients for 7 dinners: $71.38
Daily Staples: $8.75
Breakfast/snack/lunch stuff/other: $92.88

For dinners we are having:

Broccoli & Ham dinner with hot cranberry apples (Friday) -- if your kids don't like their food to touch this is not a good meal for them
Honey Pecan Chicken with carrot puree(Saturday) -- carrot puree kinda resembles baby food...the boys were not to hot on eating it
Lasagna Casserole with Caesar lite salad(Sunday)
Hash Brown casserole with bacon(Monday)
Garlic chicken breast with read potatoes, green beans & crescent rolls(Tuesday)
EZ vegetable soup with cheesy cornbread(Wednesday)
Club sand with strawberry jello dessert(Thursday)

The daily staples this week: skim milk, sugar free syrup, wheat bread

The breakfast/snack/lunch stuff/other this week: razor blades, scotch tape, dishwasher soap, jet dry, swiffer mop pads, swiffer floor cleaner (seriously if we didn't need to clean I could save a TON of money...why are cleaning products so expensive?), oatmeal, waffles, 2% milk, eggs, yogurt, lite string cheese, crackers, popcorn, laundry soap, equal

And there you have it...Week 2 of E-mealz.