Meal Plan Monday ...just a few days late :)

Okay - I'm going to go ahead and do meal plan monday - it's either really late or really early - depending upon how you see life :) I am horrid at meal planning and that's sad because it's one of the keys to living extremely frugally. If you have a plan for 21 meals for the week you are less likely to eat out for lunch or breakfast or to buy unnecessary and pricy foods at the grocery store...

An average cost for a fast-food breakfast is $5.00 so if you grab that 5 days a week that's $1275.00 a year (Assuming you get a weeks vacation and do this every day religiously for the other 51 weeks of the year!) Just 3 days a week wastes $765!!

Assuming a cost of $7.00 for lunch out 5 days a week You could be spending $1785 a year!! If you eat breakfast AND lunch out that is $3060!!

I tend to get overwhelmed when it comes to planning out my meals so then I just don't do it. I don't eat out (most of the time) but I still become very overwhelmed! So I will start small! Here are my dinners for the next 7-10 days:

Today is Thursday:
Thursday: Lemon Pepper pork chops
Friday: Creamy Crunchy Strawberry chicken
Saturday: Chicken Caesar salad (or salad with ckn from friday over it)
Sunday: Peanut butter chicken stir-fry
Monday: Pecan topped, stuffed chicken
Tuesday: Celetano Ravioli & pasta sauce
Wednesday: MorningStar burritos or nachos
Thursday: Mandarin Ham
Friday: BBQ Pork Loin
Saturday: pasta & sauce

Alternates:
Chili
prepackaged hormel meal
Rice & Black beans

I will have you know that this is an EXTREMELY ambitious menu for me ... I did start to get overwhelmed but I finished it. Normally we only eat meat 3 or 4 days a week for dinner - the rest of the time we just don't really - we eat MS Farms or just pasta and sauce.