We are a family of 4: 2 adults, 10 year old boy and 8 year old girl. (The food for our 11 pound dog comes from a separate budget.)
We budget $450/month, but regularly come in around $400-$420. This is post-discovery of MMM. It used to be $800-1,000/mo.
We typically have the following:
Breakfast (Depending on whether it's a school day or weekend)
-cold cereal with milk
-yogurt with granola
-turkey bacon and eggs
-pancakes
-fruit smoothies (frozen strawberries, banana and vanilla soymilk)
-oatmeal sweetened at home with a little bit of brown sugar and maple syrup, made with a small scoop of vanilla protein powder and vanilla soy milk
-toast
Lunch
-leftovers for adults
-sandwiches, fresh fruit, salad/raw veggies, popcorn and bottled water for kids
Dinner
-taco/burrito night with homemade guacamole (hamburger, beans (refried or cooked from dry beans), shredded cheese and salsa)
-spaghetti night with salad
-roast chicken, steamed or roasted veggies and fresh fruit
-homemade soup or chili (using chicken stock made from the roast chicken carcass, potatoes and any frozen veggies on hand)
-rice/quinoa casserole with leftover chicken and veggies, cooked with homemade stock
-quiche
-stir fry with shrimp and vegetables served with brown rice
I use Madhadron's recipe for the roast chicken from this thread:
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/share-your-badassity/convenience-food/msg25853/#msg25853It totally rocked my world. I've made it almost weekly since it was posted here.
The stock is easy, just remove the meat from the carcass, throw it in a big pot with the lemons, an onion, a few carrots and some celery and put in enough water to cover everything. Cook on medium to low heat for a few hours. It usually makes three servings for me. One to use that week which goes in the refrigerator and two to freeze.
Several times each week I make homemade juice with our juicer. We always purchase lots of apples, oranges, pears and carrots. I'll also make a green juice using cucumbers, spinach or romaine, celery, carrots, apples, a lemon and a little bit of raw ginger root if Aldi has it that week. The kids aren't huge fans of the green juice, but you can sneak a half of a cucumber in with some carrots and oranges and they drink it right up. Apple/pear is also another fan favorite. This week Aldi had pineapple on sale for $0.99 so we did pineapple/orange/apple. They loved it. I store the juice in mason jars and they last in the frig for about 2 days. Much better than store bought juice, for sure.
We alternate between juice and smoothies for the kids to make sure they are getting plenty of plant based foods. My son won't eat a vegetable if it isn't corn, so I try to sneak some in his juice. My daughter actually requests salads be included in her lunchbox, so we lucked out there. They both love fruit, so we always have plenty on hand for snacking.