Week 23: Make the best choices available with what you have.

We are on vacation this week.  To be as healthy, and cheap, as possible, we are eating most of our meals at my sister-in-law's house.  While I love her to pieces, her food supply is abysmal.  Literally, we put more food in her fridge/freezer as leftover from our snacks and lunch on the trip than she had in there to begin with.  The pantry contained three spices, half a bag of white rice, a pound of spaghetti and a jar of sauce.  OK.  I'm starting from scratch here.  I brought 4 pounds of ground beef, and 10 pork chops, so there was my starting place.  I meal planned and made my grocery list (featured in another post).

When I got to the store, Wal-Mart, I found the choice for food not to my liking.  I wanted to buy things that were in a quantity that we would use in the week we were here, as it is obvious that my sis-in-law isn't big on cooking.  I don't see any sense in buying a bunch of food that would go to waste and we have limited space to bring things back with us.  I had to revamp some of my list on the fly and buy things that I normally wouldn't be caught dead purchasing (all-purpose flour for instance).  Overall, I was happy with the amount of money we spent on the week's worth of food and I figure that we are still eating better than if we chose to eat out for all of our meals while spending a lot less money.  I am still feeling like we've taken a step backwards in healthy eating though.

Here's our menu plan for the week (Saturday - Friday)
Breakfasts:  Omelets, Toast, Cereal (leftover from the trip), Banana Muffins, Scrambled Eggs, Oatmeal
Lunches:  Frozen Pizza, Ham &/or Turkey Sandwiches, Bean and Cheese Quesadillas, Homemade Lunchables, Chicken Salad, Leftovers
Dinners:  Spaghetti & Meatballs, Beef Nachos, Grilled Pork Chops, Chicken and Mashed Potatoes,  BBQ at a friend's house, Eat Out

I'm not sure how much I'll be posting this week as I'm sure we going to be busy.  Have a great week!