{{Printable}} Real Food Meal Plan and Shopping List for April 29-May 5

It’s that time again!

Most grocery stores put out their sales flyers on Wednesday morning, which makes middle-of-the-week meal planning convenient – that way I have 3-4 days to get my (grocery shopping) ducks in a row before the new week.

In last week’s meal plan post, I shared how much easier meal planning makes my life. It really makes a huge difference when I’m not scrambling around trying to figure out what to make for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

Here’s the thing, I wasn’t super thrilled with any of this week’s sales – either Aldi, Walmart, HEB, or Kroger – well, there were a few small things at Kroger, like $0.89 pineapple, and admittedly, the $1.99 beef isn’t bad, so I guess there’s that.

So this meal plan is based less on sales, and more on basics, and always, the idea is to have real food meals, using affordable ingredients – in other words, this should be an affordable real food meal plan. 

How do you find the most affordable prices on real food?

• Shop at discount, or plane-jane stores like Aldi
• Buy frozen produce, especially if you have a Costco membership
• Buy meat in bulk through Zaycon Fresh (more about getting the best meat prices here)
• Check your local sales flyers

Get the meal plan:

Other things to note:

• I’d love to include recipes in these meal plans, but since I’m limited on time, that’s not happening for now.
• I plan for 1 pound of meat for meal (lunch and dinner) for our family of four, so this shopping list calls for a 5lb bag of chicken, and 6lbs of ground beef. Using the $1.99 beef from Kroger, and the $1.99 frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts from Walmart the week’s meat should cost $21.94 (I know a lot of us stock up on deep sales and use Zaycon Fresh for meat, which will make it much cheaper!)
• The shopping list assumes you have some basics in your pantry like salt and pepper, spices, and oil for sautéing.

That’s about it!