February Menu Plan

This month is all about using up some of what we have.  I did take advantage of Harris Teeter's Super Doubles event, but aside from that, we're really going to try to stay away from the grocery store except for absolute necessities.  I plan to use some of what we have in our freezer and pantry, including some things like powdered milk, frozen veggies from our CSA, frozen bread, and scraps that have been saved for making stock.  We're also going to continue to take advantage of gleaning from the food pantry to stretch our budget too.

We're also going to try to save some money on our electric bill with cooking too.  We'll work to use our crock pot to do the heavy lifting and use the microwave or toaster oven for reheating.  We'll only use our upper oven, which is smaller, for baking when necessary.

Here's the plan:

Breakfasts:  egg and cheese sandwiches, overnight oatmeal in the crock pot, smoothies using frozen fruit, french toast casserole with frozen blueberries, bagels and cream cheese, toast with jam, and whole wheat waffles with fruit and hard boiled eggs, winter squash muffins, strawberry cream cheese coffee cake, blueberry muffins, cappuccino chocolate chip muffins

Lunches:  leftovers filled in with fresh fruit or yogurt, egg salad sandwiches, PBJ

Dinners:  tomato basil soup (we make it without cream so it has other uses too), meatball subs with tomato basil soup as marinara, fajitas with rice, leftover turkey, and frozen peppers and onions, corn chowder with garlic toast, potato soup with homemade turkey stock and garlic toast, waffles with fruit and sausage, black beans and rice with fixin's and corn bread, black bean chili, homemade pizza (x4), french toast with smoothies and sausage, jambalya, crock pot Asian chicken over rice, veggie stir fry over rice with egg rolls

Batch cooking for freezer:  homemade turkey stock, homemade veggie stock, black beans, muffins

Special Meal:  We will celebrate Valentine's Day later in the month, so that my mom can keep little man overnight.  We'll do a dinner out and make some peppermint brownies with icecream as our dessert at home.  We'll do an early dinner and take advantage of a coupon we have, so that we can have time for an at home movie with dessert.  The cost of this meal will come out of our regular grocery budget, if possible.

Snacks:  popcorn, chocolate mint cookies (we have some cookie dough we purchased from a fundraiser that we need to use up), fresh fruit, nuts, toast and jam

Drinks:  water, hot tea, hot cocoa, maybe iced tea made with loose tea

What are you cooking up this month?  I'd love to hear from you!