Meal plan for this month: Breakfast and Lunch

Now that my cupboards no longer look like this I have some nummy food planned for my family. I usually meal plan for a whole month but this month is different. We are going to be remodeling our bathroom in a few weeks. Yay! But we only have one bathroom so we have to move out while the remodel is being done.

We will be staying with my in-laws during the remodel so my MIL and I will join forces and do all of our meals together. I'll do more shopping then but for now this is what I have planned for us to be eating.

Breakfast:

I stopped buying cereal awhile ago because it is just so expensive for our family to eat. Our main choices for breakfast are oatmeal or eggs and toast, both served with fruit. This month I bought a few containers of yogurt for the kids, too. Because I can't eat eggs I usually rotate my breakfast between yogurt, cottage cheese, and oatmeal.

Hot Hubby doesn't do oatmeal so he usually gets a breakfast like this.

Strawberry oatmeal with pecans

It may sound boring but I make sure to change things up. Oatmeal is easy to change with different fruits or spices. I like to use left over pasta to make fritatas or omlettes. I also buy a package of pancake mix every few months and we do pancakes on Saturdays.

How Jackson feels about breakfast

This may sound like too much cooking, and sometimes it feels that way, but most of the seven years of our marriage HH has been home for breakfast so I've tried to make big meals for him and also make it special like most families do for dinner because sometimes it is the meal we eat together as a family. And since I'm home a lot it's not as big a deal for me to cook. Also, I just really like to cook.

Lunch:

I try to keep lunch fairly simple. We usually have fruits and veggies with pb&j, homemade mac n' cheese, meat sandwiches, or, our favorite, a snacky lunch.

For sandwiches I save a lot of money by making my own bread. I try to make one batch every week which gives me three loaves. I get a few cans of chicken every month and I buy Kirkland brand tri-pack lunch meats from Costco. They have turkey and "pam" and Amelia calls it. We like the "pam" the best. In an attempt to use what I had on hand, this last month I used tortillas to make sandwiches for my kids and they loved it. I bought one package of tortillas just for that for this month. It's cheaper than bread so if I don't get a chance to make bread I don't feel bad about making them sandwich roll ups.

I stopped buying mac n' cheese and started making my own to try to save money. This was a big step for me because I'm a Kraft girl through and through. I thought I'd never be able to give the stuff up, but in the last few years it has started tasting more chemically to me. To make mine I use these amounts per box of regular mac n' cheese:

1&1/2 cups elbow noodles
1/4 c butter
1/4 c milk
1/2 c parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

I get big bags of elbow noodles and I buy the parmesan in bulk. Make it like you would a box of macaroni. My kids have loved this. You can also just do noodles, butter, and cheese. Amelia was the only one who didn't really care for it that way, but they all love it when I use milk too.

And then there's the snacky lunch. Snacky lunch is a favorite from my childhood. My kids love it just as much as me and my siblings did. Snacky lunch is basically finger foods with dip. We do lots of fruits and veggies with a little bit of meat, cheese, olives, and sometimes some crackers. We use ranch, ketchup, and peanut butter for our dips.

My snacky lunch

Snacky lunch for one of the kids

Even Jackson likes snacky lunch

Do you meal plan? What do you normally do for breakfast and lunch? Look for a post on dinners and snacks on Thursday!