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$5 Dinners | Budget Recipes, Meal Plans, Freezer Meals

Budget Recipes, Meal Plans, Freezer Meals and Cooking Tutorials for the Busy Home Chef

Save on Groceries in 2025

Scene from My Kitchen Counter at 7:18 AM…

October 1, 2012 by Erin, The $5 Dinner Mom 5 Comments

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So this was the scene on my kitchen counter at 7:18 this morning. I’m still adjusting to the fact that my kiddos have to be on the bus at 6:55 am…and we all have to be up by 6:15.

But…

The upside is that I can get a lot lot lot done right after they get on the bus, while littlest brother is still sleeping. This morning that meant getting food ready for my “week away.” Tonight I’m flying to Atlanta to co-host the annual Savvy Blogging Summit. I’m super PUMPED to get to see some of my favorite blogging friends, meet new blogging friends and help other bloggers learn how to transform their blogs into businesses!

While I know that my husband, my mom and our sitter are fully capable of holding down the fort while I’m gone, I like to make things as simple as possible for them. This morning’s task…dinners for the week.

In 30 minutes, I assembled 3 slow cooker packs and I browned 5 lbs. of ground beef (1 lb. for tacos, 1 lb. for spaghetti, and the other 3 lbs. I divided up and put in to the freezer.)

5 Meals, 30 minutes!

I recently discovered Sprouts grocery store in San Antonio. When I lived here as a kid, these were “Sun Harvest” stores…and only ‘crunchy people’ shopped there 😉 But I’ve fallen in love…they publish monthly sales, weekly sales and have “double dip Wednesdays,” which means that both the previous and upcoming weeks sale items are all on sale on Wednesdays. Much of the produce you see above came from last week’s “double dip” sale…sweet potatoes, organic baby carrots for $.99/bag, $.50 red peppers (I shared about the green peppers here on Facebook!), and baby red potatoes on sale too. And here’s then what I put together…

  • Slow Cooker Sweet Potato and Chicken Curry (and I threw in a diced red pepper for kicks!)
  • Slow Cooker Chicken with Potatoes, Carrots, Tomatoes, Red Pepper & Italian Seasoning
  • Slow Cooker Chicken with Potatoes, Carrots, Tomatoes & Italian Seasoning
  • Taco Meat with Homemade Taco Seasoning
  • Spaghetti Sauce (mixed up the meat and sauce and left in a storage container in the fridge for easy reheating!)

And later today I plan to make a loaf of whole wheat banana bread and pumpkin bread…boys love this in their lunchboxes!

Anyone else batch cooking or freezing cooking this week? Would love to know what you’re up to in the kitchen!

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Filed Under: Budget Friendly Meal Plans, Budget Friendly Recipes, Slow Cooker Recipes

Comments

  1. Jocelyn Pascall says

    October 1, 2012 at 12:29 pm

    6:55am for the bus!!?!?! WOW! That is crazy. Nice work on the batch cooking though. I will not be batch cooking this weekend, but will be doing it the weekend of Oct. 13 – 14. My husband will be out of town so I am planning on watching old movies and batch cooking. I’m actually really looking forward to it 🙂

    Reply
  2. susanne says

    October 1, 2012 at 12:29 pm

    cheap wheat flour + cheap eggs + cold rainy weather = baking in my house today!!

    plan on knocking out some muffins for quick snacks and breakfasts!

    Reply
  3. Jennifer G says

    October 1, 2012 at 8:13 pm

    I love batch cooking and am always watching what’s on sale. The freezers are guilt of corn and spaghetti sauce from the summer harvest. But depending on the meat on sale it ideally is making meatloaves, shepherd’s pies, meatballs or precooking chicken or cutting for different recipes when needed. I love when I can pull a complete meal out of my freezers and just heat it up for busy weeknights.

    Reply
  4. karen says

    October 1, 2012 at 10:03 pm

    I want to live where they have “double dip Wednesdays” !!!!!!what a great promo

    Reply
  5. Becky L says

    October 1, 2012 at 11:21 pm

    I am going to make up some applesauce from free apples I picked up from church that someone left. Probably just freeze it as I usually do. Then a couple days from now, cook up some tomatoes, that I got for free, at dentist office on Sat. I cook that up with onion and peppers then freeze that in pint ziplock bags. I use that for soup/stews. Have a good trip. Never have been to a blog convention.

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