| Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday |
| 30-Creamy Tomato Tortellini Soup --Pinterest XX | January --Italian Chicken XX | 1-Homemade Pizza XX | 2-Chicken Fajitas XX | 3-Meatloaf XX | 4-Chicken Parmesan XX | 5-Corn and Shrimp chowder—Pinterest my post about it here XX |
| 6-Hamburger Pinwheels—Hillbilly Housewife XX | 7-Honey Apricot Sesame Chicken XX | 8-Pork Lo Mein XX | 9- Raviolis XX | 10-Homemade chicken shake and bake XX | 11- Homemade Chicken Taquitos XX | 12-Cheeseburger Soup—Pinterest My post about it XX |
| 13-deli sandwiches----Apple Fritter Bread--Pinterest for ladies luncheon—My post about it here XX | 14-Spaghetti | 15-Lemon Chicken | 16-Toasty cheese Bake—a recipe from the 1970’s I grew up eating and found on Pinterest!!! My post here XX | 17-Pork Medallions | 18-Meatballs and rice XX | 19-Church Fellowship--Pizza Rolls/Walnut rasp. Torte XX |
| 20-Chicken and rice Casserole | 21--Cheesy Hamburger and broccoli—Pinterest XX | 22--chicken Marsala | 23--Tacos XX | 24--meatballs and veggies | 25--Fish Tacos XX | 26-Creamy bacon ranch chicken pasta orig. found on Pinterest |
| 27-Beef Stroganoff---Ended up eating Ravioli’s | 28-Italian Crockpot chicken XX | 29-Pork Tenderloin with honey---Ended up eating pizza from Aldi’s | 30-Sloppy Joes | 31-chicken pot pie | XX = Recipes that have been cooked for the month. |
So the month of December for our family was pretty rough in terms of finances. We had a paycheck the week before Thanksgiving and then no paycheck until the week of Christmas. Not an easy way to live, but when you have the Lord in your life, all things are possible and He will provide for your needs. We made it through with help from my parents, birthday money that I had received and was waiting to spend, help from my Sister and help from our Church!!
Being Self-employed there is always the chance that there will not be paychecks. So I sat down a week ago and made up a menu for the whole month of January to help me keep on track so that we did not spend any extra on eating out when that is just not an option.
I also changed our food budget based on an idea I read about over at: Bacon In My Pocket she has a modest grocery budget for the size of her family and she manages to set aside money every two weeks to go towards buying her meats at either Costco or Sam’s club depending on where you live in the U.S. I decided to put that plan into action. We currently have 120.00 a week set aside for our family of 8 for groceries. I changed it to be $100/week and set aside the extra $20 in a Sam’s Club envelope. This money is not to be spent but saved up for a trip to Sam’s Club once every 3 months. This is to then be the meat stock up. Having an extra stand up freezer out in our garage allows us to be able to stock up. We will be able to get large quantities of hamburger, chicken, etc. I calculate we will have approximately $240 to stock up at that time and once we have done that, it will free up my regular grocery budget for buying more fresh vegetables as well as other items for making some really nice dishes…
So in the meantime, here is our menu for January and I will try to post the recipes with pictures.
