Menu Planning - Pantry Challenge Update

One of my goals in the http://www.goodcheapeats./ was to start my menu planning.  I'm happy to report that this was my second week of menu planning and I've had some success with bringing down my grocery bill.

I'm going to be the first to admit that our grocery budget is pretty crazy.  We are at a time in our life where I don't have time to be running around to different stores looking for deals and/or spending hours cutting and clipping coupons.  I've found the lowest price store in our area and I shop it faithfully.  Usually I do take a couple of minutes to see if I can find any coupons on line before shopping as well as picking up coupons that the store lays out for us.  That's about the extent of my couponing. 

The company I work for decided to implement summer hours this year so I was able to leave work at 2:30 this Friday.  I went home, made my menu, inventoried my pantry & fridge then shopped.  Guess what, I saved ~$40 this week - AWESOME!  My grocery bill budget is (you better sit down) $200/week.  Typically we spend between $175 & $200, this includes our food, dog food & supplies such as laundry detergent, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc.  With pretty much four adults eating, one of which is a weight lifter and needs LOTS of protein I've found that planning on spending the money is better than being frustrated every week because we are over budget.  This week my grocery bill was $137.52, pretty sweet.  We bought pretty much everything we normally buy, the exception being I didn't over buy because I did the inventory.

Here's the menu that I planned for the coming week.  Not to different from last week but it works for us.

Breakfast
Cereal
Blueberry Muffins (from scratch this week with fresh blueberries from the farmer's market)
Cinnamon Rolls

Lunch
Pizza rolls
Personal pizzas
Bagel sandwiches
Corn dogs
Hot dogs

Dinner
Steaks on the grill (or dinner out, we haven't decided yet)
Taco's/taco salad
Mac n Cheese
Hamburgers
Brats
Haddock

How about you, did you do any menu planning this week?

I'm also posting this up over at I'm an Organizing Junkie, another great blog I've recently found with some really good ideas.