Meal Planning from the Pantry, Freezer, and Sales Ads

One big way that I have found to save money at the grocery store is to make a menu plan, which is why I post it on my blog each Monday. More specifically, I make a menu plan based on what I already have around the house combined with what is on sale that week. While I don't always stick to my exact menu plan each week, it provides a guide both to keep me from making unnecessary purchases and from running to the store at the last minute for missing ingredients. Tonight is a good example of a time that I did not stick to my menu but still made a meal using ingredients I already had plus some sale items from Publix today.

We had cheese tortellini with chicken, homemade cheesy garlic rolls, salad, and honey glazed carrots.

The cheese tortellini is BOGO at Publix this week, and there is a $1.00 printable coupon available here, so it was $1.25 for the bag. It was enough for all four of us for dinner plus one serving of leftovers.
I cooked a whole package of boneless skinless chicken breasts that I got at Kroger last week when it was $1.99/lb using a $1.00 coupon. The rest will be used in dinner tomorrow. I seasoned it with Italian Herb and Garlic Sea Salt McCormick Grinders. These are also BOGO at Publix this week. I did buy two more, but these particular bottles are from the last time these were BOGO.

I have plenty of olive oil since it has been BOGO at Publix a few times recently; the Crisco kind is BOGO this week.

I did splurge on this package of Knorr seasoning since it is Friday after all, and I didn't feel like making sauce from scratch. It would have been cheaper to make my own, of course. Dave and Alexa are not big tomato sauce fans, which is why I served the tortellini in a white sauce.
I made a salad from the salad that is BOGO this week at Publix, the dressing that I got BOGO last week, and the coupons that I used a BOGO coupon on that I got in the Publix Family Style magazine that I received last week.
I sauteed the seasoned chicken in olive oil until done and then saved 2/3 of it for tomorrow.

Here are the yummy, garlic cheese rolls. I won't mention how many of them I ate, nor how many people in my family were snacking on them while I was cooking dinner.

Here is the finished product including the Green Giant honey glazed carrots that I served with it. I have no memory of when I bought these, but I'm guessing they were on sale and had a coupon. :)

So there you have it, a yummy, cheap meal made with stockpile ingredients and sale items.