The main thought behind building my menu was to base it on a standard week, with Monday through Friday being the easier days and Saturday and Sunday being bigger, more special meals. Of course I have each day broken down into breakfast and lunch and dinner as well.
Let's start with breakfast:
As it's written right now, breakfast Monday through Friday will consist of two hard boiled eggs and two pieces of toast. Along with the eggs and toast I'll have either bacon and a glass of milk or a fruit smoothie, alternating between the two daily. As for the weekends, that's when I take the time to cook myself up some eggs over easy, an omelet, or some other special breakfast that takes a little more time. I personally like to make some special hash browns or corned beef hash with some poached eggs! My breakfast plan might not seem very exciting but the hard boiled eggs and the bacon can be prepared ahead of time for the entire week and the toast and smoothies only take minutes to make. With the way I have my menu planned it should cost me an estimated $1.50 per meal. Not too bad if it works out that way! Obviously we'll see if it does once this thing gets going. That's basically my breakfast menu, I'm sure I'll be making adjustments to it in the future but that's what I've got so far.
And on to lunch:
So lunch is a little more difficult. Eggs and toast for breakfast is easy and I'll never get sick of that, but I'm definitely going to need more variety in my lunches. I plan on using leftovers from the weekend dinners for lunches on Mondays and Tuesdays. For the rest of the week my lunches are mainly going to be a starch (rice, pasta, couscous, etc.) some vegetables and a little meat or deli meat sandwiches, alternating between the two. This gives me a ton of options! Whether it's stir fried vegetables with shrimp or fettuccine Alfredo with broccoli and chicken or any number of soups or salads to go along with a sammich. The sky's the limit as long as you have some basic ingredients and a little imagination.
That's about it for right now ...
I'm gonna start working on writing up the dinner portion and the first month's shopping list. Gotta get ahold of a decent camera and also do some (very light) inventory so I can see what food and supplies I have on hand. Then I should be able to show, pretty well, how I get the most out of a small food budget starting with basically nothing. Stay tuned,comment, and share!!
