I have the luxury of living close to Houston, Texas, which means I have access to the best grocery stores. Anyone from outside of Texas just doesn’t know how good quality HEB is. They hit different. My other favorite grocery store is Kroger because they have amazing deals. Their Buy 5 save 5 gets me every time. The digital deals? On point. If you’re a soda drinker you can find most weeks they have buy 2, get 2 free. My shopping and planning journey is pretty meticulous and it starts on Wednesday. I look at both of the sale ads for the week and use it plus recipes I’ve favorited and saved over the week to plan the meals I make. I usually leave one free night for take-out or easy fun stuff but other than that dinners are all planned out. My schedule starts from Saturday (the day I do grocery shopping) to Friday, I try to keep the dinners easier on the nights I play games with the bois and love utilizing my crock pot. Let’s go over this week as a great example!
Today is Saturday, and I got a microwavable brisket from Costco and I’m going to serve it with boracho beans from HEB and corn on the cob nuggets from Kroger. I like to cook the corn in the air fryer, brush it with butter and use the everything but the elote seasoning. Chef’s Kiss! The beans I got from one of HEB’s meal deals. They like to do a thing where you buy the protein advertised and you get like 4-5 things free. It’s a really good deal. This one was a family pack of sausages and I got corn (used last week), the beans, some HEB brand oreo cookies for free. They had sparkling flavored water but since it wasn’t sugar free, I opted not to grab it since nobody else would drink it. Kiddo will eat the oreos eventually so it was a good deal.
Tomorrow will be a recipe that I took from Southern Living Magazine. I have a bunch of subscriptions to cooking magazines. I get Food Network, Southern Living, Food and Wine, Pioneer Woman, and Real Simple. I go through the magazines when I get them and tear out recipes that I think are interesting, and then I set them aside. If I make them and it hits, it goes into rotation. This dish is an “in rotation” one. It’s stuffed pork loin with bacon and greens. HEB had a sale on pork loan, the large ones. I managed to cut it into quarters for four different meals, wrap up the other three individually and put them into the freezer It calls for mustard greens but I prefer turnip greens, so I got those. Bacon I had from a sale last week. It will be served with mixed brown and wild rice and peas and carrots.
Monday comes from the Food Network pasta edition. It’s listed as fettuccine with carrots and peppers. This is one that I’m going to alter for weight loss purposes. I’m going to substitute the fettuccini with Banza spaghetti (made from chickpeas). I’m also going to add some of the leftover sausages I put in the freezer from the HEB meal deal. This has carrots, squash, and bell pepper in it as well. I’m very excited to try this one!
Tuesday is an egg roll bowl, so I grabbed a package of cole slaw mix to save time and tears on my part. It’s got the shredded cabbage already ready to go, along with carrots. I got some ground pork to season and got some ginger to throw in as well as garlic. This is a fun favorite one for me, but I have to alter it where it’s not as “Asian tasting” to keep the hubbers happy.
Wednesday is a favorite. I have chicken breasts in the freezer already divided up for easy grabbing from a previous Costco trip. I saw a video on Tiktok where they made chicken tenders and fries that were around 550 calories for the whole plate, so I am going to recreate those. I am so excited for this one. I might try to make a low-cal version of the McDonald’s creamy chili dip to go with it.
Thursday this week is my free day. I have plenty to pull out of the freezer with the quick meal prepping I have done, and I can grab something fast for the boys. I am excited for this week and hopefully can post some recipes!
