Meal planning

Total cost of groceries for 5 days: $85
For Breakfast, lunch, dinner & snacks for 5 people.
Per meal $5.66 per person $1.13
(Didn't subtract out the snack cost so its even lower)

I get a lot of questions on how I meal plan. The attached pictures show my meals written out (sorry for the short hand) on my kitchen calendar. The other picture shows my groceries from my trip.

I spent $85 total at Fresh & Easy and Albertsons. They are next to each other and both had sales. I didn't clip coupons. I spent 20 minutes looking at both store ads. Albertsons had three store savings in the ad I clipped. I clipped fresh & easy coupon $5 off each $25 spent which saved me $20 and I used a $5 credit I accumulated from their point system.

I wrote out on paper the meals I would make this week and any ingredients & sides needed. I take this withe to the store so I know when things expire & when I'm using them.
I looked at our weekly calendar & wrote out the night we would cook the meal based on our schedule. If I don't have any items on hand I add them to my grocery list explained below.

It took me 10 min at Albertsons to buy 3 things (rotisserie chicken cooked & ground turkey) then went to fresh & easy (it's a cold day). Fresh & easy took 40 min but I had Grace with me so that's good! I use a iPhone / online shopping app called Cozi www.cozi.com it makes it so easy to keep a shopping list going. I referred to my written menu just in case any items were expiring soon.

You can see we have a variety of fruits, veggies, starch, "sometimes foods" and protein. For example: watermelon, blue berries, zucchini, whole wheat bread, wheat pretzel sticks, macaroni n cheese.
But overall easy meals and healthy.
Each meal will take 20-45 minutes to prep & cook. But this is really the same amount of time it would take us to drive through or sit down but much healthier & cheaper.

Hope this helps!