Breakfast for dinner is great – we love doing pancakes. We haven’t done that for a while and now that you’ve mentioned it, I want some pancakes for dinner soon.

Consider what your family is going to eat for breakfast and lunch on most days during the week your shopping for. These seem to be the easiest meals to plan for (cereal, fruit, eggs, bread, etc.) Add a couple of simple to prepare meals like some frozen pasta and sauces. Prepared pasta costs more than unprepared ($2.00 or $3 more) but still cheaper and easier to have a meal at home. I’ve also read about cutting the budget WAY DOWN if you make breakfast for dinner one night a week too.
When you do have to eat out, consider purchasing your prepared meal at the supermarket. You can get a pretty good meal out of there for less than sitting in a restaraunt. For example, the supermarket in my city sells a roasted rosemary chickens for $7.99 and large prepared salads (ceasar salad, cobb salads, etc.) for about $5.00. If you have a bag of frozen vegetables at home you have a healthy dinner for the familly for about $14.00 bucks.

We’re a family of three and we’re all good eaters but this will leave us some left over chicken which will make either a pasta salad with chicken. We cook bow tie pasta, add some grape tomatoes, basil, and feta cheese. Viola a meal for the next day.

If you’re a larger family than us this might just get you by for dinner. But if you start to consider what costs a family of four or more to go out to a resteraunt (even a cheap one) including tip, you could spend over twice the amount blowing your entire weekly food budget .

Best of luck!