Printable Meal Planners

Click HERE to be taken to Money Saving Mom's website to print out free printable meal planners. You'll find 1 week, seven day, 2 week, four week and monthly menu templates along with links for printable shopping lists that give you space to write the items you need, how much it costs and if you have a coupon for it.

How do you organize your meal plans and make a shopping list?

Easy Meals: Tuna loaves & 7 layer salad

Who doesn't love an easy meal that is healthy and cheap? Well, last week I made a 7 layer salad and mini tuna loaves for dinner. The tuna only cost me 10 cents per can. If you live in TN, KY or VA you may have a Super Dollar Discount store nearby. I had heard friends talking about it, but I was unsure about it and wondered if it was really worth it, if it was clean, if the food was good....I mean it's not like a big chain named store.

Well, it so happened one day that I was doing my grocery shopping at Walmart when I bumped into a good friend who told me that she had just gone to Super Dollar and bought tuna for 10 cents each! Needless to say, I was highly impressed and decided to venture over there and find out what type of store it really was. I was surprised - it wasn't dirty, the staff was nice, it was in a great location (across from Krogers - great idea to save on gas....buy what I can at Super Dollar, then move over to finish the shopping at Krogers) and the prices were great! I stacked up on tuna that day and we JUST finished it last week! Tuna is great because it keeps for so long. I would recommend that if you shop at discount stores - ALWAYS check the dates! You don't want to find yourself getting a great deal by buying spoiled and expired foods.

Recipes:

Mini-tuna loaves - makes six loaves

*2 cans tuna
*1/2 cup mayo
*3/4-1 cup bread crumbs (I like using the seasoned bread crumbs)

Mix ingredients together like this:
Shape into mini loaves with your hands and place in an ungreased Pyrex dish. Bake for 15-25 minutes or until loaves are lightly brown (as pictured below). Serve with veggies or a fresh salad.

For a seven layer salad you will need: lettuce, chopped carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, bacon bits, 2 hard boil eggs, small bag of frozen peas and cheddar cheese. Then for the topping you will need sour cream and mayonnaise.

Layer the salad in a clear glass dish or a trifle dish to give it a pretty look. Start with lettuce and then build the salad layering carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and half a bag of frozen peas thawed. Top with chopped hard boiled eggs, bacon bits and cheddar cheese. You can either put the mayo/sour cream dressing on before the eggs, bacon and cheese or you can put it on top after you put them on. Mix approx 1/2 cup of sour cream with approx 3/4 cup of mayo. I didn't really measure how much I mixed together, so you may want to eye it instead of going with my measurements - just make sure you have more mayonnaise than sour cream.

Enjoy!

FREE PIZZA

Seriously, this week has been full of all sorts of free things: e-cookbooks, recipe magazines, free drinks at Starbucks and last but not least - free pizza from Little Caesars!

Yesterday from 4-7pm at our local Little Caesars they were giving away FREE hot and ready pizzas! Who could pass up a deal like that?! Due to the fact that I already had a meal made for our supper we decided to go pick up the pizza after we ate and then just put it in the fridge and warm it up for dinner tonight. The pizza was one of those local facebook deals, where if you liked their page you could print a coupon(s) for FREE pizza. It was limit 1 coupon per person - which means that both my hubby and I could of gotten 1 pizza each, but I figured that it would of be a little much for the two of us - we'd probably be eating pizza the rest of the week!

There is one thing that I've learned while making meals for two - finish up leftovers!!! We have a side-by-side fridge and I've finally mastered the trick of fitting ALL our food in the thing! As the meal planner and the cook, I must make recipes that will fit other meals. For example, this week I made Parmesan chicken, potato casserole (recipe to come soon!), green beans, cottage cheese rolls (recipe coming soon!) and pumpkin pie! I made that on Friday evening when the weather was dark, rainy, cool and just the perfect evening for a candlelight dinner. We are still eating the green beans, potato casserole (I'll finish the last of it up for lunch today), and the pumpkin pie! Once the chicken was finished, I made a 9x13 pan of crab meat lasagna on Monday and we will finish that up tomorrow (since we're having pizza tonight!) and the green beans. Before I made the chicken meal, I had made a seven-layer salad and served mini-tuna loaves with it - yummy! Check back soon for recipes!

Tonight, I consider to be a real budget menu meal - free pizza which will be served with either fresh cut veggies or a salad.

What are some great budget meals that you've made this month?

**FREE** Cooking Magazine!

FREE SAVEUR magazine 1 year subscription!

CLICK HERE

All you need to do is fill out your name, address and email and click the little box that says, "Please don't send me any other special offers" that is at the bottom, then wait several weeks for the first issue to show up in your mailbox!

We currently get issues from Field & Stream and Sport Fishing in the mail for FREE and haven't had a problem at all with them sending us junk, so I'm really looking forward to a recipe magazine and seeing what other lowcost meals I can make with my $150 per month budget!

I had never heard of Saveur before, so I just got on their website and oh, wow! I can't wait for their magazine to come in the mail! http://www.saveur.com/ - check out their recipes! YUMMY!

** FREE TODAY ONLY! **

Here is a link for a FREE ebook for great slowcooker recipes! This is an adobe document and has 169 pages of recipes! Lots of soups recipes that are great for fall weather! :)

The FREE slow cooker ebook, is normally sold for $7.95 and is FREE today ONLY - so let your friends know.

CLICK HERE

Use coupon code FBCPMOLLY at checkout and you'll get the book completely FREE!