Punk Barbie: My $80 grocery budget and meal prepping plan

So I thought I'd get into a little personal note about my journey for a healthy lifestyle. Six months ago, I was living at home and eating fast food every night. I'm 25 and a college student, so this shouldn't be too surprising to anyone who has ever been in that situation. I didn't take the time to go buy food at the store because I didn't know how to cook. What would happen is that I would spend an alarming 50 bucks on food that I would burn or dislike after making. I pretty much gave up and accepted the fast food lifestyle.

6 months later here I am living in a beautiful house with my boyfriend and working on changing my lifestyle around to be more healthy for the both of us. My boyfriend knew how to cook less than I did so it was a challenge to learn everything on my own. What we've done to create this is to keep a budget of about $80 every two or three weeks to get food for the house. Since I'm the only one cooking, I've developed a grocery list that is only made up of fresh produce, fresh meats, and then about $20 to spend on seasoning and other condiments/spices.
Here is the picture:

This consisted of about 20 or 30 dollars in fresh meats (on the left.) I've got about 3 to 4 pounds of chicken, 2 pounds of ground beef (I buy kroger trim round beef because this is kroger filet minon and top meats combined together which is way better quality than a packaged pound of ground beef.) I have over a pound of ribs and a package of spicy Italian sausage.
Then I have all of fresh fruits and produce in the middle. It is easy to throw peppers in with any meals and the more colorful you make the meal, the healthier it is for you. I also always make a fruit bowl and a salad pre made for my boyfriend. He likes these to be made up so that it is not only easier to pack for work, but harder to say no to the healthier options in the fridge. Here's a glimpse:

Another way that I make things easier on me is to meal prep while I already have the items out and ready to unload from the store. I always open the packages of the meat and place half in a freezer bag and store them frozen while placing the other halves into marinated seasoning to place in the fridge. This is about a five or ten minute process and saves me about 30 minutes every time I cook. This is because meat tastes so much better when laid out in seasoning for a day or so. It also means I don't have to come home and marinade, wait for an hour, and then cook for an hour. Now I can just throw them in a baking pan or get the crock pot going before work and it will be done in no time.

Usually at the store, I will spend about another 25 to 20 dollars on seasonings and condiments. Usually kroger has 10 for $10 sales and I like to take advantage of cheap deals and stock up the pantry. So between these items and the packets that I buy ($1 a piece), I can try a lot of new flavors and try out new recipes I find on pinterest and apps that I have on my phone like the food network.

With the remaining amount I will either buy the household items that we need or take the time to buy a little but from the frozen sections. Now the biggest mistake I made in the past is buying frozen chicken breasts, frozen pizzas, and fries and such. It is so much healthier to buy fresh because the frozen meals you eat have so much sodium because that's how they preserve the items for so long. They have tons of unhealthy chemicals due to packaging and it's actually the same price to buy fresh. This week I decided to buy the jtm hoagie kits and some garlic knots instead of making home made garlic bread. Little things like these make it easier on me once or twice a week to just relax and not cook.

It's also healthier and just as easy to make your own pizza or make your own potatoes wedges. For example, I just cut up some potatoes, use an it loan herb seasoning, throw in a clove up garlic chopped, and cover the pan in aluminum foil. I throw this in the oven for thirty minutes with some cheese or maybe bacon and then you have the best side of potatoes you'll ever eat. And if you buy a bag of potatoes, you're only using three from the whole bag to have an entire tray of potatoes like so:

When you think about how you are going to eat out a couple of nights a week, you can really start to see how much money 80 bucks will buy you. We haven't went shopping in a month and we got the same amount of food last time as we did in this trip. Taking advantage of online coupons is a great way to start saving money as well.

What are you health tips and grocery plams? Share and help us learn together!!!

Until next time,

Tash