Weekly Grocery budget & Gluten Free Meal Plan

This week we received the results of some blood work Joshua had, and we learned that they are 90% sure he has celiac's, as well as really low iron. We have been doing a gluten free diet on and off for about a year because he was showing some symptoms but it was so nice to allow him to "cheat" every once in a while.

But now, it's real, and we have to make it a priority to remove gluten from all of our meals, which makes feeding our family a little more difficult and requires a little more thought.

I scoured the internet for some kid-friendly ideas and this week's menu went over so well that I might make most of these appear regularly in our future meal plans.

Here's what we ate this week: (including the kids!)

Monday - Parmesan Meatloaf Cups, mashed potatoes & green beans
Tuesday - Gluten free stove top Macaroni & Cheese and broccoli (this was amazing and could be made with regular pasta)
Wednesday - Slow cooker Zesty BBQ Chicken (the link didn't work for this, sorry!) with homemade french fries and peas
Thursday - Ranch chicken Nuggets and cucumbers
Friday - Homemade Gluten Free Pizza with Salad
Saturday - Dinner with Friends

Abigail loved making the Ranch Chicken Nuggets (don't worry we washed her hands really well!)

Grocery shopping went awesome this week. Shoprite had so many great deals that it made it super easy to stay within our budget. We also had a lot of basics such as chicken, ground turkey and vegetables still in our fridge/freezer so we saved money by not having to buy those this week.

My first Shop-rite trip I scored all this for $11.56! I got 6 boxes of taco shells, 2 guacamoles, and 6 cans of soup for free.

I then went to Aldi to grab some of our staples like pickles, bananas, cereal, milk and produce for the week. I spent $54.46 which seemed crazy compared to my Shoprite trip.  

I made one final trip to Shoprite at the end of the week, to grab a few more things and ended up getting 8 packages of batteries and 8 bags of steamfresh veggies for free. (Not pictured was a pot roast) My total there was $26.05.

  We ended up spending only $84.77 this week...giving us $9.19 in overage that will be rolled over to next week. It's always nice when there are great sales to allow us to stay in budget.

If you have any gluten free, kid friendly meal ideas, I would LOVE to hear them!