Meal plan for the week and other frugal accomplishments

We're 11 days into the New Year and have yet to have any food wasted.  Except for the rice krispie snowmen that didn't taste very good but I'm counting that as more of an art project.  Little R liked hers but Big R didn't want hers so I threw hers out. I thought they tasted pretty gross and will be surprised if Little R eats all of hers.

Here's the meal plan for the week:

• Sunday - Last night I made a 3 lb. meatloaf with one of the ground turkey chubs I bought at Aldi for only $5.99.  Tonight will be leftover Meatloaf served with salad and maybe a box stuffing that I got on Clearance from Aldi after thanksgiving.
• Monday - Pulled out a bag of frozen black beans and a bag of frozen pulled pork from the freezer to thaw.  Dinner will be pork and beans served over brown rice and topped with cheddar cheese and sour cream.
• Tuesday - Frozen lasagna and Rolls - I love my mom's lasagna.  She made a huge tray for Christmas and then extra smaller trays to hand out as gifts.  It was a great gift idea.  I bought a few packs of brown and serve rolls on clearance from Aldi for only $.49 after Christmas.
• Wednesday -  Leftover pork and beans and lasagna.
• Thursday  - Baked Chicken 
• Friday - Leftover Chicken.  Possibly try to make chicken and dumplings in crock pot but I don't have any cream of soups or chicken stock left.  

Frugal Happenings

• Combined baking last night to make the most of heating the oven and used up some milk and apples that needed to be used.
• 3 lb. meatloaf
• a pan of baked apple brown sugar oatmeal
• a pan of baked apples with brown sugar, butter and cinnamon (One of Big R's favorite things.  She almost ate the whole pan except I made her save me some.)  
• Washed and cut up vegetables for the week.  If I don't have them ready, I never use them and they will get wasted.
• Haven't left the house since Thursday Night since I've been sick.
• Printed out a $5 off coupon when we went out to dinner on Thursday.
• Psych Season 8 is finally on Netflix.  Mr. R and I have been watching this on this nights off instead of renting Falling Skies (which is another show we are in the middle of watching.)
• Used a $50 Norwegian Cruise Line gift card that I got from signing up for the NCL credit card to pre-pay our gratuities for the cruise next month.  I paid the remaining balance with my NCL credit card. Already have the money saved to pay this but by using the credit card we earned double points. I'm hoping to be able to earn enough points for another $50 on board credit before the cruise.  
• I have talked with everyone in our house about trying to keep lights turned off when not in use.  We'll see if it actually happens.
• Monitored Data usage on cell phones to not go over.  Not sure if we used a lot more data than normal or if it's because Verizon pro-rated our data usage for the month when I lowered our plan but we have almost been out of data for about 2 weeks.  We went from 2 GB each (which we weren't using) down to a shared 2 GB.  The cheaper plan with save us almost $10 per month.  We made it with just .162 GB to spare.  If we went over, we would have been charged $10 which would eliminate our savings.  I think this was just a one time thing because of changing our plans but I'll keep an eye on it next month just to be sure.
• Read 3 books on my kindle that I borrowed from the library.

Not so Frugal Happenings

• Went out to dinner on Thursday.  Our plan has been to go out to dinner once every pay period.  It was fun even though 2 of us weren't feeling 100%.  We used a $5 off coupon but after tip still spent $38.  
• Mr. R picked up my prescription skin cream for Acne.  Since it's the beginning of the year we have to meet our prescription deductible.  My skin cream was $67!  Luckily our prescription deductible is only $50 per person.  The prescription is supposed to be filled every 2 months and usually costs about $27 out of pocket.  I can usually stretch it to only need to pick up a new tube every 3 months.