Whoa. Here are our April 2023 groceries and meals we ate!

Groceries we bought

My big shopping day this month included two trips to Sam’s (in one day, ha). First I went in once for non-perishables, left to do other shopping I needed to get done, then went back in for fresh produce, refrigerated, and frozen items before driving an hour home.

I was preparing for Easter that day, so along with the normal produce I always get, I also picked up fresh asparagus and garden green beans.

I was thrilled that day to find a great deal on chicken legs. Sam’s and Costco always have big packs of drumsticks for $0.98/pound, which is a fantastic price. But this particular day they had a $1.50 off deal – no limit – so I got five big packs of chicken legs for around $3.50 each. SUCH a great price for good quality meat!

I splurged on those coconut crisps – have you had them? We love them at our house! I also bought a lot of tortilla chips this month because we had graduation parties to celebrate. More on that below.

Here’s the back of my van after my big Sams’s day. All this cost $817. Actually, that was just for the food. We budget paper products and household supplies separately.

The whole family gets involved with bringing in the groceries from the van when I get home. It’s like Christmas, seeing what I got at the store that day!

Another day, I stopped at our local grocery store to get some fresh fruits and veggies. I always check their meat markdowns while I’m there, so I got a great deal on a pork roast and some smoked sausage.

Here’s our 1-yo helping me take groceries out of bags another day I went to get some WIC items.

Keith made a tower of canned goods and he was so proud of how it was taller than him. :)

The rest of the month we grabbed fruits and veggies as needed, plus a few additional items we needed for Elias’ and our daughter-in-law, Kelsey’s college grad party. I went slightly over our $1,200 budget for the month and felt great that I kept it so close since we are/were preparing to host extras!

Meals we Ate

We had a gorgeous April, so we ate a lot of our meals outside. (We like it when the kids drop their crumbs in the yard instead of in our kitchen, ha.) Malachi had his senior soccer season so we took a lot of meals to the field too.

Early in the month, I made a platter of chicken salad sandwiches and took them to the trampoline for the kids to eat. I threw out some bananas and that was dinner. :)

For that week’s soccer game, I made 16 hamburgers and packed them up for all of us to eat while we watched.

The next soccer game’s dinner featured peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with apple slices and grapes.

One weekend for lunch I made Salmon Burgers (recipe coming this month). We ate them with carrots, honeydew melon, and pear slices.

One morning I was able to get some baking done. First, I divided up my big bag of whole wheat pastry flour from Azure Standard, putting it into gallon-sized bags for the freezer.

Then I made this Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread/Muffin recipe x6 along with some scrambled eggs. I froze most of the bread/muffins to serve on other days as needed.

I had marinated some chicken breasts last month, so one night I smoked them and served them with green beans and fruit. (We were in a hurry to get Elias out the door that night so I brought the chicken in from the smoker early and finished cooking it in a skillet.)

Here are some of the kids eating Pumpkin Bread and peaches outside while they wait for the rest of dinner.

I packed 22 hotdogs to take for us to eat during Malachi’s soccer game one night. There were only three hotdogs left at the end of the evening. :)

The day before Easter I prepped as much food as possible. (We ended up having 27 people share our celebration that day!) I made coffee ice cubes so that guests could make a fancy Cold Coffee.

Our Easter meal included a sprial-cut baked ham, huge pan of party potatoes, roasted green beans, roasted asparagus, corn, rolls, fresh pineapple, grapes, and cheesecake.

During Easter break, we spent a day at the zoo. Asa’s wife Eva plus Justus and his wife Kelsey were able to join us and help with all the kids. We packed summer sausage, cheese, crackers, carrots, hummus, applesauce, and chips for lunch.

That evening, we all met at a park for dinner (Asa joined us after work!). Kelsey and I ran to Costco and grabbed a $4.98 rotisserie chicken, strawberries, grapes, blueberries, pretzel bites, and soft serve ice cream (because we adults needed a treat after all the fun at the zoo!).

Justus was awesome to pull all the meat off of our rotisserie chicken while we all helped ourselves. :)

A bit out of order, here’s what we ate for breakfast before leaving for the zoo that morning. I used the rest of our Easter ham from the day before to make an Egg Casserole.

One evening I smoked marinated chicken thighs and served them with roasted carrots/broccoli, cream cheese corn, grapes, and garlic bread.

I knocked out a bunch of breakfast/snack prep one morning, making a big pan of Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Bars, a double batch of Bran Muffins, and a double batch of Applesauce Bread/Muffins.

I baked a huge bag of dino nuggets from Sam’s one evening and served them with pears and carrots.

On an unusually hot day in April, I declared it to be too hot to cook. So I quickly blended up this 3-Ingredient Beans and Cheese Salsa Dip for dinner, which we ate with chips and carrots with ranch or peanut butter. (Our 7-yo girlie likes her carrots with peanut butter, and if it gets the veggies down, this is just fine with me!) Side note: Skippy makes a 3-ingredient peanut butter now that has ingredients I don’t feel bad about. Maybe one day I’ll go back to making our peanut butter again? Maybe.

I can’t remember what we were doing this particular day but it was a full one so I resorted to something easy from the freezer! We declared it to be an ORANGE meal with our favorite Orange Chicken from Sam’s, oranges, and carrots. :) (By the way, the CaraCara oranges are a favorite around here! Pink on the inside and extra delicious!)

I used up a bunch of blackening bananas to make two loaves of banana bread and two pans of muffins. We froze some and ate some with scrambled cheese eggs and fruit one Saturday.

Keith is here eating his first plate of food one night. This is usually how I feed my kids: I give them a plate with their fruit and veggie first, then I give them the main dish. Otherwise, they tend to fill up on the main dish and are suddenly “not hungry” for their veggies. Keith shocks us by eating his spinach without any dip. Way to go, Popeye!

This box of food is what I packed to take to Lincoln one day when we were going to spend the day with our married kids there. I packed frozen chicken burritos to warm up, carrots and hummus, chips and salsa, peach cups, and those awesome coconut crisps that Sam’s and Costco sometimes have!

For a lovely, warm, but windy, soccer game, I made 12 melted sub sandwiches. Some had turkey (from the big bird I baked last month) with ranch and cheese, and a few had just ham and cheese.

I cut the sandwiches all in half to make them easier to eat, and put them into ziplock bags to stay warm. I also packed veggie straws, oranges, and applesauce squeezies.

I decided to take a picture of my lovely swirling smoothie one day when I was making it for lunch. This includes a 1/2 pound of fresh greens, along with frozen fruit and milk. Matt and I drink this and it gives us each two servings.

We hit a new level of busy as the month ended and we were preparing for graduations and adoption day! So I started slacking a bit (feeling no guilt!) on meal plans and just throwing out whatever I could find to simply put food in our bellies. This meal was a simple pan of cheesy scrambled eggs (15 of them), spinach, blueberries, salsa for those who wanted it on their eggs, and a pan of Chocolate Oatmeal (because I had some in the pantry I wanted to use up).

I made a huge Lasagna for Malachi’s May graduation day and put it into the freezer one morning while the baby napped and the girls played.

Malachi had his very last home high school soccer game (sniff) and I made a big breakfast casserole to eat at the game. I’d never tried this before as a “to-go” meal but it worked great! I put it together that morning, baked it in the afternoon, cut it into squares and took the squares to hand out on the sidelines for the kids to eat. It worked GREAT!

Here’s our 2-year-old sitting in the wagon working on her second square of egg casserole. :)

Last but not least, here’s a picture of my vanilla beans. I got them out to start a huge batch of vanilla!

We hosted a graduation party for Elias and for Justus’ wife, Kelsey, on the 29th. I just don’t have those pictures ready to share yet. I’ll include those in next month’s meal post! May is going to be incredibly full with our girls’ adoption day and Malachi’s high school graduation. Ready, set, go!