Copycat Nachos?

Last week we stocked the cupboards and fridge full and it was a good thing because this weekend they are predicting 1 to 2 FEET of snow for our area! Right now I'm sipping some coffee, watching the snow fall outside and listening to the kids playing quietly (for once) down stairs while muffins are baking in the oven for breakfast. It's a good start to the day so far! I wanted to post about my budget from our last shopping trip but for one, I can't seem to find where I put the receipt, and I'm pretty sure we went over our grocery limit! One good thing from it is I think we can make it until after Christmas to get groceries again, which would be another 3 weeks between trips. I'm liking being able to go 3 weeks between having to trudge out in the cold weather with the family.

Since I can't talk about what I spent the bacon on, I'll post what our plans are for all that food. One thing we do is meal plan. We usually sit down as a family and discuss what we want for meals. The kids get a say in what we make which helps with what they actually eat at dinner time. Also they get excited about their special meal day where they get to help Mr. Bacon or me make it. It's a win for us! This time we figured with the holiday we needed 14 meals. So what's on our list for the next few weeks?

1. Grilled Chicken with fried mushrooms, wild rice & mixed veggies
2. Bacon wrapped pork loin, roasted potatoes, & corn
3. Chicken and rice, & broccoli
4. Pizza
5. Tinfoil meal
   
6. Goulash & toast
   
7. meatballs & gravy, mashed potatoes and beans
8. Venison stir fry
9. Mini burgers, homemade fries & apple slices
10. spaghetti & garlic bread
11. country pork chops- this is a one dish meal- pork chops, potatoes & carrots
12. Tacos
13. egg Scramble & toast
14. Beef stroganoff & homemade biscuits
    

So you can see nothing too fancy or that takes a lot of time, but some pretty darn good tasting meals! They are also in no particular order. We just list the meals we have everything on hand to make and then pick each day from the list. Can you guess which one's the kids choose to make? Little miss Bacon loves spaghetti (ok so she likes the garlic bread, but she always chooses this dinner!) and she gets to help make the garlic bread with me. Little boy Bacon loves scramble and helping Mr. Bacon make it. It's also a meal that is easy on our budget. And Bacon Jr. loves tacos. He helps with chopping the veggies.

We made the tacos already this week. One thing I really wanted was Nachos. There's a little restaurant in town that has nachos on their appetizers and they are really good! I fought the urge to go there and get some. So I decided to make my own at home while the others had tacos, complete with my homemade salsa.

No too bad, and a bit festive with the red & green tortilla chips I bought! They were not quite like the restaurant nachos, but they saved me $8 (Really it saved me more like $40 and two wasted kids meals that we would have ordered and only had 4 fries eaten from them if the whole family would have gone out to eat) I'll happily pocket my $40 for the home made nachos and I'll keep working on making them more like the one's I love to go out for. So here's a challenge, what can you try to make at home instead of going out for? Or how about trying to meal plan to save some bacon for your pocket, especially during this crazy time of year.