Cheap Healthy Family Meal Ideas – Feed A Family Of 4 For $26 Per Week!

Here are some cheap healthy family meal ideas and recipes you can use to feed a family of 4 for just $26 per week! These are quick and easy basic meals for 2 adults and 2 kids that you can easily modify to meet your needs!

Cheap Healthy Family Meal Ideas And Recipes – Feed A Family Of 4 For $26 Per Week!

With the family meal ideas in this 7 day budget meal plan, a family of 4 can eat quite well for under $30! We are assuming that you have a few basic ingredients on hand already, like salt, sugar and seasonings. If not, we’ve added them at the end for an additional $7.50.

This family meal plan includes 21 basic meals that are easy to make even if you aren’t especially good at baking or cooking. We did add a basic muffin recipe for snacks and that you can use as a different breakfast.

This meal plan is designed for a family with 2 adults and 2 typical kids. These meals aren’t going to feed a 350 lb. lumberman or a family of teenage boys at this price, but if you have large guys in your family, you can just double the recipes and the total for these meals still won’t go over $60. This might be a good time to get some of that extra weight off! 

If you live in a very expensive place to live like Southern California or New York, it may cost more than $26 for these meals because everything costs more, but the point is it will still cost a lot less than a typical week of meals.

If you’re not concerned if the price is a little higher, you can adapt and substitute items you prefer in place of others you don’t like as much. For example, if you aren’t that fond of chicken, you can use meat from a beef roast for many of these recipes, but it will add some extra cost.

Are these meal plans and recipes organic? No, but if you want to use organic ingredients it is easy to do. It will increase the cost, but it will still be less than other organic meals.

Is it gluten free? No but you could easily makes these recipes gluten free by just using rice and other gluten free ingredients.

What stores did you shop to purchase these foods? I bought the food for these recipes and menus at my local Walmart. I don’t have an Aldi food store in Colorado, but I would buy there if I had one. If you shop at Aldi, you could trim off at least $5 and maybe $7-$8 from the $26 total.

I’ve included the recipes for these easy family meals below.

Meal Plan Shopping List:

• bread (2 loaves – 44 slices) – $2
• ham – $2
• lettuce – $1
• rice – $1
• oatmeal – $1
• potatoes – $2
• bananas – $1
• apples – $2
• 2 packages frozen veggies (1 pkg. onions and 1 pkg. peppers) – $2
• 1 bag baby carrots – $1
• 4-5 lbs. Chicken thighs – $3 (thighs at $.69/lb. – about 12 thighs)
• 2 dozen eggs – $3
• spaghetti – $1
• spaghetti sauce – $1
• cream of chicken or cream of mushroom soup – $1
• peanut butter – $2

Optional additional ingredients (if you don’t already have them in you pantry) – $8.50

• flour – $1.50
• sugar – $2
• baking powder – $1
• oil – $2
• margarine – $1
• 1/2 gallon milk – $1

Family Meal Ideas:

Breakfast

• oatmeal with chopped apple
• scrambled eggs, toast and margarine – 3 days (4 eggs cooked each day – I included 2 dozen eggs, so if you need to make one or 2 more, go ahead.)
• Mom’s Best Homemade Sweet Muffins

Lunch

• ham sandwiches with banana (2 slices of bread for mom and dad, 1 slice for kids under 10)
• peanut butter sandwiches
• leftovers with apple slices

Snacks

• Homemade Muffins
• Toast
• Apple with peanut butter

Dinner Meals

Dinner #1 – Roast chicken, rice, baby carrots

• Cook 2 extra thighs and double the rice for tomorrow night’s meal
• Save bones from the chicken in the freezer for soup later in the week.

Dinner #2 – Stir fry with rice – 2 thighs worth of meat with 1/4 pkg. onions and 1/4 pkg. peppers

Dinner #3 – Spaghetti with salad (lettuce and carrots)

Dinner #4 – Roast Chicken with fried potatoes and baby carrots, 1/2 package each onions and peppers

Dinner #5 – Chicken soup with 2 thighs worth of meat – Save bones from the other nights, simmer to make broth and soup add 1/2 spaghetti noodles (or rice) and carrots.

Dinner #6 – Baked potatoes with ham with 1/4 pkg. onions and 1/4 pkg. peppers, sauteed in margarine or oil. Serve with margarine.

Dinner 7 – Chicken casserole – leftover veggies with leftover chicken baked with cream of chicken soup