Eat Clean on a Budget with ALDI

Our nutrition is the biggest part of caring for our families. If we put junk in, we get junk out. If we take a few extra steps to plan, we can save time, money and effort while taking special care of ourselves and the ones we love most. A lot of my friends think that it takes all of this time, careful planning, 5 page spreadsheets, and hours of shopping and cooking to pull all of this off. I’m here to tell you that it does not! I’m actually just going to do the work for you, show you my process, and then show you how I save money too! (I do actually need your help sharing this post though. That’s all I ask of you.) 

Again, we will go back to this post {HERE}:

I rely heavily on the ALDI website {HERE} so I can find their sale ads and match up meal ideas for the items on sale that week. I love saving money and it also helps give me meal ideas. If salmon is on sale and we haven’t had it in a while, it reminds me to add it back into my meal plan for the week and makes me switch things up! Sometimes I get stuck on the same meals and I need the variety.

ALDI also has Better For You Recipes on their website {HERE} to get you started as well. This is a great source that many people don’t even know about. When I toured their test kitchen two years ago, I was able to sample several of these recipes. They are amazing! You can sneak in healthy foods for your family without them even realizing. You don’t even need me!

But if you actually came here for clean eating recipes and you want to see a meal plan on a budget, I am still happy to share it with you! This week I picked seven full dinners where we could have a lot of leftovers. Caleb is eating breakfast and lunch at school, so typically I am just worrying about lunch and breakfast for two adults right now. You can increase these for your own family’s needs. My 6 year old isn’t really making much of a dent on our grocery budget right now, but my husband sure eats well so I think it balances out.

Monday – Turkey, Broccoli, and Brown Rice ($13.58)

I place my thawed turkey breasts in the crockpot with about a cup of organic chicken broth and cook on low all day. I serve with broccoli and two packs of instant brown rice. Check the ingredients on the back of the brown rice! The brand that ALDI carries has only ingredients I can pronounce and is all natural. It remains a “clean eating” item for me and my family. I paid $8.99 for the turkey and have leftover out of it, $1.09 for the broccoli, and $3.50 for the rice. This is a little pricer for the meal, but if you think of how much turkey you get for salads for the week, it evens out!

I bake all of my chicken for the week together in glass baking dishes with a little bit of olive oil in the bottom. Then I top my chicken with cracked black pepper and pink Himalayan salt. I keep my spice cabinet well stocked and I did not have to purchase any herbs or spices on this grocery trip. You may have to supplement your pantry as you go, but my prices do not include those items. Bake your chicken for one hour at 350 degrees or until it is cooked through and the juices run clear. Meanwhile It’s time to make the rice! I adapted this beloved rice recipe from one of my dearest friends. This is not her identical recipe (you must be her friend to have that), but I changed it a bit so you could still enjoy a little bit of awesomeness at home. I used a blended rice from ALDI. I purchased this rice a couple of weeks ago so I do not have an exact price. I think it was less than $2 so we will guess around there to be fair. I used one cup of rice in my pressure/rice cooker and one and a quarter cup of water. I added one tablespoon of olive oil, one cinnamon stick, a hand full each of raisins and cashews, and I chopped a hand full of baby carrots. I cooked it in my rice cooker for 22 minutes and it came out perfect. You can make this on your stovetop, but you simply bring it to a boil and then cover and reduce to a simmer until the rice is cooked. I can’t cook rice to save my life, so my pressure/rice cooker does it for me! You can find the same one {HERE}. Let me tell you about this rice… It is a life changer! Kids will eat it. Husbands will beg for more. You will never eat plain rice again. You are welcome.  So if I had to guess, the rice costs about $4.23  because I still have plenty of leftover rice, cashews, carrots and raisins. Then I used half of the chicken, so that comes to $3.25.

When you come home, you can eat! Or you can take it one step further. If you like a thicker soup, you can get out your kitchen boat motor (Hey, I work at a marina….work with me here…) and you can blend up some of those beans. (I’m seriously talking about one of those hand held blenders, right??) It will make it creamy and awesome. Take it as far as you want to do with it. Then you can top this soup with some diced tomatoes or a little light cheese. Cilantro is awesome too! Chopped green onion…. You have so much flexibility. Go make your family happy! Clean eating can be flexible, reasonable and delicious!

I didn’t use the whole pack of beans, maybe half… That is about $1.00. The broth was $3.58 and the carrots are $.66 (I counted 1/3 of them in the rice recipe). The chicken is $3.25. You have leftovers with a salad the next day too!

I sliced my steak thin cooked with some chopped garlic (I keep chopped garlic in the fridge) stir fry style. We served over a large salad with mushrooms and carrots. It was so good! Steak and mushrooms were $7.34.

I does take a lot of time to create these and I love you guys. I want to see you succeed. I want to help you take care of your families and yourselves. If you want to help me back and share the love, please take a moment to share this post on social media with your friends and family. Not only does it share my little blog and help my family, but it also helps your people too! We all win and I keep posting away!

If you want to follow me on all my social channels, I made you easy links below:

ALDI Website: https://www.aldi.us/en/
ALDI Blog: https://blog.aldi.us/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ALDI.USA
Pinterest (for GREAT recipes): https://www.pinterest.com/aldiusa/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aldiusa/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ALDIUSA

If you’re new here and you don’t know my story… Well, I lost 90 pounds through quality nutrition (just like you read above) and doing Zumba® fitness twice a week. I hope you’ll stick around because we have plenty more ALDI stuff coming your way, friends!!!!