Weekly Shopping List for Family of 4

I give up. I give up to do this manually. Between fending off hacker attacks to our server, there are just too many conversions you have to think about, cups, to lbs, to bunches, oz, boxes….
We definitely need some computing power to do this correctly/easily. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. But, I’ve formulated and came up with an algorithm for a program and handed it off to our development team. The ball is with the developers now. I’m hoping for an automated version of this in about a month. I’ll post as soon as we have a beta version of it.

Instead of completely giving up, I made compromises and used rough estimates and guesses.
As a result, the following list is a sample shopping list for a family of 4 (mom, pop, and a preteen boy and a girl).

Broccoli’s (1 bunch – 3 heads), Romaine (1 head), Tomato (3 large), Carrot (4 medium)
potatoes (3 medium size), green beans (1.5 lb), lettuce (1 head), onion (2 large)
1 gallons of apple juice, 1 gallon of orange juice
bananas (28), strawberries (2 qt or 4 pint packages )
whole wheat bread (2 loaves – 40 slices)
cereal (12 oz box)
2 gallons milk, 24 single serve yogurts, 3 qt ice cream
2 lb Swiss cheese slices, 1 lb Parmesan cheese
1 lbs of lean beef, 1 lbs of lean pork, 1 lbs of chicken breasts, 2 lbs of salmon
1 lb of ham sandwich slices, 1 lb turkey sandwich slices
7 medium eggs, 3.5 cups of nuts, 50 oz can of beans
(buy in bulk) 1/3 liter of vegetable oil, 1 cup of mayo, 1 cup of catchup, 1 cup of mustard,
half stick of butter (buy in bulk), sugar : 28 tsp (buy in bulk)

Just to see if these made any real life sense, I tried to put the items in to a weekly meal planner below.
It’s rather boring and simple plan. This was just for a sanity check.
Not too bad… But, it seems the family will go hungry for few meals where ?‘s are.
We need few more potatoes, onions, carrots, and maybe couple of more pounds of meat or poultry.
This could be simply due to calculation errors. Or, we might really need to scale down on our meal portions.
Or, we can all try to learn how to cook French dishes.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the programmed version will yield more realistic results.
Most of the similar tools, in the market today, stop at calculating daily recommended calorie intakes.
Our plan is to take it further. All the ways to grocery lists and recipes.

And, of course, all matched up with coupons for the week! So, we all can be Frugally Correct!!

Sample Weekly Meal Plan

meal	Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
breakfast	2 cups cereal 4 yogurts 1/2 cup nuts 4 bananas 4 cups milk	2 cups cereal 4 yogurts 1/2 cup nuts 4 bananas 4 cups milk	2 cups cereal 4 yogurts 1/2 cup nuts 4 bananas 4 cups milk	2 cups cereal 4 yogurts 1/2 cup nuts 4 bananas 4 cups milk	2 cups cereal 4 yogurts 1/2 cup nuts 4 bananas 4 cups milk	2 cups cereal 4 yogurts 1/2 cup nuts 4 bananas 4 cups milk	2 cups cereal 4 yogurts 1/2 cup nuts 4 bananas 4 cups milk
lunch	? Egg salad	8 slices bread 4 slice of cheese 8 slices of meat 4 leaves of lettuce	8 slices bread 4 slice of cheese 8 slices of meat 4 leaves of lettuce	8 slices bread 4 slice of cheese 8 slices of meat 4 leaves of lettuce	8 slices bread 4 slice of cheese 8 slices of meat 4 leaves of lettuce	8 slices bread 4 slice of cheese 8 slices of meat 4 leaves of lettuce	?
dinner	1lb meat 1 head broccoli 3 potatoes 4 cups juice	1lb fish 1/2 onion 1/2 lb green beans 4 cups juice	1lb chicken 1/2 onion 2 carrots 4 cups juice	1lb pork 1/2 onion 2 carrots 1/2 romaine 1 tomato beans 4 cups juice	? 1/2 lb green beans 4 cups juice	1lb fish 1/2 onion 1/2 romaine 1 tomato 4 cups juice	? 1/2 lb green beans 4 cups juice
snacks	strawberries ice cream	strawberries ice cream	strawberries ice cream	strawberries ice cream	strawberries ice cream	strawberries ice cream	strawberries ice cream