Week Three Menu

Pre-Week Prep

• Clarified butter, if needed
• Make sure you go into each week with at least 12 oz (1.5 cups) of clarified butter
• Paleo hamburger buns (by Friday)
• Bread-replacement Paleo items are notoriously not like bread.  These buns are no exception. We used these, but I probably wouldn't make the effort again.  They serve only to give the impression of eating a burger with your hands.  There is no added flavor or texture.  But if you can't handle eating a burger without a bun, these seem to work.

Sunday
You may notice a pattern.  I plan Sunday nights to be steak every week for 2 reasons.  First,  it's a meal we all really enjoy, is fairly easy to prepare and gives us good reason not to spend lots of money on a steak dinner at a restaurant.  Second, if we only cooked 5 meals instead of 6 the week before and I have leftover ingredients, we'll use those the following Sunday night instead and keep the steak in the freezer.

• Restaurant Style Steak
• We LOVE this steak.  We will never grill steak again.  Make sure to use a cast iron skillet and follow her cooking instructions precisely, substituting clarified butter for standard butter.  We skip the herb butter and just sprinkle garlic powder on the steak, along with black pepper and kosher salt.  Use either filets or good strip steaks.
•  Sweet Potato Casserole
• Definitely not as sweet as your traditional Thanksgiving version or the kind at Ruth's Chris, but still very good.

 

Monday

• Burger with Chunky Guacamole
• Mix 1 lb of ground beef with 2 T Worcester sauce, 1 T garlic powder and 1/2 T kosher salt.  Form into patties and grill.  Top with guacamole.
• Sweet potato hashbrowns
• These take longer to crisp up that you would expect.  Start these way before the burgers, especially if you only have one waffle iron (who has more than one?).  You might find yourself continuing to cook these throughout the meal.  We also tried taking half of our shredded potatoes and cooking in a saute pan, but they didn't get nearly as crispy as the waffle iron version.

Tuesday

• Honey Lime Chicken Skewers
•  Replace soy sauce with coconut aminos. We didn't use the Saracha and cooked these in a skillet instead of the grill.  We really should buy a barbeque grill.  It was pretty tasty!
• Cauliflower Rice
• We used cheesecloth to cook the shredded cauliflower and it didn't stick like it did for the authors of the linked post.  We served the chicken on top of the cauliflower.

Wednesday

• Pork Ribs with Pineapple
• CROCKPOT RECIPE / REQUIRES 4-6 HOURS
• This was ok.  We used boneless pork short ribs.  The meat was drier than we'd like and the sauce was not as thick as it appeared to be for the original poster.  The pineapple was good, but not as good as grilled pineapple.  For a meat/pineapple recipe, we'll stick with Pineapple Jerk Steak.

Thursday

• Sweet and Sticky Baked Chicken
• REQUIRES PREP WORK / MARINATE IN THE MORNING
• Replace the brown sugar with 2 tablespoons of maple syrup and the soy sauce with coconut aminos.  The sauce didn't thicken for us quite as much as it did for the original poster, and we used chicken tenders instead of drumsticks, but OH MY GOODNESS this was delicious!  We also didn't back it quite as long due to the cut we used.  You will see this recipe show up again.
• Butter steamed Broccoli and Carrots
• Melt about 1/4 cup clarified butter in large saute pan over medium heat.  Add 1 cup of carrots and cover.  Steam for 5 minutes, shaking pan occasionally to prevent burning. Add 2 cups of broccoli and continue to steam and shake for another 10 minutes. Add more butter if veggies aren't done to your liking but starting to burn.  Serve.  Have a salt shaker on hand, since clarified butter doesn't contain salt. 

Friday

• Turkey Garlic Burger
• Mix 1 lb of ground turkey with 2 T Worcester sauce, 1 T garlic powder and 1/2 T kosher salt.  Form into patties and grill.  Serve with Paleo bun (or wrapped in butter lettuce) and BBQ sauce.
• Sweet potato chips and avocado
• We just had sweet potato chips out of the bag (Terra Sweets and Beets).  If you find a different brand, check the ingredients.  Make sure there is no flour and that the oil used is Paleo friendly. 

Week Two Menu

Pre-Week Prep

• Paleo hamburger buns (by Thursday)
• Bread-replacement Paleo items are notoriously not like bread.  These buns are no exception. We used these, but I probably wouldn't make the effort again.  They serve only to give the impression of eating a burger with your hands.  There is no added flavor or texture.
• Clarified butter, if needed
• Make sure you go into each week with at least 12 oz (1.5 cups) of clarified butter
• Make BBQ sauce (by Thursday)
• If you made this last week, you'll have plenty left.  Or you may want to look into PaleoChef sauces, especially the Peach BBQ.

Sunday

• Restaurant Style Steak
• We LOVE this steak.  We will never grill steak again.  Make sure to use a cast iron skillet and follow her cooking instructions precisely, substituting clarified butter for standard butter.  We skip the herb butter and just sprinkle garlic powder on the steak, along with black pepper and kosher salt.  Use either filets or good strip steaks.
•  Garlic Asparagus
• Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Clean and trim 1/2 lb - 1 lb of asparagus.  Place in large Ziploc bag.  Add 1 - 2 T of olive oil, 2 cloves of minced garlic.  Shake bag until coated, place on a foil-lined cookie sheet.  Bake for 16 - 18 minutes, or until done to your taste.

Monday

• Chili Cilantro Lime Chicken 
• REQUIRES PREP WORK STARTING THE DAY BEFORE / CROCKPOT RECIPE
• This should be placed in it's marinade the night before and placed in a crockpot the morning of.  We followed her tip of placing the chicken and marinade in a crockpot liner, then in a gallon Ziploc bag.  The next morning, you just have to put the crockpot liner with the chicken ready to go into the crockpot and turn on.  While we still think that most things that come out of a crockpot are dry, this recipe was really tasty and provided a good amount of left over cooked chicken for use in lunches.
• Roasted carrots and broccoli
• Scroll down about 2 screens for the carrot recipe.  I started off with the carrots per the recipe, but then added broccoli (since not all in our house will eat cooked carrots).  Don't do this.  Steam the broccoli separately.  Sweet honey carrots are yummy.  Sweet honey broccoli is weird.

Tuesday

• Pineapple Jerk Steak
• What?  You don't have a sous vide machine?  Yeah, neither do we.  I simply marinated the steak (we did NY strips) in the sauce for a bit, then cooked it in a skillet.  When the meat is done, add the pineapple until heated through.  We skipped the onion, bacon and jalapeno completely.  The sauce was delish.  We only wish we would have grilled the pineapple separately to get a good char, but it was still really good in the sauce.
• Sweet Potato Rounds
• Scroll to the 2nd recipe on the page.  We ended up cooking these a bit longer than shown in the recipe to get a bit more color.  Pretty yummy and pretty easy way to cook up some sweet potatoes!

Wednesday

• Nut and Herb Chicken
• Yes, this was in our previous week's menu.  But we liked it a lot, the leftovers were tasty and it was easy enough to include in this week's too.  We used pecans and the poultry fresh herb mix (rosemary, sage, thyme).  We also cut/pounded the cutlets to about 3/4" thickness.
• Butter Steamed Broccoli and Carrots
• Melt about 1/4 cup clarified butter in large saute pan over medium heat.  Add 1 cup of carrots and cover.  Steam for 5 minutes, shaking pan occasionally to prevent burning. Add 2 cups of broccoli and continue to steam and shake for another 10 minutes. Add more butter if veggies aren't done to your liking but starting to burn.  Serve.  Have a salt shaker on hand, since clarified butter doesn't contain salt.

Thursday

• Garlic Burger with BBQ Sauce
• Mix 1 lb of ground beef with 2 T Worcester sauce, 1 T garlic powder and 1/2 T kosher salt.  Form into patties and grill.  Serve with Paleo bun (or wrapped in butter lettuce) and BBQ sauce.
• Sweet potato chips and avocado
• We just had sweet potato chips out of the bag (Terra Sweets and Beets).  If you find a different brand, check the ingredients.  Make sure there is no flour and that the oil used is Paleo friendly. 

A Kid-sized Version

Friday

• Beef with Broccoli
• This turned out really good.  Next time, I will add some canned water chestnuts with the broccoli.  We served it with baked spaghetti squash (eaten only by some in the house), but you can also pair with Cauliflower rice.
• Baked Spaghetti Squash 
•  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Halve squash lengthwise and scoop out seeds.  Place cut side down in a baking dish, prick skin all over with a fork.  Bake for 30 - 40 minutes or until tender. Shred and separate the squash pulp into strands into bowl and serve.

Week One Menu

Finally - I'm getting to the good stuff.  At least, what I think is good.  Weekly menus and recipes.  I'll include not only what we ate for dinner each day, but also what we thought of it and any tweaks made to the posted recipes.  Additionally, there is some prep work that I would wholeheartedly recommend be done the weekend prior.

As you'll notice, I only plan for 6 days a week.  There is guaranteed to be one night that no one is really hungry or everyone just wants to snack or we go out to dinner or eat a really late lunch.  If none of those things happen, we will just have a left-over night.  Generally, that happens to us on Saturday. 

Pre-week prep

• Make clarified butter (needed by Sunday)
• Get used to making this.  You'll probably make a batch every 2 weeks or so.  We do 2 lbs at a time and end up with about 26 - 28 oz of melted butter.  We store most in the fridge and leave one jar on the counter, just as we did with regular butter.
• Make ketchup (by Friday)
• This recipe is a bit acidy for us, but we haven't tried any others.  Limit the apple cider vinegar to taste and consider adding more sweetener if you're looking for that store-bought taste.
• Make BBQ sauce (by Friday)
• Pretty good, even considering the base is the homemade ketchup.  This will probably require purchase of ingredients you don't have on hand, but buy them anyway.  They are good staples for a Paleo kitchen.  (I keep finding uses for liquid smoke.)

Sunday

• Restaurant Style Filet Mignon
• We LOVE this steak.  We will never grill steak again.  Make sure to use a cast iron skillet and follow her cooking instructions precisely, substituting clarified butter for standard butter.  We skip the herb butter and just sprinkle garlic powder on the steak, along with black pepper and kosher salt.   Use either filets or good strip steaks.
• Butter steamed broccoli
• Melt about 1/4 cup clarified butter in large saute pan over medium heat.  Add 3 cups of broccoli and cover.  Steam for 12 - 15 minutes, shaking pan occasionally to prevent burning.  Add more butter if broccoli isn't done to your liking but starting to burn.  Serve.  Have a salt shaker on hand, since clarified butter doesn't contain salt.  A similar method can be used for many types of veggies.

Monday

• Honey Garlic Chicken
• The recipe is for wings, but we adapted it to chicken breasts.  Also, we cooked on the stovetop.  If you do this, don't leave them on the skillet for too long or too high heat as the marinade is likely to burn.  I'm sure the grill would have added the extra oomph that we felt was missing from our version.
• Sweet potato hashbrowns
• These take longer to crisp up that you would expect.  Start these way before the chicken, especially if you only have one waffle iron (who has more than one?).  You might find yourself continuing to cook these throughout the meal.  We also tried taking half of our shredded potatoes and cooking in a saute pan, but they didn't get nearly as crispy as the waffle iron version.

Tuesday

• Pulled Pork (crockpot)
• Pretty good.  Admittedly, we are a family that likes our sweet pork, and this is just your straight-ahead, regularly spiced pork.  We'll continue to look for a Paleo replacement to Cafe Rio pork.
• Pureed plantains
• This was the first time I've made anything with plantains.  While it was good in taste, the texture was a little gummy.  We would have preferred the plantains just fried, which would have saved us the cleaning of the food processor.
• This broke 2 rules of ours: 'no cooked fruit' and 'tastes of cinnamon', so as a replacement, have a side salad and/or some steamed veggies.  

Wednesday

• Pancakes for dinner!
• Surprisingly good for being Paleo and easier to make than traditional pancakes.  They taste like banana nut bread.  Serve with Grade B Maple syrup or chilled canned coconut milk and a dash of cinnamon.
• Fresh fruit

Thursday

• Crispy Herb Nut Chicken
• We used pecans and the poultry fresh herb mix (rosemary, sage, thyme).  We also cut/pounded the cutlets to about 3/4" thickness.  This was definitely a winner and will make a regular appearance.
• Roasted Cauliflower
• Simple, easy prep of cauliflower.  End result is certainly crunchier than steamed.  Recommend adding more garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste after roasting.

Friday

• "Breaded" Chicken Nuggets 
• Based off the coconut chicken nugget recipe here, but because of a certain aversion to coconut, we just used the almond meal as a coating.  We made them perfectly round, but I would recommend flattening them slightly (similar to the picture in the recipe) to better cook them in the oil.  Also, we should have used ground turkey - this was too much chicken in one week.
• Sweet Potato Fries
• Peel and cut 2 sweet potatoes into fry-size spears.  Place in gallon size Ziploc bag with 2 T olive oil, 2 tsp cumin, 1 tsp salt.  Shake till coated.  Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, turning once. These don't get as crispy as the flour-coated version.  Baking longer will generally only burn the fries.  Please let me know if you have come across a crispy version.
•  Serve with ketchup and bbq sauce