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