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.