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After sharing my week of paleo groceries haul with you earlier in the week, many of you asked for me to share what we did with all of the food– a week of paleo meals. I am happy to! I’ll list our meals for the week, and a few details of how I worked out what to do with everything. If I have the recipe for something I made, I’ll post the link. If there’s something that does not have a link that you would love the recipe for, let me know in the comments, and I’ll try to write up the most popular items.
One quick note on what I bought vs. what I cooked– since we spent quite a bit on meats to cure (pastrami and bacon) which won’t be ready to eat until next week, I needed to pull a whole chicken out of the freezer– the price was definitely comparable (the chicken may have been a little less) and so the budget evens out.
First of all, I took the cauliflower and made it into a big batch of cauliflower rice that I kept in the fridge. Cooking it up takes less than 10 minutes, once I have it chopped by the food processor. Here’s a full post on how I do cauliflower rice. I also baked a whole winter squash in the oven, removed the seeds and skin, and pureed the flesh to use easily during the week.
Without further ado, here’s a week of paleo meals for a family of three, including breakfast, lunch and dinner– all on a budget!
Sunday
Breakfast: Pumpkin Muffins and Scrambled Eggs
(Late breakfast, so we skipped lunch, as we often do on the weekends. Just had some homemade pastrami and apples as a snack.)
Dinner: , Root Vegetable Purée, homemade sauerkraut and a green salad
Monday
Breakfast: Leftover Pumpkin Muffins, Scrambled Eggs
Lunch: Leftover Oxtail with extra greens and Cauliflower Rice
Dinner: Italian Meatballs, Tomato Sauce, Zucchini Noodles– I made the noodles with a spiralizer for the first time– loved the results!
Tuesday
Breakfast: Grain-free Dutch Baby for Jeff and Amelia and I’ll admit it– I had some fresh vegetable juice in the morning, followed by almonds and dark chocolate!
Lunch: Amelia had leftover meatballs with marinara dipping sauce, olives and cucumber slices. I had a big green salad with tuna, sunflower seeds, red peppers and tahini dressing.
Dinner: Moroccan Beef Stew with Cauliflower Rice and homemade sauerkraut
Wednesday
Breakfast: Jeff and Amelia had eggs and fruit. I had grapefruit and avocado, drizzled with olive oil and sea salt. (I know it sounds weird, but I liked it!)
Lunch: Leftover Beef Stew, Amelia had leftover Chelo Kebab that I had frozen last week, plus cucumbers and fruit and a tahini molasses cookie
Dinner: Roasted Chicken, Roasted Butternut Squash, and Warm Leeks in Vinaigrette (recipe in video below), and homemade sauerkraut
(After dinner, I shredded the leftover chicken to use in another meal, and put all of the bones plus one more from the freezer into the stock pot to make bone broth with.)
Thursday
Breakfast: Jeff and Amelia had buttered sweet potatoes, since we were out of eggs. I had fresh vegetable juice and then scrambled eggs after I went to pick some up. (Read about the very charming way I get to buy my eggs!)
Lunch: Jeff took the last of the beef stew, with winter squash purée (how-to video toward the end of this post!); Amelia had leftover Chelo Kebab that I had frozen last week, plus cucumbers and fruit and a tahini molasses cookie (I love this recipe, and we make them almost every week.) I had a somewhat random lunch of roasted chicken, a mug of beef bone broth, and homemade tahini crackers with butter.
Dinner: Mediterranean Chicken Soup with homemade veggie crackers (similar to this recipe) and butter.
Friday
Breakfast: Eggs with sauteed onions sprinkled with thyme, and Fruit
Lunch: Amelia and I had tuna salad and veggie crackers, Jeff took leftover chicken soup.
Dinner: Chelo Kebab and Cauliflower Rice, with olives, tahini sauce, cucumber slices and homemade sauerkraut
Saturday
Breakfast: Shakshukah (without the cheese in the recipe, using zucchini and no eggplant)
Lunch: Tuna Salad made with celery, olive oil, lemon juice green olives and chopped sun dried tomatoes. We ate this with carrot sticks and cucumber slices followed by apples.
Dinner: Chicken and Vegetable Soup
A couple other notes… We drink coffee every morning, and I did one big batch of juicing and froze individual portions for us during the week. (That explains the big bowl of carrots, and accounts for most of the celery and all of the beets.) Amelia takes a little jar in her lunch to school each day. If you want to do some juicing, here are some ideas for using the leftover pulp. Also, we usually have either bacon or breakfast sausages to alternate with eggs– this was an unusually monotonous week in that regard!
As I’m sure you have noticed, I am a huge fan of leftovers. You don’t have to eat the same thing over and over again, though. Invest in a good set of glass storage containers, and cook more than you will need. Freeze or refrigerate individual portions to take for lunch later that week, or in the next week. We don’t mind having one meal twice in a row or in a couple of days, so I usually make twice as much as we need– either for a whole supper soon after, or for lunches. This is such a win-win-win, as it saves time, money and mental energy.
And at the end of the week, we still have a few veggies left over, an avocado, a little more shredded chicken, chicken stock and some frozen kebab for Amelia’s lunches sometime this week. So, we ate most of it, but never ran out of food– just right!
A couple bonus tips, with video tutorials:
We do a lot of root vegetable/ winter squash pureés. Here’s a video tutorial on how I do that:
I also am a big fan of making marinades and dressings ahead of time to make dinner super simple. Here’s another video, sharing about that:
I hope this list is helpful for you, and that making a week of paleo meals for the family from scratch looks just little more do-able now.. Let me know if you have any questions, or if there are some recipes you would particularly like to have. If you are starting out with paleo and need extra help, then maybe these paleo tips will also be helpful.
A lot of people swear by using meal plans for making paleo a lot more doable. If you struggle to figure out what to buy and make, you can make your whole life a whole lot easier by using a meal plan service. Here’s one I recommend— it’s flexible, super organized, includes shopping lists, the recipes are delicious, and everything is paleo.
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