This is Paleo in real life – our real life… with three hungry boys and a very busy schedule!
Welcome to ‘What we ate Wednesday’! We recently implemented weekly meal plans and are sharing them with you in the hopes of providing you with some new tips, tools and recipes.To read more about why we’ve been meal planning, how it saves our family time and money, reduces waste, and helps us maintain a Paleo lifestyle, check out our first installment of ‘What We Ate Wednesday’ here!
We look at approaching meals plans in three ways: (1) when we can, we pick out seasonal, local produce and let that spark inspiration for our meals; other times, (2) we’ll take guidance from what we already have in the fridge and need to use up; or (3) we crave a recipe and then ensure we grab the ingredients for it when we do our weekly shopping. Frankly, each week is usually a combo of those things. We’ve eliminated a number of additional stops at the grocery store with this method, saving us both time and money. Who doesn’t love that?!
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Dinners
Monday: Chicken Wings with Broccolini and Mushrooms
Chickens wings aren’t just for parties – they make for an easy dinner that lends itself to a ton of flavor combinations. The boys love all picking different sauces from our pantry (including Tessemae’s and Steve’s Paleo Goods) and it’s just a fun, quick, party-like dinner!
—> Crispy Oven Baked Chickens Wings from Real Life Paleo
—> Sauteed Broccolini and Mushrooms with Italian Seasoning, which the boys told us is their new favorite because it makes everything taste like pizza (no recipe)
Tuesday: Epic Bacon Meatloaf with Normandy Vegetables
Meatloaf comes together really quickly, and can even be made ahead and later thawed. Paired with frozen veggies from the store, this meal is fast and filling!
—> Epic Bacon Meatloaf Recipe from Real Life Paleo
—> Normandy Vegetables from Costco
Wednesday: Leftovers or Carryout
This was a wild card dinner night! The night before Thanksgiving we knew we’d be running around, making preparations for the feast. We planned to utilize leftovers first, but if there were none left in the fridge by then we’d turn to take out if necessary. No shame in planning a “dinner out” in your meal plan.
Thursday: The Great Feast- Thanksgiving
You can see exactly what was on our Thanksgiving menu here! We had our whole feast-day meal plan outlined for you, from breakfast and appetizers to dinner and dessert.
Friday: Turkey Soup
We luuurve turkey dinner leftovers, and of course we made stock in our InstantPot (only way it’s ready the next day!) with the turkey carcass and used turkey meat for the most incredible roasted turkey and vegetable soup!
—> Stacy’s Soup Recipe from our blog
—> How to make Stock or Bone Broth from our blog
Saturday: Turkey Thai Basil
One of the boys’ favorite dinners, this is a turkey leftover MUST in our house! Since Stacy no longer eats peppers, we made this with sliced collard greens and bok choy.
—> Turkey Thai Basil Recipe from our blog
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Books featured in our meal plans are among our favorites and are resources we use with consistency.
We highly recommend you check them out (just click the image below)!
Let us know if this gives you some meal planning ideas for your real paleo life!
