This is the first recipe from May’s weekmenu. It’s one of my favorite meals. Soft moist chicken, leek rings drowning in fat and of course there’s the bacon. The leftovers are good, cold or reheated. It’s a very cheap meal too, where I live chicken breasts go into discount almost every other day.
I sound like I’m trying to sell something :)
Ingredients(for 2):
- 4 chicken breasts
- 2 leeks
- 6 slices of bacon
- lard or butter
- olive oil
- thyme
- salt & pepper
Slice your leek into inch thick pieces and put them in a bowl with the chicken breasts. Put olive oil, thyme, salt & pepper in the bowl and preferably some soft butter or lard. Mix all the flavours together and make sure the leek and chicken are covered in fat.
Take an oven dish and use your butter or lard to grease it. Wrap 3 slices of bacon around each chicken breast. Leek goes in the dish first and the chicken on top. Cover with aluminium foil and bake for ~45 minutes at 200 degrees.
The last 2 years I’ve toyed with the idea to make a week menu. I wanted it to help people new to paleo, without taking away all of the learning process. But it isn’t just for the newbies, it’s also for those veterans who have a busy week or when they come home from work tired don’t want to think about what’s for dinner.
It has to be very flexible. A tight schedule doesn’t work for me, my life is just not that rigid and I guess neither is yours.
It also seemed obvious to me that I couldn’t plan lunches for other people- they are totally dependent on what you do for a living, whether you go by car or public transport for example. Also whether it’s just you or maybe a partner and kids. It wouldn’t make sense to plan breakfast for people who don’t like to eat breakfast like me. I want everyone to be able to use this, singles, couples and family’s with kids.
This is what I came up with:
It’s dinner only
6 days, 1 day left open
It has cooking times from 10 minutes to hours
Which makes it flexible
It’s also seasonal
Easy
And uses minimal spices
Which helps make it budget friendly
Click here to download the pdf file (right click the link to save the file to your computer). It’s printer friendly. It’s free. Share with as many people as you like, but I’d appreciate it if you’d send them here so I know how many people download it. This was a lot of work so it’d make me happy to have lots of people use it.
If it’s a success there will be another week menu in June. Therefor I’d really appreciate feedback. You can leave feedback or questions in the comments below or by mail (you can find the address in the pdf file).
A couple months ago healthhabits.ca asked a couple of paleo and primal bloggers for their lunch ideas, including me. You can find the compilation here. For those who haven’t seen it yet and to keep my archives complete I’ve decided to repost it here. I hope you like it :)
There isn’t a one size fits all paleo lunch. It depends on how much time you have to prepare (or how much time you’re willing to spend). On how much space you’ve got and on what you had for dinner the night before or breakfast that morning. And on how far your budget stretches.
I like things easy, simple and taking up minimal space. I’m willing to sacrifice some taste and diversity for that. Are you?
1. Put it on a stick Personally I prefer this option because it takes up minimal space, doesn’t require any cutlery and there’s nothing you have to take home again. The idea is simple, you create a cold shish kabob with chicken, some leftover beef or spicy sausage. Add some paprika, gourgette, cherry tomatoes or anything else you like and then spice it up a bit. Wrap in alimunium foil and you’re good to go.
2. Brown bagging it This is the easiest and fastest to prepare, but you might need a pocketknife or fork. Just take a paper bag and throw in a bell pepper, a mini cucumber, an apple or a kohlrabi. Anything that doesn’t drip liquids. Then pick your protein. Easy options are hard boiled eggs (wrap in toilet paper to protect) or canned tuna/salmon. But you could also throw in some leftover chicken as long as you wrap it in foil. And don’t forget nuts!
There is nothing quite so hearthbreaking as watching someone genuinely try to lose weight or be healthy through conventional means. A close second are those friends and family thinking they’re at least making some good choices by buying ‘heart healthy’ margarine, 0% fat drinkyoghurt or other such abominations.
On the contrary, watching people smoke or eat huge slices of chocolate pie inspires none of these feelings. It is after all highly unlikely that they don’t know exactly what choices they are making.
Someone who is well aware of the damage gluten does to them but still chooses to drink a beer falls in the same category.
“Step 1: First make sure you inform your ‘target’. The challenge is to inform them grains are evil, excessive carbs are making them fat and saturated fat is good for you- all without making them feel pressured into changing their dietary habits. This is probably the most important step. Your project might also end with this step.”
As a kid my favorite dinner was mashed potatoes with sauerkraut and raisins mixed through them. Mashed potatoes mixed with veggies are typically dutch, we call it stampot. Besides sauerkraut it’s also often made with kale, endive or carrots.
Anyway, I was absolutely delighted when I saw this recipe on Free the Animal. I’ve since made it several times. With heavy cream it’s a lot softer and thus more palatable to those who aren’t big fans of sauerkraut. Unfortunately I have no idea what black caraway seeds are in dutch, so I can’t tell you how good that would be, but here’s how I ended up making it.
Ingredients:
- Sauerkraut
- Beef sausage, the good stuff without gluten please.
- Beef stock, not too much.
- Black pepper & sweet red pepper flakes.
- Optional: some heavy cream
In a deep pan brown the sausage and let them cook for 10 minutes or so. Then add your sauerkraut, stir for a minute and add the stock. Turn down the heat and add the peppers. Put a lid on the pan and let is simmer for ~20 minutes. If you want to add the heavy cream, do so 5 minutes before serving.
If you’re reading this Richard, thanks a lot for all the food porn!
Let me steal some more of his content by sharing this video with everyone. It’s funny, especially when you’re a regular Free the Animal reader because you’ll recognize his writing style in his talking.
My boyfriend smokes. He’s aware of my opinion. And most importantly, he’s well aware of the damage he’s doing to his health, his fitness and his wallet. Oh and he’s aware of the effect it has on his sperm count too thanks to those cheerfull messages on the cigaret packs. Sending him pictures of black lungs will not suddenly make him realise any of these things nor will it prompt him to stop smoking. Apparantly he has other reasons to keep smoking which are strong enough to offset these pretty compelling reasons not to smoke.
If I were to start nagging him about stopping smoking, our lives would be a lot less pleasant. He would probably not stop smoking. Not even when I’d send him research about all the nasty things he’s doing to his health. Or loan him books about all the downsides of smoking.
Infact, since he happens to be quite fast with forming and expressing his thoughts, feelings and opinions (unlike myself) the most likely thing to happen would be him quickly putting me in my place. It is after all his choice. While it’s understandable that I’m concerned about him, it doesn’t give me the right to try and push him into the choices I think are best.
As a side effect he also might stop fully listening if I came accross some actually interesting facts about smoking, because he’d resent the fact that I’d been trying to push him. And if I were to ask him why he’s still smoking despite everything, he might be overly defensive instead of being open to discussing this.
What does this have to do with converting people to the paleo lifestyle?
Bacon excepted, I don’t cook with pork very often.It just doesn’t appeal to me much, though I always end up enjoying it when I do eat it. Probably just a bit of indoctrination; my sister thinks she’s allergic to it, my mom+ bf don’t eat it for religious reasons, my dad’s gf refuses to eat it when it’s not 110% organic.. Jep, I’m plenty indoctrinated!
One thing is stronger than my inexplicable urge not to eat pork (other than bacon) though; sales! I let my bf make the first batch, wholly convinced that I can’t cook pork. However, there were two bits leftover, so I decided to finally give them a try for a different-than-usual lunch. With fresh herbs growing on my balcony a marinade was an absolute must. It turned out pretty darn good if I can say so myself. Give it a shot and let me know what you think :)
Ingredients;
- a good splash of balsamic vinegar - twice that amount olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 or 2 teaspoons ginger
- 2 twigs of rosemary
Just put it in a bowl and leave your pork in there for at least half an hour. My pork bits took 10 minutes in a skillet to finish. Check out the other pics of my meal on this flickr set.
I just remembered that I always used to tease my little sister that we were eating babe when we were still kids. I’m probably responsible for her period of vegetarianism :X
Please excuse the complete lack of updates. I’ve been very busy with school exams and projects these last few weeks. Not that I didn’t have an hour here and there, but for some reason the whole mess just left me completely uninspired. My brother helped fix that by sending me this picture:
Converting friends and family to the paleo lifestyle has been an often discussed topic on various paleo or primal oriented websites, and the subject always pops up on the forums. I’ve got a lot to say on the subject, which I’ll save for another post (or two). But I thought I’d tell you a little about my brother first.
As you can guess from this picture, he is slowly but steadily moving towards a more paleo type diet. I’m a pretty annoying younger sister to have probably, especially 4 years ago at the beginning of my paleo interest I wouldn’t ever stop talking about it. Luckily after a while I figured out it was terribly annoying and limited my bouts of paleo talk. Unless of course I was asked. (People would still say I talked about paleo too much, even though they asked me about it in the first place, it’s funny.)
About a year ago my big brother started asking. About kinds of fat, olive oil, sugar etc. Progressively more so in the last half year. I’m also able to answer these questions much better than four years ago. Over the last year I’ve been getting pictures of his paleo lunches and dinners. He also still eats plenty of non-paleo things or meals, maybe he’ll eat cleaner, maybe he won’t- I’m happy either way!
My brother’s paleo breakfast
He calls it his functional breakfast, because it has a lot of food he believes is good for him. You can spot the olives and the avocado. The eggs are fried with onion, tomatoes, ginger, yellow root (kurkuma? what dya call it?) and pine nuts. He gets a 10 out of 10 for tackling one of the things that most people seem to have a lot of trouble with; What do I eat for breakfast?
I’m terribly busy, so I’m keeping this very short and picture-less. Today Mark Sisson is trying to get his book “The primal blueprint” to nr 1 on the Amazon book charts. I personally think this is very important. Even though I would not call myself primal, it encompasses nearly everything I believe in. And I think it IS important that the rest of the world finds out about this. Besides, Mark Sisson and his team happen to be pretty darn good at marketing. Let’s help them out a bit!
So if you’ve been thinking about getting the PB, now is the time! Mark is giving away a couple freebee’s, go check out Mark’s Daily Apple for the details. Or head directly to amazon to get your copy.
You’ve most likely seen a mention of paleo-style burgers before. There is even a youtube video of a portobello version! I’ve been dubbing whether to tag this post as a review because of it, because it is hardly original. But I’ve just made my own version, without using anyone’s existing recipe- so i’ve decided to just go ahead and give you my recipe while reviewing the general concept. The burgers itself are just a different shaped version of my meatballs. Ingredients (for 4 burgers):
- 400 grams minced beef
- 1 egg
- half a cup almond meal
- 8 crispy iceberg lettuce leaves
- 2 tomatoes, in slices
- a red onion, cut into rings
- pepper & salt
- garlic powder (optional)
- butter, ghee or coconut oil
In a bowl mix the mince, egg, salt/pepper/garlic and almond meal together. Shape the mixture into burgers. Put your cooking oil of choice in a pan and wait for the sizzle before adding your burgers. In a second, smaller pan do the same to your onion.
Once the meat and onion is done, it’s time to assemble the burger. Take two crispy leaves for each burger, put the onion and tomato slices on top.
They are definitely tasty. And while I like the crispyness of the lettuce, there is no special taste benefit to eating ‘meatballs’ this way, but there is a special pleasure to picking up food with both hands and having juices drip down your arms! Yumm.
Comments (11) 
There isn’t a one size fits all paleo lunch. It depends on how much time you have to prepare (or how much time you’re willing to spend). On how much space you’ve got and on what you had for dinner the night before or breakfast that morning. And on how far your budget stretches.
There is nothing quite so hearthbreaking as watching someone genuinely try to lose weight or be healthy through conventional means. A close second are those friends and family thinking they’re at least making some good choices by buying ‘heart healthy’ margarine, 0% fat drinkyoghurt or other such abominations.
Themocracy
