Paleo Meal Plan Monday

Well this is certainly the mother of all Mondays. It was a gloriously relaxing 2 weeks off and now back to the real world (womp womp).

SO! A lot of people tell me they don't have time to cook like I do. No one likes to hear how busy anyone is, but I just want to explain that all it takes is a lil planning and setting aside time when you have it; during the past few months 4 days/week I leave the house at 7:15 am and get home between 8:30 pm and 9:30 pm - just enough time to exercise (thank you 20 minute HIIT), walk the dogs, EAT dinner and be in bed by 10:30 pm so I'm not Cruella Deville the following day. Last week I shared how I meal prep and here is how I spent 2.5 hours this past Saturday:

Step 1: Fill out meal planner. This is what mine looks like this week:

Step 2: Go to Wal-Mart for groceries because it's raining and in DC no one leaves their houses in the rain so Wal-Mart will be somewhat bearable. 

Step 3: Kick Harrison out of the kitchen (this is a note for future meal prep after the following comment this week: "It seems a lot cleaner and more organized when they are cooking on TV". Oh! It also seems like they have an entire production staff and a team that gets paid to make it look that way! I. Will. KNIFE YOU).

Step 4: Eat a snack (see: too many things can go wrong while prepping 12 meals, being hangry only makes it worse).

Step 5: Put on The Americans (was NO ONE going to tell me about this best show ever??)

Step 6: Prep/chop/slice veggies for breakfast casserole, chili, meatballs, middle eastern flatbreads, pizza & sausage/zucchini dinner

Step 7: Put potato in the microwave for breakfast casserole

Step 8: While potato is microwaving, brown the turkey for the chili in one pan, the sausage for breakfast casserole and sausage for sausage/squash/onion mix (all in separate pans). Confession: this is ideally what I would be doing. I got distracted by The Americans and forgot about the dinner sausage and cooked this at the end. Add the veggies to the breakfast casserole and chili pans once the meat is browned.

Step 9: Put all the ingredients in the crockpot for chili and crank it.

Step 10: Put together the breakfast casserole and throw it in the oven.

Step 11: Pull out the ground turkey, mix the bbq meatballs (recipe coming soon, this was an experiment). In a separate bowl mix the middle eastern "meatball" ingredients. Since we ate the bbq meatballs on this night, I went ahead and balled them up.

Cover this bowl and put it in the fridge-

Put these in the oven with the breakfast casserole so we can eat them TONIGHT:

Step 12: Make the doughs (pizza and flatbread) and put them in the fridge.

Step 13: Separate everything out, bag it/tupperware it/cover it and refrigerate it.

Step 14: Put meatballs in the oven to enjoy TONIGHT!

Step 15: Pat self on back, make Harrison clean up invite Harrison back into the kitchen.

Recipes for all of our experiments coming soon!