Meal Plan for Primal Living

Hello everyone!  I'm enjoying this last day of vacation with my kids and husband.  I'm going to be very sad to see them go back to work/school, I love having them home here with me.  The house is just too quiet when they're all gone.

I thought I would give you some ideas of what kinds of things my family eats now that we're living a Primal lifestyle.  

First let me say that eating whole foods definitely takes a bit more planning and preparation than getting your meals from a box, bag, or from a take out restaurant.  I certainly have mixed feelings about that fact.  Some days I enjoy spending lots of time in the kitchen, with the pay off being delicious, healthy meals for my family.  But there are times when I don't even want to step foot in my kitchen, and that makes this lifestyle a bit more challenging.  I realize that many of you work full time, and don't have the amount of time to dedicate to cooking that I do.  I hope that you'll find some workable ideas in the information that I post here.

One thing that I've started to do is to dedicate 2 nights a week where I make the same meal, each and every week.  For example, every Sunday I now make a pot roast.  This is my families favorite meal, so they don't mind eating it every week.  The other weekly meal we have are cheeseburgers made from grass fed beef.  Again, my family loves them and doesn't mind eating them once a week.  The reason I'm telling you this is that I've found that by doing this, there are 2 meals each week that I don't have to even THINK about!  I don't know about you, but part of what I don't like about cooking is feeling like I always have to come up with something new.  That's certainly not how I grew up, my mom repeated meals quite often, but for some reason I worry that my family will get bored if I cook the same things over and over again.  So even though yes, I do still have to cook these 2 meals, the only thought I need to put into it is pulling the meat out of the freezer, and making sure I have vegetables in the house to serve with it.  Get the idea?  I suggest you try doing this with your families favorites.

Now I'm going to list some of the foods we typically eat, broken into sections by BREAKFAST, LUNCH, DINNER, and SNACKS.

BREAKFAST

Breakfast might be one of the more difficult meals to wrap your head around if you've decided to give up grains.  Believe me, my family (especially my kids), LOVED their cereal before we started eating like this.  And it was "convenient" for mom.  But we've all adjusted quite nicely without it, and are healthier for doing so.
EGGS:  Most mornings that's what we eat for breakfast.  Whether it be scrambled, fried, or omelets, with added veggies, meat, or with cheese melted over top, eggs are our go to breakfast.  My 15 year old son, who gets up earlier than the rest of us, has been cooking his own eggs on school days for several years now.  It's an easy dish to teach older kids how to make for themselves.  I still cook my daughters eggs each morning for her before school, she's not quite as reliable in the kitchen yet ;)  Also, there are many make-ahead recipes like this one, that you can have ready and waiting in the fridge or freezer.
YOGURT:  I buy 2 kinds of yogurt, the raw milk whole stuff from the farm, and Chobani Greek individual servings with fruit.  I love the convenience of the Chobani Greek, even though it does contain some sugar.  I don't eat it, but my kids do and I'd rather have them eating something that I consider fairly healthy like Greek yogurt with some sugar in it than other things they could be eating.  My husband and I love the raw milk yogurt!  I usually stir in some berries, sliced almonds, coconut, and a bit of stevia to sweeten.
SMOOTHIES/SHAKES:  Almost every morning I make myself what I call a "coffee shake".  For the past few months I've been on a pumpkin coffee shake kick.  To make it, I pour a cup of milk in my blender (raw milk, unsweetened coconut milk, or unsweetened almond milk), a spoon of instant coffee granules, a couple of big spoons of canned pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice, pure vanilla extract, and stevia to taste.  I top it off with a bunch of ice cubes, and then blend (the more ice cubes you use the thicker it will be).  I LOVE this drink.  Some mornings if I don't feel like cooking eggs I add a couple of raw eggs to the blender too.  I have no qualms about consuming raw eggs because I know where my eggs come from.  Plus I've been eating raw eggs my whole life (cookie dough, cake batter anyone?)  Adding the eggs makes a complete meal, and one that I can take with me in the car if I need to.  My other favorite coffee shake is made with milk, coffee granules, cocoa powder, a couple of drops of peppermint oil, and stevia to taste, along with the ice cubes.  Peppermint mocha shake; delicious!  There are tons of fruit and vegetable smoothie and shake recipes on the internet, many of them completely primal friendly.  A favorite of my kids is plain yogurt, frozen bananas and strawberries, and sweetener if necessary (honey perhaps?)  I've also been experimenting with green smoothies lately, and have been really enjoying them.
CAVEMAN CRUNCH:  I made this recipe a few days ago as a kind of substitute for cereal, and my kids LOVE it!  Just make sure to teach them about serving size, 1/3 cup is very filling!! 
PANCAKES:  Yes, you can still have things like this, although personally it's not something I would eat everyday.  But there tons of recipes on the internet (just google paleo pancakes), and you'll find plenty of recipes to try.
LEFTOVERS:  This is something that I didn't do before I started eating primal, but now I do it all the time.  I simply eat leftovers of what I had for dinner last night.  There are no rules regarding breakfast, nothing that says you must eat "breakfast food".  Just as I love sometimes eating breakfast foods for dinner, nowadays I don't mind at all eating dinner food for breakfast!

LUNCH

I will admit that my kids still buy the school lunches.  They just do not want to pack, and I don't force them to.  I figure that at least they're eating much healthier at home, and if the time comes that they say, "Mom, I really want to pack a healthy lunch", I will be more than happy to do that for them.  As for me, many days I don't even eat lunch to be honest.  If I'm not hungry, which some days I'm not because I ate a late, big, filling breakfast, then I just skip lunch.  I'm not afraid of skipping meals anymore after learning about this concept.  When I do eat lunch more often than not it's something fairly light like a salad or a cup of soup (Primal friendly, of course).  I often cook myself liver for lunch too, I LOVE it, and since my kids are only so so on it I do them the favor of not making them eat it too often.  Btw, I tried lamb's liver for the first time last week, and I have to tell you that it is THE BEST liver I've ever tasted!!  It's very very mild in flavor, and the texture wasn't as mealy/grainy as some other livers.  I highly recommend that if you like liver but have never tasted it to give it a try!

DINNER

Our dinners these days usually consist of some kind of meat or seafood, and at least 2 different kinds of vegetables, often one of them being a more starchy veg such as sweet potatoes.  Some of my family favorites are roasts (beef or pork), roast chicken, broiled salmon, and burgers.  I've also found myself making tons of soups and stews in the colder weather.  Often I make them in my crock pot.  Just add any meat to your crock pot (nitrate free smoked sausage, ground beef, beef cubes, cubes of raw chicken, ham cubes, etc.), then add lots of chopped veggies such as carrots, celery, onions, turnips, mushrooms, kale, tomatoes, really any combination that you think would taste good together, then fill the pot with some good stock, and any herbs you like.  I do this at least twice a week, and I love using the crock pot so I can get it started in the morning and not have to worry about it all day!  You can even prepare (chop) everything the night before and have it ready to start cooking in the morning.  Other ideas for meals are things like paleo shepherds pie, meatza, paleo meatballs or meatloaf.  There are literally thousands of paleo/primal recipes floating around the internet, and I feel certain as you search you'll be able to find things your family will love.

SNACKS

Gosh, what to do if you can't eat a pretzel or cracker lol!  There are lots of delicious, primal foods that are out there that you can snack on.  Some of my family favorites are cubes of raw milk cheese, string cheese, beef sticks and beef jerky from the farmer's market (made without nitrates, MSG, or other additives), fresh fruit and veggies, yogurt, nuts and seeds, nut butter (it's delicious on apple slices!), trail mix, smoothies, hard boiled eggs and deviled eggs, pickles and olives, and kale chips.  My Pinterest Paleo/Primal board has tons of great snack ideas on it, check it out!

The laundry is calling me, so I'm going to have to stop here.  Please feel free to ask me any questions you like in the comments section and I'll answer you as best I can.