Weekly Meal Plan: Shelter-at-Home 2.0

Hey, hey and welcome back to another week of meal plans! If you missed last week’s meal plan (with lots of explanation) head over here to read that one. In this week’s post, I’ll tell you what we really cooked last week, show you some pictures and then give a little run-down of what’s on the menu for this week.

Here we go…

Last week’s plan included fish tacos, Mexican night, spinach salad with shrimp, breakfast for dinner, burgers and maybe lasagna.

Here’s what we really had:

Cod seared in cast iron pan, AIP tortillas, tropical salsa slaw, and looks like squash and mushrooms on the side

 

Taco meat (under all that cheese), fresh guacamole, but all the rest leftovers – tortillas, veggies and slaw

 

Spinach salad with hot bacon dressing, hard boiled eggs, assorted veggies and grilled shrimp

 

Eggs, sausage, one little piece of bacon I wrestled away from my daughter, experimental biscuit and pancake, apple slices

 

Here’s a close-up of the biscuits made with my all purpose baking mix (still in experimental mode). They run into each other, but are soooo delicious!

 

Perfect, flaky biscuit texture inside

 

Friday night was my son’s turn to cook. He grilled burgers, cooked okra on the stove and I made these baked, battered onion rings (an experiment that turned out great). I didn’t get a picture of my final plate with everything, but here are the onions rings, which were the best part anyway. 🙂

 

I had planned to make lasagna on Saturday, but I found 4 containers of mystery soup in my freezer, so I defrosted them altogether, added quite a lot of coconut aminos and hot sauce to mask the freezer burn taste and we had soup with grilled cheese sandwiches (the gluten free bread recipe is coming). This was not the best tasting meal ever, but it was nutritious and filling and I felt great about cleaning some old stuff out of the freezer.

 

This was Sunday night – I found an interesting new pizza crust recipe on YouTube and tried it – and loved it! I’ll post it later this week. It’s made with gluten free flour, egg and milk and could not be easier. For the sauce, I combined tomato paste, water and part of a packet of spaghetti sauce mix that had been in my cupboard for ages! Again, it tasted really good and I felt great about clearing out some old stuff. There was sugar and maltodextrin in that mix, but a little bit of these ingredients are fine on occasion and desperate times call for desperate measures.
I wanted to show you a couple more pictures of the crust. It held together beautifully – we could eat it with our hands! But it was also easy to bite, which may sound silly, but with two of us with orthodontia right now, that’s important. Holds together, yet isn’t hard to bite, makes this the perfect pizza crust for us now. Plus, you really won’t believe how easy it is to make.

 

And the baking continues! These are lemon tarts – my paleo sugar cookie dough with lemon zest added and baked into mini muffin cups. Then I made a paleo lemon curd, folded in some real whipped cream to make a lemon pudding. Everybody loved these. I loved the pudding with fresh strawberries.

And that’s the recap for last week. It’s a good thing I’m really enjoying intermittent fasting or I would be busting out of my clothes!

This week’s plan continues with what we have on hand. I did end up making an impromptu visit to one grocery store on Saturday because I was picking up a Redbox movie (Ford v. Ferrari which we all really loved) so I decided to go on into the store and pick up a few things. We were totally out of fruit and the only fresh vegetable left was broccoli. This is a store I don’t shop regularly, but there are a few things I typically buy there, like our favorite sausage, so I stocked up on those things.

Monday: Instant Pot Chicken Pot Pie

  • I’m making this live on my YouTube channel TODAY at 5 PM EDT so join me if you can!
  • Chicken breasts from the freezer that I picked up last month at Whole Foods
  • fresh onions, celery and carrots plus some green beans from the freezer
  • I usually add mushrooms to my pot pie, but I don’t have any – I did have a can of mushrooms, but I put those on the pizza last night
  • crust is made from paleo pantry staples – almond flour, arrowroot, salt and lard, all of which I still have – there’s not much demand for lard at my Whole Foods so I can probably get more when I go next time – it makes the best pie crust, pastry crust like used in this pot pie and the AIP tortillas we had last week
  • I found one little container of chicken broth during my freezer clean out last week. I’ll make up the difference with the Pacifica Bone Broth I bought at Costco on my last trip there

Tuesday: Hillbilly Casserole

  • A super simple, very comforting meal that uses simple ingredients
  • Ground beef (can sub any other ground meat) plus potatoes and onion
  • Add in extra veggies if you have them, like bell pepper, squash, carrots, celery, mushrooms
  • Pour in milk of your choice or broth and simmer until potatoes are cooked through
  • Top with cheese and broil until melted and browned, optional. I topped mine with a quick, homemade version of pimento cheese (you can actually watch me make this on my last YouTube video).

Wednesday: Lasagna for my hubby

  • I have a container of ricotta cheese I picked up a while ago and needs a home
  • Sauce will be come from our favorite Italian restaurant, if possible. If not, I have some miscellaneous canned tomato products, dried spices and ground beef so could make this myself. But it’s intended to be a treat for my favorite guy.
  • I’m out of mozzarella so we either won’t have any or I’ll have to go to the store before we have this meal. Ooh, I do have string cheese for the kids so I might use some of that assuming there is any left by Wednesday
  • Side vegetable will probably be okra because I have some in the freezer (it’s one of the things I buy at the store I visited over the weekend and one of the few frozen vegetables available – I guess it isn’t very popular)

Thursday: Tuna salad with some kind of fruit and / or vegetable

  • Unless I go to the store on Wednesday, our vegetable situation will be kind of strange. I do have some frozen fruit and a little spinach in the garden so I might make a smoothie. I could also cook some canned green beans. Not sure what we’ll feel like by then.
  • Tuna salad will be canned tuna, mayonnaise and relish. Simple.
  • If I still have some AIP tortillas left, we might make tuna salad wraps

Friday: General Tso’s Chicken, Broccoli and Rice Noodles

  • I have everything to make the General Tso’s Chicken and this is my daughter’s meal she has chosen to learn to cook so I’ve been guarding that pack of chicken.
  • May not have broccoli, but we’ll see. If not, I do have more frozen okra.
  • Rice noodles – just noodles made from rice. Not sure why my daughter likes this over regular rice, but she does and this is the meal she wants to cook, they had the rice noodles at the store, so this is what we’re having

Saturday: Thanksgiving Shepherd’s Pie

  • Ground turkey that was lurking in the back of the freezer will be combined with onions, carrots, celery and broth to make the base of the pie
  • Mashed cauliflower/potatoes will be the topping
  • Honestly, never made Shepherd’s Pie before, but when I was assessing what I had available, this is what came to mind. If it turns out well, look for the recipe here, probably in the fall because I recognize that Shepherd’s Pie is not a normal spring and summer food!

And that’s our meal plan for this next week. I hope it offers you some inspiration as you try to figure out what to feed your family this week. I can make all of these meals without another trip to the store, but I will probably be going this week anyway. Here’s why: 1. My parents will have a prescription to pick up and 2. My children are both having growth spurts and are eating great quantities of food right now. I want them eating when they’re hungry, but I want to have nutritious and filling options for them and I just don’t have a lot of that right now. They both eat a ton of produce and because it doesn’t last long, the fresh stuff goes fast.

One note for those of you who are new here: Yes, I consider us a Paleo Family, but you’ll notice a good bit of cheese in our diet. We’ve been Paleo for such a long time, we’ve been able to safely add back in some non-Paleo foods, and dairy is one of them. We always have grass-fed when possible and that’s just about all I eat. I limit all non-grass-fed dairy for myself, but my family eats it without issue now. If you’re at the beginning of your health journey, you may need to be more strict and that’s why I always offer substitutions for dairy. Generally, it’s an add-on that can simply be left out of the recipe. This week’s lasagna would be the exception to that.

I hope you make it a great week!