Life as a Lilly blog » beautiful photos of a baby, recipes, dogs & our life in Colorado!

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  • Welcome to my blog!

    Thank you for visiting Life as a Lilly blog.
    I'm Heather.
    I'm a Christian. Wife. ❤ ♥ Mom ♥ ❤ Blogger. Colorado Wedding & Portrait Photographer. I am passionate about organic & local food, exercise and chocolate.

Mostly Paleo weekly meal planning

breakfast: hard boiled eggs, Paleo Pancakes, Paleo muffins, Paleo breakfast burritos

lunches: dinner leftovers, salads with avocado & turkey bacon, Paleo Tuna Sandwiches

snacks: beef jerky, protein shakes, raw almonds, sunflower seeds, dried fruit, homemade lara bars

dinner:

  • fish & rice
  • chicken & sweet potatoes
  • Greek Meatballs
  • turkey & avocado wraps
  • loaded baked potatoes
  • kabobs
  • out or leftovers

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Paleo meal planning week of January 14th

breakfast: hard boiled eggs, Paleo Pancakes, Paleo muffins, Paleo breakfast burritos

lunches: dinner leftovers, salads with avocado & turkey bacon, Paleo Tuna Sandwiches

snacks: beef jerky, protein shakes, raw almonds, sunflower seeds, dried fruit

dinner (all Paleo):

sides: twice baked chipotle sweet potatoes, guacamole, green salad, amaranth

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The 21 days to getting ORGANIZED challenge!

I was on Pinterest looking for organizing tips and came across this 21 days to get organized challenge.

While it’s a few days late to join the challenge in January, I will start my own challenge February 1st.

The goal is to knock off one item a day, with the exception of Sundays.

Make sure to jump over to A Bowl Full of Lemons blog to take the challenge yourself!

 

21dayorganizingchallenge175 The 21 days to getting ORGANIZED challenge!

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2 comments

January 9, 2012 - 11:59 pm

Amanda Larson - I am so glad to see you are starting this late. Please, please, please remind me to do it with you. I really need to get organized!!!

January 10, 2012 - 7:03 pm

Heather - will do! :)

Paleo Meal Planning week of January 9th

In case you missed my previous post, we are still doing Paleo but not doing Everyday Paleo’s 30-day meal plan.  It felt too redundant for us… but her menus were extremely helpful and inspiring – to point us in the right direction.

Thanks to Pinterest and some of your feedback, I found some great Paleo blogs.icon smile Paleo Meal Planning week of January 9th

For breakfasts, lunches, & snacks, we will alternate between a few key dishes…

breakfast: hard boiled eggs, Paleo Pancakes, Paleo muffins, Paleo breakfast burritos

lunches: dinner leftovers, salads with avocado & turkey bacon, Paleo Tuna Sandwiches

snacks: beef jerky, protein shakes, raw almonds, sunflower seeds, dried fruit

dinner (all Paleo):

  1. Grilled Fish & mixed green salad
  2. Steak Chile Rellenos
  3. Garden Fresh Meatballs & tomato sauce
  4. Paleo Chicken Pot Pie
  5. Beanless Chili
  6. Paleo Hamburgers
  7. Sweet Potato Lime Soup 

 

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Beginner’s Guide to Meal Planning

My friend Karen called me today and asked for some guidance with meal planning.

She’s never meal planned and doesn’t know where to start.

She also wants to keep the recipes quick & easy… easy clean-up afterwards, even better!

Here’s some steps that should help you dip your toes into the meal-planning world:

1. browse your grocery store’s ad.  Get an idea of what is in season and what the store has in stock that week. I feel that people fall into one of two categories:  1. buy what’s on sale OR 2.  buy what sounds good.  If it is on sale, great – if not, oh well.

I definitely fall into the second category.  Most of the foods we buy are not processed and coupons or sales are rare… but I still browse the ad to get an idea of what I will be able to buy.

2. Pick 2-3 resources to select your recipes from. For example: food blogs, allrecipes.com, Cooking Light magazine, family recipes, Pinterest.  Don’t overwhelm yourself with using 20 different recipe resources in one week.

3. Choose a variety of protein bases: in one week, choose a couple of each: chicken, beef, turkey,  fish, pork (if you eat pork, which I don’t), and at least one meatless protein. As a rule of thumb, we rotate through these protein bases for dinners and have alternating proteins for lunch or leftovers for lunch from the previous night’s dinner.

4. Select a variety of food preparations for the week.  Grilling, baking, crockpot/slow-cooker, saute, pan-fry – you get the idea… The key is variety so you don’t feel like you are having the “same thing” again, since texture is such a big component to enjoying food.  Also, use the fish, salad and items that perish quicker at the beginning of the week.

5. Choose side dishes: choose a veggie/fruit & a healthy grain as a side.  Some ideas: quinoa, brown rice, yams, sweet potatoes, russet potatoes, spaghetti squash, mixed green salad topped with fruit…

6. Use little post-it tabs to mark recipes you want to try in cookbooks, magazines & any hard copies you can get your hands on.  As you mark the recipes you want, notice the serving size and how many portions the recipe yields.  Don’t be afraid to scale down the recipe to fit your needs.  There’s no sense in having 10 leftover dishes you don’t have room to freeze and don’t care to eat as leftovers.

7. Make a list!  My new favorite way to make a list is the smart-phone app called GroceryIQ.  It is free & easy to use… as you type in the item, it brings it up and you confirm it for your list. You can sync lists with your spouse (via the website or phone app) – so if they think of something to add, they can just add it!  Nice huh?  It keeps your list in categories – somewhat how you would search for food as you shop.  In the store, as you add items to your grocery cart, you do the same virtually by checking items off your list in your phone. There’s even a coupon feature.

IF the thought of this app makes your skin crawl, go ahead and put some pen to paper and make a list that way.  It will help to “map out” your trip around the store, by categorizing your list and adding items under each category:  produce, dairy, meats, etc.

8. Breakfast, Lunch, Snack & Dinner: write or type it out… We have our meal plan on the side of the fridge & I send a copy to work with my husband.  When you fail to plan, you plan to fail – in other words, if you don’t plan each meal, you’ll be improvising: running out of ingredients, eating junk, skipping meals (then overeating the next), ordering takeout, overspending on food you didn’t plan for.

So write it out; Even if it as simple as:

breakfast: Huevos Rancheros (family of 3, two eggs per person… then you know how many eggs you need for that meal)

lunch: turkey bacon & cheddar grilled cheese (family of three: how much bread, turkey bacon & cheese will this take?)

snack: protein shake or handful of raw almonds and and apple (add these to the list)

dinner: crockpot Catalina Chicken (which you can throw in the crockpot the night before or morning of and keep in the fridge until you need to start slow-cooking it)

9. Dietary needs.  Your body needs a certain amount of protein each day, plenty of water, some carbs, and some fat… if you have NO idea what you need, talk to your dr or a dietitian.  Don’t believe everything you Google.icon wink Beginners Guide to Meal Planning I keep track of what I’m eating, to ensure a balance, with another smartphone app: Calorie Counter.  Sometimes I forget to use it but my friendly reminder to use it again is usually constant “crashing” between meals – which means I’m eating too much sugar & carbs… but that’s my vice.  Everyone has one, right?

10. Alternate Planning. My husband and I have different tastes in food, therefore we alternate weeks for meal planning, whenever possible.  It helps us appreciate each other’s efforts and we end up eating more variety of foods.  Lately, he’s been working long days, but he still in enjoys starting the “general” food ideas for the week.

So there ya go! Some meal planning tips for those just starting out. Hope it helps!icon smile Beginners Guide to Meal Planning Feel free to share some of YOUR meal planning tips below:

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1 comment

January 7, 2012 - 9:57 am

Karen - Thank you so much for all of the amazing tips, Heather! You really helped me get started. I am almost done planning my first week’s worth of dinners!