Julie Mayfield - Weeknight Paleo: 100+ Easy and Delicious Family-Friendly Meals

To Scott and Adelyn,

who make all our days the best day ever

CONTENTS

L ets face it: We live in a fast-paced world, and many of us find ourselves with jam-packed schedulesshuttling kids or pets or ourselves to and from this or that, commuting, evening work commitments, trying to make time for our significant others, friends, family, church... indeed our lives are a pretty far cry from our ancestors way of living in all that we do. We no longer live in villages where all of our friends, family members, and necessities are literally a stones throw away, where our jobs keep us outdoors pretty much every day, where walking and socializing (in person) and sharing meals are all a part of our daily lives. Our modern lifestyle presents some serious challenges as it relates to keeping us and our families out of the drive-thru and in the kitchen. This book will show that it is possible to make nourishing, satisfying, and delicious meals and not lose your life to grocery shopping and cooking.

One of the biggest challenges we hear that people face is finding or making time to cook meals. While one could argue its a matter of priorities (its reported that the average American spends nearly three hours per day watching TV and about half an hour per day on food preparation and cleanup), we know for many houses that is certainly not the case, and finding time to cook from scratch can be extremely difficult. Sometimes, it just takes getting a little creative, or a little planning ahead, or a new technique (like not thawing out the steak before cooking it!see the ) to help make dinnertime at home possible.

Our goal in writing this book is to provide real recipes for real families who want to feed everyone nutritious, delicious mealswithout spending too much of their lives in the kitchen. We arent saying that you dont need to do any planning or any work; there will be some slicing and dicing. We are saying that there are ways to make getting dinner on the table a little less stressfulheck, maybe even fun for you (and the kids if theyre in the picture). In this book youll find recipes that we make a lot in our house, and dozens of ideas on how to make eating nutritious food at home possible without eating the same thing twenty-one meals in a row.

Were fortunate in that we did not come to a Paleo lifestyle by way of some autoimmune disease, some adverse health issues, or with a ton of weight we needed to lose. However, we both have years of experience with scale fluctuations, experimenting with what we choose to eat and when, in addition to a variety of athletic pursuits. When it comes to diets, weve tried NutriSystem, SlimFast, the Zone Diet, the 6 Week Body Makeover, vegetarianism, a bunch of programs touted by celebrities, the cabbage soup diet, cleanses, and many others. While we werent yo-yo dieters, we both have had many ups and downs with the scale.

We first heard of Paleo as it related to a way of eating in 2008. We had recently started dating and were heavily smitten with each other... and with CrossFit workouts. Like many in the CrossFit world, were ever thankful it provided us with our introduction to each other, to Paleo, and to Robb Wolf. We attended Robbs CrossFit certificationthe Paleolithic Solution Seminarin 2009, where Robb finally got Charles to stop meticulously (obsessively?) counting almonds. For us, the Paleo way of eating made perfect sense. Here was something that had helped so many people look, feel, and perform better and was so squarely focused on eating real foods and omitting the processed junk that lines the grocery store aisles. We were sold. Many other diets and lifestyle plans were either trying to sell you something (their branded products) to make certain pseudo-foods a mainstay of a diet or just plain did not make sense as to what would or could promote great health. A breakfast composed of eggs, sauted vegetables, and some avocado? A lunch of a huge bowl of pasture-raised chicken and vegetable soup? A dinner of grilled grass-fed steak, sauted Brussels sprouts, and mashed sweet potato? What wasnt to love?

Then in 2010, over a NorCal margarita or several, Robb and his wife, Nicki Violetti, suggested that we write a cookbook featuring some of the recipes wed been enjoying at home. A year later, our first book Paleo Comfort Foodswas released, followed by Quick & Easy Paleo Comfort Foodsabout two years later. At the same time, we started growing our family. Our pattern was birth a book, birth a baby, birth a book, birth a baby. Were pretty certain that after this book there will not be more babies, but we do hope to continue writing books!