IT'S FRIDAY!!!


Meal Planning Part 2

Okay, so we talked about setting the mood and making meal planning as fun as possible….but you might be sitting there with your weekly planner and pen in hand, a hot cup of tea and chocolate (most important detail) and still feeling like a lost puppy.  What in the world are you going to feed your family or yourself?  I let you in on where I begin my list and that may give ya some ideas and a place to start.
So we try to focus on 80% paleo based diet (grain-free) and then let the other 20% fall where it may.  So if you were to come to our home on a Monday night you would more than likely find us eating roasted chicken and sweet potatoes with green beans and salad. This meal gets me off to a great start for the week, cause with that one little chicky I can do a whole lot of magic (until the kids eat more…then it may take two chickys)! Then, the left over roasted sweet potatoes and green beans will be part of breakfast and lunch for the next couple of days.
So once the belly’s are full, I de-bone the chicken and put all the meat in a tupperware for my next meal.  I then take the chicken bones and everything from the roaster pan and through it in the crock pot with some water and apple cider vinegar and make one of the most healing foods on the planet…homemade chicken broth.
So, then when looking at the rest of the week, I find a recipe that will use my leftover chicken and a soup for my chicken broth.  But let’s start with the roasted chicken and sweet potatoes recipe and in following weeks I will send recipes your way that I use a lot for the leftovers. 

Roasted Whole Chicken
There are a lot of ways to do a roasted chicken, but usually I keep it short and sweet! When I am really in a hurry or just feeling a little lazy….I simply sprinkle some salt, pepper and garlic powder on that bad boy, top with some butter and call it a day.   
Ingredients
1 whole chicken
Sea Salt and pepper
1/2 yellow onion chopped
2 Garlic cloves
1 chopped carrot
3 tablespoons butter

Directions
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Remove the chicken giblets. Rinse the chicken inside and out. Liberally salt and pepper the inside of the chicken. Stuff the cavity with the onion, garlic and carrots. Sprinkle the outside again with salt and pepper and cut the butter into 3-1 TBSP slabs and place onto on chicken. Tie the legs together with kitchen string (don’t stress if you do not have any…it will still be great!).
Roast the chicken for 1 1/2 hours, or until the juices run clear when you cut between a leg and thigh. Remove the chicken and cover with aluminum foil for about 20 minutes. Slice the chicken onto a platter and serve.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Ingredients
Sweet potatoes
Coconut oil
Sea salt and pepper
Cinnamon

Directions:
Oven 425 Degrees
The chicken should already be cooking so just set the pan in with the chicken (bottom rack is fine)
Cut up the sweet potatoes into cubes (I use about 4-6 potatoes, so I can have extra for breakfast and other meals throughout week) and place in large 15x11 baking pan. Put about 1 TBSP coconut oil on the sweet potatoes. (I just put it right on top of the potatoes, put in oven and after about ten minutes in oven, it is melted and then I toss the sweet potatoes with it.)
Bake for about 45 mins…..if like crispy, place on top rack for about 10 minutes at 475 degrees.  Once they are cooked to how you like them, take them out and toss with sea salt, pepper and a whole lot of cinnamon! Play around with different seasonings….you really cant go wrong…I just love cinnamon J



Next week we will tackle chicken broth! Also will throw some recipe ideas at you that will help you use that chicken for all its worth!

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