What Paleo/Gluten and Dairy Free Looks Like In Our House

I am definitely no expert on the subject and we are still in the process of making the hard changes to ensuring that we adapt to the new lifestyle that we have adopted.  We are stumbling along the road like most of the rest of the population right now (every second person has decided to try and give it a go, at least for a trial period), so I don’t have all the answers, but I can share my experience and what we are doing right now in the hope that it may be encouraging/helpful.

So I thought I would share what our weekly shopping looks like and what I did with it during the week.  Obviously this may look crazy daunting, but remember that we have 5 people that need to be fed every single night.  Knox eats what we eat , Kyla eats almost as much as I do and Riya eats a fair amount (even if she happens to sit at the table longer than everyone else in order to get it all in).

This shopping trip was purely a fruit and veg shop (we had meat in the freezer from the last shop that we could use).

We got:

• 4 packets of diced butternut (because life is too short to peel butternut)
• 1 packet of leaks
• 1 packet carrots
• 1 head of broccoli
• 1 bag of apples
• 2 punnets of mushrooms
• 2 bags of cauliflower (they didn’t have any heads)
• 1 tin coconut cream
• 2 bags of bananas
• 1 bag spinach
• 1 small cheddar cheese
• 1 punnet of baby marrows
• 1 bag red onions
• 3 avos
• 1 bag of roast veg
• 2l milk
• 1 bag of lettuce
• 1 bag potatos
• 2 bags of sliced carrots (in the hope to send them to school with the kids or use them to dip in the avo’s as a snack)
• 2 packets of Lays chips, because there’s no gluten in them and just shut your moustache about the bad fats and processing, I need something fun.

I used all of this to make:

Monday:

A HUGE pot of coconut cream infused butternut soup (it was enough for 2 meals – so I froze half the pot – even with Kyla having 3 bowls at one sitting)

Tuesday:

Savoury Mince with spinach and mushrooms (done in a not so gluten free packet of Beef and Veg Soup mix powder)  on top of a collection of baby marrow, butternut, carrots, cauliflower.

Wednesday:

Chicken pieces that I spice and pop into the oven covered with foil, after 20 minutes I take it out, turn the chicken and add a packet of the roast veg plus some extra carrots, butternut, cauliflower and recover before putting it back in for another 20 minutes, then I check it again and turn the chicken and mix the veg around a bit and put it back in (still covered) for another 20 minutes.  Then I take off the foil and let it brown for a bit and then the veg tastes amazing because it has picked up all of the chicken flavours.

Thursday:

Beef and Veg soup (with no packet this time).  I used all the veg that was about to go off.  It was really amazingly yummy – I don’t have a recipe though because I literally just feel like I chucked meat and veg into a pot and let it do the rest itself.

Friday:

Chicken with cauliflower mash.  (Not the most visually appealing meal I’ve ever made, but it was edible)

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The fruit was eaten by Seth and the girls who have to take it to work and school for tea time.

So that was one week for us.  I didn’t bother with the weekends because we tend to wing it and eat wherever we may find ourselves or just whip up something quickly at home.

I’d love to know how that compares to your weekly shop and whether this is at all helpful?