Need a Primal/Paleo cookbook that does not include exotic foods. page 2

[noodletoy]

if the op is used to taco bell and frozen dinners then cooking skills of even the most basic sort may be an issue.

i don't use recipes either, but am a culinary school grad and have worked in fine dining all my life. i can make stuff in my sleep that most would never attempt.

keep it super simple, like a bunch of chicken legs roasted. you can roast or steam just about any veggie. salads. scrambled eggs and quiches. i've been making crustless quiche for awhile now with coconut milk instead of cream, some veggies mixed in, and wow is that good.

[Chaohinon]

Every meal is some combination of meat + vegetables + starchy vegetables + fruit + dairy + appropriate fat (add and subtract according to your needs). It's not hard.

Meatballs & marinara + salad
Vegetable curry + chicken
Pork loin + sweet potato
Pork shoulder + cabbage slaw
Steak + peppers & onions
Steak + mashed sweet potato

Robb Wolf even has a food matrix for this sort of dilemma. I've found paleo has gotten easier to stick to the more I simplify my meals and get away from saucy & gourmet affairs. These days, most of them are a basic formula of meat + vegetable, like ground beef and carrots. And there's no reason you can't keep white rice and tapioca flour on hand as substitutes for things bread & pasta. Just make smarter choices within the context of your pre-existing diet.

But bear in mind, if you're not helping her out with grocery runs, food prep, and cooking, you kinda forfeit the right to complain.

[lssanjose]

Every meal is some combination of meat + vegetables + starchy vegetables + fruit + dairy + appropriate fat (add and subtract according to your needs). It's not hard.

Meatballs + salad
Vegetable curry + chicken
Pork loin + sweet potato
Pork shoulder + cabbage slaw
Steak + peppers & onions
Steak + mashed sweet potato

Robb Wolf even has a food matrix for this sort of dilemma. I've found paleo has gotten easier to stick to the more I simplify my meals and get away from saucy & gourmet affairs. These days, most of them are a basic formula of meat + vegetable, like ground beef and carrots. And there's no reason you can't keep white rice and tapioca flour on hand as substitutes for things bread & pasta. Just make smarter choices within the context of your pre-existing diet.

But bear in mind, if you're not helping her out with grocery runs, food prep, and cooking, you kinda forfeit the right to complain.

+1.

To add, I wouldn't try stressing over cookbooks, and just get cooking oil (coconut oil, butter, rendered duck/pig fat) and throw it in a pan, until slightly brown, to cook a slab of meat. I won't even go so far as to season it. As you get comfortable cooking, try your hand at seasoning with a simple spices (sea salt, pepper), then move to other ones you'll feel comfortable in trying for the future.

[Dr. Bork Bork]

Make It Paleo is my favorite, followed by Paleo Comfort Foods, and Everyday Paleo. EP has a 30 day meal plan and shopping guide. If you've got kids, Eat Like A Dinosaur is nice to have on hand for them.

[Karma33]

I would say primal cooking can be very easy. I will throw out a few recipes i have been using:
Breakfast-scrambled eggs and bacon, scrambled eggs and grass fed ground beef(i cook of grass fed ground beef in taco seasoning to use through out the week)
Lunch- bag of spinach with cucumbers, cooked chicken(boil a whole chicken, save stock),olive oil, fresh lime juice fresh cracked pepper
Snack-nuts, sliced smoked salmon, fruit
Dinner-grass fed ribeyes with steamed cauliflower and grass fed butter, any meat and steamed veggies and butter

It is so easy. None of this takes much time. Grill or bake meat in advance. Add cooked veggies and fat. Just get a routine going.

[magicmerl]

You want to buy a cookbook for your wife? Why don't you buy one for yourself and do the cooking?

+1

[RitaRose]

Don't get all in a panic, guys. I think he really is looking at this as a team effort. From his unedited first post"

I want us both to cook healthy meals from this cookbook.

By the time the first complaint was posted, it was too late to correct the original post without an edit showing.

[primalkyle]

Cook up some chicken thighs and steam/saute some veggies...will probably save you money over buying those meals and will taste way better and be wholesome.

Cook ground beef and pair with with some peppers/sour cream, avocado and salsa, wrap in lettuce leaves and have some delicious iceberg tacos.

There are many simple things you/she can make that will cost less per meal and be absolutely delicious.

[magicmerl]

The easiest meal I have found is to stir fry veggies (red onions, capsicums, mushrooms, garlic etc) in a generous dose of lard/ghee/butter, then scrape that into a pile on one half of the pan and cook some eggs/bacon/offal on the other half in the final few minutes.

[sbhikes]

Okay then, if this isn't for the wife entirely, what I would do is just learn how to cook. Not how to cook paleo, just how to cook. Get a Betty Crocker cook book from the 50s. Throw out the section with baked goods and jello salads. Learn how to cut up and cook meat. Learn about what a slow vs fast oven is. Learn how to broil. Get a simple metal vegetable steamer and a crock pot.

Dinner is a plain piece of meat, steamed veggies with butter or a salad with oil and vinegar, and sweet potatoes. After a while, you'll start to experiment. Sometimes all you have to do is make the presentation fancy even if it's the same boring thing. The same boring piece of meat but this time you cut it up and put a sauce on it. The same boring sweet potato but you cut it into circles and fried them in coconut oil. The same boring piece of salmon but this time you put mustard on it before you baked it.