'Smoked' Beef

On Friday I made THIS recipe from Civilized Caveman Cooking Creations. What a creative idea ‘smoking’ in the crockpot is and it turned out great. Not only was the smoky flavor infused into the meat, there was none of the hassle and mess that comes along with the actual smoker. While I love smoking meat, if it is just me at home with the kids I will rarely do it b/c it is so much commitment to tending the smoker. This was a great alternative for during the workweek, love it!  I will be utilizing this method again, for sure.

A money/time saving strategy that I use just about every week can be seen in this particular recipe’s preparation. I choose to make my large cuts of meat at the start of the weekend. This ensures there are leftovers in the fridge to use for other meals. Not only does it save time on prepping/cooking lunches for the weekend, but it saves money by ensuring we won’t have to go out to eat because it takes too long to make a meal as we run from weekend event to weekend event. This is particularly important for us, as we are yet to find a restaurant in our area that has any real Paleo options. When we want to venture away from Paleo it is generally with an Ice Cream or other sweet treat, not because the waitress didn’t know there was something in the dish and we accidently ate something we shouldn’t.

Generally, for my weekend meat, I like doing one that can easily be made into a salad, an omelet, and of course re-heated and eaten just the way it was cooked. So with the beef I made Friday, there was enough for hubby to have lunch Saturday (as leftovers w/ leftover carrot and cauliflower mash), a large salad today for lunch, and a large salad for his lunch tomorrow at work. I have enough beef left to make myself a salad for lunch tomorrow too.  It is a win-win for staying on the Paleo Bandwagon!

I had leftover turkey loin on my salad for lunch today.

On weeknights I do cook enough of the protein for us to have lunches the following day, but weekends this is particularly important when you are running around and not always having time to get something together.