Well Fed Weeknights Presale Now Open!

Sometimes I felt like this day would never arrive. After a few years of collecting recipe ideas, the summer of 2015 spent recipe testing, months of writing, and then another summer of food photography, I’m delighted to let you know…

The presale is now open for my  new book ‘Well Fed Weeknights: Complete Paleo Meals in 45 Minutes Or Less.’

Pre-order details are below—keep reading for all the delicious details.

Over the years, you’ve all been so gracious with your support of Well Fed and Well Fed 2. Your affection for the recipes and the Weekly Cookup comes through loud and clear. But I also heard you when you said you’re time-stressed. That you don’t always have the means or the desire to do a big Weekly Cookup. That you wish you had delicious paleo recipes with the same bold flavors as WF and WF2, without the sometimes long-ish time commitments.

Well Fed Weeknights solves all those problems!

This is our biggest, boldest, most beautiful cookbook yet: 288 pages, over 200 recipes, 128 complete meals, 140 full-color photos and illustrations… it’s a monster in the most awesome way.

I gave myself a pretty big challenge with these recipes! My assignment: Go to the grocery store, buy the ingredients for a meal, then come home and cook it in under 45 minutes. I completed that exercise about 175 times, and the result is this cookbook.

But being fast wasn’t enough. No! There were additional iron-clad rules for whether or not a recipe made the final cut:

But fear not, my Weekly Cookup-ers! Even though each recipe is designed to come together quickly, I also included Cookup Tips on each page, so you can easily work these new recipes into your old (awesome) Cookup habit. It’s the best of everything, really.

More About the Book

The recipes were inspired by takeout classics, food trucks, and cuisines from around the world. Basically, it’s stuff I’ve eaten—or read about—and wanted to recreate at home. All of the recipes are free of grains, dairy, legumes, and soy. And while this book isn’t officially Whole30 approved, I live by the Whole30 guidelines, so the recipes are squeaky clean with options for a little added sweetener once in a while.

Every complete meal—a healthy serving of protein with plenty of veggies and luscious fats—is thoroughly tested and easy to make, with affordable ingredients you’ll find at your regular grocery store. Who wants to go to multiple stores?! And all of the recipes include my “You Know How You Could Do That?” variations, as well as Cookup Tips to help shorten meal prep.

I’ve also included instructions for a Mini Cookup with step-by-step details for cooking six paleo kitchen staples in under an hour. Cook once, and fancy-up your meals all week long with cauliflower rice, zucchini noodles, homemade mayo, and more.

Debuting in Well Fed Weeknights are fun and flexible Food Court Recipes: blueprints of dinner themes, like Meat & Potatoes, Burger Night, Velvet Stir-Fry, The Ultimate Salad Bar, and more, all offering basic techniques and creative variations to satisfy your personal cravings.

Well Fed Weeknights is also packed with useful tips and how-to info including:

What People Are Saying

I sent an advance copy of Well Fed Weeknights to some of my favorite food people, and their reactions were just what I hoped they’d be!

I often find the question ‘What do you want for dinner?’ more stressful than actually prepping and cooking the meal, but thanks to Well Fed Weeknights, the what’s-for-dinner game just got crazy fun. You’ll be blown away by how many time-saving resources are packed into this cookbook, and the recipes are the perfect balance of joy-in-my-mouth and hey-that-clean-up-went-fast. So feel free to ask me what I want for dinner tonight, because I’ve got about 34 pages in Weeknights already bookmarked. — Melissa Hartwig, New York Times bestselling author and co-creator of the Whole30 program

I’m head over heels in love with Melissa Joulwan’s Well Fed Weeknights! My spice-loving kitchen sister has created yet another amazing collection of umami-packed meals—and this one is tailor-made for busy folks like me who crave flavorful, nourishing meals whipped up in minutes. Why look anywhere else for culinary inspiration? — Michelle Tam, New York Times bestselling author of Nom Nom Paleo: Food For Humans

Mel is one of my favorite authors/chefs in any food genre. She never ceases to impress with her creativity and passion, and Well Fed Weeknights is no exception. Beautifully presented and exceptionally laid out, it’s got all the “need to know” elements and bullet points of a healthy Paleo lifestyle. Be prepared to get your Paleo on every night of the week! — Mark Sisson, Publisher of Mark’s Daily Apple and Founder of Primal Kitchen

We’re all time poor and we all need to make better choices about what we put into our bodies. This new compendium of easy and fast recipes from Melissa Joulwan is the tastiest way I’ve seen to get started or continue to be inspired. — Andrew Zimmern, TV personality, chef, and food writer

Recipe Layout & Illustrations

Every recipe is shown alongside a full-color photo with a little story about why I think the recipe is a keeper, and like our previous books, the design includes plenty of whimsical details to make your time in the kitchen as playful as possible. Along with ingredients and detailed directions, each recipe also includes variations—”You Know How You Could To That?”—and Cookup Tips so you can work these recipes into your Weekly Cookup.

My husband Dave (Master of Cartooning, for real) drew ridiculously awesome custom illustrations to make the Food Court Recipes even more fun—and even easier to cook.

Table of Contents

Click for an expanded view of the 128 complete paleo meals you’ll find in Well Fed Weeknights. What you can’t see in the TOC are the eight velvety stir-fries, 16 gourmet hamburger and hot dog ideas, 20 salad dressings and more than 40 salads, and so many more irresistible variations.
You won’t mind skipping the drive-through or delivery to cook at home when you can eat meals like Korean Beef with Kimchi Relish, Crispy Pork Cutlets with Red Cabbage, Dirty Rice, Fried Chicken Meatballs with Collard Greens, Pizza Noodles, Sticky Orange Sunflower Chicken with Sesame Broccoli, Street Fries, and so many more. (Two words: Taco Night.)

Photos

As always, Dave and I tag-teamed on the photos, with me on food styling and Dave behind the camera. These are just a few sample photos to whet your appetite. All of the photos in the book show the real food that results from following the recipes. In fact, we spent this past summer cooking, styling, and photographing these dishes—and then eating the leftovers all week.

Pre-order now—official release November 1

The presale for Well Fed Weeknights officially kicks off today! You can pre-order Well Fed Weeknights so many awesome places, including my online store. I encourage you to support your favorite local bookstore by pre-ordering there—or use the links below to order online.

You can also order signed copies from BookPeople in Austin, and they ship worldwide! Just click this link,  place the book in your cart and indicate “SIGNED COPY” in the comments field during checkout. BookPeople is a damn fine bookstore. I’m thrilled to be doing a signing there on November 9 (7:30 p.m.) and so excited they’re making signed copies available to everyone.

Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | BAM! Books-a-Million | Barnes & Noble | BookPeople
Hudson Booksellers | Indie Bound | Indigo | Powell’s | Target | Walmart

And if you need more convincing—or just want to start cooking some of the Well Fed Weeknights recipes before the book is officially launched on November 1—you can download a free 70-page sampler that features 18 recipes, including Fried Chicken Meatballs. Get the Well Fed Weeknights sampler now!