Quick Dinner Ideas
When things get hectic and you need to feed your family quick and balanced dinners there are many options. Most of us cooking for our families don’t have time for an elaborate homemade meal each evening. This doesn’t mean that we have to sacrifice health or taste to quickly prepare a meal for our family. Read on for several quick dinner ideas.
My favorite quick dinner idea involves my favorite small appliance, the slow-cooker. Though it takes hours for the food to cook, the preparation and clean up are quick and the meal does not require constant monitoring while cooking. Put a roast, beef or pork, or a whole chicken in the crock pot with chopped carrots and potatoes and easy seasonings like onion soup mix or Italian dressing mix and cook on low for 8-10 hours. Search great recipe web sites like www.allrecipes.com for even more delicious slow-cooker recipes.
If crock pot cooking is not your style, try pasta dishes. Spaghetti is an easy fix, as is rotini mixed with tuna, cream of mushroom soup and cheese. Serve with frozen veggies and whole wheat bread for a healthy meal. Boil perogies and add link sausage for great flavor. Dishes like lasagna can be prepared ahead of time and popped into the oven for 30 minutes to bake. These dishes can also be frozen and reheated in a time pinch.
There are many quick meal ideas that come in a box. Granted, they are processed and contain sodium so they aren’t the healthiest of the quick dinner ideas. Meals like Hamburger Helper are quick if you have meat defrosted ahead of time. If not, meals such as Homestyle Bakes come with all of the ingredients in the box. These quick dinner ideas should be used less often than others because they aren’t as healthy.
Once a month cooking allows for quick dinners. Once a month you shop for ingredients and prepare enough meals to freeze for the whole month. As needed, you reheat the meals and serve. Depending on the time each dish needs for reheating, you can have a meal on the table in minutes. This usually requires extra freezer space and may not be a viable option for those with small freezer. Cooking twice or three times per month would be a better plan for someone with limited freezer space.
Meal assembly stores are another way to get dinner on the table quickly. Along the same line as the once a month cooking, at a meal assembly store you literally assemble meals from prepared ingredients and then freeze them until you need them. To find a meal assembly store in your area check out the following websites: www.dreamdinners.com, www.supersuppers.com, and www.doingdinner.com.
For the busy family, there is no shortage of quick dinner ideas that allow for fast, easy and healthy meal preparation. Cooking can be fun, and need not be stressful if life becomes too busy to prepare elaborate meals each evening.
