Was Wandering If Anybody Knew Quick and Easy to Prepare Meals

Try once a month cooking, and once a month cooking 2. There are pretty decent recipes and it is a plan to cook everything on one day (or weekend) and freeze them all so you can grab from freezer and pop in oven. They also have a grocery list that is broken down by the sections of the grocery store (which makes it real easy to shop). For free recipes there is all recipes like the one lady mentioned. Also, go to www.flylady.com has some weekly meal planning on her website. You can subscribe to or just get the weekly free sample. There is one for regular, low cal, etc.

Hope this helps,
K.

I get the Cooking Light magazine. They also have the website www.cookinglight.com . Lots of great, healthy ( but don't taste light)recipes. You can search by ingredients, quick meals, etc. We get all of our great recipes from there. The March issue of Family Fun magazine has Argentinian Ham and Cheese Empanadas that you can freeze (similiar to a calzone which are easy to make & freeze). It would be easy to change the ingredients around in those too.

I use Allrecipes.com to find a ton of recipes. They have a feature where you can list ingredients you have on hand and find recipes that use them. Now my plan is to make (or find online) a monthly calendar chart and try to plan out meals ahead of time so I'm not running around at the last minute. My son is on a no artifical, no preservative diet now so I can't rely on store-bought frozen meals anymore. Besides, it's always cheaper to cook than eat out. Good luck!

Hi S.

I usually have meals from defrost stage to table in approx 30 minutes max unless it is a roast.

The main meals that we use are tuna surprise, tuna, pasta spirals (cook before combining), frozen vegetables and tuna sauce combined with grated cheese on top.

Chicken Parmigana, pre-crumb the chicken or buy pre-crumbed, then after cooking by itself, place the tomato paste on top.

Pretty much, most of my working meals either use frozen vegetables or a pre-made sauce to go with it.

Enjoy!

Hey there S.,

I totally understand how you feel on this one. Most days i find myself trying to find time to get half the things done that i need to finish. Time is precious thats for sure. Well I am a consultant with the Pampered Chef and something I have been doing for the past year is something called Power Cooking. Its where I teach hosts and their friends how to prepare 3-5 easy meals in about 30 minutes. So you have one great meal for tonight and can freeze the rest for later when you are in a pinch for time. The best thing about these is they are all delicious recipes the whole family will love, as well as great on the checkbook. On average it is only going to be costing you around $2 per serving, which i find very helpful especially with the way our economy is. Well I would love to email you these recipes and get you some great ideas for dinners. Also if you are interested in sharing this will your friends I would love to come and do a Power Cooking demo for you to get you started:) Either way I would love to help you in any way I can just let me know what I can do.
A. ###-###-####

My granmother had this published in a cookbook and now that I'm the "G." my kids all make it:
Good Stuff
1 lb hamburger, browned
1 serving cooked rice per person (I use brown)
when you cook the rice add beef bouillon to water
1 - 2 cans beef soup
dash of garlic
salt, pepper, & season to your taste
Add any of the following:
1 can water chestnuts
mushrooms
onions

Mix ingredients and bake for 30 minutes or freeze and bake when needed. My kids loved it with ketchup.

http://www.cookinglight.com/food/quick-easy/20-20-superfa...

From the cookinglight website. Looks really cool and quick.
Enjoy!

L.
work at home mom and wouldn't have it any other way!

A good idea is to cook up lots of ground beef and seperate it into ziploc bags, then all you have to do is reheat it. You could use it for tacos, sloppy joes, spaghetti,etc. Soups would be good to freeze as well. You could premake a lasagna and freeze it too.Seems to me what takes the most time is defrosting and preparing the meat, the rest of the meal comes together pretty easy.

When I cook I make enough to feed my family for four meals and freeze half. So we eat it for dinner one day, then for lunch the next. Then at some point in the future I can do the exact same thing with the frozen portion. In addition, my sister lives in the neighborhood so we have an unstructured dinner co-op of sorts. I'll cook a few times a week for both families, and she'll cook a few times. For freezer meals, I've used freezer meal recipes (they also provide the corresponding shopping lists so I don't have to do any thinking) at www.savingdinner.com

Fresh Pasta: cooks in about 2-4 minutes, thus cutting down considerably on your cooking time.

The crockpot is the way to go!! I recently bought the best recipe book from Amazon.com - 101 Things to do with a Slow Cooker. There are a ton of recipes for meat, chicken, and pork dishes. Most of the recipes require less than 5 min of prep and voila! dinner will be served 8 hours later. You can even throw in frozen meat. Love that crockpot!!

One of the most difficult issues we have every week is trying to put food on the table. We can easily go through the motions at times and get in the car and drive our lovely little ones from school to gymnastics and back to home but to create a meal at the end of the day, that requires planning and thought...who has time or energy for that!

I am a foodie through and through but not every meal can be gourmet and if it was, my kids would never eat! So I try and use fresh local ingredients that are in season to prepare delicious meals to keep my kids sitting at the table. Well, my oldest is 4 so I pretty much have to tie him down to his chair to keep him seated but you know what I mean.

Please check out my Market Menu each week for what is on sale in our local grocery stores and a listing of great menu ideas that you can make for your family.

It Takes a Village...
Where Dallas Moms go for Food, Family and Fun

http://www.ittakesavillagedallas.com/It_takes_a_village/M...

Cooked ground beef freezes well, I like to make sloppy joe sauce, spaghetti sauce, chili, etc. and freeze batches to pull out and defrost when there's no time to cook.Also, at Fry's grocery in the freezer section there's packs of different flavored chicken--orange flavored, mexican mole flavored, chile mandarine flavored and so on. You pop the chicken in the oven for 15 min. and then pour the sauce packets over it. I cook up a batch of rice with it, its dinner in 20 min! I believe the regular price is $7.99 but I watch for the sales for $4.99 and stock up on them. We have it once a week. Good luck Mama!

I couldn't live without my crockpot!
Think about dinner in the morning, throw it all in the crockpot and let the wonderful smells fill your house all day.
I don't just make "stews". I throw entirely frozen pieces of meat in there, or use another one to cook my boiled potatoes all day (then mashed potatoes are made in minutes in the evening). Sometimes I have three 7- quart crock pots going at once. One for meat, one for veggie or side and a cake baking in the other!

I'd love to see the responses you get on this question. I recently started my own home business so that I can stay home with my younger one, and get so busy that I forget about dinner, then have to throw something together last minute. Let me know if you find any good ones.