Dinner Ideas After a Long Day

Get a crock pot. You can set it before you leave and dinner will be ready when you get home. There are tons of recipes and recipe books for a crock pot/slow cooker. I make roast beef, soups, chicken, ribs, etc. Sometimes it as little as throwing in some chicken or ribs with some barbeque sauce and letting it cook throughout the day. The chicken and the ribs will fall of the bone and be really tender. The best part is coming home to a house that smells great and only having to prepare sides.

Stir fry: cut up some chicken and cook in a pan, add one bag brocoli slaw and sautee until tender. Mix together hoisin sauce and soy sauce in a 3:1 ratio and toss in some sesame oil and coat the stir fry mix. Serve over rice.

Switch up pasta: add pesto, white beans and baby spinach. Or diced tomatoes tossed with garlic, olive oil and parsley. Also, you can turn lots of different pastas into baked pastas - make the night before and just stick in a greased glass dish.

Tilapia cooks very quickly if you pan cook it. My family likes fish tacos - I just cook up some tilapia, put out some tortillas and some rice and beans or corn.

Grill for as long as you can - burgers, hotdogs, chicken, etc.

Pizza potatoes - stick baking potatoes in the oven right when you get home, right when they're done, take them out, top with a little tomato sauce and mozzerella cheese. (You can also do this with frozen french fries or tater tots, but obviously less healthy).

Eggs cook up really fast, and can be served with frozen hash browns, fruit salad or cooked veggies, baked sausage.

"fancify" sandwiches - grilled ham, apple and cheddar is really yummy. Same thing with turkey, spinach and boursin (or dill havarti). You can either make side salads the night before or buy them.

Finally, if you do want to go the crock pot route in the winter, you can prep everything the night before and put it in the pot, cover it and put it in the fridge. Then just take it out in the morning, add whatever liquid the recipe calls for and turn it on. I do this a lot.

Good luck going back to work!

On weekends try making extra - then refirigerate or freeze in meal size portions. This works really well for meat balls, and meatloaf becuase you can par cook them, freeze them and then finish cooking them when you are ready to serve them.

Wow. My kids dont resume school until after the Tuesday after labor day..but they were in school until June 24th.

Anyhow do you have a Trader Joe's supermarket near you. They have lots of healthy and delicious dinner ideas.

whole wheat pancakes w/walnuts
omelettes w/veggies & whole wheat toast
grill cheese sandwiches with tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchini
cereal and bananas
salad w/ chicken breast and whatever you find in fridge
egg salad sandwiches with side of fruit
Saute chicken breasts on stove, quarter potatoes w/olive oil and garlic in oven, nuke frozen veggies w/ a little butter
Chicken salad sandwiches with walnuts and raisins on whole wheat; serve w/cut up fruit
Package of Mrs. Grass's soup w/extra noodles - add egg and veggies, serve with whole wheat bread
saute chicken breasts with taco sauce, cut up tomato, lettuce, open a can of black beans, make tacos
Make sweet and sour cabbage (vinegar, sugar, water cook 15 min), serve with chicken sausage (cook 10 min)
Chicken and instant brown rice w/broccoli - saute chicken, add broccoli last five minutes; cook rice with soup broth, serve together
Make pasta, nuke some frozen spinach, add a can of artichokes, saute shrimp or scallops and garlic with some white wine, olive oil. Mix together. Top with fresh parm
Quesadillas - put tortillas in pans, add whatever you want - spinach, artichokes, chicken, shrimp, zucchini, cook over low heat for 10 minutes.

Use the slow cooker:
put a chuck roast and veggies in the a.m.
chicken - roasted or bbq'd

The best thing I do is on Sunday I spent a couple hours cooking for the week. This week I made sweet and sour cabbage, chicken sausages and baked zucchini with parm & asiago cheeses. For lunch today sausage and cabbage; for dinner tonight sausage and zucchini. I cook a roast or roast some chicken, bake healthy snack bread, cut up fruit. It's fun to cook when there's no pressure. Then I just take out the stuff and reheat during the week.

I have a recipe for low fat lasagna with ground turkey and broccoli (from the Better Homes/Gardens cookbook) - it makes four servings, but I double it and freeze one and make one. A week later I have a meal ready and just pull it out of the freezer, put it in the oven and voila!

Dinner menus can be delivered to your e-mail every week along with a grocery list. They have been tested by families and are healthy and give good variety. Most can be fixed in 30 minutes:

www.thescramble.com (fee for subscription)
www.savingdinner.com (fee for subscription)
www.rachaelraymag.com (free)

I have been using these for years - it is a great help.

Good luck!

Grill and grill extra things. Freeze it for later..
Chicken breast, lots of chicken legs (if your children like them) hamburger patties, turkey burgers, sausages, Chicken fajitas.

Always have some kind of bread and tortillas. They also freeze well.

Purchase a crock pot and purchase the plastic bag liners.. They are sold with the aluminum foil.. I purchase super large pork and beef roast (when they are on sale)and season and cut them up.. Then I brown then and freeze them in sections. I can throw them into a crock pot with a can of tomatoes and herbs, or onion soup mix and water in the morning and for dinner you can add frozen veggies.. Or microwave rice, potatoes or boil pasta..

Stew is great in a crock pot.

Sloppy joes made with ground Turkey and shredded carrots or zucchini in it is also good.

Breakfast for dinner was one of my favorites when I was a child.

I always have jarred spaghetti sauce and pasta, just in case..

Cook's Country and Cook's Illustrated magazines have pull out cards called 30 minute suppers. Sure, some of them take longer than 30 minutes ( I don't think they factored in crying babies and needy older siblings) but their recipes are pretty tasty, even the ones that are better prepared during the weekend. I think Cook's Country usually has a slow-cooker recipe, too. Plus I like to look at the other recipes and remember when I had time to make things like that.

I got this recipe from Oxygen magazine so I cannot take any credit for it's deliciousness! Easy, fast, full of flavor, and HEALTHY!

Shrimp, feta, and black bean tacos - 4 servings

1 T olive oil
24 shrimp (pre-cooked, tail off is best)
1 can of black beans
1 cup of salsa
4 oz low-fat, low sodium feta (crumbles)
8 corn taco shells

-Heat the olive oil in a skillet and warm the shrimp (about 6 minutes...or cook it though if you use raw)
-drain black beans and add to shrimp
-add salsa to the skillet
-heat through
-let cool, add feta
-serve in taco shells (2 tacos, 3 shrimp per taco shell)

Serve with a green salad and you have a meal under 500 calories that takes less than 15 minutes to make.