I try really, really hard to feed our family a well-balanced, nutritious diet. It's not always easy to do when dinner time is when Maddy is DONE with me but yet clings to me, too. It's really the witching hour! She wants my attention and at the same time is bored with me. It's too easy to eat junk or order in. Not only is that not healthy, but it's expensive as well.
So, I remedy this by using some short cuts. Here are a few of my tried and true ways to get dinner on the table at a decent hour without having to stand in front of the stove for an hour before hand.
Preslice, precook, preprep I will spend Maddy's nap times prepping for dinner. If I need to slice an onion for dinner I'll do that then and put it in a baggie. I'll prebrown meat and then just reheat it for dinner. I'll get out all the ingrediants I'll need or open up jars just to get ahead a bit. There's no reason you need to wait until dinner time to prep lazagna, for instance. Most of that can be done ahead and then just pop it it the oven.
The crockpot is your friend. There are a TON of great recipe pages online for wonderful, easy and nutricious crockpot recipes. I will normally put it all together the night before and just plug it in the next morning.
Frozen/precut veggies work wonders. I like these over canned since they have less salt and retain more of their nutriants. Not all are created equal though, so buy some to try out. So if your recipe calls for onions and peppers cut up, why not buy a stirfry mix and defrost it? Less cutting and sliciing for you!
Frozen side dish veggies also are great! Often, if we have fish for dinner, I"ll throw one of the frozen veggie with low-fat sauces in the microwave and that is our side dish. I love Green Giants Rice Pilaf with veggies. The only catch is that they do often contain a lot of salt.
Premade sauces spice up meat. I love Trader Joes and Whole Foods for their jar sauces. As I have said, TJ's Mojito Sauce is fabulous on Chicken for fish. Their Mole sauce is great as well. Sauces can be loaded with salt, fat and sugar though. So make sure to read the ingrediant list carefully!
Weekend cooking for the week Often, I'll make a triple batch of a favorite dish and freeze two servings of it. These work great for during the week when there just isn't a whole lot of time. Defrost, reheat and you have your favorite dish! Just tonight I made 24 mini spinach, green and red pepper, onion, turkey bacon quiches for breakfast. I'll freeze the majorty of them and then take them out the night before and put them in the fridge. They reheat well in the microwave and are portable in case Matt is running late in the morning.
Cook once, use twice A ham steak for dinner is part of an omelete for the next day's breakfast or a ham sandwich for lunch!
Well, those are just a few of the little things I do to make dinner time more managable around our house. But when it can't be helped, I pull out the exersaucer and let Maddy jump around. I normally save it for when we're eating, but sometimes--I need to pull out the big guns!
I'm sure most of you already do a lot of these things. If you have any more feathers in your cap, please let me know them! I could always use more great ideas!
Disclaimer, I realize this may sound like I do ALL the cooking. And this isn't true. Matt is very useful and helpful in the kitchen. He is a much better cook than I am, actually. He is much more creative with his cooking and it always turns out great. But, to be timely, and eat at a decent hour, I do try to have dinner done not too long after he gets home from work. But there are certain dishes I don't cook. Matt cooks most of our fish, he does the grilling, he cooks our asparagus (It's heavenly--and mine never EVER turns out as good as his), etc. He knows his stuff! His omeletes are fabulous too. He even flips 'em without a spatchula!
Tea of the day: Adagio Blueberry Black Tea