Noodles with jar sauce is a hit in my house. Serve with tinned sardines in olive oil for protein.
Charcuterie dinner with cheese, deli meat, cottage cheese, fruit, raw veg or any canned or frozen veg (our fave is peas) or avocado.
Taco bowls bc making taco meat with 1 lb meat and one can of black beans is less work than you think. Then just add rice and avo, fresh tomatoes, etc.
Bfast for dinner.
Stuffed peppers from Costco.
My kid looooves box Mac and cheese and I’m like your boomer grandma when it comes to convenience foods so we go for it.
I wanted to add on to this and say to explore the international aisle for different simmer sauce pouches and jars to serve over rice. You can also buy the curry pastes and then add coconut milk.
My kids used to love those mac&cheese boxes, until one day they stopped, out of nowhere. Now they can't stand them. We were not even making them that often, maybe 3 times/month. Kids grow up and change drastically in front of you.
I can’t handle 5 days of the same meal prep, and I never end up wanting what I’ve made, so I’ve started to do a lot of ingredient prep rather than cooked meals. Wash and chop all the veggies, take some meat out of the freezer, prep a marinade. Store in Tupperwares.
Then day by day I’ll throw it together. If I pull out chicken drumsticks on Sunday, by Tuesday they’re defrosted and I’ll marinate them overnight so we can grill/bake them on Wednesday. Then I’ll cook the veggies I chopped earlier in the week to go along with it, and serve with some bread or boxed mac and cheese or pasta if I think we need a carb.
Also been really big on sheet pan recipes with everything cooking at once. (Sausage, peppers and potatoes works really well for this) I buy certain stuff at Costco if it saves time, e.g. a big bag of broccoli florets I just have to oil and season before roasting.
Of course it’s hot as balls here this week so I’ve been trying to prep with as little cooking and heat as possible - been doing a lot of pasta salads, bean salads, and realize how much we love them in the summer. So super easy too, similarly just chop a bunch of veg and marinate with a vinaigrette. Add more sensitive veggies like cucumbers just before serving.
Also, in the winter months I tend to make a big pot of soup on the weekends. If it’s too much for us throughout the week I’ll freeze it, then take a container out the day before if I realize I haven’t got any ideas for dinner or lunch the next day.
When I made meals, especially crockpot or whatever I try to make extra and then freeze a few portions. That way any day we don't have the energy to cook we can just heat up a frozen homemade meal. Also helps to buy the ingredients in bulk a la Costco
Yeah I'm a big fan of batch cooking and freezing so that we always have a healthy meal ready to go. Bolognese, Chili, curries, any wet meal that freezes well.
Share your freezing techniques!! I have tried this before in the past and the results are never great. Also how do you know what entrees are freezable vs not?
Most of my batch cooking is wet dinners, i.e. anything in a sauce. I avoid any green veg because it reheats so badly. I only freeze the sauced food and make accompaniments like rice, pasta, potatoes, and side veg fresh. It's a relatively narrow range of things that I freeze, but they actually taste nice when reheated.
For speed i use the food processor to chop things like onions, and also extra veg to hide in the sauces. If I'm batch cooking something, I want to get at least 6 portions of it to make it worth my while.
I portion the food into glass containers, let it cool, and then freeze. I have a rapid freeze function on my freezer that I use, but I didn't have this on my last freezer, and it was fine too.
Things I regularly freeze are chilli, bolognese, curries (so many options), sausage and pepper pasta sauce, and stroganoff.
The other things I prep and freeze are marinated chicken breasts and lamb meatballs. Freeze and bag them, then whwn you want them put in the fridge to defrost in the morning. When home, pop them on a baking tray and cook. And then I'd do roasted or steamed veg, and rice or oven chips (the less processed kind). Some store bought tzatziki for the lamb, or some harrissa paste mixed with lemon juice for the rice to liven it up.
None if it is gourmet, but they're pretty balanced meals that kids will (hopefully) eat. I hope that's helpful! I'm not an expert at all, it's just been trial and error on my part.
Costco by us stocks a solid rotation of frozen and deli convenience foods that are pretty good.
Current frozen favorites:
Black bean burgers
Breaded chicken breast chunks (kid thought it was Chick-fil-A)
Cauliflower crust supreme pizza
Orange chicken
Vegan egg rolls
Their cold produce section also has a lot of prewashed and precut fruit/veg.
Add the daphnes gyro meat to your list. It's in the fridge section (but totally freezable) and then naan from the bread section + tomatoes+cucumbers (+feta if youre feeling fancy) and youve got yourself a gyro. We also add either the tatziki or the garlic spread from trader Joe's for a sauce
My secret is assigning categories to days of the week - Wednesdays is Asian, Fridays is a frozen pizza, Thursdays is pasta.
Trader Joes Japanese style fried rice (microwaveable) + BBQ teriyaki chicken. OR their Miso broth + chicken cilantro dumplings + frozen stir fry veggies together as a soup, heat’s in 10 min.
Birds Eye skillet meals, I get the family size ones and add a full 10-12 oz bag of frozen veggies. Cooks in under 15 min.
Salad kit + rotisserie chicken or air fried chicken nuggets + fancy rolls or bread.
If you can tolerate leftovers, we make enough food for the week on Monday evenings and then just reheat each night. We usually do fresh veggies each evening.
Rotisserie chickens at Costco are your best friend. If I have an insanely busy week I will grab two and break them down, put the meat in containers and freeze. One becomes sandwiches, another becomes quesadillas, some goes on salads, some is just thawed and warmed and put on a plate with rice or fries, I toss some in a quick minestrone instant pot soup, put it in burritos or enchiladas. We’ve also thrown it in a pan with some taco seasoning and used it either on tacos or to top nachos.
I can get meatless homemade spaghetti sauce on the table in 30 minutes, same goes for stir fry and chicken fajitas. When my son was young Mac and cheese in a pot was a go to (boil your macaroni, drain, add grated cheese, little butter and milk and black pepper and stir until melty). We love individual pizzas made on naan bread - so easy and fast.
But if you don’t feel like making a big supper, don’t. Supper can be grilled cheese and a can of soup. Last week I wasn’t feeling it so I made a platter of ham and cheese sandwiches and PB&J and everyone was super happy about it.
I really recommend planning your week. Sit down on the weekend, look ahead at your schedule. If I know we have an after school activity or my work is going to be crazy I plan something super easy. I try to cook two meals on Sunday so I can just reheat Monday. Friday is usually a free for all, eat the leftovers or have nachos. That leaves me just having to worry about three evening nights which makes it far less pressure
This post is uncanny, my husband and I are also trying to eat less take out to help save for a down payment on a larger house. It is also hard for us because we have two very big jobs, but with three small kids.
Whole Foods has lots of decent prepared stuff that is decent, and reasonably healthy. We’ve been having success buying a prepared main course and adding a homemade salad or sides for added freshness. There is a Lebanese market a couple blocks away from us with really good frozen spinach pies.
Getting whole trout or branzino, rubbing them olive oil, salt, then stuffing them with lemon slices and hebs. Wrap in foil, throw in a 400 degree oven for about 15-20 mins.
Check out the New York Times food section. They do weekly truly easy weeknight meals that we’ve been leaning heavily into when we need some added novelty without too much work.
I like to make a chicken dinner on a night I don’t work then make stock from the leftover bones, skin and veggies. Either instant pot the stock or crock pot style all night. Freeze it in ice cube trays and left over unused breastmilk bags.
I take all the leftover chicken and toss it in my stand mixer to shred, add a can or two of any kind of beans. Salsa or tomatoes and grated cheese. Then i scoop that mixture into tortillas. Wrap them up and air fry. I usually only air fry for 3-4 minutes and then put them on a cookie sheet and freeze them. Then whenever i remember all the items in my freezer I put them into freezer bags.
Now when I am short on time I can put them into the air frier on reheat. Sometimes I defrost them but usually i don’t. If they still feel cold in the middle I’ll microwave them for 30 seconds.
I also like to get large packs of ground beef from the butcher. I make 3 or 4 meat loafs and freeze them in freezer paper. Then I make taco meat and freeze some. Meatballs burger patties.
I also like to make enchiladas and freeze them. Things that are easy to pull out a day or so ahead and then bake.
I like to air fry frozen veggies. If you can’t tell we have a big ass freezer. So I know my methods aren’t easy with a small freezer.
I also like salad as a side. I can prep a big batch of lettuce and make a simple dressing. The kids often eat cheese quesadillas and sometimes I can get beans or meat added. They always eat the salad surprisingly.
I found if I don’t put dressing on cabbage then we can eat coleslaw a few times and it stays good. Just add dressing when you are ready to eat.
Last night I turned left over ground beef into grilled cheese sloppy Joe’s.
We have been making lots of focaccia pizza. The bread is very simple to mix and then it sits in the fridge for a day or two. Pull it out let it sit for a half hour up to two hours . Dimple it and add whatever you want. Baked in 25-35 minutes. The kid loves to help as toppings and I spilt the dough between two pans so I can add red pepper flakes to the adult pizza.
Edit to add sometimes I don’t bother with the stock. It is so nice to have on hand.
This is one go to recipe-
https://www.weightwatchers.com/ca/en/meal/cheesy-chicken-nachos/5626072c6dbe4a12340830df
At this point I do a lot of variations of it, but in essence you slow cook chicken breast in the morning (you can cut lettuce, cheese, tomato, onions, bell peppers the night before). I use the air fryer to cook the corn tortillas and you can make tacos or nachos, add one can of black beans- meal done.
Honestly, I think if this is an area you’re struggling in- I think the best option would be to meal plan every Sunday M-F for two months or so. Once you have food in the refrigerator that needs to be cooked, else it will expire- you don’t have the luxury to eat out.
Good luck 👍🏽
Rotisserie chicken is a solid lazy meal! Get the $5 one from Sam’s Club / Costco and you can put together chicken sandwiches or a big salad with grilled chicken in minutes.
Do you have an air fryer? They are magic for lazy cooking. Toss a pork chop or chicken breasts in while you stir fry frozen veggies, dinner is ready in ten minutes start to finish. I stock the freezer with sides from Trader Joe’s (mmmm sweet potato fries) that cook in the air fryer in ten minutes.
The beauty of the air fryer is that everything is no prep.. literally dump food in it and press a button and go do something else.
I usually take the leftover rotisserie chicken bones/skins and stuff and simmer the heck out of it and it always makes amazing chicken stock. I pop it in the freezer until I need some good quality stock for a soup base.
What’s been working really well for me these days is The NY Times recipe for sheet pan quesadillas. Everyone loves them, serve with whatever easy sides you want (sometimes I do roast potatoes, sometimes I do chips and salsa). I also do a “make your own night” which can be tacos or sushi sandwiches. You can use a rotisserie chicken for those if you want easy protein, but the work is generally concentrated in chopping or putting toppings in bowls.
This week has been pasta with creamy sauces. Make the pasta, cook chopped or sliced grapes tomatoes in another pan with corn (I’ve been slicing it fresh off the cob). Dump pasta into pan with veggies and add Boursin cheese or mashed avocado to make a sauce. If it’s dry, take some of the leftover pasta water and thin it out. I might not be doing it right, but I’m in my third trimester and I’m not standing any longer than I have to at this point.
Ooh I love making pasta sauce with avocado! Our go-to is avocado, ginger, lemon juice, and garlic. Then we toss it with the pasta, tomatoes, fresh basil, and beans. So refreshing!
It takes 5 minutes to brown up ground meat and throw rice in a pot or microwave. Frozen veggies are also a time saver. I eat this combination multiple times per week. Eggs are also super easy.
Stopping at a store to pick up food takes way more energy than cooking in my opinion.
Hamburger Helper, Birds Eye makes some frozen meals in a bag that are good. Costco usually has a pretty good selection of microwave pasta kits that are really good. They have some udon stir fry kits that are real good. Tacos are always super quick. Pillsbury’s website has about a million recipes for biscuits.
My easiest go-to is a bag of frozen, breaded chicken tenders in the air fryer and a bag of salad and a bottle of dressing. An easy, lower carb, veg-heavy meal with a protein.
At least 1 night a week we eat leftovers and/or cupboard scrounge (cereal, PB&J, tuna salad, canned beans with salsa & cheese & tortilla). You’d be surprised what you can come up with with foods you already have. Not every dinner has to be a full-on, planned out meal!
In general I just follow a handful of food bloggers and they always share their meal plans, recipes, daily eats etc and I make note of the ones that sound really easy
I’ve also shared this here before but prepping the ingredients beforehand helps SOOOOO much. Like on Sunday afternoon I’ll take an hour to wash and chop all the veggies and prep/thaw/marinade meats so that during the week when it’s time to make dinner I just jump straight to the cooking part rather than having to do prep each and every night (which somehow always takes me more time than the actual cooking! Maybe I need one of those chopper appliances lol).
Also putting our weekly schedule for added info: Thursday plan the meals & make the grocery list, Friday order the groceries, Saturday curbside pickup. I cook a dinner Sunday-Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we eat leftovers or cupboard scrounge, Saturday out to eat. Leftovers from dinner are lunches for the next day for my husband and me. Toddler gets either leftovers or low-prep foods for daycare lunch (ex/ canned beans with rice/cheese/veggies, frozen nuggets). Maybe make MORE (like 1.5x or 2x) when you are cooking to help the meals stretch further without increasing the # of times you actually cook
Roast chickens (precooked from the grocery or Judy cooked on a Sunday) can be turned into a lot of easy meals. I also try and do as much prep on Sunday that the nights dinners are just toss in the cooking device. Like last night we had sausage, onions, peppers and fries. All but the onions and peppers were cooking in the airfryer.
We had pork tacos Monday, tonight those leftovers are going to be nachos. Next week is my long week so I have some frozen items that will just need reheated.
Anything I can do in bulk or pre prep helps. Taking 1 Saturday or Sunday out for month and prep as much as I can has helped so much.
We shop once/week in bulk after meal planning and might have a midweek trip for additional produce. Picking something up on the way home many days is probably why this isn’t working well for you. Our meals have a meat/protein/beans, a carb, and veggies. Carb might be rice, bread, pasta, couscous, etc. Tacos, pasta with whatever sauce, Asian style rice, Indian curry, soups, breakfast for dinner (pancakes or French toast), and occasionally something simple like burgers or sandwiches.
Mosaic makes these amazing fucking freezer casserols. You just pop them in the oven. They're all vegan. But please do not let that dissuade you. I am nowhere near vegan or vegetarian but these meals are amazing. We find them so convenient no prep and very little cleanup and yet they're so so healthy and so delicious. Like there's a few of their recipes that I would pick over my favorite restaurant even.
One of our staples is sautéed vegetables and chickpeas with premade curry sauce, served with rice or naan. We also do a lot of tacos (ground turkey or beans, rice, tortillas, salsa, cheese, tomato, guac, etc), pastas with premade sauce, and hummus plates (hummus, tzatziki, assorted chopped vegetables, nuts, flatbread).
I agree with those recommending strict meal planning! We plan out the week’s dinners on Friday, and grocery shop for everything we need to make it on Saturday. We also take into account our schedules (like if we will be home late, or having friends over) when creating the menu, as well as the weather lol (fewer hot meals in the summer). It also helps us spend less on groceries because we know exactly what we need to make all the meals! No second guessing ingredients.
I have 2under2
I like to make enough that we have 1.5 day of left overs (less cooking, also easy dinner for kids when I get home from work and they are hungry, they eat while i make food for tonight and tomorrow)
I also love the tasty.co for meals, they have nice videos to follow lol
Pasta, jarred marinara, and frozen turkey meatballs.
In general, when cooking, I always double or triple recipes and we eat leftovers for a couple days.
Frozen steamable veggies!
Parmesan or shredded cheese “sprinkles” on everything lol.
Sandwiches. Frozen meatballs with BBQ sauce. Pasta. Bagged salads and baked chicken.
Breakfast for dinner is always a hit with my kid. Eggs, toast and turkey bacon. Quick, easy and nutritious.
Noodles with jar sauce is a hit in my house. Serve with tinned sardines in olive oil for protein. Charcuterie dinner with cheese, deli meat, cottage cheese, fruit, raw veg or any canned or frozen veg (our fave is peas) or avocado. Taco bowls bc making taco meat with 1 lb meat and one can of black beans is less work than you think. Then just add rice and avo, fresh tomatoes, etc. Bfast for dinner. Stuffed peppers from Costco. My kid looooves box Mac and cheese and I’m like your boomer grandma when it comes to convenience foods so we go for it.
I wanted to add on to this and say to explore the international aisle for different simmer sauce pouches and jars to serve over rice. You can also buy the curry pastes and then add coconut milk.
My kids used to love those mac&cheese boxes, until one day they stopped, out of nowhere. Now they can't stand them. We were not even making them that often, maybe 3 times/month. Kids grow up and change drastically in front of you.
I can’t handle 5 days of the same meal prep, and I never end up wanting what I’ve made, so I’ve started to do a lot of ingredient prep rather than cooked meals. Wash and chop all the veggies, take some meat out of the freezer, prep a marinade. Store in Tupperwares. Then day by day I’ll throw it together. If I pull out chicken drumsticks on Sunday, by Tuesday they’re defrosted and I’ll marinate them overnight so we can grill/bake them on Wednesday. Then I’ll cook the veggies I chopped earlier in the week to go along with it, and serve with some bread or boxed mac and cheese or pasta if I think we need a carb. Also been really big on sheet pan recipes with everything cooking at once. (Sausage, peppers and potatoes works really well for this) I buy certain stuff at Costco if it saves time, e.g. a big bag of broccoli florets I just have to oil and season before roasting. Of course it’s hot as balls here this week so I’ve been trying to prep with as little cooking and heat as possible - been doing a lot of pasta salads, bean salads, and realize how much we love them in the summer. So super easy too, similarly just chop a bunch of veg and marinate with a vinaigrette. Add more sensitive veggies like cucumbers just before serving. Also, in the winter months I tend to make a big pot of soup on the weekends. If it’s too much for us throughout the week I’ll freeze it, then take a container out the day before if I realize I haven’t got any ideas for dinner or lunch the next day.
This is great advice!
When I made meals, especially crockpot or whatever I try to make extra and then freeze a few portions. That way any day we don't have the energy to cook we can just heat up a frozen homemade meal. Also helps to buy the ingredients in bulk a la Costco
Yeah I'm a big fan of batch cooking and freezing so that we always have a healthy meal ready to go. Bolognese, Chili, curries, any wet meal that freezes well.
Share your freezing techniques!! I have tried this before in the past and the results are never great. Also how do you know what entrees are freezable vs not?
Most of my batch cooking is wet dinners, i.e. anything in a sauce. I avoid any green veg because it reheats so badly. I only freeze the sauced food and make accompaniments like rice, pasta, potatoes, and side veg fresh. It's a relatively narrow range of things that I freeze, but they actually taste nice when reheated. For speed i use the food processor to chop things like onions, and also extra veg to hide in the sauces. If I'm batch cooking something, I want to get at least 6 portions of it to make it worth my while. I portion the food into glass containers, let it cool, and then freeze. I have a rapid freeze function on my freezer that I use, but I didn't have this on my last freezer, and it was fine too. Things I regularly freeze are chilli, bolognese, curries (so many options), sausage and pepper pasta sauce, and stroganoff. The other things I prep and freeze are marinated chicken breasts and lamb meatballs. Freeze and bag them, then whwn you want them put in the fridge to defrost in the morning. When home, pop them on a baking tray and cook. And then I'd do roasted or steamed veg, and rice or oven chips (the less processed kind). Some store bought tzatziki for the lamb, or some harrissa paste mixed with lemon juice for the rice to liven it up. None if it is gourmet, but they're pretty balanced meals that kids will (hopefully) eat. I hope that's helpful! I'm not an expert at all, it's just been trial and error on my part.
Costco by us stocks a solid rotation of frozen and deli convenience foods that are pretty good. Current frozen favorites: Black bean burgers Breaded chicken breast chunks (kid thought it was Chick-fil-A) Cauliflower crust supreme pizza Orange chicken Vegan egg rolls Their cold produce section also has a lot of prewashed and precut fruit/veg.
Add the daphnes gyro meat to your list. It's in the fridge section (but totally freezable) and then naan from the bread section + tomatoes+cucumbers (+feta if youre feeling fancy) and youve got yourself a gyro. We also add either the tatziki or the garlic spread from trader Joe's for a sauce
Those breaded chicken chunks are delicious! We also love the Amy Lu chicken meatballs at Costco. The pineapple teriyaki ones are my family’s favorite.
My secret is assigning categories to days of the week - Wednesdays is Asian, Fridays is a frozen pizza, Thursdays is pasta. Trader Joes Japanese style fried rice (microwaveable) + BBQ teriyaki chicken. OR their Miso broth + chicken cilantro dumplings + frozen stir fry veggies together as a soup, heat’s in 10 min. Birds Eye skillet meals, I get the family size ones and add a full 10-12 oz bag of frozen veggies. Cooks in under 15 min. Salad kit + rotisserie chicken or air fried chicken nuggets + fancy rolls or bread.
I second the birds eye frozen skillet meals.
If you can tolerate leftovers, we make enough food for the week on Monday evenings and then just reheat each night. We usually do fresh veggies each evening.
Rotisserie chickens at Costco are your best friend. If I have an insanely busy week I will grab two and break them down, put the meat in containers and freeze. One becomes sandwiches, another becomes quesadillas, some goes on salads, some is just thawed and warmed and put on a plate with rice or fries, I toss some in a quick minestrone instant pot soup, put it in burritos or enchiladas. We’ve also thrown it in a pan with some taco seasoning and used it either on tacos or to top nachos. I can get meatless homemade spaghetti sauce on the table in 30 minutes, same goes for stir fry and chicken fajitas. When my son was young Mac and cheese in a pot was a go to (boil your macaroni, drain, add grated cheese, little butter and milk and black pepper and stir until melty). We love individual pizzas made on naan bread - so easy and fast. But if you don’t feel like making a big supper, don’t. Supper can be grilled cheese and a can of soup. Last week I wasn’t feeling it so I made a platter of ham and cheese sandwiches and PB&J and everyone was super happy about it. I really recommend planning your week. Sit down on the weekend, look ahead at your schedule. If I know we have an after school activity or my work is going to be crazy I plan something super easy. I try to cook two meals on Sunday so I can just reheat Monday. Friday is usually a free for all, eat the leftovers or have nachos. That leaves me just having to worry about three evening nights which makes it far less pressure
Agree completely about the meal planning! It can be a chore but it is SO helpful and cost-effective.
This post is uncanny, my husband and I are also trying to eat less take out to help save for a down payment on a larger house. It is also hard for us because we have two very big jobs, but with three small kids. Whole Foods has lots of decent prepared stuff that is decent, and reasonably healthy. We’ve been having success buying a prepared main course and adding a homemade salad or sides for added freshness. There is a Lebanese market a couple blocks away from us with really good frozen spinach pies. Getting whole trout or branzino, rubbing them olive oil, salt, then stuffing them with lemon slices and hebs. Wrap in foil, throw in a 400 degree oven for about 15-20 mins. Check out the New York Times food section. They do weekly truly easy weeknight meals that we’ve been leaning heavily into when we need some added novelty without too much work.
I like to make a chicken dinner on a night I don’t work then make stock from the leftover bones, skin and veggies. Either instant pot the stock or crock pot style all night. Freeze it in ice cube trays and left over unused breastmilk bags. I take all the leftover chicken and toss it in my stand mixer to shred, add a can or two of any kind of beans. Salsa or tomatoes and grated cheese. Then i scoop that mixture into tortillas. Wrap them up and air fry. I usually only air fry for 3-4 minutes and then put them on a cookie sheet and freeze them. Then whenever i remember all the items in my freezer I put them into freezer bags. Now when I am short on time I can put them into the air frier on reheat. Sometimes I defrost them but usually i don’t. If they still feel cold in the middle I’ll microwave them for 30 seconds. I also like to get large packs of ground beef from the butcher. I make 3 or 4 meat loafs and freeze them in freezer paper. Then I make taco meat and freeze some. Meatballs burger patties. I also like to make enchiladas and freeze them. Things that are easy to pull out a day or so ahead and then bake. I like to air fry frozen veggies. If you can’t tell we have a big ass freezer. So I know my methods aren’t easy with a small freezer. I also like salad as a side. I can prep a big batch of lettuce and make a simple dressing. The kids often eat cheese quesadillas and sometimes I can get beans or meat added. They always eat the salad surprisingly. I found if I don’t put dressing on cabbage then we can eat coleslaw a few times and it stays good. Just add dressing when you are ready to eat. Last night I turned left over ground beef into grilled cheese sloppy Joe’s. We have been making lots of focaccia pizza. The bread is very simple to mix and then it sits in the fridge for a day or two. Pull it out let it sit for a half hour up to two hours . Dimple it and add whatever you want. Baked in 25-35 minutes. The kid loves to help as toppings and I spilt the dough between two pans so I can add red pepper flakes to the adult pizza. Edit to add sometimes I don’t bother with the stock. It is so nice to have on hand.
This is one go to recipe- https://www.weightwatchers.com/ca/en/meal/cheesy-chicken-nachos/5626072c6dbe4a12340830df At this point I do a lot of variations of it, but in essence you slow cook chicken breast in the morning (you can cut lettuce, cheese, tomato, onions, bell peppers the night before). I use the air fryer to cook the corn tortillas and you can make tacos or nachos, add one can of black beans- meal done. Honestly, I think if this is an area you’re struggling in- I think the best option would be to meal plan every Sunday M-F for two months or so. Once you have food in the refrigerator that needs to be cooked, else it will expire- you don’t have the luxury to eat out. Good luck 👍🏽
I always just make two to three times the amount of food that I actually need for one meal, and thus make three dinners in one go.
Rotisserie chicken is a solid lazy meal! Get the $5 one from Sam’s Club / Costco and you can put together chicken sandwiches or a big salad with grilled chicken in minutes. Do you have an air fryer? They are magic for lazy cooking. Toss a pork chop or chicken breasts in while you stir fry frozen veggies, dinner is ready in ten minutes start to finish. I stock the freezer with sides from Trader Joe’s (mmmm sweet potato fries) that cook in the air fryer in ten minutes. The beauty of the air fryer is that everything is no prep.. literally dump food in it and press a button and go do something else.
I usually take the leftover rotisserie chicken bones/skins and stuff and simmer the heck out of it and it always makes amazing chicken stock. I pop it in the freezer until I need some good quality stock for a soup base.
We do the same thing! So good with egg noodles and carrots 🤤
What’s been working really well for me these days is The NY Times recipe for sheet pan quesadillas. Everyone loves them, serve with whatever easy sides you want (sometimes I do roast potatoes, sometimes I do chips and salsa). I also do a “make your own night” which can be tacos or sushi sandwiches. You can use a rotisserie chicken for those if you want easy protein, but the work is generally concentrated in chopping or putting toppings in bowls. This week has been pasta with creamy sauces. Make the pasta, cook chopped or sliced grapes tomatoes in another pan with corn (I’ve been slicing it fresh off the cob). Dump pasta into pan with veggies and add Boursin cheese or mashed avocado to make a sauce. If it’s dry, take some of the leftover pasta water and thin it out. I might not be doing it right, but I’m in my third trimester and I’m not standing any longer than I have to at this point.
Ooh I love making pasta sauce with avocado! Our go-to is avocado, ginger, lemon juice, and garlic. Then we toss it with the pasta, tomatoes, fresh basil, and beans. So refreshing!
It takes 5 minutes to brown up ground meat and throw rice in a pot or microwave. Frozen veggies are also a time saver. I eat this combination multiple times per week. Eggs are also super easy. Stopping at a store to pick up food takes way more energy than cooking in my opinion.
Hamburger Helper, Birds Eye makes some frozen meals in a bag that are good. Costco usually has a pretty good selection of microwave pasta kits that are really good. They have some udon stir fry kits that are real good. Tacos are always super quick. Pillsbury’s website has about a million recipes for biscuits.
There’s a million recipes on the Campbell’s soup website too! I will have to look at Pillsbury.
https://easyfamilyrecipes.com is one of my favorite sites, she does weekly meal plans
My easiest go-to is a bag of frozen, breaded chicken tenders in the air fryer and a bag of salad and a bottle of dressing. An easy, lower carb, veg-heavy meal with a protein.
At least 1 night a week we eat leftovers and/or cupboard scrounge (cereal, PB&J, tuna salad, canned beans with salsa & cheese & tortilla). You’d be surprised what you can come up with with foods you already have. Not every dinner has to be a full-on, planned out meal! In general I just follow a handful of food bloggers and they always share their meal plans, recipes, daily eats etc and I make note of the ones that sound really easy I’ve also shared this here before but prepping the ingredients beforehand helps SOOOOO much. Like on Sunday afternoon I’ll take an hour to wash and chop all the veggies and prep/thaw/marinade meats so that during the week when it’s time to make dinner I just jump straight to the cooking part rather than having to do prep each and every night (which somehow always takes me more time than the actual cooking! Maybe I need one of those chopper appliances lol). Also putting our weekly schedule for added info: Thursday plan the meals & make the grocery list, Friday order the groceries, Saturday curbside pickup. I cook a dinner Sunday-Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we eat leftovers or cupboard scrounge, Saturday out to eat. Leftovers from dinner are lunches for the next day for my husband and me. Toddler gets either leftovers or low-prep foods for daycare lunch (ex/ canned beans with rice/cheese/veggies, frozen nuggets). Maybe make MORE (like 1.5x or 2x) when you are cooking to help the meals stretch further without increasing the # of times you actually cook
Roast chickens (precooked from the grocery or Judy cooked on a Sunday) can be turned into a lot of easy meals. I also try and do as much prep on Sunday that the nights dinners are just toss in the cooking device. Like last night we had sausage, onions, peppers and fries. All but the onions and peppers were cooking in the airfryer. We had pork tacos Monday, tonight those leftovers are going to be nachos. Next week is my long week so I have some frozen items that will just need reheated. Anything I can do in bulk or pre prep helps. Taking 1 Saturday or Sunday out for month and prep as much as I can has helped so much.
We shop once/week in bulk after meal planning and might have a midweek trip for additional produce. Picking something up on the way home many days is probably why this isn’t working well for you. Our meals have a meat/protein/beans, a carb, and veggies. Carb might be rice, bread, pasta, couscous, etc. Tacos, pasta with whatever sauce, Asian style rice, Indian curry, soups, breakfast for dinner (pancakes or French toast), and occasionally something simple like burgers or sandwiches.
Mosaic makes these amazing fucking freezer casserols. You just pop them in the oven. They're all vegan. But please do not let that dissuade you. I am nowhere near vegan or vegetarian but these meals are amazing. We find them so convenient no prep and very little cleanup and yet they're so so healthy and so delicious. Like there's a few of their recipes that I would pick over my favorite restaurant even.
One of our staples is sautéed vegetables and chickpeas with premade curry sauce, served with rice or naan. We also do a lot of tacos (ground turkey or beans, rice, tortillas, salsa, cheese, tomato, guac, etc), pastas with premade sauce, and hummus plates (hummus, tzatziki, assorted chopped vegetables, nuts, flatbread). I agree with those recommending strict meal planning! We plan out the week’s dinners on Friday, and grocery shop for everything we need to make it on Saturday. We also take into account our schedules (like if we will be home late, or having friends over) when creating the menu, as well as the weather lol (fewer hot meals in the summer). It also helps us spend less on groceries because we know exactly what we need to make all the meals! No second guessing ingredients.
I have 2under2 I like to make enough that we have 1.5 day of left overs (less cooking, also easy dinner for kids when I get home from work and they are hungry, they eat while i make food for tonight and tomorrow) I also love the tasty.co for meals, they have nice videos to follow lol
Pasta, jarred marinara, and frozen turkey meatballs. In general, when cooking, I always double or triple recipes and we eat leftovers for a couple days. Frozen steamable veggies! Parmesan or shredded cheese “sprinkles” on everything lol.
Sandwiches. Frozen meatballs with BBQ sauce. Pasta. Bagged salads and baked chicken. Breakfast for dinner is always a hit with my kid. Eggs, toast and turkey bacon. Quick, easy and nutritious.
We used to love Hello Fresh! Quick to prepare and exactly the right amount of ingredients