Dinner Ideas for Quick Meals

I need fast and easy dinner recipes that will let me make quick dinners. At my house, time absolutely flies. I get all the kids out the door to their respective schools and it feels like I have so much time. In my mind I should be able to accomplish everything on my “to do” list and so much more. After all, I have almost eight hours all to myself.
I don’t want to brag, but I work in high gear most of the time.

As a matter of fact, I frequently get up before 5:00 AM just to get an early start. It is a real mystery to me how  4:00PM arrives so fast, and suddenly I have to ask myself the dreaded question-what do I make for dinner that is fast and easy? Can any of you identify with that? I know that it sounds funny coming from someone who owned a catering company for ten years. Hey, have you ever heard about the cobblers children?

First of all, after all the hours I have spent in the kitchen, I am always on the lookout for time savers and shortcuts. To be honest, the biggest time saver is to have a plan, yeah, the M word. Menus remind me of budgets, sort of a pain to do, but makes a world of difference in real life.

I have been working on the menus and I will share the first weeks plan soon, but first I want to tell you what I have been doing . Every day I made a different meal, but I prepared twice as much as usual, and froze half. It only takes a little extra time to make a bigger batch, but the great thing is that I now have a weeks worth of meals ready to go. Well, to be more accurate, I have a weeks worth of entrees. I figure the veggies and startches I will leave for later. To be really honest, I am really liking this plan.

Having a menu prepared will cut down on the shopping time, and making two meals at once is like winning the lottery of dinner prep! Hopefully that will free up a bunch of time for other things, like work and play! I hope that you will like this as much as I am going to. Please leave your comments and suggestions. If we all contribute, this will be a really great tool for all of us! Hopefully I can post the first weeks menu by Saturday.

photo credit: philcampbell