Quick Dinner Recipe

The evenings at our house seem to be booked with some activity or another several nights a week. Our children are involved in several activities in school and my husband and I are involved in church and community activities. We all enjoy the things that we do, but the evenings seem very short and I find that I am always looking for a quick dinner recipe so that we can try to have a nutritional meal together. This is often a challenge, but I feel it is important for us to gather as a family daily.

The dinner hour tends to get shorter depending upon the activities that are happening. It would be very easy to grab a pizza on the way home from work or to stop for take out or order in, and we have been known to do this from time to time, but I do not want to make that our regular pattern. My husband and children are very good at wanting to help with meal preparation. We find that we spend as much time getting ready for the meal as we do sitting around the table and eating it. I try to plan a quick dinner recipe for three nights a week, we eat out one night and the other nights I try to have a slow cooked meal. The meals that take longer to prepare I usually plan on the weekends or on my one day off from work during the week. There are many good recipes that use short cuts and partially prepared foods. They are still tasty and nutritious.

I try to have a quick dinner recipe or two in mind for the week when I do my grocery shopping. It helps when you have everything that you need on hand when it comes time to getting a meal on the table. I try to cook extra when I have time so that there are ready made entrees in the freezer that we can heat up. When ever I make a stew, soup or lasagna I always make enough for two meals and freeze half of it. We eat chicken quite often so I try to purchase pieces that are skinned and boned out. It does cost more, but this saves a great deal of preparation time as well as cooking time. A quick dinner recipe usually calls for ingredients that have already been skinned, boned or are thin cut so that the cooking time is reduced. These ingredients are still nutritional and natural, someone else has just done the time consuming chores.

It takes more of an effort to cook meals and to eat as a family but with a good quick dinner recipe and short cut ingredients it is doable. It is worth the effort to have the time together as a family.