Thursday, June 5, 2008

Quick Easy Meals

Rachel Anne over at Home Sanctuary challenged us to create a list of 5-10 quick, easy (healthy) meals for the days when we don't have time to properly plan a meal. So I thought I'd post here so others can benefit from my ideas too LOL (and feel free to share your own ideas, as well):

  • We're really enjoying salad this summer. In the time it takes to boil some eggs I can tear up some lettuce, slice some cucumbers, open a can of olives, shred some cheese . . . healthy, little (or no, if you skip the boiled eggs) cooking to heat up the kitchen, and quick.
  • Some other great salads can be found here.
  • Spaghetti's another quick easy one. If you use jarred sauce, read ingredients, many brands have sugar &/or corn syrup & I just don't find it makes them taste any better, so why have it in there. When I make spaghetti sauce from scratch I make a big batch & freeze it in pint jars, even if you don't plan ahead & defrost a jar, it can be defrosted in the microwave enough to dump it in a saucepan and should be hot roughly the same time the spaghetti's done cooking. If dh is going to be around for the meal I also brown some Griller crumbles I like them WITH the red sauce, dh likes just them w/ a little butter & cheese on his spaghetti.
  • Pesto Pasta. This isn't very frugal, but it's healthy & yummy. I get the Simply Organic Pesto mix wholesale and make sure to keep a few packets on hand at all times. Put the pasta on to cook, toast some pinenuts, and fix this sauce, mix it all together, YUMMY!
  • On days when I know we won't be home till supper time & I remember to pre-plan, it's a great day for pintos in the crockpot
  • Grilled cheese or egg in a basket sandwiches are quick, and w/ a side of fresh fruit &/or raw veggies, not horribly unhealthy
  • It's still abit early, but as we get into garden season, one of my favorite supper is fresh veggies (whatever's in season) sauteed w/ vegetarian "chicken" of some sort.
  • Now that we're moved, I'm going to get back to cooking HUGE pots of rice whenever I cook rice, that way we can have at least 2 rice meals that week but more importantly, I can freeze the rest in smaller batches & pull it out for a quick meal of fried rice whenever the mood strikes.
So how about you, what are some of your favorite quick, easy meals?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I always make extra rice in the rice cooker, for fried rice another day. Quick and easy.