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[quote=Anonymous]I hear you OP. I still haven't forgiven my husband for fighting me for years on trying to make this easier.

Here's what we do now (despite his complaints):
- Make leftovers so you're cooking dinner 2-3x/week
- 1x/week is takeout or going out to eat. Pizza, Chinese, or going somewhere nicer.
- Sundays I make a big batch of something - hearty soup, black beans and rice, something longer in the crock pot etc.
- Use a rice cooker and crock pot. There are heathy crock pot recipes these days. 
- Get a bag or box of lettuce, grape tomatoes, shredded carrots, olives, etc. Quick things the kids can throw together to make a salad.
- Kids set the table and help as abilities allow.
- I put out salad or crudités for the kids to eat while I'm making the main course. The kids enjoy making a crudité platter. Keep baby carrots, grape tomatoes, celery, snap peas, olives, grapes, broccoli, etc. Things that don't need to be cooked and can go on the platter.
- Some quick meals are rice in the rice cooker on a timer to start then you pop salmon in the oven or tilapia in a pan on the stove when you get home. Kids are eating the aforementioned crudités or salad while you make the fish.
- Keep marinated chicken in the fridge, sliced thinly (wide but thin) so they cook quickly. Rice or quinoa in the rice cooker. Cook the chicken in a pan on the stove. The marinated chicken will last in the fridge for a few days so you can cook hot chicken each night.
- Like a pp, sometimes we just keep ingredients for a variety of meals. Cook chicken breasts or thighs to use in burritos, salads, next to rice, etc. We do this once a week as our oldest is a teen athlete and needs the protein.
- eggs, toast, fruit is a fine dinner occasionally.
- buy good bread and deli cheese and meat and have make your own sandwich night with crudité's. This saved me a lot when my husband was out of town for weeks at a time and I was alone with 3 kids. 
- buy French bread, brie or other cheese, salami, grapes, olives, nuts, and dried fruit. Serve a cheese and charcuterie board. My kids think this is a complicated, fancy meal, but I can assemble it in 10 minutes. 
- If you don't have time to plan, then pick up a rotisserie chicken, pouch of microwaveable rice or quinoa, and some crudités. A rotisserie chicken gets us 2 nights of meals. Once with rice and veg, and once in burritos with a salad. 
- Stir fry some vegetables, add leftover rice with soy sauce and seasonings, then fry eggs to serve on top. 
- When you get some time on a weekend, make batches of stuff you can freeze. Soup (add bread and salad), pasta sauce (add pasta and salad), cooked chicken (add rice and veg). Cook and freeze the time-consuming part so you can pull it out the night before to have a quick dinner the next day.

Related to this, go minimalist with stuff in your house. So much of my time is taken up managing stuff. I'm constantly purging so we have fewer toys to keep organized, only clothes we want to wear in our closets, only things we use in the kitchen, etc. Leverage the public library so you're not buying books to store for the rest of your life. Don't shop unless you really need something. Keep as little in your house as possible. [/quote]

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