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We do 20/30 minute meals, but a LOT of the time it's because we do prep the night before. Here are some constants:

Like so many others, we do pasta or millet with jarred sauce, some kind of meat, and broccoli thrown in. Serve with salad but our salads are just mixed greens from the box with evoo and nice vinegar/squeeze of lemon, S+P so no prep time.

Lemon pepper chicken baked on rice w/ spinach or broccoli. We season the chicken, cook the onion and add to the rice with the veggies and seasonings, and put the whole thing in a baking dish. The next day, we throw it in the oven the second we get home. Done in 30-45 minutes depending on how much chicken, but you're just hanging out playing with your family. We make two dinners worth (8 servings).

Some kind of soup or chili in the crockpot with cornbread - prep it the night before, make the cornbread. Next day just turn on the crockpot in the morning. This is also two dinners plus a couple lunches worth. We serve it with a salad.

We usually do fish once a week as well, which cooks super fast, and we serve it with seasoned rice and salad. That takes about 20 minutes total.

On the weekends, I make something elaborate. A roast with caulflower gratin and a salad with more than just lettuce, or a roasted chicken with root veggies, or an elaborate curry. I make big dishes though and then process the leftovers into the next week - like made a big ham, and used some for crockpot split pea soup that week. That kind of thing.

Anonymous wrote:Dinner last night at my house:
Grilled cheese sandwiches
Ramen noodle soup (right from package directions) with shredded carrots added
Sliced apples

On table in 15 minutes after walking in door

Now, see, this idea and the cheese plate idea above you would be fine if it was just me and the kids. But there is no way my husband would call those meals "dinner" so I find myself having to make something more substantial for him.

Dinner last night at my house:
Grilled cheese sandwiches
Ramen noodle soup (right from package directions) with shredded carrots added
Sliced apples

On table in 15 minutes after walking in door

Meat, veggie, starch.

Please do not discount our favorite "easy" meal- cheese plate.
Cheese, crackers, grapes, maybe grape tomatoes, orange segments, hard sausage.

Delicious, toddler will eat it, fairly balanced, and we serve it all on a giant cutting board, so super simple clean up.
We have this once every 2-3 weeks probably. Also a great way to use up "ends" of cheeses.

Frittatas are popular in our house. I usually throw some kind of meat in, and steam or roast asparagus or broccoli for a side. I keep frozen homemade tomato sauce in the freezer along with dough for pizza. The sauce can either go on pasta or a quick pizza. I also keep a variety of frozen veg in the freezer (edamame, corn, peas, etc.) along with dumplings, turkey burgers and hamburger buns for desperation nights.

Things I have made in the slow cooker lately that have been kid-friendly: beef barley stew, chili and a pho-like soup with noodles. Miso soup with tofu is super quick and easy; we had it this week with rice and salmon fillets.

A few of these things require a little prep before getting them into the slow cooker or freezer, but at dinner time they don't take more than 20-30 minutes to pull everything together.

Grilled chicken/steak/fish with an easy veg (broccoli or green beans) and a simple salad (lettuce/Tom/cucs)

Asian grilled above with noodles and veggies

Tacos, taco salad or quesadillas

Pasta and meatballs or meatball sandwiches (usually make a large pot of meatballs on the weekend)

But really the majority of out meals we grill even in the winter.

wow, much more time on cooking than i usually spend. my dinners are pretty simple during the week.

do pasta more than one night a week, with stirfried veggies and maybe stirfry chicken or trader joe frozen turkey meatballs.

quesadella at least once a week (with spinach and cheese)

tofu with veggies (+ fruit + applesauce)

fish with veggies and maybe pasta or rice. usually just in a pan with soy sauce and orange juice.

scrambled eggs or omelets.

baked sweet potatoes (put them in microwave for 2-3 minutes and then bake so alot quicker....)

roasted potatoes or cauli....

PP-- we have the same menu! Only once a week with spagetti, although the DCs would do more.
Just would like to add, if you oven has a timer which turns the oven on and off, that is more efficient for me than the slow cooker. That is I would rather bake chicken, other meats, and so on for a shorter time in the oven, than for a longer time in the cooker. I work from home sometimes, and find it tastes better.

For me, dinner from prep to plate generally takes between 30 and 45 minutes. I frequently make chili, tacos, beef and broccoli, chicken marsala, spaghetti, homemade chicken tenders, sausage and peppers and something called haystacks that really is a lot like veggie and black bean nachos.

I like to cook a main course that incorporates veggies so that I don't have to cook those separately. However, when I do, my go to move is steamed veggies that are then sauteed in a bit of garlic and olive oil. This works well for broccoli, green beans and asparagus. I also make salads or even just serve cut up raw peppers, carrots, cherry tomatoes and cucumbers.

In the fall and winter, I use my crock pot a lot - beef stew, carnitas that can be made into soft tacos, etc.

In the cooler months, I make a big pot of spaghetti sauce or soup from scratch once a week. We eat half of it for dinner or lunches and I freeze the other half. Same thing when I baked baked ziti or chicken parm - I will freeze half of whatever I make. Having a freezer full of good, homemade food makes it easy to pop something out for a quick dinner.

I try to make a roast chicken every few weeks on Sunday night. It's super easy, just time-consuming in that it has to be in the oven for a while. Then we can use the leftovers for chicken salad pitas, quick chicken soup, etc.

I also make a lot of stir fry with shrimp or chicken + loads of veggies. The whole dinner takes 20 minutes or less.

Another easy, quick dinner - dredge pieces of chicken breast (I cut boneless, skinless breasts into quarters) in lemon juice then bread crumbs. Place in a baking dish, drizzle with olive oil and bake at 375 for about 20 minutes. Serve with a salad and rice pilaf or cous cous.

In the summer we do a lot of grilled fish, chicken, or flank steak with a simple salad.

Williams-Sonoma sells a really cool salad dressing carafe that has a whisk inside of it. I make homemade dressing and just keep the carafe in the refrigerator - allows you to have homemade dressing without all the work each night.

I get home with my DD around 6:30, and she goes to bed at 7:30, so we don't have a lot of time in the evenings to cook and eat.

We also do a pasta dinner once a week, often with ground beef mixed into the jar sauce. Angel hair pasta only takes about 4 minutes to cook, once you get the water to a boil. We do stir fry with tofu once a week, using pre-cut veggies (the crazy expensive ones from WF) and pre-cubed tofu. Usually we do "salsa chicken" once a week too, which is surprisingly delicious. Rub the chicken breasts with taco seasoning, cover completely with salsa, and pop in the oven at 375 for about 25 minutes. We do slow cooker once a week, and eat leftovers for the other days. We usually get takeout on Friday nights.

We do pasta one night a week. Spaghetti and meatballs/meat sauce, or chicken parm with angel hair, or fettuccine alfredo with grilled chicken. Usually a bagged salad and some garlic bread with that. None of these take more than 30 minutes.

Another night I will do something that I can throw together earlier in the day and let simmer and be ready for dinner. Beef stew or beef tips in gravy or chili or something like that. That usually takes only 10-20 minutes of prep and then you serve it up at dinner time.

A third night will usually be a meat and potatoes or meat and rice meal (with a green vegetable on the side). This could be meatloaf or hamburger steak or grilled pork chops or steak bites (just buy sirloin tips and brown in a blazing hot skillet with some butter and Worcestershire for 2-3 minutes). Again, this only takes about 30 minutes or so.

I also make chicken pot pies (make a roux, add chicken broth and a bit of cream, frozen veggies and browned chicken, pour in a baking dish and top with cut up biscuits and bake), and every couple months I will make up a huge Crockpot of red beans or black beans, freeze the individual portions, and do red beans or black beans and rice on weeknights when I really just don't want to cook. Add a little smoked or Andouille sausage to the red beans and rice if your husband insists on meat with a meal like mine. Tacos and burritos are also insanely easy. Open and heat some black or pinto beans, brown some meat, and set out toppings. Everyone makes their own.

Friday night we always go out to dinner, and on Saturday we order pizza to watch football with. So I essentially cook Sunday-Thursday.

I love trying out new recipes, and when it was just DH and me, I would prepare weeknight meals with 2 or 3 courses, with a salad with homemade dressing. But gone are those days! Now that we have a toddler, those kinds of meals just aren't realistic anymore.

So my question - how do you get dinner on the table in 20 or 30 minutes tops, and also have it be still healthy and somewhat interesting? One-dish skillet recipes? Crock pot? Do you always have a salad? Just curious to get some ideas. Thanks!