Easy and Fast Meals

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I am starting NS in just a few short weeks, and I am concerned about what we will be eating - I dont want to spend a lot of time cooking! Can anyone share a quick or easy recipe that they enjoy?

Here is one that I fix all the time - Buy a bag of already cooked frozen meatballs, and a jar of spaghetti sauce. Let those two simmer on the stove until heated through. Pour 3 or 4 meatballs and some sauce into a hoagie bun and top with shredded mozarella cheese. Super easy meatball subs. I usually just serve with a tossed salad and dinner is done!

One of the biggest lifesavers I have found is prep work. Food prep is actually the most time consumming of the cooking process. What I have found that works well is take a weekend day and spend a couple of hours in the kitchen chopping onions, peppers, garlic, shredding carrots, cheese, etc. pop your prepped veggies on a sheet pan and put in the freezer for a couple of hours until soft frozen, then divide into individual zip lock bags. That way, when you get home, all of your prep work is done and making dinner is a breeze, since you don't have to spend the time chopping, slicing and dicing. I did this for years when I was a full-time working mother with a lengthy commute. It cuts cooking time almost in half. All of these things freeze wonderfully with no loss of flavor.

One of my favorite dishes to cook is a pot roast with all the trimmings. This is usually done in the crock pot. But, the next night the left overs are recycled into Shepherd's Pie. Take all of your left over pot roast and dice or shred it into bite size pieces, mix it with the gravy, carrots and potatoes and put into a casserole dish, while you are mixing this together, make a quick batch of instant mashed potatoes, when the potatoes are done, smooth them over the top of the casserole, pop this into the oven at 425 for about 30 minutes until bubbley. If you like you can then top it with a little bit of shredded cheese and melt for about 5 minutes more.

Its a good way to get rid of left overs, especially if you have kids like mine that don't like leftovers.

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Specializes in SNU/SNF/MedSurg, SPCU Ortho/Neuro/Spine.

Want to know what to do with left over rice? Quick and simple Brazilian rice cakes

2 cups of rice- whichever kind you have left

2 eggs

1tb spoon of olive oil

A splash of milk (just like you use on your omelet)

1 cup of chopped left over veggie, spinach, broccoli, corn, whatever you have,

Salt, peper, garlic to taste

5 tb spoons of flour

Beat the eggs and milk like an omelet, throw in the left overs, the flour, mix it all up

On a non stick pan, spray it with cooking spray, and use a ladle to make hue cakes, brown it for a couple of minutes and you are done.

Ps, you can use potatoes, or even left over Mac and cheese instead or the rice... It's a great way to use left overs, and to cook something quick.

Another thing I love to do is to do parchment paper pouches.

Throw any fish you have, with veggies, lime, salt, and pepper into a parchment paper, fold it like a pouch, staple it and 20 min in oven at 375! asparagus is great like that too.

My favorite is baked wellinburgers

4 tawed paties or steaks, season them and brown them up both sides,

Cut 4 squares 8 by 8 of store bought puff pastry

Put , some spinach if you have or tomatoes, a slice of cheese, put the patty on top, wrap it up, turn it upside-down so the pretty flat side is up and bake it 15 min on 350.

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Specializes in student; help!.

When I roast a leg of lamb, I do it specifically so I can have shepherds pie later in the week. NOM.

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Specializes in Geriatrics.

I love this thread, I have been thinking of this too. Ive been looking up a lot of good meals to fix ahead of time and freeze so I can just dump them in the crock pot in the morn and have it ready when the kids get home from school. Getting ready to start preparing meals and freezing them. Thanks for the links also!!!

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Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.

This was our Poor Folks meal growing up but I always loved it and will make it now and I hate cooking.

Brown up some meat, add the brown gravy packets per instructions of the packets. Let it thicken with the meat and serve over white rice. I love it.

My grandma also will do the frozen meatballs in Tomato Soup for 45 mins. She adds Worcestershire to the soup and some other spices, serves with mashed potatoes. It's really good too.

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Specializes in Psych, Maternity, ER, Ortho.

For those REALLY early mornings and questionable future lunch hours: I make protein waffles. You can freeze them and put them in the toaster like eggos to eat on the way to class/clinical. The protein in them helps my tummy from grumbling too soon.

1 cup rolled oats (traditional oatmeal)

1 cup egg whites

1 cup cottage cheese (drained, if really watery)

1/3 cup splenda (or sugar/sweetener of your choice)

1 tsp baking powder

Cook the batter in a waffle maker, or can even make pancakes with it.

Sounds really gross but they come out pretty tasty. I also buy little bottles of "french toast" flavoring from capella - makes em even better

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For those REALLY early mornings and questionable future lunch hours: I make protein waffles. You can freeze them and put them in the toaster like eggos to eat on the way to class/clinical. The protein in them helps my tummy from grumbling too soon.

1 cup rolled oats (traditional oatmeal)

1 cup egg whites

1 cup cottage cheese (drained, if really watery)

1/3 cup splenda (or sugar/sweetener of your choice)

1 tsp baking powder

Cook the batter in a waffle maker, or can even make pancakes with it.

Sounds really gross but they come out pretty tasty. I also buy little bottles of "french toast" flavoring from capella - makes em even better

I'm going to have to try that!

A super easy, very tasty idea is to throw some chicken breasts into the crockpot, with about a bottle (or more, if you are making a lot) of BBQ sauce. Once it is cooked, shred the chicken, and serve it topped with coleslaw on buns.

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Specializes in Psych, Maternity, ER, Ortho.

Forgot to add, put it all through a blender, gives it a smooth consistency!

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My favorite "easy/fast crock-pot meal" is what we call 'Chicken Goup', or 'Poor Man's Chicken Paprikas'.

2-3 large chicken breasts

1 sm can of cream of chicken soup, plus a half can of water

salt (to taste)

pepper (to taste)

onion powder (to taste)

paprika (generously)

Cook those together on low 6-8hrs, or high 4-6hrs.

Shred chicken (so easy now that it is fork tender), and add a sm container of sour cream and let "cook" for another 15 minutes or so.

Serve over minute rice.

Sooo easy, fast, and tasty!

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My favorite "easy/fast crock-pot meal" is what we call 'Chicken Goup', or 'Poor Man's Chicken Paprikas'.

2-3 large chicken breasts

1 sm can of cream of chicken soup, plus a half can of water

salt (to taste)

pepper (to taste)

onion powder (to taste)

paprika (generously)

Cook those together on low 6-8hrs, or high 4-6hrs.

Shred chicken (so easy now that it is fork tender), and add a sm container of sour cream and let "cook" for another 15 minutes or so.

Serve over minute rice.

Sooo easy, fast, and tasty!

Good recipe! I've done this before, but without the paprika. I also added a bag of frozen broccoli to my mix. Yum!

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Oh, and I've posted this before, but Fix, Freeze, Feast is a GREAT cookbook for students, because it's based on using big quantities of ingredients then freezing. So go to Sam's/Costco, buy a pack of chicken thighs, and you use gallon freezer bags to make 6 meals. Just whip up a sauce, toss it and the meat in a bag, and you're ready for dinner. I thaw them the day before, then you can just cook however you like (crockpot, bake, whatever). If you have a Sabbath mode on your oven, you can even program it to start up before you get home. A surprising number of ovens have them now, check your manual. I didn't even realize I had it until someone suggested it for Thanksgiving. Sweet!

Thank you so much for this idea - My daughter and I spent last weekend preparing/cooking recipes from this book. For 2 days in the kitchen, we now have 65 frozen meals to choose from. We spent a total of $700 - that comes to $10.77 per meal! You can't eat out for that amount!

We had a horrible storm here this week and both of our homes lost power for about 10 hours but we were fortunate enough to have generators!

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For summer, I cook alot of the grill. I can marinate a chicken a veggies, grill a steak, or do hotdogs and hamburgers quickly and easily. My husband would gladly eat steak every night, so I always keep them around to just throw on the grill. I buy meat on sale or buy in bulk at Sams Club.

In the winter I do alot of crockpot cooking as well.

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