"Fast Food" ideas...getting a healthy meal together FAST & on the fly!

[moolie]

Some great ideas here

I have home-canned jars of Baked Beans in the cupboard for quick Beans on Toast, jars of Black Beans and Pinto Beans that can easily turn salad with tomatoes and avocados into Taco Salad with the addition of some salsa and plain yogurt dressing, and jars of Ground Bison that make it ridiculously easy to whip up a quick Lasagne (don't boil the noodles, just make the sauce a bit more liquid-y than usual and bake away) or other Meat Sauce Pasta dish. You can do the same things if you freeze the pre-cooked ground meat or pre-soaked/cooked beans in useful amounts--I used to do it this way before I got my pressure canner.

We also do "Breakfast for Dinner" quite often: scrambled eggs and toast, waffles, eggs & sausages etc.

As you already know, salads are super easy to vary! Salad with lettuce, tuna, potatoes, green beans, and capers = Salad Nicoise. Salad with lettuce, grilled chicken and veggies with home made Caesar or Ranch dressing = Chicken Caesar or Ranch Salad. Salad with lettuce, mango, melon, berries and tinned Salmon is lovely with a simple honey mustard vinaigrette. I have a salad dressing jar that has recipes on the side with "fill" lines that makes it super easy to whip up quick dressings--you can often find these at the grocery store, I got mine from Epicure although it looks from the link like it doesn't have the recipes/fill lines on the side anymore.

There are some fabulous Freezer Cooking cookbooks out there these days, I have a few that I've picked up at Thrift Stores (Once a Month Cooking Family Favourites and The Big Cook) that include recipes where you freeze chicken pieces, pork chops, or stew beef with a home made marinade mixture, then just pop the frozen lump into a casserole and have dinner in half an hour or so. Before I got my own copies I borrowed various Once a Month Cooking cookbooks from the library (and shamelessly scanned a few favourite recipes to my computer).

The freezer cooking take a bit of prep, but last night's dinner was a baked frozen lump of Apricot Chicken from one of those cookbooks with brown rice and a salad of garden lettuce and farmer's market cukes and cherry tomatoes with home made vinaigrette dressing and home made bread. You can also just double everything you cook when you have the time to make dinner and freeze the extra.

 

[Marianne]

I like to keep already prepared taco meat in meal size containers in the freezer. I also keep refried beans and flour tortillas as staples. I almost always have salsa and grated cheese around here, too.

Then there's a choice of taco salad plus bean or beef/bean burritos.

 

[mamaluv321]

My favourites always involve either rice or pasta;
brown rice
can of black beans
tomato
onion

Start rice, chop onion and tomato then throw onion in a pan till it is almost starting to brown, chop tomato and throw in, add fave spices (I like chili, garlic and basil) and leave on for a minute or so then remove from heat. you don't want the tomato to cook too much. Rinse beans and when rice is done mix beans into rice and serve tomato n onions over rice and beans. top with shredded cheese. I Aslo use this as a clean out the fridge recipe, left over meats just about any cooking green sauted in butter goes nice with as well as zuchini and squash.

 

[sunsaver]

Y'all are making me hungry for some Mexican food! All of these recipes sound good.

 

[MyKidLuvsGreenEgz]

I've done "snack meals" ever since my now 14 yo son started eating solid foods.

Basic Menu:
Dried veggies and/or dried fruits
Cheese stick
Nuts or seeds
GF rice crackers

All the basic food groups here. Nutritious, and quick. We always have dried fruit and veggies around, and being who I am, we have tons of crackers.

But you obviously can work around this.

Instead of rice crackers, make some flax crackers ahead of time and freeze or dehydrate and put them in canning jars and put away for days just like that. It's just ground flax with a little water and sometimes seasoning (cinnamon and sugar for sweet, garlic and onion powder plus parsley and spinach for savory). The water will goo up the flax seed. Combine thoroughly. If you want a little rise, add a bit of baking powder. Plop on cookie sheet and "bake" until crunchy. Or dehydrate until crunchy. GFCF.

Instead of dried fruits (my son's favorite is mango, blueberries and blackberries), open a can of fruit. Try placing pineapple rings on a plate, sprinkling with cinnamon and microwaving until warm. Same with peach slices. Pears taste good with a little bleu cheese and pecans, then heated up.

Instead of dried veggies (we like peas, corn and tomatoes), I'm sure you've got a can of green beans or corn or even some radishes from the garden.

We always have jars of hulled sunflower seeds and packages of almonds around. I keep pecans and walnuts in the freezer (bought around Thanksgiving).

Does that help?

 

[big brown horse]

Yes! Thank you! Awesome ideas!

 

[Avalon1984]

Yes! Thank you! Awesome ideas!

There is some real good bag of Teriyaki vegetables you can buy at Walmart. It is I believe "Birds" or "Byrds", in a blue bag. It is a huge bag too and you get the sauce to come with it. Youc anw arm that up in the pan in 10min, throw some meat in the pan and start a pot of Betty Crockers mashed potatoes and youa re good to go.

I take care of the farm (6 horses, gazillion chickens) by myself during the week and work 50+hrs so I know where you are coming from with the quick meals. I never eat dinner before 7:30-8pm which is quite unhealthy so I always try to eat healthy food. Doesn't always work though.

Do you have chickens? This is a German recipe so I don't know if you'll like it but here it goes:

Boil some eggs
in a small pot, put mustard and water in equal amounts (depending on how much sauce you want to make, I usually do 1/2cup) and add some sliced up onions. You can also add a small teaspoon of soup mix for additional flavor. Warm up slowly and let come to a quick boil, then remove.

Boil potatoes

done.

The eggs with the mustard sauce are a killer and the potatoes are optional but that is how I like my German food Should take you no more than 20min if you boil teh eggs and potatoes at first.

 

[keljonma]

Jacques Pepin has a couple cookbooks, Fast Food My Way and More Fast Food My Way that have a number of good healthy recipes including three that I make regularly.... beef stew, bow tie pasta with fried eggs, warm chocolate cakes with apricot cognac sauce. When some of his recipes call for canned convenience items, I just use my home-canned instead.

 

[MyKidLuvsGreenEgz]

I've tried to watch Jacques Pepin shows on PBS and can't get past his accent. He's been in the USA for 20? 30? 40? years and still can't add the "s" on the end of "onions"? Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine.

Of course you can go the Rachel Ray route and do meals for under 30 minutes. Still, when it's hot like this and I just don't feel like cooking, 30 minutes is still a long long time to be in the kitchen.

 

[lorihadams]

We do breakfast too...omelets, pancakes or oatmeal with some fresh fruit and voila

I always keep some GF soups on hand so if I need to eat quickly I can do soup.

I also like to cook a lot of bacon at once and then keep it on hand for a few days and do BLTs with toasted millet bread.

We like to do tuna salad on crackers for the kids and on corn tortilla chips for me.

I make double or triple batches of pancakes and freeze them so I can nuke them if I'm in a hurry, works for breakfast or dinner.