POSTED December 01, 2024

Flourish with Food: Time Saver Dinners

By Mary Lynne Hixson, MA, RD

Easy dinners help manage the packed season’s to-do list, which includes planning for the feasts themselves. This Flourish with Food looks at a few strategies for optimizing weeknight meals to manage stress and skip the drive thru.

Time-saving strategies include all-in-one meals (stews, soups, sheet pan cooking), healthy frozen or fridge entrees, use of convenience ingredients and planned-overs (aka leftovers).

My freezer favs for a pop-in-the-oven meal are Rao’s Meat Lasagna and Meat Balls & Sauce dinners. A pre-packaged salad kit and crusty bread quickly round out the meal. Rao’s offers many other frozen entrée options. As Rao products are tomato-centered, check out their tomato sauce 101 lesson. https://www.raos.com/pages/sauce-101

Kevins Natural Foods’ tagline is “we hacked healthy”. Kevins heat-and-eat meals center on a sous-vide cooked protein and a flavor rich sauce. This cooking method results in tender, tasty, moist protein. Serve over quick-cook, leftover or frozen rice. Balance the plate with a frozen vegetable or a bag of prepped pre-washed fresh vegetables. https://www.kevinsnaturalfoods.com

Muir Glen Organic has a great chili starter product, a flavorful mix of fire roasted tomatoes, veggies and seasonings. It’s available in mild and medium heat. From my experience, the medium is a “mild” medium. To complete the chili, add 1 pound of ground meat and 1 can rinsed and drained beans. For healthfulness, I prefer ground turkey and adding ample chopped mushrooms. The perfect beans for chili are dark kidney, black and pinto.

Consider making a double batch of chili – the planned-over – for smothering a microwaved baked potato. Top with avocado, guacamole, diced tomatoes, shredded mozzarella cheese, plain Greek yogurt, cilantro, green onion, a favorite salsa and/or jalapenos.

For other easy dinner ideas: Check out Allrecipes, a resource for kitchen-tested recipes.

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