The Reality Of Healthy 30 Minute Meals

By Toni Vang


If you are like most families, you have to balance your schedule with those of your children. This typically means that you usually have little time to prepare and serve dinner. Without some prior preparation, you are not able to throw healthy 30 minute meals together every night. Although a wonderful thought, it is totally unrealistic to assume this will happen.

To be able to have dinner served thirty minutes after arriving home every day, you will need to do some preparations ahead of time. You can make preparations over the weekend and store everything in the freezer or refrigerator until you need them for your weekly menus. Although this sounds like a simple task, in the real world it may not be possible.

You need to be flexible and have alternatives since it is more likely to take 40 minutes to get food served. Every time you make a recipe you will get faster at putting it together. Decide which ingredients you can prep before hand that will reduce your time in the kitchen. Choose recipes that have few ingredients and are practical.

There are a few tips you should know that will help you put a nutritious dinner on the table quickly. So many folks are working with such hectic calendars that it is necessary for them to have ways to get food served in short time each night. Following a certain plan can reduce the stress of mealtime preparation.

For example, spend time on Saturday and Sunday chopping, blanching, or roasting vegetables. Make sauces that your weekday recipes call for. If you plan your meals for the week you will know what ingredients you are going to need. Many recipes take more time to prepare the ingredients than the actual time it takes to cook them.

Also, make sure you plan some meals using leftover. For example, you can use leftovers from Monday to make a dinner for Wednesday. You can either serve the dinner as you did on Monday, or make another meal using the leftovers. If you served chicken and vegetables you can use the leftovers to make a skillet meal. In addition, soups and stews can be made using the remains of a meal.

Invest in a slow cooker and a pressure cooker to get dinner to the table quick. Beforehand, put together the ingredients for several slow cooker meals and store them in bags in the freezer. You can empty the ingredients of a bag into the slow cooker as you leave for the day. When you return home you will have a fully cooked meal ready to eat. Also, meats and other foods cook in minutes when placed in a pressure cooker.

Give yourself a break now and then and get takeout for dinner. You can also buy prepared meals at your favorite grocery. In addition, eating out once in a while is great if you can fit it into your budget.




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