For those of us who have spouses and/or children to make dinner for, what do you do with your schedule? Since I work at a studio outside my home, it is not very convenient for me to teach, go home and have dinner, then return to teach some more.

My schedule pretty much crams everyone into a 4-hour block from 3-7 pm every day, usually with no breaks. Still, this means by the time I'm home and done cooking we eat around 8 pm. What do you guys do about making/eating dinner?

My studio is in my home. It has a separate entrance which is nice. I wish we could have sit down meals as a family but we can’t.

I prepare a lot of casseroles and I am able to take them out/put them in the oven in between students. Crock pots are the best. I am always looking for prepare ahead recipes. If you have some good ones, send them to me.

I have four pre-teen boys so I also look for recipe that don’t have potential for a lot of dishes and clean-up.

My crock pot is my best friend on teaching days. I teach till 6:15.
Family favorites:
spaghetti sauce
chili
beef/chicken for tacos filling
BBQ chicken
beef stew

If anyone wants recipes, PM me and I'll send them to you.
Or get a crock pot cookbook and experiment.
In the summer months, I make big salads for the fridge, my teens and busy husband can eat and run.

I teach 3:30 - 7, from home, with built in breaks, so it's no big deal for me to pop something in the oven. Yesterday it was a chicken noodle casserole I made early in the day. When my 6:30 student came, I put it in the oven for 30 minutes. I also use the crock pot a lot. I make more than I need, freeze the leftovers, and then have quick microwavable meals for other days. Family favorites include turkey breast with sweet potatoes, pot roast, various stews and soups, pork and sauerkraut, etc. My husband gets home about 7, and we eat about 7:30. Empty nest now, but this worked well when I had three at home, too.

Other meals, like spaghetti or tacos or chef salad or stir fry, don't take that long to throw together if I don't have something already cooking. And there's always pizza!

I do use the crock pot of a couple of things, but it's hard to find good recipes. I don't do enough casseroles, because until recently I couldn't eat any grains or pasta or breads, and most of them have something like that in them. But now I have that under control.

Making extra and freezing it for another day is a great idea.

Yup, my crock pot gets a workout too!!
With 3 boys and their sports/school/work schedules and my piano, it's just easier to have a dinner that anyone can access at any time.

I always keep lots of cut up stuff in the fridge too, so people can make fresh sandwiches when it's hot out.

I always make doubles too, and freeze the rest for later. Do you all know about the foil lining trick? Line your casserole before you put the food in it. Cook it, then freeze the whole business. After a few hours, pull the foil and food out of the container, wrap it up tight and you have your casserole dish back to use so it's not in the freezer. When you want to make it, it fits right back into your casserole dish

I teach in a retail location 4 days a week; my day ends at 6:15. As my kids have gotten older I assigned them each one day a week to cook dinner, which has become more challenging as they now have part-time jobs. One day a week we might all meet somewhere for dinner (or it's just my husband and I), and another day I'll have something in the crockpot or a quick meal.

There are some great crockpot recipes at www.copykat.com :
Pepperonchini Beef (basically a chuck roast that you shred to make beef dip sandwiches)
Crockpot Italian Chicken
Cabbage Roll Casserole

Also, Paula Dean has a great fairly quick recipe for Chicken Fajita Tacos.

Another great site for recipes is www.allrecipes.com

I like recipes that real home cooks have contributed and aren't just in cookbooks.

Depending on how health nutty you are, one of our go to's might work as well.

We make a bunch of salads and sides (pototo, pasta,carrot, tomato) to eat over a few days. I also cut up tomoatoes, eggs, olives, and other green salad toppings and throw them in separate containers so that is really fast to put together a hearty green salad. If you grill up a bunch of chicken and beef at the beginning of the week, then you or your family can combine these raw materials nicely. This week this has meant chef salad for dinner one night, chicken breast and potato salad, chicken sandwiches with lettuce and tomato on top, and sliced steak and feta salad.

It helps if you keep lots of salad stuff around to dress it up (different cheese, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, a million dressings, craisins, whatever your folks love)

We have a farm share, so it's hard for us to not eat lots of veg every day or it goes to waste.

Anyhow, in the heat, we like this since it creates a giant salad bar in the fridge that you can also use for yummy sandwiches. And we try to cook protein in mass so that there is less heat in the house! Grilling also makes more sense when you just do a bunch at once. Be sure if you do this not to overcook your chicken, or it is terrible if you reheat it in the micro! Sometimes I'll make a quiche too to stand in as a protein. Easy to cook with/pre-made dough and reheats like a dream.

We do a ton in the crockpot in winter, but this is my technique for coping with summer heat and abundance of vegetables.

And a lot of casseroles can be frozen in freezer bags before cooking them.

I have a few casseroles that don’t have to be layered. I dump all the ingredients in a freezer bag and then thaw and poor into a casserole.

For example. Cream of chicken soup, cottage cheese, parmesan cheese, cooked chicken breast, chicken broth all dumped into a bag. I cook egg noodles and freeze them separately.

When I want to prepare this meal, I thaw out and pour all the I ingredients in a crock pot and cook. I add a bag of vegetable at the end.

Mustaccoli Cass. I put two jars of spaghetti sauce, cooked mustacholli noodles (1 lb) and cooked hamburger in a Freezer bag and Freeze. ( You can also add pepperoni and mushrooms.) Thaw ingredients in the bag and poor into a casserole. Top with cheese.

A few girlfriends and I do a casserole/ meal exchange during the winter/fall months. Once a month, we each prepare five freezer meals . It is easy to buy bulk and prepare the same five meals. The exchange is fun as you get five new meals.

What has worked for us, is that I have dinner ready at 3:30. Everyone eats when they get home! That way they aren't snacking when they get home and then having supper after that! Dinner is their snack! Sometimes they eat dinner at 3:30, 4:00 or 4:30! And everyone eats alone cause they arrive home at different times!

Myself, I eat only 2 meals a day! Breakfast at 10:00 and dinner at 2:00! Dinner for me is yesterday's leftover! So I'm actually one day behind everyone else! Will have fruit and yogurt in between if I need it! Can't eat after I teach either, cause I'm too tired!

I'll just add this cause I think most of us tend to not drink enough water! If I'm dehydration, I will have trouble sleeping at night, so throughout the day, I drink a ton of water!

I can't emphasize the importance of drinking lots of water! Most of the time I'm not all that thirsty, but I force water down anyway! I usually push 10 glasses a day!

Hope this helps!

I do this also as my kids are the hungriest after school and off to football practice by 5:30. Anything that they can dish up themselves is priority for me.

What a great thread! I really need to remember to drink a lot of water because I'm prone to migraines. On days when I teach, I do teach back-to-back, so that can get me in a lot of trouble, because I'm so focused on what I'm doing, I forget to drink water, much less eat. Just this morning, I ate breakfast, walked the dog, and had a lesson starting at 10am. By 10:20, my stomach was growling. OMG! It was my first lesson with an intermediate transfer student, and it broke the ice quite nicely. LOL

Last year, I wasn't organized enough to get dinner ready before teaching.. this year, I will remember to. What a great idea, to do the crockpot thing..

BevP

OK, now I'm feeling really spoiled. I teach at home until 8 or later most nights, and my husband takes care of everything. I hardly cook at all anymore (but am looking forward to trying out, or eating my husband's trying out, of the many yummy suggestions here. We also go mainly for salads during the summer, and do make use of the crock pot during cold weather, since even though he's cooking, there can't be a lot of it going on while I'm teaching. Great ideas, everyone!

Hee hee I had to laugh. Northern California....cold????

I saw some construction guys once just north of Santa Rosa. It was about 35 degrees and they were dressed like eskimos (no offense to anyone). That made me laugh, yes, I know that's cold for you guys. I invite you to come here in January All in good fun

E&I, I know I'm a spoiled Californian, and should have said 'colder,' rather than cold! I lived in Santa Rosa for years, but now I'm up at about 1300 feet in the Sierra foothills and even get snow about every third winter (sometimes even more than an inch!)

Wow! Ths is a great thread even for those of us for whom cooking is just not a priority! I love it - thanks!

Cathy

Stop it, you're killing me here!! lol lol An inch! ACK!!

I use my crock pot year round - that air conditioning can be downright chilly!

I have had a party business selling kitchen tools for the past 8 years (the income paid for my Steinway!) and the recipes and techniques I've learned from this have definitely helped me be more efficient in creating healthy, quick meals for my family. The company even created 2 30-minute meal cookbooks in the last year that save a lot of time.

My best tip for fixing meals quickly is to do some investment cooking and some morning prep. I'll cook off 4 lbs of ground beef at a time, divide it up and freeze it. You can marinate and cook off chicken breasts and use them in various things from chicken salad to pasta dishes to casseroles.

In the morning, you can chop up vegetables to use in a stir fry or salad, mix up sauces or cook off the potatoes so they just take a quick reheating. You can also use certain frozen products to jumpstart a dish (frozen hash browns, for instance).

I can get a good meal on the table in 30 minutes or less and we usually manage to all eat together. Just tonight I made a meal in 20 minutes: rosemary herb rice (not a mix!), sauteed chicken breast fillets with a lemon/caper butter sauce, green beans and biscuits.

You can do it if you want to!

I was thinking about this topic today too! Our daughter will start Kindergarten soon and I realized I teach most days straight through dinner time. Perhaps I can share some lunch time with her at school and prepare some nice meals for Saturdays....Also my schedule varies a bit and when I feel like taking a day off, I do! So perhaps with all that we will have some time to sit down as a family. Casseroles and Crock Pot meals are great ideas...Eating late will not be an option as she will be getting up soooo early....But I would feel better knowing my family is getting a healthy meal...It all seems a small price to pay for having a job I enjoy!

These are some great ideas! My husband did help me out toward the end of the school year because I had terrible acid reflux and couldn't stand eating at 8, so he would get dinner ready by 7. However, I've been able to cope with that a bit better now (drinking a lot more water really helps!), but I do worry about when I'm back to teaching until 7pm. And I know hubby works hard at work all day so I feel bad making him cook, though he did it gladly for me.

But these ideas are wonderful. They take a lot of planning and that has been my downfall most of the time. Usually what happens is even if I plan a meal for that day, I'll not feel like doing all the work to make it when I get home and end up throwing on a pizza or some chicken nuggets. That gets old really fast!

Please, please, please let you husband do some cooking for you if he indeed loves it! You'll all eat better, you'll be saner and have less reflux, and he gets to show you how much he cares about you all! Don't feel guilty, feel loved!

I believe that women still take on more than half of the domestic responsibilities because we were taught that we should, and that it was our duty. This is exhausting, and eventually can make men feel like they are living in their wives homes, and not their own. (Perhaps this doesn't apply to your marriage at all, so ignore me if this doesn't resonate!)

I know that whenever my husband has been more engaged in 'my' domestic routines, we all benefit. I get more job related work done and have more energy at the end of the day, he appreciates me more, and he feels more included as part of the necessary infrastructure that makes the house run.

I think it brings peace to our marriage since now he knows how to do all 'my' tasks and when I am working 15 hour days or travelling for work (I am a freelance consultant) he knows that I am killing myself, and that it wouldn't be fair to expect me to return from a marathon like that and have to eat cereal for dinner or resort to wearing bikini bottoms for underwear b/c he didn't do any laundry for weeks while I was away (come on, you KNOW you've been there!). He knows that I only have so much energy, and sometimes I do everything, and sometimes, he has to pick up the slack and handle most of the big stuff.

Anyhow, not knowing your situation, it might not make sense for your hubby to cook a lot, but if he has the time and energy to help at all, and if he likes it, don't feel bad! You don't want him to feel bad when you cook, right? So just enjoy it when he is there for you! He sounds like a doll!

Just my .02!

Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals cookbooks are great.
I like the "investment prep." that Minniemae posted. This prep can take a 30 minute meal into a 20 minute meal.

This is another gem!

Mark Bittman's Quick and Easy Recipes

Today's my first week of the fall semester, and I don't finish teaching until at least 6:30 each day. So I took the easy way out and bought a crock pot meal kit for today, and some Stauffers Chicken Enchaladas for tomorrow. I guess I'll have to get to work for the rest of the week!

This planning ahead stuff is working out great so far! I browned 6 lbs of ground beef, put taco seasoning in one so its ready for tacos, and froze em all. I also thawed chicken breasts so i wouldn't have to do that later. So chicken and rice for tonight, taco salad tomorrow, etc. I guess the key is to plan and not eat so much whatever you're in the mood for at the time, which is what I usually do. Thanks guys!

Along with ground beef, I boil chicken breasts and cut in cubes then freeze.

I place flour tortillas on the electric griddle. Then sprinkle with shredded cheese and cubed chicken. When cheese melts fold over and continue heating till tortillas are crispy. These freeze and refrigerate well and are a convenient for the boys to reheat in the microwave.

I also use the cooked frozen chicken on top of lettuce salad or in canned soup.

Also easy…..Boil mustacholli noodles, place in casserole dish , top with a jar of alfredo sauce and cooked frozen chicken, cover with foil and bake till heated through. Easy to make ahead of time and easy for kids to dish up when I am teaching..


I am getting hungry.

I just stop teaching at 7pm and we eat then - something quick like pasta or fancy salads. My wife's a vegetarian, so that makes things a LOT simpler. (And healthier, too!)

My wife's work schedule is also odd, so she's frequently at work overnight or odd hours, or she may not get lunch until 3 or 4 in the afternoon, so we just catch food whenever we can.

My husband grills something most weekends, so in addition to whatever we're having that night, I have him grill up several boneless chicken breasts (how much would depend on how big your family is and how many meals you want to get from it) and then freeze or...if I'm going to use in the next day or two, just put them in the fridge.

You can reheat or use them cold in salads. I don't add any seasoning when they're cooking and that way I can use them with any kind of dish.

While the grill is hot you might as well cook multiple meals!

Mrs. A,
Do you toss the alfredo sauce in with the chicken and noodles or is this all just layered?
Grease the pan?
Thanks

I make sure the noodles are covered with Alfredo so they don't dry out. I don't grease the pan because I don't let it get that hot.

This is a favorite of my boys but when they dished up the noodles and spooned on the alfredo separately it was mess to clean up. And the cooked noodles dried out quickly. Now I put it all in glass 9x13 pan and heat it so it is easier for them to dish up.

I feed a family of six. I use 1 to 1 1/2lb of mustacholli noodles (1 and 1/2 box), two jars of alfredo and a couple handfulls of chicken (that was cooked previously and frozen.)

Serve with a green vegetable and garlic bread.

This isn't fancy but it is easy.

That's dinner tomorrow night at our house, thanks Mrs. A.

I can't imagine how difficult this would be for a family. My wife and I both teach in the evenings and it's one of the reasons we decided not to have kids. Works out fine with just the two of us as whoever finishes teaching first does the cooking. The only problem I have is that my wife often runs late with her last student so I never quite know when to get things ready for.

BTW, what's a 'crock pot'?

I've been wondering what a "crock pot" is too!

I always taught back to back and skipped dinner- just ate late when I was finished teaching, but then I was very ill and ended up in hospital. My doctor nearly killed me for not eating regularly (I've been a diabetic for many years).
Now I make sure to take a break for 30 mins at 5.30 each evening. Whatever about eating, I find it's great to take a break from students and clear my head before I start on round 2 for the evening!
I usually try to cook earlier in the day and have my dinner ready to zap in the microwave, or else I eat salads, or sometimes it's just beans on toast which doesn't take long to do.
It's important to eat, no matter what the state of your health. I learned the hard way

I used to live overseas, and the thing I missed the most was my crock pot! It is possible to find them for 220 volts. Here's one:

http://www.eastwestintl.com/showprod.asp?catid=65

(If the link doesn't work, google European crock pot). The problem I had with Internet orders is that most only shipped to the US (intended for US military overseas.)

It is a slow cooker that plugs in and cooks all day without burning. Most meals are ready in 8 to 12 hours, and it doesn't matter if it cooks longer. Meat becomes very tender in it, and it is safe to leave alone. I bought one in Europe at an Edeka restaurant supply store. It wasn't as good as the ones in the US - did tend to burn if left too long - but it did the job.

Luckily it's just myself and my husband here, and I teach from home. I have a self-imposed cut-off time of 7:30pm for teaching because I really value my evenings with my husband. He usually gets home around 7.

I try to get as much prepared for dinner as I can in advance. (pre-chop veggies, etc.) I get dinner ready by 8. We are just used to eating at that time.

I know this doesn't work for everyone because you may have kids, or you may need to teach in the later evenings to make enough income. I feel really lucky to have the schedule I do.