Quick & Easy Meals For The Family

Everyone knows instinctively that family dinners benefit children emotionally as well as physically. In fact, as The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University points out, teen substance abuse decreases when families eat dinner together. Keeping a well-stocked refrigerator and pantry makes providing a healthy dinner in 30 minutes possible every night of the week.

Breakfast for Dinner

Since family members get up at different times, even Saturdays and Sundays don't work for most people to cook a hearty and healthy full breakfast. There is no reason why you can't make up for that lost opportunity by cooking breakfast for dinner. Fill an omelet with your family's favorite cheese, diced tomatoes, green onions and cooked mushrooms. Or, make whole-wheat pancakes or waffles with bananas and walnuts tossed into the batter. Be bold and add a serving of broccoli or a spinach salad on the side. Keep pancakes or waffles warm in a 200-degree oven until all are made so everyone can eat at the same time. Add a fruit salad for dessert to any breakfast dinner.

Chicken Breasts

Poaching chicken breasts takes only 30 minutes, less if you cut each breast in half. And if you poach them ahead of time, your time spent making dinner is cut even further. Use shredded chicken or hamburger interchangeably in the scores of recipes listed on the Meals Matter website, including taco pie, 15-minute fajitas, grilled sandwiches and quesadillas. Broil quesadillas on a baking sheet in the oven, turning once, to cook a large quantity in a short time. Fill them with shredded chicken, a bit of salsa, cheese and sliced olives.

Salads

In the summer, serve your family taco salad with either chicken or hamburger, Caesar salad with chicken or Asian chicken salad with cabbage shreds, mandarin orange slices and toasted, sliced almonds, all tossed with a commercial sesame oil dressing. Turn green salads into a meal by adding diced meat, nuts, cheese or tofu. Roast bite-size potato chunks for 30 minutes in a 400-degree oven to add substance to any salad.

Pasta

You probably already cook spaghetti since it takes under 10 minutes to cook and only a minute or two to heat up a pre-made sauce in the microwave. Mark Bittman, author of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, recommends that you expand your pasta repertoire by adding a greater variety of pasta, such as penne, ziti, rigatoni, tortellini and orecchiette. Instead of tomato sauce, Bittman encourages home cooks to try cooked mushrooms and peas in a sauce made with cream cheese; pasta tossed with your favorite vegetables and sausage; pasta tossed with white beans, parsley and a can of diced tomatoes; pasta tossed with canned salmon, plenty of Parmesan cheese and butter; or pasta topped with a cream sauce and tossed with broccoli and walnuts, both roasted for 10 minutes in the oven.