Cooking Shortcuts

I really enjoy cooking, but I don't always want to spend a lot of time prepping a meal. I can do parts of the prep work throughout the day, and Cambry is good at playing in her jumper in the kitchen or sitting in her high chair with toys watching me. However, it seems like there are always other things to get done so I don't want to use a bunch of time cooking.

Lately I have been taking a few shortcuts like using frozen pre-chopped veggies (like onions) instead of fresh, using a tube of cilantro paste instead of chopping fresh, or leaving out some ingredients if they are difficult. And for rice I just buy the 90 second bags of plain brown rice. I kind of hate doing that because I'm cheap, but sometimes the desire to save time trumps the desire to save money.

I have a few quick go-to meals for those nights when there is no time for prep, and am looking for more. One of my quick meals is breakfast for dinner. We used to do this every Sunday night but ended up getting a little burned out on it. We do eggs over easy and turkey bacon on english muffins and smoothies. We still do this fairly often but not every Sunday. Doing a super easy Sunday dinner is one of my goals in order to make Sundays as relaxed as possible. I don't do anything fancy on Sundays.

One of my other go-to meals is stir fry. I almost always have the ingredients on hand and it is really easy to do - no chopping (except for chicken) and no measuring. I do have fancier stir fry recipes that I make sometimes, but when it comes to a quick dinner I just keep it simple. The frozen bags of stir fry veggies and pepper/onion blend are great. Add some soy sauce or other sauce, cashews or sesame seeds, and it is a great quick meal.

My last go-to meal is tilapia. We almost always have frozen tilapia fillets on hand. They thaw out so quickly, and all I do is pan fry them with some olive oil and seasoning.

If all else fails then I eat a Healthy Choice meal. I usually only buy them when Greg is out of town. I am too lazy to cook anything if it is just for me.