Tag Archives: easy family dinners

Easy Weeknight Dinners in 20 Minutes or Less

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On average, American women with children under age 18 spend about an hour on food preparation and clean up every day, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s an hour less time spent chatting with the kids or catching up with their spouse or even just relaxing and re-energizing. Instead of spending an hour on dinner and cleanup, why not cut it to 20 minutes, or less?  Replace the cleaning, mixing, and chopping, with time at the dinner table, savoring your food and catching up with the family.

Here are some great easy weeknight dinners ideas:

  • Slow cooker soups and stews: Really, the slow cooker is a godsend for any busy mom. You can get creative with your slow cooker by coupling a meaty dish with your favorite jam, making an apricot pork dish (hyperlink: http://www.foodonthetable.com/recipes/355007-slow-cooker-apricot-pork), for example. You can also cook a rotisserie chicken or lime and cilantro chicken in your crock pot for a tender, succulent and juicy chicken dinner dish. Load up your slow cooker in the morning, and come home to a fully prepared meal, just waiting to be devoured.
  • Grilled panini: Grill your sandwich with turkey, spinach, basil, and sun-dried tomato, and drizzle the sandwich with garlic olive oil for a Mediterranean dish that’s both filling and fast. All it takes is about 10 minutes for the contents of the panini to warm up and for the bread to brown. Cleanup is made easy, too: all you have to do is clean the panini residue of your panini grill or pan!
  • Quick and painless pizzas: All you need is single-serving pizza dough (which you can defrost ahead), tomatoes, pesto or olive paste, cheese (unless you want delicious white pizza), and salami to make mini-pizzas that each family member will love. You can even use pocketless pita bread to make these single-serving treats.  You can even make extra pizzas and freeze for another easy weeknight dinner.
  • Beef salsa: Cook beef ahead of time or defrost leftover beef from another day to make a filling southwest salsa. Mix beef with quartered cherry tomatoes, black beans, shredded carrots, green chile salsa, red onion, and cilantro to a dinner that will take you 10 minutes to assemble. Just throw your beef salsa into taco shells and garnish with lettuce. You can also try this salsa with salmon, if you prefer fish.
  • Burgers: Use your George Foreman grill or panini press to quickly grill up burgers for a dinner that should take you under 15 minutes. Broil hamburger buns with a bit of butter and garnish with ketchup and lettuce for the quintessential, American dinner.
  • Hearty salads: Get some more greens on the table by quickly tossing up a hearty, dinner salad. You can prepare a taco salad with beef or make a summer salad with grilled chicken breast. If you like to make your dressing from scratch, make the dressing ahead of time to cut down on cook time. Chicken, spinach, and raspberry salads are especially delicious in the warm, summer months.
  • Fruit salads for dessert: You don’t have to serve a decadent dessert. For weeknights, prepare a delicious, sweet fruit salad, which can last for a few days if you make it in bulk. Make your fruit salad using fruits that are in season and at their peak ripeness to get maximum flavor. You can even add 3/4 cup of marshmallow cream, coconut shavings, and whipped cream to really take a plain fruit salad into dessert territory. Make a fruit dip using marshmallow cream and orange juice. If you’re not a fan of marshmallow, simply serve your fruit salad with a couple of scoops of vanilla bean ice cream. Sometimes less really is more.

Now that you have some quick and painless recipe ideas at your disposal, time yourself to see how fast you can get dinner on the table. The less time cooking and cleaning, the more time you have to spend your way.

Preparing Easy Family Dinners Using Base Sauces

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Studies show that Americans are now working longer than anyone else in the industrialized world. After a long, hard day at work, the last thing we want to do is cook a gourmet meal for our family. However, you don’t need a feat of magic to get dinner on the table in a flash. Dinner can be whipped up with little effort if you have a basic sauce to work with. That’s why you should always have basic sauces at hand (or in the freezer), so that you can make an easy family dinner in a flash.

Sauce-Based Easy Family Dinners

You don’t necessarily have to know how to saute, bake, and blanch to make a great dinner that the whole family can enjoy. Just pick a meat or veggie (depending on your personal tastes) and whip up and store one of these sauces as a base for the entire meal:

  • Spaghetti Sauce: Spaghetti sauce can be used on spaghetti, with meatballs, or as a base for Italian-style soups. Whether you buy a spaghetti sauce at the store, or make it from scratch, always have this basic sauce in your pantry or in your freezer so that you can whip up a delicious Italian meal in an instant.
  • Alfredo sauce: Alfredo sauce is another flavorful Italian sauce that goes great on just about everything, from pasta to cooked spinach. All it takes is butter, garlic, milk, and parmesan cheese. Add a half a package of cream cheese for an extra, cheesy kick.
  • Gravy: This southern staple can add some sustenance to a dinner that needs a little pizazz. Gravy is great for everything from biscuits to fried chicken. Add a dash of cayenne powder or ground chili to give gravy a little bit of a kick if your prefer spicier dishes. Luckily, gravy is one of the easiest sauces to make with minimal ingredients and cook time.
  • Creamy white wine sauce: Simply pick up chicken breasts or some scallops, boil pasta, and pour a white wine sauce over your dishes for a meal to die for. Heavy whipping cream, white wine, flour, salt, and parsley are all it takes to make a heavier sauce. This sauce only takes about 10 minutes to prepare, making it perfect for an easy family dinner.
  • Peanut sauce: Great for spring rolls, salad, dipping, pasta or noodles, or stir fries, peanut sauce is versatile and delicious. If you feel like doing something a little different this dinner, whip up a peanut sauce for a Thai-style feast.

Next time you’re exhausted after a big day, just grab one of your pre-made sauces and add to some pasta or a stir fry.  You’ll have dinner on the table in minutes. Just remember to defrost that morning, and your family dinner will be almost complete.

Tips for Preparing and Selecting Family Dinner Menus for a Family Event

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Kids who eat meals with the family are more likely to do well in school, delay sexual activity, eat their vegetables, and even speak articulately. Mealtime socialization helps children learn family values and even more so, “A meal is about civilizing children, It’s about teaching them to be a member of their culture,” says Robin Fox, an anthropologist who teaches at Rutgers University in New Jersey. However it’s not only family time that’s important. General socialization, especially with familiar and helpful adults that may or may not assume a “mentor” position is critical to children’s development of language and social skills.

To really immerse your children in a happy, healthy, social environment, try throwing a backyard barbecue or dinner party every once in a while. If you really want to bring the family together and have your kids feel closer with their family, why not get the whole everyone? Invite brothers, sisters, grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, and various aunts, uncles and cousins over for a dinner party at your place. Dinner parties are not just beneficial to your child’s development, they promote family bonding, allow everyone to catch up, and can be the perfect opportunity to smooth over any conflicts within the family. All you have to do is plan a menu and your dinner event will be well on its way.

Tips for Planning Your Family Event

All you need to do is consider family dinner menus, and pick which ones are best for your family. Here are some tips to decide on a family dinner menu:

  • Try to have something available the second your guest comes in. You don’t want people grasping their stomachs as they wait for the meal to be finished. Try something simple, like crostinis, garlic bread, deviled eggs, or chips and dip for your family dinner menu.
  • Decide whether you want to have a sit-down or buffet style dinner when planning the menu. Buffets offer a variety of foods, so you may have to do a lot more cooking, however with buffet style the host or hostess doesn’t have to serve every guest individually.
  • If you do decide on a sit-down dinner, try to follow the general meal structure of salads, entrees, then desserts when making your family dinner menus. Salads will add some greenery before the meal and desserts will make the family dinner menu feel that much more festive and decadent.
  • Make sure to include salads, greens, and other healthy options for dieters on your family dinner menu. Those who are watching their figures and health will be grateful for your consideration.
  • Also help vegetarians in mind, if you have any vegetarians in the family. For example, if you’re serving sirloin steaks have a stir fry or veggie-based dish to satisfy your vegetarian or vegan guests.
  • Make your family dinner menus ahead of time and plan in advance. You may want to prepare a week-long plan so that you don’t get overwhelmed the day before and the day of the party.
  • Make space for food in your refrigerator before you even start planning out your family dinner menus. Clean out the food in the fridge and ice beverages in an ice chest to make room in the fridge.
  • Remember that you can also use an ice chest to keep things hot if you’re in need of extra storage when you’re preparing the meal.
  • Most importantly: consider your guests! Even if you’re throwing an intimate, family dinner party, be cordial and consider what dishes they would like over your own tastes.

With the help of this guide, hopefully you’ll have no trouble at all pondering family dinner menus and picking the best one for your needs. It’s time to celebrate the whole family coming together. Cheers!