Tag Archives: quick meals

Tips for Creating Great Sunday Supper Recipes

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We’ve all heard the benefits of eating with the family. One survey done by the Obesity Prevention Program at Harvard Medical School found that 9-14 year-olds who ate dinner with their families frequently ate more fruits and vegetables and less soda and fried foods. Additionally, researchers at Brigham Young University conducted a study of IBM workers and found that sitting down to a family meal helped working moms reduce the tension and strain of long hours at the office. While sitting down for dinner helps kids eat healthier and moms alleviate stress, family dinners are also fun and a great opportunity for the whole family to spend some time together and catch up. Instead of ordering in this Sunday, have a traditional Sunday supper. Here are some tips to create the perfect Sunday supper recipes:

  • Plan in advance. You don’t want Sunday to roll around and have no idea what you’re going to cook. Additionally, braving the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon can sometimes be a nightmare with frenzied mothers and children running amuck. Avoid the lines and grocery store and do your meal planning, recipe selecting, and grocery shopping beforehand.
  • Keep your Sunday supper classic and stick to recipes that everyone will love. Think of suppers that your mother or father used to serve you, like classic roast beef with home fries and gravy, lemon rotisserie chicken with fresh rolls and honey butter, or maple glazed pork roast with garlic potatoes. Once you find a menu you love, you can create your own family tradition.
  • Keep it simple. Don’t spend your entire Saturday and Sunday cooking and cleaning. Make as much as you can beforehand (like desserts, in particular) and try to save time by buying sauces at the grocery store rather than making them at home. Minimal cooking means minimal stress.
  • Get your family to lend a helping hand. This isn’t a one-woman show! Get everyone involved, from the chopping and peeling, to the cleaning. Normally, non-cookers get dish duty.
  • Pick a filling meat as the entree, like pork, beef, or chicken. These hearty meats are the anchor and soul to any Sunday supper.
  • Sneak in veggies if you have to and make it healthy. You don’t want to associate Sundays with pigging out and unhealthy eating. Instead, give your kids a positive example of what a meal should look like, with a balance of healthy carbohydrates, protein, and plenty of veggies. A side salad or grilled asparagus could add a little green to your supper recipes.
  • Make a dessert. Every supper recipe deserves a dessert for the special meal. Cheesecake, carrot cake, or even something as simple as Jello and some fruit are great complements for a Sunday supper. Try and prepare something that pairs well with your entree.
  • Pick a standard time to eat supper every week and stick to it. This will assure that everyone in the family keeps their schedules wide open for a wonderful, relaxed suppertime meal.

If you keep all of these tips in mind, you will surely prepare Sunday supper recipe to remember. Just beware: after one, your family will want a Sunday supper every week!

 

How to Prep Your Kitchen and Make 30 Minute Meals

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According to the National Restaurant Association (NRA), 133 million Americans eat out every day. Michael Donohue, spokesperson for the NRA, contends that, “The typical adult eats at a restaurant nearly six times a week.” While this is great news for restauranteurs it may make budget-minded moms and pops blush with shame. So why do we eat out so much? Time is partially to blame. The grocery shopping, the cooking, the prep, the cleaning — all of these things take time that we, as working Americans, really don’t have. Luckily, however, there is a way to get in and out of the kitchen in a flash. There are plenty of chefs and cookbooks that have proved to us that having dinner out in under 30 minutes is achievable.

Tips to making your kitchen 30 Minute Meal-Worthy

You can’t just throw together 30 minute meals if you’re in the midst of a filthy or unorganized kitchen. You need to be adequately prepped to churn out meals in a flash. One way to prep for a 30 minute meal? Practice what chefs like to call “mise en place,” or “to put in place.” The basic premise of mise en place is that if you put everything out in front of you before you start to cook, you’ll be able to prepare a meal quickly and efficiently. Get your mise en place set up by doing the following:

  • Make sure you have all of your ingredients in front of you
  • Have plates ready so you can put the meal on the plates and serve it while the dish is still hot.
  • Have stations set up for different phases of the meal. Arrange a washing, chopping, and seasoning station.
  • Put all of your herbs or different chopped ingredients in bowls so that you can easily grab and use them. The bowls can be quickly thrown in the dishwasher after use.

Apply this technique to all of your meals to churn them out as quickly as possible.

Examples of 30 minute Meals

Thirty minute meals usually include elements like a meat that can be cooked in a skillet in a flash and simple recipes without hundreds of ingredients. Meals that you can cook in under 30 minutes include:

  • Steak with herbs: Steak is so easy to just throw on a cast-iron skillet and cook. All you need is herbs like rosemary, parsley, and oregano to really make a rib-eye taste delectable in only about 8 minutes!
  • Lemon Garlic Tilapia with Spinach: Just sauté some spinach and throw a tilapia filet on the skillet with garlic, lemon, and butter for a delicious dinner that only takes about 20 minutes.
  • Parmesan Chicken Tenders: Bust out your olive oil and get ready for some quick frying. You can bread your chicken tenders in rosemary, shredded parmesan, red pepper flakes and garlic cloves. Then, just fry up your breaded tenders and serve with a pasta salad and some leafy greens for a great meal.

You can make the time to cook for thirty minutes each night. Just start planning your meals out, and open your mind to the possibility that cooking could actually be enjoyable.