No Time? Quick Meal Ideas

No time. Can you relate? I’ve been feeling the crunch of more scheduled evening events—and I no longer have kids going back to school!

As I sat looking at what happened to my calendar in the last week, I realized that many of my extracurricular activities were on summer sabbatical. They are all back with a vengeance.

EVERYTHING started up at the same time.  

The Challenge: My brain is still stuck in summer mode. Workouts feel hard, I can’t deal with buying more than 15 items from the grocery at a time, and I can barely find the cherry tomatoes in my garden because of the weeds.

Then there’s the little detail of making dinner really fast, so that I can be at my evening functions. Can you believe Mr. Non-Compliant gets hungry and wants more than M&M’s?

He does.

I thought it might be helpful for you to have some REALLY QUICK meal ideas, in case you’re finding yourself in a similar end-of-summer situation.

Here are my last four days of dinner menus, and all took less than 30 minutes to prepare: (Please don’t judge.)

Sunday: Hamburgers, angel hair pasta (for Mr. NC), tossed salad

Monday: Sautéed scallops, sautéed zucchini and onions, brown rice  

Tuesday: Beyond Meat Hot (not really) Italian Sausage sliced and sautéed with broccoli florets, orange bell pepper, and canned mushrooms, leftover brown rice for me and leftover pasta for Mr. NC

Wednesday: Rotisserie chicken (from the grocery) and tossed salad, which neither of us were home to eat—oh well

 

Quick Tips

• I cook a surplus of pasta and brown (or white) rice so that they are ready to reheat as an accompaniment to the protein of choice. This saves time AND dirty pans, especially since I don’t eat gluten-filled pasta and Mr. NC is not so fond of brown rice. I love my Instant Pot for cooking rice.
• Keep ground beef/turkey/pork, chicken, sausage—any of your favorite proteins—in the freezer so you don’t have to run to the store. Add a few vegetables (which could also be frozen) and you have a stir-fry. Really easy when you have your rice already cooked.
• A tossed green or spinach salad goes well with everything and gives you another serving or more of vegetables.
• Fresh fruit is a good choice for dessert if you don’t have to dash out the door as soon as you set down your fork.

We really DO have time to do the things that matter most, once we get our mindset right. If you’re struggling, I’d like to help. Let me hear from you! Clarity is a wonderful thing, yet it is sometimes tricky to find on our own.

Cheers to fall,
Carol

“Don’t be so easily moved by things that do not benefit the well-being of your soul. Time waits for no one, and you’re going to wish you invested more of yourself into the things that sparked your heart.”