Hello everyone,

I am in search of some very quick and easy meals to have for dinner. By the time I get home from work I am just too tired to spend much time making dinner. My wife cooks on the weekends but we usually do our own thing mon-fri because I am always dieting and she is usually too tired to cook as well.

I have been making sandwiches and lean cuisines but they are just getting old. I need some fresh ideas. I usually have around 1100 calories after breakfast and lunch so I am looking for something to cover around 700-800 calories.

Stir-fry's are really quick, especially if you prepare ahead of time (like the weekend) by pre-slicing meats and veggies. You can even pre-cook the meat, so that you can just re-heat it. And its easy to make these taste really different by making small changes to the meat, veggies and/or sauce. You can cook some noodles, rice, potatoes to have with it.

I think the biggest helper for quick/easy dinners is to do some of the preparing earlier in the week so you can toss things together when you're ready.

Another dinner I had recently were the Heinz brown beans in tomato sauce, tortillas, tomato and then sauteed some red pepper, mushrooms and onions. The saute step could easily be skipped and just have them raw.

I am into the quick/easy dinners in these 2 months because of class schedule. I think those frozen entrees are not bad choices. Healthy Choice has a lot of good nutrient and tasty frozen dinners. SmartOne is not too bad also.

I like to spice things up by cooking 'ethnic' food.

For example, you can do a lot of things with a plain chicken breast. To make it italian, just make a sauce out of basil, tomatoes, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Coat the chicken in bread crumbs and parmesan and you have chicken parm.

To make it mexican, use oregano and add cumin and paprika. Grill or saute it. Wrap it up in a tortilla and put your favorite salsa and you have a taco/fajita.

To make it japanese, use a bottle of teriyaki sauce as marinade and then pan fry it. For chinese, use soy sauce and ginger with some prepared stir fry veggies to make a quick stir fry. To make it Indian, use curry powder... and so on.

I've never been a fan of frozen dinners, but I do like to do "semi-homemade" stuff. Just buy different bottled sauces and difference spices. You can buy already cooked chicken breasts, some already sliced.

You can also buy frozen cooked chicken wings (my fave is tequila lime flavor) or frozen cooked meatballs. Those you can buy in large bags and just heat up in the microwave or heat up in the toaster oven.

A simple dinner would be grilled chicken on a bed of lettuce. I like to add sliced tomatoes and use Galeos Miso Dressing.

You also have fish. My favorite is salmon in a pouch. Put the salmon fillet, chopped tomatoes, slice of lemon and juice from it, salt, pepper, basil in a tin foil pouch and put in in the toaster oven for 30 minutes or so. Another would be pan-seared salmon fillets with just salt and pepper. 3 minute on each side... done.

I like to saute bite size chunks of chicken in olive or grapeseed oil and then add fiesta frozen veggies. It has broccolli, carrots, celery, kidney beans and garbanzo beans and has a lot of flavor. Sometimes I put the mixture over whole grain rice. 15 minutes tops.

I'm a big fan of spinach and tomato salads with little bit of feta cheese, and a light dressing, bake a small chicken breast or grill it, and there u've got a meal thats less than 400 calories (dependant upon cheese and dressing of course). So you have some left over to add something else quick in there.

Just don't make my mistake of forgetting to defrost the chicken in the A.M.

Do you have a steamer? If not you should get one. It is a great way to cook food and keep most of the nutrients. I use sweet potatoes and bok choy (I only recently tried it and it is great) cabbage and potatoes. You can steam almost anything. My son does hot dogs in his. I like to mix a yellow and green veggie and leftovers are easy to just steam for a few minutes to warm up. Potatoes and broccoli. Try making garlic/onion mashed potatoes. I steam potatoes and then mash them with some of the cooking water to recover even more nutrients.

If you have Trader Joe's stores in your area, they have these great simmer sauces in jars. They are all thai or indian kind of flavors, and quite good. They also have frozen shrimp (my FAVORITE protein source these days) and cooked rice that's ready to go. Bring the simmer sauce and water to a boil, throw in some frozen veggies (I like spinach or broccoli, personally), throw in your frozen shrimp, microwave your rice, and in about 10 minutes you've got a fanbloodytastic, healthy dinner.

Me too! I never consider frozen dinner "food" before. But, just lately, I don't have choice. After these 2 months, I don't think I will go for frozen dinners anymore.

Yep, I pretty much live out of my wok!

Every meal has the same format though I still manage to vary it up enough so it feels like I'm eating something different.

Chop onions and chuck in the wok to get cooking. Chop meat (always changes, sometimes it is fish if I want), and add to the wok. Add flavour (a combination of herbs, spices and peppers. Good chance to be creative from the collection of options in the cupboard). Add fresh produce (or just chuck in frozen veg if time is a problem). At this point I fill the washing up bowl with hot soapy water. Finally add sauce (I frequently cheat as time is important to me and just add it from a jar. One jar can last me about 3 days worth of cooking. Just add what you need and leave the rest in fridge till tomorrow). Once sauce is heated then you slosh it on to a plate and serve. Before eating I chuck the wok and everything I have used so far into the washing bowl and in less than 30 secs everything is totally cleaned. This has taken less than 20 mins so far and I simply eat my meal and have one plate, one knife and one fork to clean after I've finished eating. Oh and possibly one mug if I make a brew.

All the benefits of a cooked meal with all the trimmings in no time at all and minimal fuss!!

And the lasses are impressed because they think you can cook and take care of yourself. Ha ha, as if!!