Quick Dinners for the Busy Mom

These days, in most families, both mother and father work full time. Add house cleaning , taking care of the kids, and yard and house maintenance and you barely have time to eat much less COOK a decent meal. But all hope is NOT lost. I'll give you some suggestions of some quick and easy meals that you can make for your family.

Pasta and Meat Sauce

Pasta! Now unless you're doing the low carb thing, everyone likes pasta. Now as far as tomato sauce, sure you can spend the time making a sauce from scratch but think of it....If you use a 26 ounce jar of "Ragu", "Prego" or "Franchesco Ranaldi" as a base and then adding your own minced onions, garlic powder, salt, basil, oregano and whatever else you want, how many people would really care and/or even NOTICE the difference.

Get a pot of water boiling, put in a pound of noodles, at the same time, start frying up about a pound of ground beef (or ground turkey or pork).add a few spices to your meat to give your sauce a roasted garlic taste. When you meat is well done and your noodles are tender, drain your meat and noodles, add them to a pot, pour your jar of sauce (with your added spices) into the mix (you don't need to heat it up) and stir it up until the noddles and meat are covered with sauce. And there, you have a decent meal and it only took you about 20 minutes.

Chicken Parm.

How about Chicken Parm? Everyone loves that. Grab yourself a 26 ounce jar of tomato sauce, a few boneless/skinless chicken breasts, some shredded mozzarella and Parmesan cheese and some spaghetti. Turn on your oven to about 450 degrees Fahrenheit. While it's preheating lay your chicken cutlets in a baking pan. Bake them in your oven for about 30 min. While that's baking, boil a pound of spaghetti, make a quick salad using one of the many prepackaged salads from your supermarket. When your noodles are done, drain them, put them back in the pot and add a bit of butter and mix it up to keep them from sticking. By now, 30 min should have past. Open your oven, slide out the oven rack with your chicken on it, pour some sauce over the chicken cutlets, then generously sprinkle some of the mozzarella cheese over the sauce and cutlets, put another layer (a light layer this time) of sauce over the cheese, then generously sprinkle some parmesan cheese over it all. Then continue to bake the Chicken Parmesan for an additional 15 min. While that's baking, take the left over sauce and add it to your spaghetti. Remove the chicken from the oven and there ya go. You have a decent Chicken Parmesan Dinner that only took you 45 minutes.

Another thing that busy moms do that helps dinner preparations go smoothly during the busy week is to pre cook and store the weekday dinners over the weekend. Then all that has to be done is warming them up. This method can save a LOT of time and you don't have to be there for the husband and kids to fend for themselves.

Just because you have a busy lifestyle doesn't mean you have to resort to fast food and take out to feed your family. There are ways you can feed them a healthy meal and it doesn't have to consume your entire evening.