Dinner, Please Help!

I am not a slow cooker person unless it is pulled pork or something like that.

I love to be in the kitchen prepping meals but not spend ALL my time there. Allrecipes.com has a lot of good things on it which vary from basics and simple to very elegant and difficult.

For the record, I make a homemade marinara from scratch and I keep at least of quart of it in my fridge ready to go because we eat a lot of pasta,e tc. I also make the stuffed shells or manacotti and keep some in the freezer so all I have to do is heat it up. While it heats, toss a quick salad and heat bread and you're done!

If possible, since you have a tough schedule, use a weekend day or night to prepare some foods for the week.. meatloaf, lasagna, pasta, casseroles, etc.

Good luck.

Look for recipes on Pintrest! I have found tons!
I lived by our slow cooker when I was working, and even now I use it quite frequently. And I'm kinda lazy, so I use a lot of McCormicks seasoning packs to make stuff :)
I do french dips (A couple of pounds of deli roast beef with the seasoning pack, cooked all day then served on hard rolls with swiss. Yum!)
Pot Roast
Chili
Pulled pork (with a seasoning pack, ketchup, vinegar)
BBQ chicken
Soups
Corned Beef
Stew
nacho cheese dip

Hint: cook the night BEFORE... Including getting a salad (or whatever) put together just sans dressing (think ready made meals at the store).

THEN when you come home, dinner is ready and just needs to bd zapped, or nipped into the oven, or squashed in the panini press.

I personally hate getting several meals put together at once, but that's another option. Think of 'Dinners Ready' type companies... And do that: prep, cook, portion, freeze OR prep for cooking (new baby style casseroles, dishes, etc) do you can defrost on the counter or fridge at work, and crank the oven on and cook when you get home.

Just think of the frozen aisle at the store... ALL those meals can be frozen. So you can make ahead a week in advance and freeze... Or make the night before and just heat.

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As per your recipe Q...

The Silver Spoon is my hands down favorite cookbook. It has over 1500 pages, w2-3 recipes per page, and most of them only have 4/5 ingredients and take about 20 min to cook (some, of course are huge and take hours, but those are the exception). It's the Italian 'bible' of cooking, and the English translation is now only about $35 on amazon (used to be 100-200).

My 2nd favorite source is www.foodnetwork.com

I haven't found a good slowcooker site/book, yet, though. Except for pulled pork, everything comes out like dry (wet, of couse, but the meat is just dry and icky) mush. Shudder.

My mom was a single mom and she always cooked for a week at a time. Every Saturday morning she spent a few hours cooking a weeks worth of food then freezing it. This allowed her evening to free up and pretty much the weekend to be free to spend with us.

You can put 4 chicken breasts in the slow cooker and dump mild salsa all over them. Cook on low all day (or you can have a timer plugged in that starts the slow cooker at whatever time you want). When you get home you make a salad and get together taco fixings for chicken tacos. There are so many recipes online...just look for ones that get high ratings. Chile always comes out great in a slow cooker. Soup does too. You can even "roast" a chicken in there. My mom worked and always made a decent dinner quickly. She always had a small salad, a veggie, a starch (like rice or potatoes), and a meat. She cooked meat that is fast...thin pork chops, small hamburgers, thin chicken breasts. While the rice or whatever was cooking she quickly sauteed the meat and steamed the veggies. She put us kids to work every night helping. It was not fancy, but it was healthy. She often also made those quick rolls/bisquits too. Another thing to look into is a pressure cooker. I hear you can make fabulous dinners really quickly.

http://allrecipes.com/recipes/everyday-cooking/sensationa...

http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Cooking-Style/Slow-Coo...

http://www.momswhothink.com/crock-pot-recipes/crock-pot-r...

Some of my family's favorite quick meals are tacos, salads, shrimp, eggs, ground beef with pasta and sauce.

You could also make a casserole the night before (or in your free time and freeze it) and then just heat it up when you get home.

Anything you already make can be made in a slo-cooker with only a few excetions. Pot roast carrots and potatoes toss in meat, add a little water, season toss in carrot then potatoes ---- can also be done with cut up chicken.

A quick summer meal make some hamburgers or get some pre-made, grab a couple lbs of macaroni salad--potato salad cole slaw ect from the deli area of your store --- add some fruit. When you get home light grill if charcoal, or just get meat ready--- change clothes toss meat on grill , wash the fruit or cut watermelon -- place in bowl. Get meat off grill add salads to plate and burgers and condiments.

http://allrecipes.com

allrecipes.com really is a great site! I use it a lot! There are also quite a few slow cooker cook books, you can always check out the library or 1/2 price books.

My two favorite go-to slow cooker recipes are pulled pork (pork, bottle of root beer, cook for 8 hours) and a whole chicken or pot roast. For that just put in the meat, veggies of your choice, a little liquid (stock, wine, water, juice...) and cook for 8 hours!

Casseroles are also good and fairly fast if you make them ahead of time and just put them into the oven when you get home. You can always make your kids a quick salad or offer some yogurt or veggies and dip while it's cooking. I make casseroles a lot during the winter and I usually make them last for 2 nights worth of dinners.

Other fast dinners are
grilled chicken, it only takes about 12 minutes to grill a breast
turkey burgers on the grill, takes about 10 minutes tops. I use ground turkey and season it with lots of herbs. It doesn't taste like a "burger" but it sure is tasty!
tacos any variety...fajita, taco salad, soft tacos, hard tacos...
pasta, jarred sauce and chicken sausage or turkey meatballs
red beans and rice, add in some turkey kielbasa that is already cooked
homemade pizza...use Boboli or refrigerator crust, add sauce and toppings and it only takes a few minutes and can be a lot healthier. You can brown the meat the night before if you like to add chicken, sausage or hamburger.

The other thing that helps me is to make a rough meal plan of the things I'm going to cook every night. That way I'm not trying to figure out what I'm doing at the last minute. It might change during the week due to one thing or another, but if I don't use my meal plan for that week, I can easily make it the next. The biggest thing is prepping the meal too. I stay at home, but I still use my nap time or when the kids are watching TV to prep for our dinner, even if it's 3 in the afternoon. You may just have to do some prep work the night before after the kids are in bed so that dinner time the next night can go more smoothly.