Need Fun, Easy, and Simple Meals to Have for Dinner

Here are some fun site to get recipes from:

BettyCrocker.com
BoxTops.com
KAROSYRUP.COM
SlimBodyCoach.com (losing weight site but has access to great recipes that are good for you).

My kids love chicken bacon wraps, and it's a good way to introduce them to vegetables. I usually make these when we want a light dinner.

Fry 5 strips of bacon and set aside.
Cook 3 chicken breasts in the bacon grease, and cut the chicken into thin strips.

slice a tomato into thin slices, along with onion (if you like) and have 5 lettuce leaves washed and dried.

Take 5 tortilla's and spread a thin layer of cream cheese along the edges (this helps seal the wrap). layer the lettuce, tomato, onion, chicken and bacon in the middle of the tortilla. top with a little ranch dressing. wrap the tortilla tight and cut in half. Good stuff!

Pork chops on rice. Pre heat oven to 350 degree's.
Empty a box of Uncle Ben's long grain/wild rice (you can use the flavored ones, they are pretty tasty) into a 13x9 baking dish. Add the water, NOT the butter, lay your pork chops on top, cover w/foil, put into the oven for 50 min., then remove the foil and cook for another 10 to 15 min. (once the water is pretty much absorbed).

The last 10 min.,I throw a veggie. into the microwave.
This is the type of meals I like to make, that keeps me out of the kitchen the majority of the time while it is cooking.
YEA!!!

I am a big fan of The Six O'Clock Scramble. They aim for 30 minute healthy meals. I have their cookbook; you can get it at the library if you want to try it first. They also have a website: www.thescramble.com. On the website you can sign up to get recipes emailed to you every week.

Hope that helps!
J.

C., I am also a big fan of www.kraftfoods.com. I don't always have time to read the emails, but whenever I am stuck for a dinner idea I can hop on the website and just search for whatever category I want. They break down searches by meat, meatless, pasta, etc. They have recipes specific for healthy living, or one-pan dishes too. My family has really liked all the recipes I have tried so far. Another website that is really great - at least the free sample recipes - is www.savingdinner.com. It costs for a subscription, but my mom loves it. Instead of using hamburger/ground beef all the time, try chicken and alternate every other night. I also buy meat when it goes on sale at the local supermarket, so we eat a good variety. Chicken thighs are usually cheaper than breasts, and more moist in casseroles. Also, pork ribs or roasts usually go on sale for a good price pretty regularly. Pork and chicken are interchangeable in almost any recipe. Good luck, dinners are so hard! My personal struggle is lunch, but we're getting better at that!

Hi C.....Some really great ones that my family loves is.. Dorito Cassorole, Take cresent rolls and smash at the bottom of a pan like you do pie, cook ground up hamburger meat, mix in enchelada sauce, cheese and smashed up (nacho cheese) doritos all with your meat put on top of Cresent rolls, cook till the rolls are golden brown usually 13 min. My families favorite!! Also sloppy joes, enchaladas, quesadillas, spaghetti casarole (taste nothing like spaghetti) add spaghetti, cooked hamburger meat, spaghetti sauce, cheese, cream of mushroom or cream of chicken mix all together and bake till cheese melts. Also If you like the crock pot put in come chicken and add bbq sauce or cream of chicken and let it cook. Easy and different. Hope this helps! ;)

Here are some super easy recipes!

Put raw boneless, skinless chicken, a jar of salsa, and a packet of taco seasoning in the crockpot and let it cook all day. Use a fork to help shred the chicken at the end - yum!!

Put a boneless pork roast in the crockpot with barbeque sauce and cook it all day to make barbeque pork sandwiches.

Cook salmon (brushed with butter) in the oven and when it is done put gorgonzola cheese on top and broil just until the cheese is melted.

Put a beef roast (eye of round, rump, or chuck) with 6 cups of water and 2 packets of au jus and just let it cook all day and make french dip sandwiches.

Try buying different marinade/sauces. It is a really easy way to mix up chicken/fish without a lot of extra work. I love sesame ginger, lemon pepper, things that you don't use every day.

In the winter I like to make soups that don't take a lot of time, but are good. I make chicken noodle soup, potato soup, brocolli, tomato, cheese soup, etc. These are quick and easy. I serve them with corn bread or rolls of some kind. In the summer we have a garden dinner, everything we serve is from te garden or the orchard. I also have my kids help with the meals. Then they are more likely to eat them and less likely to complain. It also helps them to learn kitchen techniques. Foil dinners and chicken pot pie are also good. Sometimes I have a make your own dinner night. Just have fun with the meals. Good luck!

Hey there C., I know exactly what you mean. However, I have found several websites that can help. I usually type in Chicken, fish, beef, etc. in the recipe search box. Some websites I repeatedly visit are:
www.kraftfoods.com
www.bettycrocker.com
www.tastytuesdays.com (campbells)
www.tasteofhome.com

On the tastytuesdays website, some of our favorites are
Chicken and broccoli divan, beef teriyaki, and easy rice skillet. We also make a lot of main dishes out of side dishes, such as macaroni or potato salad at bestfoods.com

Good luck,
J.

C...I accidentally deleted your response so I had to go and find your request again. I don't know why its called fried rice exactly since you don't fry it. Thats just what its called. Basically, take whatever meat you want, cook it and then mix it with vegetables. After that is mixed, you mix in rice that is already cooked. Then you mix it all together and viola "fried rice". I guess you can call it stir-fry and then just put it over rice. You can use minute rice but I prefer the calrose rice that you cook in a rice cooker.

Get yourself a subscription to Cooking Light and try the recipes in there. You can even get email newsletters from them with some good recipes, though the magazine has lots more 'fast dinner' recipes. Its helped me branch out of the rut I was in and now my kids get into picking the recipes or the 'veggie of the week'.

Some of our favorites from there: Chicken dijon soup with kale, hearty beef and tomato stew, crab cakes, etc.

My Mother-In-Law gave me a cookbook years ago: "What's for Dinner?" I love It! It has six months worth of menus in it. You can go to the website: whatsfordinner.com. I like not having to think about what's for dinner since I am also a SAHM with 3 boys and this takes a lot of the guess work out of the equation! I hope you enjoy it.

I am with Kimberly, Kraftfoods.com has great recipes! Here are some of our favorites. Quesildilla, make them like you would a grilled cheese, add chicken, cheese or whatever you want to put in them, have sliced tomatos and sour cream on the side.

We do turkey burgers, with salad. Tuna sandwiches with soup. I wait until salmon filets are on sale and then I will bake salmon in the oven and serve with brocolli rice.

Also a hit here is getting turkey bacon, cooking it in oven at 395, flip at 7 minutes then cook another 8 to 10 depending on what crispiness you like, get english muffins, some scrambled eggs and cheese and making your own egg mcmuffins.

We do tacos often, either with soft tortillas or hard crunchy shells. I have a great recipe for Chicken lasagna that has no red sauce.
I do not use hamburger on anything, we do ground turkey meat for everything. It is healthier, less fat and actually less expensive.
I will get thin pork chops and put them in seasoned bread crumbs with a tiny bit of canola oil on them and bake them.
My kids love salad so it makes it easy with a veggie with most meals. I try to serve a veggie they like with every meal.
I too wait when they are on sale and get a rotisserie chicken from our local grocery store, it is precooked and will last us two meals and it is so yummy.
It isn't easy, I know we get in our ruts too and I try to mix it up some! :) Good luck

One of my favorite things to do is to try to recreate meals from our favorite restaurants, sometimes you can find copycats online. There are some good recipe share websites as well, you can google for recipes, just make sure you use ones that have reviews. My favorite sites are allrecipes.com, epicurious.com and the food network. But there are a lot more that I use.
A good way to create a menu with variety is to choose a theme for each day. (Sunday-Brinner, Monday-chicken, Tuesday-Mexican, etc..)and then think up or find 5 or 6 meals that go along with the theme, then you don't have the same thing more than once a month, unless you love it. We have pizza every Friday.
I know what you mean about ground beef, try using Ground sausage or chopped roasted chicken in spaghetti, or a vegi spaghetti with large chunks of carrots and zucchinni. You can slow cook a pork shoulder roast in taco seasoning, or salsa and brown sugar for a sweeter flavor, and use it for tacos, enchiladas and chimichangas, just shred it and freeze in portions for your next mexican night.
I have also been in some recipe exchange groups with ladies from my church. Everybody brings something that goes along with a theme, you get to test everything and get the recipes and visit with your friends. If you don't know of a group in your area you could probably start one with your friends, I think all moms feel this way sometime.
Good Luck!

I love the quarterly magazine Kraft puts out. I think if you go to www.kraft.com you can sign up for it. The receipes are really easy and great! I love getting there magazine and its free!

C.,

I love new ideas for dinner, my family likes variety. Here are a few of mine. 5 or 6 boneless skinless chicken breasts. Place in a baking pan. Season with garlic salt, and season salt. Mix together 1 -10.5 oz cream of chicken, 16 oz. sour cream, and a splash of milk(can't really do it wrong). Pour sour cream -cream of chicken mixture over chicken, cover and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or longer until chicken is cooked through. Serve with rice, mashed potatoes, or noodles, using sauce for gravy. My family loves it. Do you have a good stroganof recipe?
Brown 1 1/2 pounds of hamburger with half an onion chopped(salt to taste). drain off grease. Add 1 T of flour and 1 clove of garlic minced to hamburger and let sizzle for a minute while stirring. Add 1-10.5 oz can cream of mushroom(I like using the mix of cream of chick and cream of mushroom--campbells), 16 oz of sour cream, 1 T worchestershire sauce, 1 small can of mushrooms (optional). let it cook over low heat for a while, stirring occasionally, until it tastes good, if it gets too thick pour milk in to thin. Serve over rice, mashed potatoes, or noodles. My family loves these dishes, I hope yours will too. Good luck.

C.....

Recently the best thing ever came along!!!! My neighbor had the fantastic idea of starting a dinner exchange. Basically there are 4 families of 4 in our group. We plan dinners for Monday - Thursday. I have Mondays. I make dinner ONE night a week for my family and the other three families. Then Tues - Wed- Thurs - dinner arrives pipping hot on my door step! It is so awesome! It makes for so much more time in the evenings to spend with the kids. We love to set the table with anticipation of dinner. We plan our meals two months out and all agree upon the menu. I have even noticed that my kids eat things I NEVER would have imagined them eating if I had cooked them! They feel like they can't turn their noses up at someone elses dinner as easily as they could mine! FOUR other groups have sprung up in our neighborhood! The whole town is doing it! lol
My husband takes the BEST leftovers for lunch! His co-workers told him "Man, your wife MUST love to cook". He just smiled! Tee hee hee!

I realize this may not be for everyone...so if a dinner exchange is not for you try SimplifySupper.com! It is the BEST site ever! You can design your menu for the week from a list of fantastic recipes and it even MAKES A SHOPPING LIST FOR YOU!!! I used it every week for a year before the dinner exchange! I still use recipes I learned on there!!!! It is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good Luck!

I would suggest picking up an Everyday Food by Martha Stewart"s chefs. You can also sign up on-line to receive Dinner Tonight emails. We love the magazine and use it consistently.

Take boneless, skinless chicken breasts, I usually marinate them in lemon juice w/ italian seasoning or italian dressing and bake them in the oven, usually takes half and hour, just before they are done, take them out of the oven, top with a sliced tomato and a slice of swiss cheese, sometimes we put chesse-tomato-cheese, and bake it till the cheese is melted. We eat it with rice, potatoes, stuffing, noodles..It is so so yummy!!!

Good luck

I'm right there with you. My dinner salvation has been to spend a little money at www.savingdinner.com
Totally worth it for the variety!

Our favorite dish right now is Fried rice. I use light spam but you could do ham if you are "morally opposed" to spam. :)

1 can spam; diced
1/2 pound bacon
2 large carrots, diced
2-3 stalks celery, diced
1.5 cups rice, uncooked (prepare according to package directions)
1 T. minced garlic
soy sauce to taste

put a small amount of oil in the pan and saute the veggie's over medium heat until they are just getting soft and add the garlic. Scoop the veggies to the side of the pan and add 1/2 of the spam so it can brown up a bit. Add the remaining spam and the broken up bacon and mix in the rice. Add soysauce (I usually use a few tablespoons) and enjoy!