Sharing Sunday: Weeknight Meals

Today I’m sharing seven of my favorite weeknight recipes. Quick, easy and (fairly) healthy.

Easy, fast and (somewhat) healthy food to make for your family.

One of my favorite parts of staying home with the baby, is having the chance to cook dinner every night.  It’s one of my strategies for saving our family money, plus I love to cook.  Real talk…. sometime it takes me ALL DAY to make dinner.  Babies can be unpredictable, and mine is usually active around the time we want to eat so I usually start dinner first thing in the morning.  I know that sounds crazy but it just makes it easier for me.  I might chop vegetables at 10 am, brown some meat at 1pm, set up the rice cooker at 3pm… basically I do as much as possible during the day to make the actual cooking go quickly in case I can’t start until after my husband gets home.

I cook a lot of different stuff but today I’m sharing my standbys.  The recipes I make over and over because we love them, they are fairly easy, quick and at least moderately healthy.  I realize now how meat heavy these are, but hey, that’s that way we eat.

1. Curried Lentil Soup: This is hands down the most popular recipe in our home.  I make it at least once a month… maybe more.  It’s vegetarian and goes great with a side salad or dinner rolls.  I double or triple the recipe when I have friends over for an easy meal.  Expect about 20 minutes of prep work plus 30 minutes of simmering.  
2. Cashew Chicken:  This originally came from my Martha Stewart Everyday Food: Great Food Fast cookbook, but of course the recipe is online now.  Love you, Martha!  This is a meat heavy, simple stirfry of chicken, cashews, scallions, hoisin sauce.  Serve with rice.  Once I get the chicken chopped, it takes only about 10 minutes to get it on the table.
3. Pineapple Fried Rice:  Fried rice is my secret weapon for cleaning out my fridge.  Asparagus, broccoli, spinach, mushrooms, zucchini, throw it all in!  I aspire to use fresh pineapple but honestly its usually canned.  This is best with day old rice, so I try to make extra earlier in the week or make a batch in the morning and let it sit in the fridge all day.  To turn this into a bigger meal I’ll serve it with some teriyaki chicken or roast pork.
4. Herbed Turkey Meatballs:  Thanksgiving dinner is how to describe the flavor of these.  I serve them with some canned cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes.  They come together in about 20 minutes, plus 10 minutes of baking.  
5. Italian Meatballs: Yes, more meatballs!  These are your classic Italian meatballs.  They are a little more time consuming to make so I usually double or triple the recipe and put a bunch in the freezer.  You could serve this with pasta, or I like to make oven baked polenta like this recipe from Joy The Baker.  Polenta is sooooo easy and sooo cheap!
6. Pioneer Woman’s Big Steak Salad: I try to make salads for dinner a couple nights a week and this is one of my favorites because it’s really filling.  I’m too lazy to fry the onion rings myself so I just use French’s Fried Onions.  Not quite as good as home made but everyone loves them.  
7. Kale Coconut Salad:  I could eat this this salad every day of the week!  It sound like a weird combination of flavors, but I promise, it is delicious.  The only problem is my husband does not like  it, so I usually make it for lunch during the day.  I highly suggest using tamari instead of soy sauce, the flavor is much better. I usually eat it with rice, but farro is really good too.