Whip Up Quick and Easy Dinners Your Family Will Love

What's for dinner? These three words invoke stress in working mothers everywhere. After getting up early, spending all day at the office and playing chauffeur to countless after-school activities, dinner is the last thing on your mind.

While meal planning for the week go check out our Busy Cooks page.  There you'll find quick and easy recipes that your family will love to eat and you will love to whip up during the week.

We've all been there. Weeks when the evening schedule is packed with school concerts, sporting events and endless errands. While it's tempting to order takeout or head to the nearest drive-through at dinnertime, those choices can be both expensive and unhealthy.

Instead, consider these dinner options designed specifically for busy cooks. They're quick, easy and healthy.

• Healthy Recipes in a Hurry
• Healthy Crock Pot Recipes

Open any cookbook and most of the recipes will include a rather lengthy list of ingredients. After a long day at the office, the last thing most working moms want is a complicated recipe that takes a long time to get on the table.

The solution? These five-ingredient recipes that are sure to become family favorites.

Then, there are some nights when even five ingredients seems like too many. Does that sound like you?  Then keep reading!

Have you ever had one of those days where you hit the snooze too many times and overslept? Then you rushed around trying to get everyone ready and out the door on time. Traffic was worse than usual and you were late getting into the office.  Then, of course, the school calls in the middle of your afternoon meeting to let you know your child is running a fever and needs to be picked up. When you get home you discover that you left the milk sitting out on the counter all day.

On days like this, you don't just need a quick and easy meal; you need a meal that almost cooks itself.

You need a recipe like these that are  easy as 1-2-3!

From a time management perspective, the best way to handle dinner each night is to plan ahead. Trying to decide what you will serve for dinner while on the way home from the office is not a very organized approach. And did you know that last-minute stops at the grocery store throughout the week are one of biggest time wasters for working moms?

Here are some make ahead meals that will make you feel awesome heading home from work.  Nothing beats having dinner ready when you get home!

• Make Ahead Main Dish Casserole Recipes
• Once a Month Cookting (OAMC) and Freezing (how to plan it and recipes)
• Freeze Ahead of Time Casserole Recipes

Let's face it, there are some days when even the thought of an easy dinner recipe is just too much. 

To help keep you sane announce to your family that it's free-for-all night. This means that each person can pick and choose what they would like for dinner and there are no restrictions. This may be tough for you at first but you'll only have free-for-all nights once or twice per month. Your family won't suffer for one or two nights even if your children select strange combinations seriously lacking in any nutritional value.

There options can be leftovers, cereal, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or apple sauce, potato chips, pickles and ketchup (sounds like a meal a child would actually pick, right?)

A free-for-all night ensures you don't transfer your stress to your child and that you end a tough day with a smile.  

 Nothing makes you feel better when you can quickly whip up a meal. This takes practice as well as knowing what meals can truly be prepared quickly.  Check out these 18 meals that can be made in 15 minutes so that you and the kiddos can feel fulfilled.

Updated by Elizabeth McGrory