Recycled from our yahoo blog. Timely reminder for ME!

Time Savers for Meals
Cut Back on Time!
On one of my lists we've been talking about how a parent can choose to walk away from chores or cooking, when they are needed by children. The discussion was centered around how a parent could be more involved in the child's day, especially when the children are homeschooled and there isn't that traditional eight hour break where you've farmed your kids out to the government training ground...I mean, public school. I wanted to offer up some ways that we, in our house, use shortcuts and alternative thinking to open up our days. Cooking has become more difficult with the discovery of several food allergies in our family, nearly eliminating all precooked or boxed meals, as well as storebought bread and sauces.

-crockpot cooking
(find your favorite recipes and figure out how to cook online. google 'easy crockpot recipes' yourself or look at www.tastycrockpotrecipes.net) Throw in a bunch of precut and precooked stuff, let simmer all day. Spend that time with your kids. Be open to reusing leftovers. Today I used leftover meatloaf, cut into cubes, to make spaghetti sauce with square meatballs. The kids think it's hilarious.

-buffet night
Got leftovers? Heat them up and put them on the table. Tell the family it's Golden Corral night. You can make one-hour yeast rolls to make it realistic. The kids will enjoy mixing and it makes the house smell good. With a microwave, I would start the bread rising, and then heat in stages. We don't have a microwave anymore, so we put everything into pyrex loaf pans on a cookie sheet in the oven at 250º for about 20 minutes. Remember to cover with foil and/or add broth to remoisten foods. We always like a layer of chedder on potatoes!

-breakfast for dinner
Nothing cooks faster than scrambled eggs and pancakes. Takes thirty minutes and the kids will love it! Precook your bacon on your OAM (once a month cooking) or OAW (once a week) day so it's easy to reheat. We also usually do our pancakes and waffles on a big cooking day to refreeze. Pop them in the toaster and they are heated in minutes.

-once a month cooking
OAM cooking doesn't have to be just once a month. It's really a life style. It's getting used to cooking large batches of meat, veggies and bread and storing it.
When you go grocery shopping, buy a moose size block of burger. You can fry it in batches, but I like to boil it in a 40 qt pot. It scrambles it up to make the perfect meat for tacos, spaghetti, cassaroles, soup, etc. Plus you can save the water as a beef broth that has no preservatives or sweeteners. We store the meat in gallon ziplocks and place in the freezer. In the morning, we can dump it into the crockpot with sauces, noodles or rice, and frozen veggies.
For meatloafs or other meat meals like salisbury steak, we put two pounds of beef in a ziplock, throw in the extras like condiments, seasonings, onion, pepper, breadcrumbs, and mix it in the bag. We put the whole thing in the freezer. The night before, put it in the fridge to thaw, and then in the afternoon, squeeze it out of the ziplock into your pan. Bake as normal. For potatoes, I keep a box of flakes just in case the kids and I are doing something great. Another alternative is just not peeling, we smash with skins for a gourmet feel. :-)
Same goes for chicken. We spend the extra money to buy boneless chicken breast. When we grill out, we'll cook about six pounds at once, we have a big cook and clean time that day, but we'll have five pounds of grilled chicken that we slice, chop and bag for crockpot days. You can also get it out, bread it and fry or bake for a much reduced cooking time. For example we use an enchilada recipe with some extra water for a yummy chicken enchilada soup. The kids who don't like soup use a slotted spoon to get out what they do like.
The same time that the chicken is grilling, we'll slice up a few pounds of onion, some green and red peppers, etc. We store those in the quart size ziplock freezer bags. You can do it for just about any veggie you see in the grocery section.
The great thing is that you can shop in the clubs, but those huge packages, saving money and time in the long run.
Dh also cooks pasta for a few days at a time...he'll cook an entire bag of egg noodles til they are slightly underdone, rinse with cold water, and bag up in our ziplock storage boxes. We can then use them to make cassaroles with little set up time. They are also handy snacks for kids, who might just like some warm pasta with butter or oil and some salt. I've done the same with rice, it reheats well with some chicken broth or any kind of sauce that you'd like to put in, and it's especially nice if you're going to have chicken and brocolli rice or some such meal that takes tomato or soup.

-at the very least,
if you want to spend more time with your kids, be open to just buying take-out. I generally choose not to because of the cost, but there are days when even with all the shortcuts we've taken, i just don't feel like it. I choose my kids first. Fast food is not a bad thing IN MODERATION. If you are preparing homecooked meals more often than not, and offering fresh fruits and veggies throughout the day, then no one will take away your 'good mommy' award. It's okay!

Picky eaters
Many of you may have kids who are more picky about eating. That's okay too. To be honest, I've never known a kid who could make their own food choices without external pressure to be picky. Let it go. Save some of the chicken or beef in your ziplock, and microwave to offer things split up rather than mixed in a cassarole or soup. We have camp trays from Target, with divided sections. It's fun to see and to eat. Let them help to cook. It's not only great for spending time together as a family, but it's also important that they know that 1) it's fun to cook and be together, and 2) how to cook. Let them fix something by themselves. Let them experiment. The first time Josh made pancakes, they were awful. Half of them were burnt, the other half still batter. But everyone in our family ate them with relish because he was so pleased to be helping and because he opened up our day to do other things.

Just some ideas. Feel free to post more in the comments section.
M