Real Food Wednesdays: Healthy Fast Food!

I'm participating in Real Food Wednesdays, hosted this week by Kelly over at "Kelly the Kitchen Kop" (you can hop over to her website by clicking on the link over on the left!). The topic this week is "Healthy Fast Food". What do you do when it's 5:00 and you've had a busy day, didn't plan ahead to start dinner, or are simply too exhausted to make a big homemade meal from scratch?

I'll start with some of those ideas, then I'd like to add an "addendum" of my own: my best "plan ahead meals".

First, my "Crap it's 5:00" ideas (to quote Kelly! ~smile)

Croque-Monsieur: A French grilled ham and swiss sandwich. We have used turkey or ham, whichever we had, and we prefer the swiss cheese. We have these with salad (90% of the time I have salad fixings), or cut up veggies w/a quick homemade dill dip, and/or we open up jars of my home canned peaches, pears or applesauce.

Taco Salad: My ground beef comes in nice vacuum packed 1# packages. It's always frozen - but if I fill my sink with hot water, and put the packet in there, it's usually thawed by the time I've got most of my taco salad fixings ready. It only takes 10 minutes to brown a couple pounds of beef and mix in the taco seasoning. We always have taco chips, and usually tortillas.... so I generally save taco salad as one of my "last minute meals". I also soak and can my own pinto and black beans.... so it's easy to open up a jar and either fix them into refried beans (literally, this takes 5 minutes!) or rinse and drain them to go on the taco salad.

Spaghetti: I always have my homemade/home canned spaghetti sauce in the pantry (I make 30 quarts at a time!), and the same goes for the meat as I wrote above. HOWEVER - if I am really tired, I don't like to make spaghetti, because it's one of those easy meals that uses up a ton of pots and pans, by the time I get a vegetable going with it...... so while this is easy to throw together at the last minute, I don't always use it.

Sloppy Joes: These are extremely fast and easy to put together. I use the same method for thawing the beef at the last minute, and I have an easy homemade seasoning use that doesn't require using ANY ketchup. I don't usually have buns, but we will just have it on regular bread, open face (which reduces the amount of bread!), and cut it with a fork and knife. Sometimes I like to make up a quick pan of fried potatoes and onions to go with it, and a salad.

Now for a few plan ahead tips:

Generally speaking, I don't run into the "5:00" dilemma very often because I have worked on a few plan-ahead habits along the way.

1) Whenever I make homemade soup - I make a gigantic stock pot full. I freeze half the soup for an "emergency" night. I like to freeze soup in the half-gallon freezer containers (square shaped) because these work well in my freezer. I can then take a FROZEN container of soup out at the last minute, leaving the lid on, rut it under warm water in the sink to "loosen" the sides, then remove the lid and dump the frozen block out into the stock pot. If you then put the lid ON and turn the heat to medium-high and RESIST the urge to stir it as it thaws, it will be thawed, and ready to go in about 20 minutes. If I am running in the house at the last minute, I start this FIRST, the unload everything from the car, get settled, etc.... and then I can put some easy grilled cheese sandwiches or cut up veggies together to go with it. When the soup is halfway thawed, I usually turn the heat down to medium, but I've found it's best not to stir it until it's completely, or atleast nearly completely thawed. (Otherwise, you'll mash up the beans, shred the half-frozen vegetables, etc.)

2) Crock-Pot: I have just a handful of EASY crock pot "pantry meals" that I can put together in 5 minutes, using frozen meat, that requires minimal preperation.

Here are 4:
a) BBQ chicken: Frozen chicken leg quarters, our favorite bottled bbq sauce (we buy it in Kansas City by the case and bring it home to Michigan. See www.jackstackbbq.com if you're interested.

b) Italian Chicken: Frozen chicken leg quarters, 1 quart home canned tomatoes, 1 onion sliced into rings, italian seasoning, granulated garlic, salt, pepper to taste over all.

c) Beef Stew: 2 # beef stew meat, 1 quart bag frozen whole carrots (I buy these from a farmer, then wash, blanch and freeze them WHOLE for roasts and stews all winter.), 2-3 red potatoes, cut into quarters, 1 quart bag frozen corn (home grown, and blanched and frozen), dried rosemary, salt and pepper to taste over all. *Just before serving, I mix a little flour and water and stir in to thicken the gravy a bit.

d) Mexican Chicken: Layer in the bottom of the crock pot 1 quart bag frozen corn, 1 quart pinto or black beans drained and rinsed, 1 pint home canned salsa. Set frozen chicken leg quarters on top, salt and pepper the chicken. To serve, remove the chicken leg quarters and set on a platter. Stir the remaining veggies and beans (that now also have the beneficial gelatin from the bones in it!), stir in a little cream cheese if you'd like, and serve this mixture as a "corn/bean/salsa" side dish. If you have leftover chicken, debone it, and mix the meat into the leftover corn mixture..... this will make an EXCELLENT filling for quesidillas when you have another emergency night! (I freeze the quesidilla filling).

All 3 of these cook on high all day, since the meat is going in frozen.

And, last but not least....... the ace up my sleeve when it's "one of those nights", is to go to Papa Murphey's! (Shhhhh.... don't tell!) Dh and I love the D'Light pizzas (low carb) and the kids love an occasional pepperoni pizza from "the pizza place".

Shauna