I’ve only been a 6-hour-a-week working mom with one child, so I don’t know if that even counts as having “working mom” experience.  I sympathize with working moms, though, even though I can’t empathize.  I think planning is even MORE vital for those of you who work, even if it’s just part time. (Please see this meal planning challenge and meal planning resources.)  You have even less time to be running to the store for forgotten ingredients and want to maximize your time with your kiddos.  If you know what’s for dinner before you leave the house in the morning, I guarantee dinner prep will go easier.

This post is inspired by the meal planning challenge this week and a reader comment at last week’s mental mission. It’s interesting and challenging to me that I received a reader question about how to balance cooking good food and working outside the home, because I’m also working on a guest post about the joy and responsibility of cooking for your family at The Finer Things in Life in a few weeks as part of Amy’s series on “Mommy, Come Home” for SAHMs (Stay-at-Home-Moms).

13 Tips for Sane and Quick Meals
(for working moms and others who don’t want to spend all day in the kitchen)

Here’s a brief list of tips to help the dinner hour run more smoothly and nutritiously:

1. Make a plan, make a plan, make a plan.  You’ll love yourself later!
2. Form a relationship with your slow cooker.  You can even assemble many recipes at night, refrigerate the whole doggone slow cooker insert, and start the thing running in the morning.
3. Wash a lot of fruits and veggies at once and have them out for easy snacking.
4. Cut veggies in the evening for the next few days (for side dishes and to go into the meals you have planned).  They may lose a few nutrients, but that’s much better than you losing your mind or not including fresh vegs because you don’t have time to chop them up between work and dinner.  You can even freeze some easy prep foods so you’re always ready to cook with them.  Read this post for a super list!
5. OR…spring for pre-cut veggies in the deli section. You kind of have to figure in some cost of convenience if you’re going to work full time outside the home, and it there’s a choice between not eating veggies or spending a little extra to have someone else cut them, I think it’s worth the cash.
6. Learn to add extra veggies and beans to easy meals like spaghetti and tacos so your family gets the nutrient boost and you get the quick-and-easy meal.
7. Hard-boil eggs for the week while you’re cooking dinner one night.  They are great healthy additions to school lunches, salads, and quick egg salad sandwiches.
8. Plan work-intensive meals for Saturday and Sunday and quicker meals for weeknights.  Lots of people even prepare multiple meals on the weekend and serve them up on a weeknight.
9. Cook Once, Serve Twice:  figure out how to make twice the meat for certain meals that can be used the following day in an easy meal: roast chicken in wraps, ground beef in spaghetti, grilled meat on a salad, roast beef in a soup…you get the idea.  There are all sorts of ways to employ the “Cook Once, Serve Twice” strategy.  Get creative and intricate with your meal planning and you can use all sorts of items twice in one week with once the amount of effort!
10. A lot of the recommendations here at Kitchen Stewardship are not impossible for working moms.  You can still make chicken stock and leave it on the stove all day, even when you’re gone (stay-at-home moms aren’t always home to tend the stock either!).  You can still soak and cook dry beans during the day when you’re gone, too.
    Added Bonus:  It’s nice and easy to have the main part of your meal (the broth or beans) hot and ready when you walk in the door.  You can whip up a quick soup in no time with the chicken and broth ready to go.
    Many people have success with both these items in the slow cooker, too, if leaving your range on while you’re gone makes you nervous.
11. You can also make homemade yogurt, starting it after you get home from work and putting it in the freezer when you wake up, then into the fridge before leaving for work.
    Some of your savings here can cover the cost of convenience in other areas.  Just make sure convenience isn’t a trade for nutrition!
12. Make double meals and freeze the extra.
13. Convenience foods that are still nutritious:
    • pre-cut salads, romaine or spinach (stay away from iceberg) or organic leaf lettuce
    • baby carrots (even if they are a bit higher in sugar, better than no carrots at all!)
    • frozen vegetables (stay away from canned)
    • brown instant rice:  from what I understand, the nutrition is just slightly less in instant rice than long grain…but still better to use the real stuff if you can.  Again, better to have brown, whole grain instant rice than plain white rice if you don’t have the 45 minutes to cook long grain brown rice.
    • some pre-cooked meats, like frozen grilled chicken.  Learn to check the ingredients for fillers and junk.  If it’s just “chicken” and/or matches the ingredients on the raw breasts you would buy anyway, I say go for it.  I have never bought cooked chicken, because as a single income family, we can’t afford it!
    • Hummus dip for veggies, but do check the ingredients
    • canned beans
    • This list is far from comprehensive.  Dear readers…what other convenience foods do you love that still have all the nutrition of their more time-consuming counterparts?  (Even better if they’re mildly frugal as well!)

Convenience foods I stay away from like the plague:

• biscuits in a can and biscuit/pancake mix:  always have trans fat!  Plus my own biscuits are so easy to make with whole grains.
• boxed rice and pasta mixes (although there are still a few in the cupboard from my less-strict days…):  read the labels for trans fats, MSGs, powdered milk and eggs, etc.  There are almost more offensive ingredients than possible real food!
• processed cheese slices:  if it’s not close enough to cheese to just put “cheese” on the packaging, I don’t want it close to my family.  Cheese is food; “processed cheese food product” (what??) is not!
• cheese and cracker packages: additives like MSG, food coloring, “processed cheese food product”, etc.  I can slice my own cheese, thank you!
• fruit roll-ups and fruit snacks:  when the “snack” is more than the “fruit”, I’ll save my money for M&Ms!  (Shhh, don’t tell!  I love chocolate!)  These are just sugar and high fructose corn syrup.  Shell out the cash for real dried fruit or skip this “snack food group” all together.
• any yogurt that is a color found in a crayon box instead of on a tree.
• items that are just for the microwave, like steamer bags of vegetables, Easy Mac, To Go soups and so many more!
• Again, far from a comprehensive list.  Feel free to add to the X-list in the comments.  Just remember to check labels for trans fat in particular (read this post for reasons and tips) as you decide on a given convenience food.

DON’T MISS THE FREEZER QUEEN’S TESTIMONIAL:  Next week I’ll share some of my favorite “how to freeze a meal” tips to extend tip number 12 from this week.

We’ll return to the subject of meal planning and saving time in the kitchen periodically.  Please sign up for an email subscription or grab my reader feed so you don’t miss out on valuable information.  If you leave a comment, click the box for “subscribe to comments” to see what other people (me included) have to say.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

I’m please to link this post to Works for Me Wednesday at We are THAT Family, Real Food Wednesday at Kelly the Kitchen Kop, Homemaker Mondays at 11th Heaven’s Homemaking Haven, and Thursday Thirteen.

Other Posts you may enjoy:

• Why I love Glass Containers
• Natural Dishwasher Detergent Experiments
• Love Note to Local Strawberries
• Ways to Use Broth and Beans in the Summer
• Olive Oil Primer
• 13 Surprising Benefits of a Microwave Free Life

I am a guest lecturer and partner with GNOWFGLINS eCourses, so I will earn commission from any sales made starting here. Of course, the courses are also an awesome way to learn to cook real food, so I’d gab about them anyway.