dinner ideas - Stuff Parents Need

This post is sponsored by Taste of Home in conjunction with Blog Meets Brand, and I have been compensated for my participation. All opinions are my own.

When it comes to weeknight dinners, the saying, “If you fail to plan then you plan to fail” is absolutely spot-on. Raise your hand if you’ve found yourself in a fast food drive-thru on a Wednesday night because you started thinking about dinner at 5:30 and all the meat in your home was frozen solid and/or you were missing one key ingredient for pretty much everything you could think of that would come together quickly.

My hand is high in the air, friends. I’m guessing yours is, too.

We all know that creating a menu for the week is smart, but even that task can take quite a while to accomplish (I usually head to Pinterest looking for recipes and then get totally lost in DIY ideas and other life hacks and run out of time before I’ve found what I was originally looking for!). I’ve also found that I often will put together menu ideas that sound fantastic, only to realize when it’s time to start cooking that the recipes are much more complicated than I thought (I can’t even count the number of times I have been working through a recipe that I expect to be feeding my family 30 minutes later, only to find, “marinade the meat overnight” in the directions. UGH!!!!).

And this is why I’m really enjoying a brand new cookbook put out by Taste of Home called The Simple & Delicious Cookbook. It contains a whopping 1,347 different recipes that perfectly fit the needs of my busy schedule as a working mom who is also the head chef at home.

This full color binder has categories that make my heart sing, because they are exactly what I’m looking for, especially for weeknight options. Check out the categories:

Snacks, Apps & Beverages
Finished in 15
30 Dinners in 30
On the Stovetop
Slow Cooking
Oven Entrees
Quick Casseroles
Fast Comfort Food
Sides & Salads
Breads Made Easy
Good Morning
Lunch on the Go
Buy This, Make That
Cook Once, Eat Twice
Make-Ahead Magic
Potluck Perfect
Sweet Treats
Desserts in a Dish
Party Time!
Holiday Highlights

Within the book, many of the recipes have large, color images next to them. But what I LOVED seeing was that at the very front of each section, every single recipe has a small color photo shown, which means you get to see everything in this book! That’s a rare thing to find in a cookbook, and especially at this price point.

I’ve been using this cookbook quite a bit since school started back as I have to really stay on top of the dinner plan in order to ensure that the kids’ homework gets finished and we eat something that is nutritious and that everyone will enjoy. The Simple & Delicious Cookbook is full of exactly what I’m looking for and since it’s all in one place, it keeps me from getting distracted online or from selecting recipes that are too complicated. The spinach & bacon salad with peaches (found on p. 259) was absolutely beautiful and easy! I cooked and crumbled the bacon in the morning and that helped this recipe come together lightning fast at dinner time!

Another big hit was the maple sausage skillet (p. 92). The onions, peppers and mushrooms became completely irresistible once I added a small amount of maple syrup. I have made similar meals to this, ingredient-wise, but it’s never occurred to me to add maple syrup. It tasted fantastic!!!

And for Taco Tuesday last week, we went in a new direction and had Thai Chicken Tacos (p. 59). I loved having a brand new idea for taco night and being able to introduce a different flavor profile. I also love that this recipe called for a rotisserie chicken, as taking a cooking shortcut like that can save you a ton of time (and I also think rotisserie chickens are a bargain…they usually don’t cost much more than an uncooked whole chicken!).

I’ve even been able to find some fun special treats for after school (my kids come home positively ravenous most days so I’ve got to be ready for them!). I made caramel heavenlies (p. 467) and we all immensely enjoyed them! They came together really fast and just needed time to cool down before being served. It’s even one your kids would love to help make!

If you are struggling with weeknight dinners or with avoiding the drive-thru, I highly recommend checking out The Simple & Delicious Cookbook. With so many recipes being offered, you could reject 2/3 of them and still have enough recipes ideas to provide a recipe each day for 1 year and 3 months with no repeats. And if you try them all? Well then you’ve got enough recipes in here to try one new thing each day for 3 years and 9 months. All for less than $20. That’s a no-brainer, if you ask me!

This post brought to you by Campbell Soup Company. The content and opinions expressed below are that of Stuff Parents Need.

A few weeks ago I shared a fun weekend lunch idea with you that included an organic soup only requiring you to heat it up (major score!). Today I want to show you a weeknight meal that requires a little more prep (but only a little, I promise) and that just might get your kids to load their plates full of veggies. It worked for me!

The star of any pasta dish is the sauce, and it’s also usually the most labor-intensive part of the cooking process. Not this time! I highly recommend you check out one of Campbell’s new products, Campbell’s Sauces. There are SO many great flavors and possibilities for helping you get great food on the table fast. For the pasta bar idea, I decided something extra cheesy was the way to go, so I opted for the Cheesy Broccoli Chicken sauce. To make this sauce, simply empty the contents into a sauce pan and heat it up. That’s it! Isn’t that just music to your tired mama ears?!

I chose to offer two different types of whole wheat pasta (we went with shells and penne). Cook those according to package directions. The other offerings can really be as creative as you want. This is also a great time to clean out your crisper drawers of veggies or to use up leftover meats! I cooked and crumbled bacon, and I also steamed some edamame and some broccoli. I also offered up some parm cheese for sprinkling on top.But the options are really unlimited! Being able to get dinner on the table very quickly on a week night is critical for me, and this idea is a great one for my family. You can even cook your noodles ahead of time and store them in the fridge. Same goes for the bacon. There are slight tweaks you can make to the prep so that you can literally get this dish on the table less than 10 minutes after you walk in the door, which is awesome! photo campbells oven sauces 3_zpsn99an7gu.jpg

But now I want to show you what’s even MORE awesome: by giving my kids full control over how they built their dishes, and by offering such colorful and fun options, I noticed that they LOADED their pasta bowls with veggies! #WINNING!!!!

And thanks to the presence of that tasty Campbell’s Sauce in the bowl, my girls ate everything that they put in their bowls. We still had enough leftovers for me to serve the meal one more time, which made me love this concept even more. It was already not much work, and then I got two meals out of it, to boot! 🙂

I think one of the really great things about the Campbell’s Sauces line is that they each come with a recipe idea on the back of the packet, but you certainly aren’t limited to those suggestions. You can come up with a ton of ways to put these major time savers to use in a variety of dishes that can now be that much easier to prepare. Campbell’s Sauces come in varieties intended for the Slow Cooker, Skillet, Oven and Grill. Definitely check them out on your next grocery shopping trip and get some new ideas for saving time in the kitchen on those crazy week nights. And to get some inspiration for delicious Campbell’s recipes, simply follow @Campbells on your favorite social media site.

A Go-To Resource for Fast and Easy Recipes: The Simple & Delicious Cookbook

Hassle-Free Weeknight Dinner Idea: Pasta Bar!