Quick and Easy Recipes for the Back-to-School Grind

The kids are going back to school, and the hustle and bustle of activities, sports and homework will fill up the family schedule, so it is important to manage meals in an efficient and healthy way.

It is possible to make fresh food that everyone will want to eat without cooking for hours every day. One of the best tips is using some prepared foods with fresh additions to make it healthier, easier and more delicious.

Making a large pot of tomato sauce for a variety of uses is a great base to start with. sells peeled garlic cloves in a jar for $2.48. Mix the cloves with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil and salt and puree in a food processor and place back in the jar. That way, you will have ready chopped garlic for many different uses, including . The tomato sauce can be used for pizza, pasta, lasagna, beans (to make chili) and many more tomato-based recipes. Use fresh basil (for Italian recipes), which is sold at in Town and Country, it gives an added freshness and vibrancy to a sauce made from canned tomatoes.

Stocking your shelves with easily prepared items makes dinner less stressful as well—canned beans (rinse to lessen the amount of sodium), canned tomatoes, tortillas, pasta, couscous, stock and rice as well as grated cheese. Buy meat or fish that requires very little preparation is also good—boneless skinless chicken breasts or thighs, shrimp (that has been peeled and deveined), even a side of salmon can be oven roasted in 20 minutes.

A crock pot is great for many things. For meat eaters: Beef, vegetables and stock makes a great pot roast. Just put the ingredients in the crock pot on low in the morning, and it will be ready in the afternoon for dinner.

For a meatless meal, the crock pot cooks dry beans relatively quickly and deliciously. It makes them soft, tender with a hint of caramelization.  has recipes for cooking beans. A benefit of using the crock pot is the ability to add salt at the beginning of cooking, making the beans more flavorful. Cooked on a stove top, salt needs to be added toward the end of cooking to prevent the beans from getting tough.

To make sure you get your "five vegetables and fruits a day" buy spring mix or bag lettuce, which is prewashed and eliminates the need to cut up lettuce for a salad. Although fresh vegetables are preferable, buying frozen vegetables (especially the ones that come in the easy steam pouches) make serving a balanced meal easy in a pinch. , and in Manchester sell the easy steam vegetable pouches.

Another popular way to cut cooking time is to cook extra food. For example, cook two pans of lasagna (using your big pot of tomato sauce and store-bought grated cheese) and freeze one for later in the week or make extra chicken breasts when you make fajitas and save the extra for chicken Caesar salad the next night.

Most of all, planning ahead and making extra is what makes cooking easier on those busy days when dinner has to be ready in 15 minutes.

A favorite meal in my house is fajitas.

Steak Fajitas (chicken may be substituted)

Ingredients
2 pounds beef,  thin cut (flank steak, skirt steak, top round, etc.)
2-4 tablespoons fajita seasoning mix (recipe below or store bought, one packet equals about 2 tablespoons)
2 onions, sliced
3 bell peppers, sliced 
1/2 cup beef stock (or water or red wine)
1 lime, juice of

Method

1. Place the sliced meat, onions and peppers in the crock pot (6 quarts).
2. Add seasoning and liquid.
3. Cover and cook on for eight hours on low or six hours on high, or until meat is tender*. 
4. Pour the lime juice over the meat and serve with your choice of fajita toppings.

*The longer the meat is cooked at a lower setting, the more tender it will be.

Some possible fixings for the fajitas are tortillas, sour cream, salsa, lime segments, minced onions and chopped cilantro.

Fajita Seasoning

Ingredients
2 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoons chili powder
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons paprika
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons chicken bouillon powder
1 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoons garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon cumin

Method

1. Mix all ingredients together.