Forget quick and easy meals. In summer, Wisconsinites need FAST meals. Not fast food, - though in a pinch we eat that too. I'm talking about turbo-prepped meals with 'fridge to table delivery times of 15 minutes. Rachel Ray, save your 30-minute meals for a Wisconsin winter. With only 3 months of warm weather, Wisconsinites are way too busy outside to spend a single extra minute in a hot kitchen.
The kids have been out of school only a week and already parents look haggard. Last night, for example, we jockeyed car seats among mini-vans in parking lots as neighboring parents frantically arranged which parent would take which child to which activity, be it pre-little league baseball, a swim meet, a camp evening performance program, or a birthday party. Yes, we parents help each other by car-pooling, but somehow even this cooperative effort buys us little extra time for meal preparation. I'm no cooking expert, but I have figured out a few tricks for fueling families fast in summer. Click on "Continue reading..." for some ideas for fast meals busy parents can make. They aren't fancy, just nutritious dinners kids like.
First, I continue my winter-time strategy of preparing large quantities of food on weekends and then serving left-overs during the week. But I bet most parents do that. Most commonly, I make a large salad which can remain reasonably edible for a couple of days. This means if it's a tossed green salad I use cherry tomatoes rather than regular tomatoes chopped, and I leave out similarly squishy ingredients such as avocado. The salad dressing goes on at the table. I don't' know, does left-over salad sound gross? I can no longer tell. For my work-day lunches, I ladle salad into plastic containers and toss a bit of ham or turkey on top. My co-workers haven't made disgusted faces at my left-over salads yet. But they are polite people, so I don't know. I do pitch the salad when the lettuce browns. I regularly make salad becuase my kids eat salad, -barely. My nine-year old begs to put peanut butter on her lettuce. Now to me, that's gross. But eventually, even I tire of tossed green salads.
So more creatively, I like to mix up a Mediterranean pepper salad or coleslaw. Deli coleslaw is too expensive so I make my own, sort of. I buy bags of shredded cabbage, carrot and broccoli and pour bottled coleslaw dressing over it. Add a dash of salt and pepper and we're good for nutritious vegetables for four days.
My latest concoction is a broccoli salad which I imitated from a deli salad I had at a party. It was super easy and held up well during the week. My kids each ate a piece of broccoli per night, - we're on our way to health! Here's the salad recipe:
For the main course, I have no qualms about serving scrambled eggs. This dinner idea is not as strange as you might first think. Scrambled eggs are packed with nutritious protein, - and my kids like them. I usually warm chopped ham, and even mushrooms in the skillet first, then add the eggs. It's sort of an omelet, but not so fancy. I'm always seeking ways to get more protein into my children. Their natural kid diet seems to have way too many carbs for my comfort level. I'm not so worried about them consuming excess fat as I am about them not eating enough protein. That's why I serve them some kind of sausage about once a week. Wisconsin makes some of the finest sausages in the world, no wonder my children love them. My daughter's favorite is weisswurst; Another easy, fast and nutritious dinner we often have are breaded and stuffed chicken breasts. Now these take thirty minutes to bake, but less than a minute to pop them from freezer to oven to table. Again, my kids like them so they are a regular at our table. I hope these ideas for fast meals help out busy parents like me. As Red Green says, "I'm pullin' for ya. We're all in this together."
I blanched the broccoli, which means I dumped it in boiling water, then one minute later I drained it and poured very cold water over it to stop the cooking. The broccoli becomes bright green and softened but not mushy (or even tender). It still has some good crunchy texture to it. Then I mix in the rest of the ingredients and let it chill for several hours before serving. The chilling infuses the broccoli with the flavor of bacon. That's why my kids eat it.
my son loves the wieners. Sausages are a fast meal. Just put them in a medium saucepan, cover them with water and heat them on the stove. Don't let them come to a full boil or else the casings will burst and the flavorful juices will flavor the water instead of the sausage. Sausages take less than 15 minutes to prepare and we all like them. For snacks, I often give them summer sausage. The elk, buffalo and venison summer sausages are exceptionally lean and make terrific high-protein snacks.
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