What Are Your Favorite Heathy Make Ahead Meals?

Salad
Quinoa
Meatloaf
Stews
Crock Pot dishes
Marinated chicken. Just keep marinating it in a Ziplock until you are ready to cook it.
Stir Fry
Pasta

All of these are easy, quick, healthy and does not take long to cook.
On days I make salad, my kids eat it too. They like salad.
I throw whatever we have, in it. And it is hearty.

Rachel Ray's week in a Day did great cook on the weekend meals.

You need to plan to cook the meat once and make many things out of it.
Cook a chicken or turkey on the weekend and eat it plain with a veggie the first day, part in fajitas the next or a casserole, then into the crockpot with BBQ sauce for sandwiches.

You could prepare the veggies on a weekend for a stir fry on a weekday. Make the stir fry sauce on the weekend, too.
Throw a cut up chicken breast in some soy sauce to marinate it 5 mins before you cook it. Done.

Grilling is usually pretty fast, too.

Get a rotisserie chicken and look up recipes to make with it.

You can make homemade spaghetti sauce on Sunday. Good luck!

If you have a family of 4, make a meal for 8 and freeze half for
the next week. This works great for empty nesters too.

You can put a roast in the slo-cooker with potatoes and carrots then make a salad. If there is meat and gravy left over, you can shred the beef mix in gravy, heat, and pour over noodles or whipped potatoes, make a veggie and a salad.

I find it easier to make a big pot of potatoes all at once, whip them then freeze them in portions I will use in one or two meals.

You can also make a big pot of soup on weekends and maybe freeze part of it.

I also find the pre-made hamburgers or turkey burgers are fast and easy.

One night a week you can have 'breakfast for dinner'. Make up a big batch of pancakes or French toast (freeze part of it) make sausages or bacon add fresh fruit. Or just scramble eggs add some cheese make toast and again have fresh fruit.

my easy meals aren't healthy but they are fast for us.

Tacos, for us is fast, we cook the meat and freeze reasonable portions, then soft or hard tacos and cheese, I don't cut up tons of veggies, but maybe the pre cut stuff would work for you, like bagged lettuce. or even make taco salad, that gives you the veggies but it's fast.

spaghetti sauce from a jar and boil the noodles, I don't fuss with garlic bread or salad but again a bagged salad would be super easy, and maybe frozen garlic bread in a box would work if you need a full meal. when hubs makes his fancy doctored up spaghetti sauce he freezes that and "IF" I remember to get it out to thaw the night before that works too.

I like to cook plain chicken in the crock pot and you can do a lot with the shredded meat. just chicken and a frozen veggie and baked potato, or chicken on soft tacos- if you spiced it up it might make fajitas or enchiladad or something, chicken salad.

I love my slow cooker

I hope you get lots of better advice but i'm sure having a plan is the most important part that and remembering to thaw stuff out.

I make or get veggie pizzas on Friday nights! I make a big veggie salad w/ it. That takes care of one day.

I put organic greens in a big salad bowl and put lots of veggies on top. That's our salad 2 days. I save half of the
veggies (celery, carrots, onion, etc...) and put them in a glass bowl w/ a lid.
The next am, I put the veggies and 4 potatoes on the bottom of the crock pot. I toss organic chix pcs atop. Then, I pour a lg carton of organic chix broth atop and cook on low all day. The second night we eat the soup leftovers w/ rice noodles.

You can always make a pasta sauce and freeze it for the end of the week.

I used to have good luck making a full recipe and we would only eat half, so I would freeze the other half..... now that I have 4 kids 5 and under, they are starting to eat just enough to make that not work anymore. I"m going to have to double a recipe to make enough to freeze!
I took a class on crock pot cooking and freezer meals at the local Jr. College, and that was helpful with tips and such, as well as getting a freezer cook book and a few good recipes from the teacher. (It was a 3hr class on a Saturday, not a big commitment).
What works for me is this: plan your meals for the week through the next Friday on the weekend, and go to the store. Try to have a couple meals almost completely "made ahead" and the rest doable before dinner time (I schedule based on when my husband will be able to be home early/late). If you can, cut up chicken, have things thawed, etc, the night before. Any prep work that you can do before is good.

Believe me, most of the time I don't get the prep done -- esp when you also have to do lunches and such. But I know how even prepping something in the morning can help that evening. Here is one of my go-to recipes for the crock pot (you can decide if it is healthy enough for your family!) Message me if you'd like a couple more (pork and chx) I just don't have time right now to type them down:

2-3lb roast (at safeway I buy 'chuck pot roast')
1/2onion chopped
~4-5 potatoes, cubed, skin on
5-6 carrots, chopped
1-2cloves garlic, minced
1/4c flour
2tsp "kitchen bouquet"
~1/4c water
Put onion in bottom of crock, salt and pepper roast & place on top of onion, mix flour & water & bouquet and form a loose paste (add more/less water to make it right) and put on top of roast with garlic, add potatoes and carrots all around sides of roast. Cook on low 8-9hrs.

good luck! Anne

One thing I like to do is cook up a bunch of chicken breasts ahead of time, and freeze them.... I have several recipes for different marinades/sauces.

I can usually buy a tray pack of boneless, skinless chicken breasts for about $2 a lb, and there are usually 6 chicken breasts in it. They are close to 1 lb each, so I usually cut them into 2 or 3 pieces, making smaller servings. I have a recipe for a pineapple chicken (sauce uses pineapple juice, garlic, honey, ground ginger, and soy sauce), a couple of different lemon/garlic or other herb/spice blends, or a balsamic chicken recipe that freeze well.

Then, in the evening, I pull out 2 of them (it is just hubby and I), add a veggie/starch/salad (whatever sounds good), and dinner is ready in less than 20 minutes.

In the fall and winter months I usually roast a chicken on Sundays and use leftovers for soup on Monday and then tacos on Tuesday. After dinner on Sunday, I use the bones to make stock for the soup, then Monday and Tuesday is super easy. Since this can get boring, I change the flavor of the soup. Sometimes regular chicken noodle, other times tortilla soup, etc. And tacos you can change and change but my kids love tacos so I'm lucky with that. Good luck. I agree, it is hard coming home from work to make a healthy meal. My husband is in charge of 1 night, which means take out usually! I'll take it, a night off!

I agree that making a bigger meal and either freezing half or eating for two nights is easy. We eat some variation of tacos quite a bit. Tacos, quesadillas, taco salad, fajitas, taco casserole. You can easily make it healthy with lean ground beef or use ground turkey.

Same with lasagna or any other pasta dish. I use ground turkey to make it healthier and just jazz it up with Italian spices. You can also buy ground turkey Italian sausage and I've used that before as well.

Chicken in the crock pot is good, so is chili or vegetable soup. Grilling is fast and easy and I grill quite a bit. I do chicken, steaks, pork chops, lamp chops, etc. I just spice them with something (salt, pepper, Lowry's, herbs, salad dressing, etc.) and grill it up with a salad and a veggie side dish.

I think the thing that makes it easiest is having a plan as to what you are making every night of the week. Of course you have stuff on hand for other things if you change your mind, run out of time, run late, etc., but for the most part if you buy for the week with a basic menu in mind it makes it a lot easier to get things done each night.

Whole chicken in a crockpot is so easy and delicious. Recipe is on "100 Days of Real Food" website.

We do a southwest chicken soup that reheats well.

Also, I plan my meals on Sundays for the whole week. I try to have leftovers from one night feed into dinner a second night. For example, pork chops with rice becomes fried rice the next night. Also, we inevitably have "leftover night" and clean out the fridge!

Quesadillas are a go-to for my kids. I use whatever leftover meat I have and add tomatoes, avocado, etc to make "fancy" quesadillas.

Good luck!