What’s for dinner?

When our routine gets shuffled, dinner can feel like a dreaded task – like we need to be thinking about ONE more thing, right?

Here are three quick, easy dinner ideas that will help you stay nourished, and out of the drive-through:

1. Sandwiches. Who doesn’t love a good sandwich? Have healthy sandwich fixins and allow everyone to make their own? Have multi-grain bread, tuna fish, maybe egg salad, and veggies available. Try to stay away from processed meats – they have loads of sodium and preservatives.

One of my favorite sandwiches is cucumber and tomato with herbed cream cheese spread. They even make a soy variation on the cheese spread – it’s yummy :)

2. Leftovers. When you do have time to cook, make an extra serving or two. Freeze them in 1 serving size containers. Then, when time is short, pop ‘em in the microwave. Quick, easy, healthy.

3. Pasta. Now, pasta is easy – however – it’s calorie dense, and not so nutrient dense so ya gotta watch it. That means, that for every cup of pasta, you’re looking at approximately 220 calories. A cup is about the size of your fist. Small amount of pasta, big amount of calories.

To enhance your quick pasta meal, load it up with fresh veggies. I usually load mine with tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, red onion, a bit of garlic and some basil – YUM. For every cup of pasta I’m eating, I try to have about 2 cups of veggies with it.

I just saw a great story this morning on the news about some really great, quick, no-stove dinner ideas. Check that out here. For some other really great food info and recipes, check out Real Food Wednesday.

If you’ve got some quick, healthy meal ideas, we’d love to hear ‘em – do share!