1. Pasta with frozen meatballs.

Sometimes I skip the meatballs and throw leftover cubed chicken (when we have it) and pesto sauce. Pesto sauce is SOOO good and a little jar goes a long way.

2. Chicken with shrimp and pasta.

I wrote about this recipe here; I call it Easy Shrimp & Chicken Garlic Pasta. It does require some preparation, but not much!

3. Greek Salad with flat bread.

We love this one. It requires almost no cooking (if you serve shrimp, you have to cook it or thaw the pre-cooked stuff). It does require a lot of table setting (a zillion jars of stuff). I wrote a post about some of our favorite salad ingredients here.

4. Tuna Casserole Sans Peas

I hate peas! So my tuna casserole has nary a one. I love tuna casserole because it can be on the table in about 90 minutes. The hardest thing about it pre-cooking the pasta and trying to shake the gravity-sealed cream of celery soup out of the cans. Here’s our favorite recipe for Easy Non-Peas-y Tuna Casserole.

5. Crockpot Manhattan Clam Chowder

This is a great one if you have 15 minutes to spare in the morning. Pre-cook the sausage or crumble the breakfast bacon leftovers into the crockpot, and throw in a bunch of ingredients. Allow it to simmer all day. By dinnertime, the house will smell delicious. Clean up is SO easy, too. My personal favorite is my own recipe, Manhattan Clam and Fish Chowder.

6. Tortellini with Edamame and Kielbasa

I love this, but the kids have grown out of it. I don’t know WHAT it is about edamame, it makes me feel like superwoman after eating it. It’s just so good. The kielbasa is a little salty and too flabby for me, though. I think the edamame with the tortellini or just the edamame is good enough. I have the recipe here: Tortellini with Edamame and Kielbasa.

7. Leftover Turkey Pasta Primavera

This is an AMAZING dish, perfect for after the holidays when your fridge is stuffed with leftover turkey. I love it because it is so easy and so delicious. Check out my recipe here.

These are the few recipes in my repertoire that I use for those moments of OHMYGOSHIFORGOTTOSTARTDINNER. Which, incidentally, are occurring a LITTLE too often for my tastes. But I’ve been clobbered with writing assignments with such technical topics like Technical Recruiter Consultant Jobs and electric wiring!

Hey, if you have any Quicky Meals that you want to share, please do! I think the family is starting to tire of my repertoire, lol.

I’m really looking forward to making (and eating) more salads this summer. The stuff in the stores is so expensive.. almost criminal! I can’t wait to have things fresh.

Here are some of the things we like in our salads right now. The star next to the vegetable is something we are growing in the garden this year.
Raw garlic cloves*
Leeks*
Cucumbers*
Kale*
Iceberg lettuce
Red peppers
Black olives
Red cabbage*
Green cabbage*
Carrots
Romaine lettuce*
Mixed lettuce*
Spinach*
Tomatoes*

So you can see that I’m going to grow my salads this year. I wish I could grow olives, YUMMM. I love them. I also add feta cheese or bits of salmon, if I have it. Fresh food is SOOO good for you! I’m starting to really dislike cooked food, more and more.

One other note: the Salamida Brothers Spiedie marinade is crucial to the recipe. It is STUPENDOUS stuff. The Salamida dudes sent me a free bottle to blog about it (ta daa), but I’ve been using Salamida since I was 15 years old, living in Southern New York where spiedies are a regional dish. The marinade is not expensive, and I only used half a bottle for this recipe (I could have used even less, I discovered). But if you want a wrap that will send people to your feet, kissing them in gratitude, use the Salamida stuff. You won’t regret it! Here in New York, it’s every where at the grocery stores (no grocery store would dare not sell it, there’d be riots!), but if your local area does not have it, you can order online here. And if you place an order, use the discount code SAUCE3 at Spiedie.com, you will get 15% off your order! Coupon code is good until April 1st.

Here goes:

Super Speedy Spiedie Wrap
serves 6

2 to 3 pounds of beef, trimmed of fat
1 large white onion, sliced thickly
sliced red pepper
kale, destemmed and washed
Salamida Brothers Spiedie Marinade

Slice the beef. Thinner is better– I did mine a little too thickly.

Slice the onions(s) (thick slices is better).

Put the meat and onions in an air-tight container. Dump in enough Salamida marinade to cover everything. Stir well. Cover the container and refrigerate, anywhere from 12 to 72 hours.

Take out the meat and onions from the container, and place in a large saucepan. Do not add water or oil to the saucepan! Set the pan on medium-high and allow the meat and onions to sizzle. Discard any remaining marinade.

Allow the meat to cook, about 7-10 minutes. The onions will soften but should not get mushy.

Slice some red peppers and kale and set on a dish. Set some flat bread in a dish. When the meat is done, pile it into a prepared wrap and DEVOUR.

Additional yummies to add to the table for wraps can be: lettuce, spinach, feta cheese, marinated olives, marinated garlic cloves, green peppers, chickpeas, sliced American cheese, and etc. You can do so much with this recipe. It makes a terrific healthy dinner, and it only takes 10 minutes to cook!!! I love it. I think this will be my new favorite recipes. I am “into” kale very much these days. I have always liked it, but I recently realized that it can be purchased at my local grocery store. Yum! It’s SO healthy for you– it’s not exactly a wonder-working adult acne cure, but it has calcium, iron, and protein. I’m going to be growing it fresh on my garden this year, to use as a supplement for my salads.

And by the way, if you don’t want to use beef, you can also use chicken or pork with the Salamida Spiedie marinade. Salamida also makes a nice marinade for chicken, too, which is superb. I am going to be making these all summer long. Yay!

I made up a pseudo-lasagna recipe, using ziti for the pasta. I call it Hybrid Lasagna, because it is a mixture of a lasagna recipe and a baked ziti recipe. The kids love this stuff! It keeps well, and you can make it early in the day (or a day before) and throw it in the oven later. It’s also great as a “full” meal- contains vegetable, meat, dairy, and carbohydrates. And, like most of my meals, it is “fully customizable,” that is you can eliminate an ingredient or substitute an ingredient. I make this stuff in huge quantities, and for when I’ve got a full house or when I want to serve it again another day.

Like most Italian dishes, this requires a lot of cookware and dishes for the prep work. I hate doing dishes! But the nice thing about this is that you can prepare this early in the day. Whch means that the cookware gets dirty early in the day, and you have all afternoon to wash it. I like that. I don’t know about you, but after dinner, I am tired and the last thing I want is a huge stack of dirty cookware to clean! OK, on with the show:

Hybrid Lasagna

Serves 10!

1 pound ground beef or ground sausage, cooked
2 boxes ziti
1 large white onion, diced
2 28oz. cans petite tomatoes
1 28oz. can spinach
3 eggs
1 tub (32oz.) small-curd cottage cheese
1 jar spaghetti sauce (leftover sauce does well)
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Dried basil
Dried oregano
Garlic powder
Salt and pepper
Aluminum foil
A GREAT BIG casserole dish (or several small ones)
A cookie sheet

You’re going to do three things for the prep work: boil the ziti, coat the ziti, and cook the tomato sauce. I always get the ziti boiling first thing. A word of caution: do not overcook the ziti! It’s going to be sitting in a tomato sauce for over an hour– it will get mushy. Cook the ziti for about 5-6 minutes, until it is al dente- the point at which you can split the noodle with a fingernail without too much effort. If it falls apart in your fingers, it’s overcooked. Don’t worry– I’ve done this, and served it up anyway. Kids will eat just about anything. But keep an eye on the pasta. Drain it and rinse it with cold water. (In Italian cooking, we usually don’t rinse the pasta, but I am being unconventional here. You don’t want to allow the ziti to cntinue cooking. The cold water stops it in its tracks).

While the ziti is boiling, I heat up my pre-cooked and drained ground beef. Sometimes I use ground sausage (ooo lala! it’s good with sausage), but I was a dunderhead today, and didn’t thaw out the sausage in time. So ground beef it is. Once the beef is heated, add the onion. Allow this to cook until the onion is translucent and tender.

Now, add your two cans of 280z. petite diced tomatoes. Add in your spices. I’ll leave the quantities of the spices up to you- I love basil and it sweetens the tomatoes, so I add about a tablespoon. I add 1/2 tablespoon oregano and about three shakes of the garlic powder. Stir it all in and allow to simmer for about 10 minutes. The simmering is important– if you don’t cook the tomatoes through enough, the ziti will have a raw taste to it. Wait until you see it really bubbling and look for those frothy red-brown bubbles to show up. It will also smell wonderful.

So while that simmers (don’t let the tomatoes burn! keep them in the back of your mind and stir the pot every minute or two!), let’s go back to the ziti.

In a large bowl, lightly beat the eggs.

Open up your can of spinach, drain it thoroughly, and beat it into the eggs. Add a little pepper and salt to the mix.

Now add the cottage cheese. Mix it up really well.

Dump the cooled ziti in, and mix to coat the ziti thoroughly. Set aside.

By now, your tomato sauce should be just about done. I always assemble all my components at this point. You’re going to work in layers: spaghetti sauce, ziti, cheese, tomato sauce. Repeat this one more time.

This dish can be a little juicy. Like I said, I just hate scrubbing cookware, so I mummify my pans before baking with them. I wrap my cookie sheet with aluminum foil and place my casserole dish on top. Then, I loosely cover the Hybrid Lasagna with a sheet of foil. I puncture the top with a fork, to allow steam to escape. The foil cover keeps the ziti noodles from drying out. There is nothing worse that hearing my family bust their teeth on solidified pasta at the dinner table.

Bake the Hybrid Lasagna for an hour at 350 degrees. If you make the dish early in the day and refrigerate it, be warned that you will have to bake it for a longer time, for it to cook in the center. At the final 15 minutes of the baking time, remove the foil and add some shredded cheese on top to get it browned and gooey (yum).

You can serve this dish with bread, a salad, with yogurt banana parfaits on the side, or whatever. Or just serve it alone; it’s a complete dish.

Here are some extra ideas for customizing this dish: