The main ingredient in easy recipes for single parents is the fact that it should be nutritional. It would not help much if you are going to make quick and easy meals and get that out of the way, but then suffer the consequences of illnesses due to malnutrition. You need to keep the strength of everyone going as the mere fact of being single and a parent can be stressful already. It is therefore important to sort out your meals to be quick and easy as well as highly tasty and nutritious.
You may want to make the setting up of your meals a family event. You could start with creating a food pyramid chart for the kitchen. Once you have done that, you could set out for everyone to be involved in researching the quickest meals that can capture the pyramid best. It will make the preparation of meals a family event as well and it will make the work lighter for the single parent if the children are involved too.
One of the best ways to make a decent quick meal, however, can be to make use of a steam cooker, crock pot or slow cooker for easy recipes for single parents. Another way to make it easy for yourself and to keep yourself from having to come home and prepare a meal is to take a few hours out of your Saturday to prepare some of your weekly meals and freeze them. What you could also do, when preparing vegetables for your meals, is to cut extra and freeze that as well. However, it is good to try to use the fresh ingredients as often as possible.
Easy Recipes For Single Parents Using A Steam Cooker
With a steam cooker, you usually get two or three tiers and you could therefore cook more than one dish at a time. This is a great way in which to prepare a quick and tasty as well as a very nutritional meal. This is one of the healthiest ways in which to prepare your meals as it locks in all the necessary nutrition.
A steamed vegetable platter with a dressing of your choice would be a wonderful festive way to present food to your children. Below is an example of a recipe for your steamer. There are many more recipes and many ways in which you can prepare your meals as there are no set rules for easy recipes for single parents.
Veggie Meal With A Dressing Of Your Choice
- Ingredients:
- 12 cleaned string beans
- 14 halved baby carrots
- 3 fresh corn on the cob which could be halved
- 2 small yellow squashes, trimmed and cut into rounds
- 2 small zucchinis, trimmed and cut into rounds
- 2 cups broccoli florets
- 2 cups of cauliflower florets
- 2 teaspoons seasoning or of your choice (remember to choose a healthy seasoning)
- 1 tablespoon of grated mozzarella cheese
- 1 teaspoon fresh grated parmesan cheese
- Method:
- Prepare your dressing and keep it aside
- Prepare your steam cooker by filling it with water
- Add the string beans and the carrots first
- After about three minutes add the squash, zucchini, broccoli and cauliflower
- Cook until the vegetables are soft to your taste
- Remove and arrange them on a server platter in an appetising way
- Season with your choice of seasoning and drizzle the dressing over it
- Sprinkle the cheese over it (either layered or mixed)
- Cover it, with foil, so that the dressing and seasoning can be absorbed and the cheese could melt before serving.
The steam cooker is a quick and easy way to get your meals done in the shortest period possible especially if it is only veggies or fish you are cooking. It would probably be best to use a crock pot or a slow cooker (these two are the same appliance) if you are going to have meat with your meals as the meat takes longer to cook.
You could take any recipe and adapt it to what you would like it to be. It is even a better idea and a more exciting idea if you could set the children up to come up with ideas for recipes (be prepared for the bizarre). Keep in mind though that experimenting can bring about your on recipes and it could possibly be the best and personalized for your family.
Easy Recipes For Single Parents Using A Crock Pot Or A Slow Cooker
Some of these easy recipes are as simple as adding meat and vegetables. Others, such as pasta dinners, need for you to be home at least an hour before dinner so that you can add the pasta. Preparation usually takes most of the cooking time of meals and it would therefore be best to make use of the pre-prepared veggies in the freezer for quick and easy recipes for single parents.
You could cook your meat in the slow cooker during the day, and if you feel like having roasted meat that evening, just give it a few roasting minutes in the oven when you get back from work in the evening. If you would like a stew, you could set this up in your slow cooker for the day as it would be ready for you when you get home.
If you are looking at having great healthy meals, it is best to have chicken more often than beef. For this purpose your slow cooker would be ideal, so that you have lovely succulent chicken breasts at the end of a long day. The meal should be ready in about four hours, but you should set your cooker to three hours for the cooking of the chicken. This is a way in which you are able to get home and have a more hands-on finalization of the meal. The best part of the chicken is the breast without the bones. Following is just one example of a recipe for a crock pot or slow cooker.
Creamy Chicken With Mushrooms
- Ingredients:
- 4 pounds of boneless chicken breasts
- A tablespoon full of olive oil
- 1-2 cups of mushroom
- 1 onion, chopped finely
- 2 cups broccoli florets
- Seasoning of your choice
- Dressing of your choice
- Chicken soup (either a packet or tinned)
- A tub of cream cheese or cubed cream cheese to taste
- Cooked pasta to add to the completed meal
- Method:
- Prepare the chicken by seasoning it and tossing it in olive oil.
- Place it in your slow cooker on its three hour setting
- When you get home:
- Fry the mushrooms and onion until it is soft and tender
- Add the soup, broccoli, cream cheese
- Add this to the slow cooker and let it simmer for one hour
- When it is ready, cook the pasta and add that to the mix.
The latter hour of the meal is dedicated to simmering the other ingredients with the chicken to complete the meal and then also adding the pasta.
Other Easy Recipes For Single Parents
Soups in winter are great options and there are a wide variety of soups from which to choose. These are also very easy and quick to put together. There are also salads which is as quick and easy for summer time. Both of these types of meals are quite healthy and should be a great option for easy recipes for single parents.
Making a soup could also be a lovely family gathering in the kitchen, especially if you are making the soup from fresh ingredients. The soup could in fact be a crock pot recipe as well, because you could set it in the morning and return home to a lovely soup in the evening. The soup recipes could be divided into what you would like to have on a particular day. There are, for example:
- Pea soup
- Tomato soup
- Carrot soup
- Asparagus soup
- Barley soup
- Bean soup
- Butternut squash soup
- Chicken soup (especially when you are not feeling well too)
- French onion soup
- Leek soup
- Lentil soup
- Minestrone soup
- Mushroom soup
- Onion soup
- Potato soup
- Pumpkin soup
- vegetable soup
The list for soups is endless. Here you can use your own discretion of what you would like to add to make it your own. The best option is also, for health reasons, to rather create your soup from scratch with fresh ingredients. This will also ensure that you capture the nutritional value of the ingredients.
The making of a salad is a fun way to get the children involves in peeling and cutting (if they are old enough) of the vegetables in preparation for the salad you have chosen to make. Salads are the easiest it make because you can literally use any raw vegetable for it. An example of such a salad might be:
A Coleslaw Salad
- Ingredients:
- 1 baby cabbage (red or green or half of a larger cabbage
- I large onion, finely chopped
- Low fat mayonnaise or dressing of choice to taste
- 1 tablespoon full of raisins
- I tablespoon full of peanuts to nuts of choice (if there are no allergies in the family)
- Method:
- Shred the cabbage so that you have long thin strips ( you could also purchase if already shredded
- Place in a salad bowl
- Add the onion and mix in well
- Add the nuts and raisins
- Add the mayonnaise or dressing and mix through well
Salads can also be made fun in that you can add strips of bacon or, different types of cheeses and many other additions that you and especially the kids would like. There are rich, tasty and healthy sandwiches that could become an institution for certain days. There are also warm salads that could add more variety to the taste buds.
You could create salads using any vegetable you could find. Some of these only need seasoning and some olive oil, thus making it even that much healthier. Here is a list of some:
- Lettuce
- Add some rocket or any green leaf in your herb garden
- Beets (raw, roasted or cooked)
- Tomato
- Cherry tomatoes
- Italian tomatoes
- Broccoli florets (cut finely – very good when eaten raw even without dressing)
- Cauliflower florets (cut finely – very good when eaten raw even without dressing)
- Tuna (cooked)
- Chicken (cooked)
Again, the combinations you could put together as a salad are endless. With some salads, depending on your taste combination, you could even add some fruit. Let the kids decide what should go into the salad and make it a habit that they are involved. They would then not feel that they are given chores to do.
The Secret Of Easy Recipes For Single Parents
It is also not a new thing for a mother to prepare meals as many women have to go out and work, whether they are married or single. Hence, it is important that you focus on the fact that you would have had to cook even if you had a partner.
As a result, there is no real secret for easy recipes for single parents except that it should not become an issue. Making meals for a small family should not be a chore, but a joy and as suggested before, by making it a family event would add to the joy of preparing the daily meals.
There are also hundreds of recipes to sift through and to find one that you like might become a difficulty as well. Use what you can find and adapt it to what youyou’re your kids enjoy the most. Having fun is therefore, again, the secret to easy recipes for single parents as you are able to make this work for you and your family.