I don't have kids, but I can definitely relate to making meals for people even when I'm too tired to think, because in addition to cooking for guests, I also regularly have to cook for crew and employees at restaurants and things.

I love to have some simple, easy things that can come together that look like I didn't just throw chicken nuggets at my coworkers. And these look great for that.

1) Dump-and-Bake Chicken Enchiladas

I love this concept of tearing up the tortillas. I usually do a layered situation. I usually do layers.

I would recommend corn, though. It says here to use flour. Flour is good, but if you're soaking up the stuff, a good corn tortilla will hold its shape and also lend some nice flavor to everything.

You can obviously use rotisserie chicken for this. Rotisserie chickens are great if you just wanna buy a chicken and tear it apart with your hands, and then you've got some chicken ready to go. You can also obviously use other proteins.

I'm thinking a pork shoulder that's been cooked in the crockpot.

Refried beans are great too. If you're gonna stir everything together, I would just do refried beans, a little dollop of it here and there from a spoon. A good way to do that is if you spray your spoon with a little bit of pan spray, then you're not just making a mess and trying to get it to come off your spoon.

I do like this make-ahead and put it in the freezer. I'm all about that. Instead of an enchilada sauce, you could also do this with a jar of salsa.

2) Slow Cooker Beef Tacos

I love this. You could also do it with a pork shoulder or chuck beef roast. If you wanna get really fancy with it, after you shred the chuck roast, you can press it down in a frying pan so you get some nice crispy bits.

I love that. That's a carnitas thing, which is usually done with pork, but you can do it with anything that's really fatty.

And this may be a controversial topic, but the shredded lettuce works great. But if you just buy a head of iceberg lettuce and slice it really thin, that's quite good too, and it'll keep for a while. And don't forget the cilantro; it's important.

3) Freezer-Friendly Baked Ziti

I love a baked ziti. I love a baked pasta of any sort. Of course you can do this with a penne pasta.

I have also done it with a bunch of vodka sauce, so if you have a bottle of vodka and a can of tomato paste lying around and some heavy whipping cream, that's also a really nice one.

The spinach would be great. You could also use any other kind of soft green. I'm thinking of chopping Swiss chard or kale if you want to sauté that.

4) Sausage and Pepper Pasta Bake

I've done a similar thing to this with chorizo, which can be great. Just make sure that when you're cooking the chorizo, you taste it, because not all chorizo is created equal. Some of them are very spicy, which I don't mind, but it's not for everybody, and some of them are very mild.

You can also get a vegetarian chorizo, which surprisingly cooked up quite well.

I would also add maybe some onion to this regardless of what kind of sausage you use. If you have just some sliced onion to throw into this, sliced onion, when you bake it into something, gives out this really beautiful flavor that I love, and it also smells amazing while it's cooking.

5) Chicken Pot Pie Casserole

I love this. And this is calling for a biscuit mix. I think it'll be great.

I've also done a similar thing to this with Cornbread batter. You can do it with the chicken, or you can do it with beef, and that works really well too.

“The goal isn’t a perfect dinner. The goal is a hot dinner that didn’t require me to think after 4 p.m.”

6) Make-Ahead Breakfast Burritos

You could also take all of these things and just make a frittata, so make an egg custard with eggs and heavy whipping cream and just throw that in a baking pan with everything else, cover it tightly, and bake it. You can have some then, and you can also cut it into slices and refrigerate it. It will keep for a few days.

7) Turkey Meatball Subs

This looks great. Instead of using four hoagie rolls, you could just get a couple of big baguettes, and then you just make one big sandwich, and you cut it into a couple of sandwiches out of that and save yourself some time.

8) Cheesy Taco Rice Casserole

I would serve this with some tortillas on the side because then you can just stuff your tortillas with this mixture. Maybe have some shredded lettuce or some pico de gallo, and then it stretches a little more.

9) Chicken Parmesan Casserole

I think this would be great if you had some penne that you could just throw this on top of, and then it stretches it a little bit more. And penne is one of those things, or just pasta in general: if you cook it al dente, salt the water properly, toss it in some oil when it comes out, you can keep it in the fridge for quite a while, or not quite a while- maybe five days at the most- but it's pretty easy to find things to use cooked pasta for.

10) Beef and Bean Chili

My secret weapon for making good chili is, yes, definitely chili powder and cumin, a little bit of brown sugar, and if you can get hold of some masa flour, which is a corn masa flour that is used to make tortillas. You can usually get that in any Latin food section of a regular grocery store if you happen to be near a Latin food store. It will thicken up the chili really nicely and add a really nice flavor to it.

Also, if you happen to have any dark chocolate, I know it sounds weird, but if you throw a couple of squares of dark chocolate in there, it really deepens the flavor.

11) Ham and Cheese Sliders

These look great. I love Hawaiian rolls; they're like the best thing ever. I would serve this with a little really country coleslaw on the side, which you can just buy some cold coleslaw mix in the grocery store and mix together with a little bit of mayonnaise, some brown sugar, some vinegar, and maybe a little bit of mustard.

And it would be really nice to have this beside it because I think with the sweet rolls and the really heavy thing, you can either put the coleslaw on the sandwich itself, which is what I would do, or you could have it on the side, and it would really cut through all that richness

12) Creamy Chicken and Rice Bake

I would do this with a cream of mushroom soup because I just love mushrooms, but yeah, I can add an extra layer of flavor in there. You could also swap out the peas and carrots for corn. Put a little bit of paprika in there.

A tiny bit of cayenne pepper would also be nice, not enough that you taste the cayenne, but just enough to bring out the flavors of the other things. And cheddar is great. You could also do a Parmesan.

And I would sprinkle a little bit of a tri-color mix on top of this before you put it in the oven.

13) Stuffed Pepper Casserole

This looks great. You could also do it with brown rice. I would add a little paprika in here.

I think it would also work with ground turkey. And of course you could use a different cheese. I would like to have mozzarella on something like this, or maybe a mixture of mozzarella and cheddar.

14) Lasagna Roll-Ups

This looks like more work than just making an actual lasagna. I would just do it in a lasagna if we're talking about saving time or whatever. And fresh basil leaves in there would be great.

15) BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches

You can just take the pork, all the things that are listed here, and just put it straight in a slow cooker. Also, I would pair this with the coleslaw. I'm just a big fan of putting coleslaw on sandwiches when it's really fatty meat, because I feel like you need an acid to kind of counteract how heavy the meat can be.

16) Chicken Fajita Freezer Packs

I like this idea. I would use chicken thigh, but I will use chicken thigh most of the time if given a choice because I find that chicken breast is just not my favorite. I don't know if one of the best ways to freeze it flat, too, is to take a sheet tray, wrap it in a Ziploc bag, and freeze it on top of the sheet tray so it freezes really flat, and then once it's frozen solid, you can take the sheet tray back out of the freezer.

You can also just pour this straight into a frying pan. You don't need to put it in the oven, and you're gonna get a little bit better color on it if that's something you want. It's just good for color and texture, and I would also do another squeeze of lime at the end there.

17) Baked Ravioli with Spinach

You can also just use, instead of the spinach, some Swiss chard or kale. And if you have fresh oregano, that's great. You can go ahead and add some thinly sliced onion in there; it would be nice.

Chili flakes also, depending on who you're making this for.

18) Sloppy Joe Meatballs

I think you can skip the freezer part of the situation. You can skip the freezer part. On the day that you want to put everything into the slow cooker, just put it all in the slow cooker.

You're really not saving yourself any time halfway making this and then putting it in the freezer.

It would take the same amount of time to just dump frozen meatballs and all the other things into the slow cooker, so I would skip that, especially if they're frozen, fully cooked meatballs. Just the freezing and re-freezing for this. And if you have some of those Hawaiian sweet rolls, that would be great.

19) Sausage Potato Hash

If you get breakfast sausage, a lot of it's already cooked, so you could just get the fully cooked breakfast sausage and then do all the other things and just put them in a bag.

And what I like to do when I'm making a hash like this is, once it's done, towards the end, take it out, take off the foil or whatever you have covering it, and just crack your eggs straight into it and then cook it again depending on your oven, maybe four or five minutes, and then you can take the foil off, and then you'll have eggs. They're just baked straight into the hash, and it saves having to fry them in a pan.

20) White Chicken Chili

This looks good. I think that you could probably skip the freezing part, though, because you're still doing another; you're just adding an extra step. So the process of opening all these cans and putting them in a Ziploc bag shouldn't take that long.

You can just go straight into the slow cooker when you're going to do that. But yes, choose some tortilla chips; that sounds great.

I would put maybe some fine diced white onion with some cilantro; that would be nice on top. You could skip the cream cheese if you want. And I would add a little bit of dried chili if you have a white or a powdered chipotle or something like that, just to give it a little bit of heat, depending on who you're cooking for.

21) Tater Tot Shepherd’s Pie

This is super cute and something that I wish I had thought of back when I was having to cook for a crew that was picky. They probably would've eaten this cause at the end of the day, I'll all adults like to eat kid food.

I've also done this: if you have some leftover mashed potatoes and it's not like an actual shepherd's pie, but you just spread that over the top, that can be quite good too.

I would add some fresh oregano to this, and if you're making the gravy from scratch, I always put red wine in it. That's just me. You could use, I think I would like to just have peas, unless just because it adds a nice color contrast and a sweetness.

But another thing too is that mashed potatoes keep well, so if you have a bunch of them, you can also freeze those.

Keep reading

• Dump-and-Go Meals for New Moms
• Freezer Meals for the First Month After Baby
• Dump Dinners That Start With Frozen Chicken