I am hoping for some nice advice from the combined wisdom of MN. We have recently got a new au pair, who is "vegetarian", but loves fish and will eat some meat. On the other hand, while we do not present huge slabs of animal in most of our dinners, we are most definitely a meat-eating household, and DH and I both work FT.
We do make a fair few stir-fry type dinners (either as Chinese, indian or italian - depending on the sauce and either pasta or rice as suits) and these tend to have a lot of veg anyway. But I'd usually have say 2 chicken breasts or 2 pork chops cubed up and mixed into that. And while my proper curries would have lots of tomatoes and other veg in them, they tend to start with a large bag of beef or lamb pieces. Lasagne and spag bol are favourites. I do 3 different types of potato topped "pie" - shepherd's (mince), chicken and mushroom, and smoked haddock and brocolli. We also tend to do a roast dinner at weekends, and there would be some nights when I do just grill a chop and boil potatoes and some frozen veg. Things that might be veggie would often have a small element of meat (like a small tub of bacon lardons in with LOADS of veg in a macaroni cheese, or veg stuffing for stuffed mushrooms but then adding lardons to the remainder of the stuffing when I add the tomato pulp to stuff tomatoes). We do like to eat fish, I forget to buy it often enough or have inspiration after work to cook it.
And I was not very organised with the freezer over the summer, so I had a load of joints to use up and lots of things like baking and single portions of spag bol there too, so I am trying to empty that out.
Can anyone give me some ideas for things that I can make easily when I get in from work? Especially things that I can do double and freeze for another day? Or things that I should try to stock up on for the freezer/cupboards, so that the AP can fend for herself easily or I can whip up something suitable in a hurry (there are evenings where I get in 20 minutes before she has to leave for her class, and so far, cooking for herself doesn't seem to enter into it even though I have said she can). I would tend to have plenty of things to make sauces etc from scratch, but as a FT working mum, I also have a few good jars of basic sauces in the cupboard (curries, pasta, chinese).
And would it be a cardinal sin to use chicken/lamb/beef stock in meals that are for a veggie? I do have some veggie stock, but I tend to make and freeze my own stocks a lot rather than use shop ones, and they tend to be chicken/lamb/turkey/duck based (although with a lot of veg too) rather than pure veg.