Ideas for quick dinners I can prepare the night before, leave in the fridge and bung in the oven while the boys are being bathed when DH and I get home from work

[hunkermunker]

Please

Am working mahoosive amounts after Christmas (and a fair amount before) and don't want to just eat pasta and jacket spuds (although do like both these!).

Thanks!

get a slow cooker and look up receipies
tis a familly lifesaver!!

gosh just saw it was you..

Why should it make a difference who it is, Cowmad?

Thanks for the tip. I'm a bit scared of slow cookers - don't they have a bad reputation for exploding?

make sheperds pie and lasagne and freeze them?

I have lasagne, spicy sausage pasta sauce and fish pie in the freezer for next week

Mince based dishes are good - like chilli, spag bol, shepherds pie. Honestly I love my slow cooker and when I was working often used it. Great for lamb shanks, casseroles etc.

Any casserole will reheat all the better the following day - dh does a fab one with shin of beef (economical), tinned tomatoes, plenty of onion and carrots, garlic, black pepper and a twist of orange peel.
Sounds strange but the orange peel does work (was sceptical until I tasted it)
Vegetable gratins (leeks, chicory, fennel, potato, carrot all gratin well) to be reheated and served with grilled meat or fish
And I get 3 of 5 a day down their gullets with a meditteranean veg lasagne, without them suspecting a thing...

cos you normally kick my ass!!!
loads of slow cooker advice here on MN do a search you can even roast a chicken in it!!

Yes, those are good, Enid - I often make mincey things - I was wondering about something baked chicken or fish-like too?

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(and don't be scared of slowcookers, hunkermunker - I think you might be thinking of pressure cookers and exploding, though I'm not sure that they do that any more).

Hunker, we pot-roast chicken thighs on a bed of chopped potatoes, carrots and leeks and plenty of olive oil plus a sloosh of wine. That can be assembled in a Pyrex and left to contemplate its fate in the fridge overnight.

LOL at unsuspected veg down gullets, Marina! I'm not cooking for the boys though - am going to be home from work too late to eat with them (although they can eat leftovers if there are any for lunch the next day, I suppose).

Aw, Cowmad, don't be like that - I think we got off on the wrong foot, don't you?

I can't afford a slow cooker atm though - am having to work loads just to afford the blinking food

fish I am never sure of reheating tbh. I think it needs to be cooked at the time...although fish pie an exception to that

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Smoked haddock and prawn pie, fish cakes. Sweetcorn, spinach and cheese bakes. Plenty of things can be prepared in advance and frozen then justtake out the night before to defrost in the fridge. Then just bung in oven and cook some veg to accompany it. I often do a masscook at the weekend and stock the freezer. It frees up so much time in the evening.

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I don't have room for another gadget in the kitchen either - we have a weeny kitchen.

Marina, the chicken thighs and veg sounds great.

Just want to get organised - will be working 9-7 Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and probably Sundays 10-8 too.

[knackered]

All these ideas sound great - with fish, I was thinking of doing salmon with herbiness and leaving it raw and wrapped in foil overnight?

As this is for you adults, can I recommend the judicious occasional use of the M & S Cook? range hunker? Dh and I have both had a v. busy time at work lately and once a week have treated ourselves to a main course from the range after the dcs are in bed.
Just a thought - the fish especially is absolutely delicious.

Salmon, or tuna in a lemon/olive oil/coriander/black pepper marinade also yum

yes the lamb chops with pine nuts are really good

spendy though

Might be an idea, Marina - not this month though - too skint even for once a week.

Those are long days hunker . When do you start back?

I just made chicken nuggets out of roast chicken last night.

Just blitz some celery and an onion in the food processor.

Then the chicken meat, ripped off the carcass into strips.

Added bread crumbs, grated parmesan and two eggs and shaped into nuggest.

Froze them.

Now all he has to do is bung them in the oven.

Serve w/pasta and roasted tomotoes.