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Career Momma Investigates the Quest for Easy Dinner

Our columnist searches for an easy dinner for a working family.

Featured Author:

Brittany E. Hudson

Brittany Hudson is a seasoned business professional living on the South Shore of Massachusetts with her husband, Greg and 18 month-old daughter, Carli. Brittany has become an advocate for working families in America and is working to create a strategic resource for working families to find balance in family and career life as well as political action for the rights of parents in the workplace. Brittany writes a weekly column about being a working mom.

Check out her blog, Career Parent.

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More articles from this author:

• Smile! Put Your Best You Forward
• Hubby's Getting a Raise; Should I Quit My Job?
• Facing the New Boss Whose Job I Wanted

I looked up the meal plans online for a couple of these places. The meals sounded delicious. Then I read on. All I can say is “WHOA!”. One item was a vegetable lasagna. One portion was about 400 calories, not too bad. Fat content, 27 grams. That is over half the calorie content from fat. The sodium? How about 1247 milligrams. Does this lasagna double as a salt lick? In fact, none of the items except for one at each website were anywhere nearly in the vacinity of health conscious. You might as well just skip the “cook it yourself” step and order take out. Which brings me to my next point. Not so cheap either. $15 or more dollars per family-sized meal of 3 servings seemed to be the norm. Do the math and then add up the rest of your grocery bill. As far as I am concerned no one is saving me any time for paying for the convenience. In fact, if I ate like that every night I’d be shopping for bigger pants in no time flat.

Okay so what then? I did go online and find some rather nice options. For instance, Trader Joe’s has many wonderful pre-cooked and heat-and-eat selections and they are both delicious, usually health conscious with all-natural ingredients. Trader’s isn’t draining your wallet either and you can get the rest of your groceries there as well. Not to mention, I love Trader Joe’s staff. They are always so friendly. How can you beat that? No Trader’s near you? That’s okay. I also checked out a nice website by the Healthy Choice people. They advertise their products which are reasonably health conscious and they also have a section on their site for some great and easy recipes.

My suggestion is to pre-prepare your meals just like you would do at the Dinner-in-a-Baggie joints. You will need to plan for a couple of hours whether you do it at home or at one of these places. If chopping is so bothersome you can buy lots of produce already pre-washed, chopped and ready to dump into your baggie. Besides marinating your protein for a couple of days makes the meal much better tasting. There are also rice and potato products that come pre-cooked. Just microwave and pour into a dish. You can also pre-cooked organic rice at your local Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods.

We can make some healthy and rewarding meals for whomever gathers around our table for dinner without making us crazy with some creativity and a little planning. It’s worth it. What you get in return is a dash of “thanks” and a heaping of time well-spent with your family all at the table. To me, that is worth the Sunday afternoon of preparation. Bon Appétit!