I am a stay at home mom. When I decided to leave my job to stay home full time with my two toddler boys I wasn’t too sure what I would be in for. Don’t forget that I adopted these children at about 1.5 years of age so I had a lot of changes in my life – becoming a mom and quitting my job – all at the same time.

I guess I thought I would have all this “free time” on my hands, staying at home. I could make some great meals from scratch. Wouldn’t it be a trip to have a pork roast on Tuesday evening, complete with fresh rolls and dessert? Well, my fantasy of having free time was shattered pretty quickly. My time is spent with the boys and what time I have while they are napping is spent doing laundry and cleaning the house.

I also had this notion that the toddler boys would wait until dinner was ready to eat. Boy was I wrong! When my guys are hungry they are hungry right then and there. You better have something ready to go or they are going to have a fit.

Since I need to have healthy meals ready to go on short notice, I started doing some thinking about what I could do to make it easier on me (and easier on my ear drums). Here are a few things I do and some suggestions I’ve read:

Prepare meals ahead of time. My boys love meatloaf. What I do now is use a mini-loaf pan (8 mini loaves per pan) to prepare the meatloaf. 1.5 pounds of ground beef make 8 mini loaves, and I use the recipe in the Betty Crocker cookbook. Instead of cooking them for an hour or hour and 15 minutes I cook them at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. The boys have one loaf for dinner that day, and then I have seven in reserve in the freezer. You can do this with just about any meal – wimpies, lasagna, etc.

Use pre-packaged food. I would spend a lot of time and effort making home made meatballs. One day I thought I would give the frozen ones a try – and they liked them better than mine! Be careful of the salt content in the foods you buy pre-packaged to make sure it isn’t too bad on your children.

Store made chickens. Whoever came up with this concept is a millionaire. You can use one of the chickens for dinner one night, cut the meat off the bone to make chicken salad for the next day’s lunch, and then throw the carcass into a soup pot to make chicken noodle soup (which you can freeze for other meals).

Have a few meals you can make well and quickly. What about quesadillas? Grilled cheese sandwiches with canned vegetables? Pasta noodles and jar sauce? You get the idea – things that don’t take a huge amount of time to cook but taste good and are kid friendly.

Don’t be afraid to have breakfast for dinner. Slice up some fresh fruit and serve with yogurt while you cook up some eggs, pancakes or French toast for your children. Kids get a big kick out of eating these foods for dinner.

Finally, if all else fails, head for the Spaghetti-O’s. I’ve done it. It’s not the best meal for your children but heck, once in a while it’s not going to kill them.

With a little bit of planning and thought you can come up with some meals that are healthy, tasty and quick to make. Why spend hours in the kitchen every day, if you can take a few hours one night or on the weekend to get your food ready for the week?