While I try to menu plan for our family every week, there always seems to be those nights where dinner time rolls around and I have fixed nothing! Hubs walks in, plays with the kids and asks, “So, what’s for dinner?” And I reply, “Um…. I have absolutely no idea!”
A year ago, we probably would have just gone out to eat on those nights. But even if you eat out at a fast food restaurant the cost for a family of 5 can add up pretty quickly if you go out often enough.
Tonight was one of those nights. I hadn’t written up my meal plan yet for this week because… well, I have no excuse (other than not wanting to think about food!) 
But thankfully I had a few things in the pantry, fridge and freezer that helped me to whip up a quick and easy meal in about 15 minutes! As much as I HIGHLY recommend meal planning, I also HIGHLY recommend having some items on hand that can turn a planning failure into a success.
Here are a few of the things I try to have on hand for those “menu planning fail” nights:
1) Couscous!! I was first introduced to couscous when I did the South Beach Diet a couple of years ago. It was one of the few foods that I could eat while in “Phase 2″ of the diet. I started using it in place of rice, pasta, and other starches in all kinds of dishes, and the best part is that it only takes 5 minutes to cook! The best place to find couscous is in the dry food dispensers at Whole Foods, Central Market, or HEB (some other stores have these dispensers as well, these are just the ones I know of) at a very reasonable price.
2) Individually Frozen Fish – Our favorite is Tilapia, but you can get several other varieties in the frozen food section of your grocery store. The individually frozen fish also thaw very quickly.
3) Bagged Salad/Bagged Fresh Veggies – Add a salad or veggies (my kids like to eat their veggies with a Caesar vinaigrette dressing) to a meat and starch to round out your meal.
4) Pre-cooked Ground Meat – One Saturday cook up 5 pounds of your favorite ground meat. You can add in onions, garlic, bell peppers, or whatever you use to season your meat. Let it cool, divide it among 5 freezer bags (or less depending on the size of your family) and freeze it! Then when you need to make a quick meal, you can dump a jar of spaghetti sauce in a pot to boil, dump the frozen meat in the pot with the boiling sauce, and you’ll have meat sauce ready to go on pasta in under 20 minutes!
Here’s what I did for my quick dinner tonight:
1) Put four Tilapia fillets in the sink to thaw (took under 10 min.)
2) Made a mixture of butter, honey mustard, salt, tarragon and basil (you can add lemon juice, mayo, or whatever other spices you want too!)
3) Put water in a pot, along with a can of tomato sauce, garlic and basil leaves to boil.
4) Put the couscous in the pot of boiling water/sauce (about 1 1/2 cups of couscous for every 2 cups of water), covered the pot, and took it off the burner (the couscous is ready in FIVE minutes!)
5) Brushed the butter mixture onto the fish fillets and put it under the broiler (about 3 minutes on each side)
6) Added a premixed salad with broccoli and dressing
Voila! Dinner in under 15 minutes from start to finish!
There are so many more ideas I could list, but I want to hear from YOU!! What are your quick and easy backup dinner plans? Do you have a recipe on the shelf that you use for times such as these? Please leave a comment below with your idea(s)!!
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