Handy tips for quick meals for the time poor

How fast is 'fast food'? You go out of your way on the way home, wait in a queue to be served, hand over your hard-earned money, wait for your meal, wait at the traffic lights while your dinner gets cold on the front seat of the car and go home to eat a luke warm, bland tasting meal in a box with soggy chips? The only thing fast about fast food is how quick you eat it when you get home. Here are my tips for preparing truly fast meals at home. 1. Plan ahead. Last night I made butter chicken and rice. Tonight I am planning to make Fried Rice out of Poh's Kitchen cookbook, so when I made the rice for last night, I cooked double the amount I needed and put half of it in the fridge for tonight's dinner. I'm already half prepared for tonight's meal, which is handy as I am going out tonight and need something quick to make and eat before I go. 2. Have a cooking day. Chose a day when you aren't too busy and set aside some time to cook up meals for the week. If you want to use your ingredients while they are still fresh, have your cooking day after you have done your grocery shopping. Yesterday I did my food shopping, came home and put soup in the slow cooker for meals later this week. I have a busy week ahead, so it's nice to know that some meals are already made and just need to be pulled out of the freezer. 3. Freeze your leftovers. When cooking meals, make a bit extra than what is needed and pop them in the freezer for those nights when you don't feel like cooking or are running short on time. When freezing meals or left overs, use containers that seal properly to avoid any leaking of the contents but also to stop any airborne bugs getting in (such as listeria if putting the containers in the fridge). Label the container with what is in it. There is nothing worse than pulling something out of the freezer and not knowing what it is, as often frozen meals are hard to identify what they are. When labelling the meal, also write the date, as a general rule, meals shouldn't be left in the freezer any longer than 3 months. Writing the number of serves on it can be handy if you need to feed more than one person. In the photo at the top of this article, I have used a container that can go straight from the freezer to the microwave, has a vent to let the steam out, and have written on it with a whiteboard marker 'mince and veg, 5/3/12, x 2'. When reheating meals, only ever use your microwave on 50% or medium. The food is already dead, so no need to kill it again. Avoid just hitting the start button, as this will give you 100% power. Do you know if your container can go straight from the freezer to the microwave? Check the bottom of the container for the icons that show it is freezer and microwave safe. Also check the instructions on the packaging when you buy it from the shop or with the demonstrator if you buy it from a party plan demonstration. Microwave containers may warp if used on high instead of medium. This will affect how well the seals work on it, and may make the plastic porous, allowing it to absorb stains and odours from the food. You may find you void any guarantee on the product if it shows signs of having been used on high. To top it off, it tastes much better than the stuff from the fast food outlet. Still not convinced? Here is a story of what happened to my husband and I... One day we were out much later than we expected. On the way home we realised we didn't have anything organised for dinner. Although we live in a city, the particular roads we were travelling along didn't have any fast food outlets along them (and my husband and I are not big fans of fast food anyway, but I would settle for Indian or Chinese). We worked out that to get Chinese for dinner, we would have to go out of our way. Being tired, we just wanted to go home. We had a think about what was in the fridge and realised we could make Fried Rice ourselves. When we got home, I chucked the rice in a bowl of water, into the microwave (takes about 14 minutes). I chopped vegies and quickly fried them in the wok with a bit of soy sauce, mixed the cooked rice in and we had a delicious meal. My husband commented how much cheaper it was to make it ourselves than go to the Chinese restaurant. I pointed out that it took about 15 minutes to prepare and cook this meal...if we had have gone out of our way to the Chinese restaurant on the way home, we wouldn't even be in the door yet. While I was cooking he was getting our son bathed and into his pj's for the evening. It tasted great, was cheap to make and we got to eat it while it was still hot!