A Simple Dinner

Life has an uncanny way of getting extremely busy.  Those are the times when putting a fast, easy meal on the table is a must.  Many rely on fast food take-out for these types of dinners but nutritionally these foods are not good value for you food dollar and they put a nice sized dent into your pocketbook.  There is another way, and that is to rely on easy to put together 15 minute and 30 minute meals.

There are a multitude of ways to make fast, easy meals just that.  I like to keep quick meal starts ready to use in the freezer.  These include pre-seasoned cooked ground beef, ham cubes, cooked BLSL seasoned chicken strips, and other cooked meats (eg. roast beef slices).  This takes a bit of cooking ahead but really if you are cooking ground beef for dinner cook extra for the freezer as well.  I keep cooked beans and quick to cook meats in the refrigerator and of course being a home canner I keep several jars of ready to use foods on the pantry shelves (eg. meatballs, chicken, beans).   Bulk cooking sessions preparing several quick meal starts in a couple of hours can go a long ways towards stocking your freezer helping to remove the temptation to stop for take-out.

Sausage is a delicious quick cooking meat that is rather versatile.  It can be served on a bun, as is for the meat serving or cut into bite sized pieces then added to other dishes.  Bulk sausage can be formed into patties or it can be browned and crumbled to add to casseroles, soups and stews.  Sausage ranges in flavour from very mild to spicy and everything in between.  Aside of quick cooking and flavour, sausage is inexpensive.  Breakfast sausage is usually mildly seasoned and may have a maple syrup flavouring added.  Despite its name breakfast sausage is not just for breakfast.  I served breakfast sausage links with buttered broad egg noodles and black bean salad for a quick, easy meal that took less than 15 minutes to prepare.  The black bean salad is served cold but it could easily be served warm as a topping for rice.