dinner ideas for a cooking dummy?

Do you have a grill or a forman?

I take 1/4 cup of honey and 2 tbls spoons of balsamic vinegar, about 2 pounds of boneless skinless chicken breast (I cut them so they are about 4 ounce "patties") Mix the honey and vinegar together, dip the chicken in the mixture, or let it marinate for awhile. Throw on the grill.

This allows for me to have extras to eat on different nights/days. Great with brown rice and veggies, or just on a hamburger bun with whatever you like on your chicken sandwiches. Very easy, and the left overs make it great to help speed up weeknight dinners!

I find the biggest problem with not knowing what to make for dinner is not having the right ingredients on hand. I've learned planning ahead makes a world of difference. Once a week I sit down with my cookbooks for healthy meals and at least 3 or 4 meals for the week. I mark them in the book and then make a grocery shopping list. Then during the week all I have to decide is which meal I have a taste for that night. Sounds so simple but makes a world of difference. The crockpot is also becoming a favorite friend. Good luck. I know you can do it. Start small so it doesn't overwhelm you and soon you will no longer be a 'cooking dummy'. It worked for me!:bigsmile:

Take a little bit of olive oil (maybe a teaspoon) and put it in a sautee pan and turn the heat on Medium. Get boneless skinless chicken breast and lay on the pat and cook on one side for 3 minutes and season the side that is up with whatever you want (I use season all, garlic powder, a little pepper, a dash of soy sauce). After the 3 minutes flip it, and cook another 3 minutes. Season the other side, after 3 minutes are up, cover pan, turn heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, flip chicken and cook for 3 more minutes. after time is up, chicken is done! I take out of sautee pan, cut up in strips, cut up some veggies, throw the veggies in sautee pan, cook until tender, add chicken, and serve by itself or with brown rice or whole grain pasta.

Enjoy!

I've made some dinners from The Eat-Clean Diet book. Prep time for most are 20 minutes.

You might try oriental steamer vegetables comes with its own sauce. Then add a couple ounces of thin sliced lean beef, chicken breast , or shrimp . It's easy fast and low on calories

I am a total non-cook, but decided this January to start learning to cook. I am out the door by 7:30am and I rarely get home before 7:30pm on weekdays, so it's been a challenge to make cooking happen. But I have found some things that have worked for me.
I bought Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution cookbook and have been working my way through it.
His 20 minute recipes take me an hour (because I have no idea what I'm doing in the kitchen). But if you know what you're doing it can really be done in 20 minutes. I find that planning what I'm going to eat for the week takes the longest and the going shopping, but once I organize myself it doesn't take that long to actually do stuff.
When I don't know how to do something like cut an onion or zest a lime I just google it online and find a video explaining how to do it.
I will cook 3-6 meals on the weekends, put everything away in correct portions into good containers (easy stacking, secure closing, easy toting(I use public transit-buses and subways to get to and from work)) and refrigerate or freeze the rest to take to work for lunch or reheat for dinner. Most things I've tried cooking are still very good after a few days.
It takes a bunch of effort; I had to buy some kitchen utensils (Chef's Knife, a good large frying pan, cutting boards) and the first time I went grocery shopping my bill was huge- things like olive oil, mustard and sea salt all cost a lot but they last a long time.
On the plus side even though there are things like cheese and bacon and olive oil in his recipes even when you enter them into MFP they actually turn out to be really well balanced and most things are not crazy calories if you eat the portions recommended. His soups are really good and I enjoy having them as a meal because they are very tasty and filling.
On the downside it is a British cookbook and some of the ingredients are hard to find (English Mustard, Italian Parsley, Jacob's Crackers) but I just sub the closest thing (Dijon/Regular mustard), Regular Parsley and unsalted Saltines) and it works fine for me.

Personally I found the sheer volume of recipes and cookbooks available totally overwhelming. I tried recipes.com and other sites but it was too much. Picking just one book and trying my best with what is in there has really helped me get started and start building confidence. So I would say go to Barnes and Noble and just spend a bunch of time looking at the cookbooks, when you find one you really like and feel you can 'bond' with and are excited in a good number of recipes go for it.

I also found now that I have accepted that cooking is a (new) hobby of mine, people are pretty excited for me and it has been a worthwhile investment in my time. I also found that I like chopping veggies- I find it oddly therapeutic and I get tons of compliments at work about how good my cooking smells.

Good Luck!

Check out the Kraft Website and click Healthy Eating....great recipes that are super easy to make.

http://www.kraftrecipes.com/healthy-living-ideas/main.aspx