Cooking at home

I love store bought rotisserie chicken. It is ready made and all you have to do is through together some side stuff. You could get some boxed salad and throw the chicken on top or steam in bag frozen veg or whole wheat pita and shredded carrot or chicken broth and some frozen veg. The possibilities are endless.

Invest in a crockpot/slow cooker if you don't already have one and search for recipes that you like. There are a lot of them out there and healthy. Take 5 mins in the morning to toss your stuff in, turn it on and go to work. When you get home you will have a hot and delicious meal waiting for you when you get home. Boneless skinless chicken breast tossed in with a little water and taco seasoning is one of my favorites and very versatile but here is an example of some of the other stuff you can find.

http://blog.rateyourburn.com/blog/post/2013/10/08/Healthy-Slow-Cooker-Soup-Recipes.aspx

Boiled eggs. Add water to submerge eggs. Boil on high for 10-15 minutes

Start slow by planning to make something once a week. Find a recipe that only has a few ingredients (you can always roast a chicken-it takes over an hour but there isn't any skill involved and 95% of that time it's just cooking in the oven). They have rice (even brown rice) that you can just heat up for 2 min and get a bag of frozen vegetables and microwave them. I say pick a different recipe each week and maybe you will find something you both really enjoy. Then increase that to 2 days a week and so on until you are cooking at home most nights of the week instead of eating out.

I get that you don't like to cook but you may have to bend just a little - at least for one day!

I do most of my weekly food prep on Sundays. This includes:

- Chopping veggies for salads and/or dipping
- Hard boiled eggs (they should be a week or so old). Put them in pot, cover with water, add in salt. Bring to a boil, remove from heat and cover for 15 minutes. This process makes them easier to peel.
- Roast chicken breasts. Preheat oven to 350. Line a baking sheet, PAM it. Brush both sides with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast bone side up for 30 minutes, then flip and roast another 30 minutes. Let cool and pull chicken. Works great for salads and sandwiches.
- Pick a crockpot soup. Make it. Freeze it in individual portions.

I also usually have hummus, cheddar cheese, berries, apples, peanut butter and popcorn on hand if I"m feeling particularly lazy in the evening.

Invest in a crock pot. You can make chili's, soups and meals it with little effort and freeze leftovers for your own quick freezer meals.

My son plays travel hockey and my husband and I both work full time. There just aren't enough hours in the day to cook dinner some nights. With the slow cooker you can just throw stuff in before work and it's ready when you get home. There are many meals you can make with 5 ingriedients or less.

You can also buy the club size boneless, skinless chicken breasts and make them in the slow cooker, shred the meat and freeze in baggies. Then you can use it for tacos, enchiladas, wraps etc.. Just defrost them and add whatever sauce you want (BBQ, Buffalo). Sometimes i just put the chicken over rice with veggies and teriaki sauce.

Like GreatGreenSea, we have a couple of go-to, don't-feel-like-cooking meals:

1) Baked potato. Scrub outside of potato with wet veggie brush. Use fork to poke holes multiple times into skin. Microwave a few minutes (our microwave has Baked Potato setting -- it's like 3 - 4 minutes). Slice open & sprinkle with your favorite toppings.
- grated cheese
- crumbled cooked bacon
- warmed up chili from a can
- diced fresh tomatoes
- salsa, jalapenos, etc.
- steamed broccoli
Use any/all in combination to your tastes. DH loves sour cream & chives with bacon. Some mornings I prepare the potato in the microwave, put the separate fixin's in other containers, to reheat at work for lunch, adding the toppings after cooking.

2) Sliced kielbasa with BBQ sauce. Heat on stove, serve with noodles or rice. You can choose the side of your choice that best fits your macros.

3) Can of soup + grilled sandwich. Sounds like you already have sliced meat, cheese, and bread based on your post. Build your sandwich while the soup is heating. "Butter" outside of bottom piece of bread with lowfat mayo (really browns nicely, and won't tear up your bread when you spred it on), place mayo side down in hot griddle, then "butter" the top outside slice. Flip over when cheese melty and/or bottom bread toasted to your preference.

The easiest meals IMO are crockpot meals (very popular these days and recipes are abundant on the internet), grilled meats and roasted veggies.

Almost any non-leafy vegetable is good roasted. Just chop (if necessary) put is a bowl, drizzle with oil, dust with spices, dump onto a baking sheet and roast in hot oven just until it starts to brown. Pork chops, steaks, fish, boneless chicken, all these can be seasoned and drizzled with oil and grilled or sautéed in a skillet in minutes.

You can also roast or bake meat along with the roasted vegetables. Except for thicker cut fish steaks, most fish can go straight from the freezer to oven without thawing.

Lots of good suggestions. Here's another one: put some meat (chicken, pork chop or tenderloin, or small beef roast) on a rack in a pan in the oven, along with a couple of baking potatoes and/ or sweet potatoes. With some steamed fresh or frozen veggies, voila...dinner. While it's cooking put your feet up and watch tv. If you choose fish, it would go in the oven closer to serving time!

One of the best things I ever did was throw a part where I cooked for 150 people (talk about learning to prep!). As a result, I had a bunch of leftovers, one of which was grilled chicken. I bought something like 60 free range chicken breasts from my butcher (got a good price as they gave me a "bulk" price), marinated them overnight, and grilled the following morning. At the end of the party, I cut the left over chicken intro strips and divided it amongst last freezer bags. I took a bag out to defrost on Sunday, and I had chicken ready for the rest of the week. Now I do that for chill, beef, etc. I just make a huge batch and into the freezer it goes until needed. Sure it takes a bit longer to prep/chop big batches, but it saves so much more time. If you have a scale, you can weigh as you go, but you can also write the servings on the bag with a sharpie i.e. 4 X 4 medium chicken breasts.

I keep cooked rice on hand (white or brown, whatever floats your boat) in the fridge and for lunch will often make a "fried rice bowl". Heat up the rice in the microwave, scramble an egg and an egg white in nonstick spray, add to the rice along with whatever veggies I can find. I like shredded brussels sprouts, or steamed broccoli, sometimes lettuce and tomato. I add sriracha sauce or whatever seasonings sound good and that's lunch.

If I'm planning even more ahead I cook some chicken breasts (I often just simmer them in water, rather than cook with fat) and shred and keep in the fridge, warming them up as I need them.