Easy Dinner Ideas

I made egg salad sandwiches last night - yum! I like tuna salad as well.

Fish, shrimp, pork, beans

Do you have a crockpot? I put a frozen pork roast and some sauerkraut in the crockpot before I left for work this morning. We'll have that for dinner tonight along with a Veggie Steamers (probably brussel sprouts) and either noodles or leftover mashed potatoes.

Soups and stews are also great in the crockpot. You can prep them the night before, or even a few days before and then literally just set it and forget it.

What about breakfast for dinner? Fry up a few eggs and some bacon and done!

Assuming pork=red meat, options for a main dinner protein include: fish, shellfish, turkey, beans or lentils, tofu, tempeh. I also sometimes do an egg-based dinner, such as omelets. There are legume-based pastas which have enough protein that you might be able to not add some other main protein or just a small amount.

There are also lots of interesting chicken dishes, especially if you don't limit yourself to boneless, skinless chicken breast. One I like is a tagine. Here's one example: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016987-daniel-bouluds-chicken-tagine, but there are many.

When I want an easy dinner I have a breakfast-for-dinner meal, ex: eggs and some kind of potato and pork.

I work from home so other easy dinners involve getting something into my slow cooker at lunch time and then it is ready as soon as I'm off work. (Bigger cuts of meat could be started earlier in the day, but I mostly use boneless chicken thighs, which take about 5 hours in my recipes for meals like Chicken Cacciatore.)

At the moment I'm putting a piece of frozen crumbed fish and a few sweet potato chips in the air fryer. Eat with a salad. Comes in at about 350 calories

• Buffalo chicken lettuce wraps (can be made in crock pot or instant pot - changes up the flavor a lot from reg ol' chicken. Literally just chicken breasts + ranch seasoning + buffalo sauce. I add Bolthouse ranch and chopped green onions on top for extra flavor. If you have non-dieters in your house, they can add the chicken to a bun/tortilla to make a buffalo chicken sandwich/taco.)
• Chicken/tofu/beef broccoli stir fry (great if you have other people in the house that aren't dieting because you can add rice to their portions to make it more filling. I usually prep some chicken on Sunday so I can throw together stir fry dinners on busier nights. Just add teriyaki sauce + a little soy sauce + a lot of ginger/garlic powder.)
• Breakfast for dinner (eggs/egg whites, turkey sausage, reduced fat cheese, all mixed together)
• Honey soy glazed salmon w/broccoli (or w/e veg)
• Chili (Crock pot meal - meat + beans + corn + tomato sauce + diced tomatoes + spices)
• Instant pot roast (piece of beef + onion soup mix + brown gravy mix + tiny potatoes, add cornstarch to end liquid to make a gravy)

Almost any slow cooker recipe, I picked up a couple of second hand cook books "Without the Calories" by Justine Pattison that has some great tasty meals that you can tweak to your own tastes.

I quite like a couple of meat free meals here and there too - Saag Paneer is a yummy one (Spinach & Garlic based curry with paneer cheese), Dhaal, Falafel with Hummus, Marinated Mushroom or Spicy Bean Burgers.

We have a gazillion recipes saved to Pinterest. We sit down every weekend to go over recipes to see what we want to make for dinners during the week and we usually make sure at least two of those will also provide leftovers for a couple of lunches. After that we go shopping for what we need and any other staples that are missing. This cuts down on waste as well as the grocery bill and also keeps things interesting.

There's a gazillion ways to make chicken, but there's also a whole world out there beyond chicken. We eat a lot of Cod, Salmon, shrimp, chicken, some lean cuts of beef and pork and do all kinds of things with veggies, wild rices, potatoes, etc. We usually have one or two vegetarian entrees every week as well.

Dieting and healthy eating definitely doesn't have to be endless chicken and broccoli...it doesn't have to be or get boring.