7 Easy Meal Shortcuts That Saved Us During Recovery

After our recent hospital stay, I found myself in unfamiliar territory: browsing the freezer aisle for the first time in years.

I just didn’t have the energy to jump back into meal planning, monthly grocery runs, and cooking from scratch. My brain needed a break from all those decisions.

But I also wasn’t ready to compromise completely on food quality. I wanted quick meals without going full TV dinner mode. So I went searching for healthy shortcuts that could still put decent food on the table.

Here are the seven favorites we discovered over the past few weeks. Some of them were so easy and good that they’re earning a permanent spot in our rotation.

1. Frozen Ravioli Dinner

This one’s pretty straightforward: a bag of frozen cheese ravioli, pasta sauce, and a veggie side. We went with green beans.

I’ve been really impressed with the Better Goods brand from Whole Foods. Their seasoned vegetables are fantastic—you can just throw them on a skillet or baking sheet and roast them.

For this meal, we paired the ravioli and green beans with our homemade garlic bread using our master bread dough mix from the jar (from our Mix and Jars cookbook). With the bread machine, it’s basically dump and go.

The takeaway: Those pre-seasoned frozen veggie packets are a game-changer. My wheels are already turning on how to make my own next summer with garden vegetables, especially since we don’t love canned green beans. I think it was the Green Giant brand that had garlic-seasoned green beans with really clean ingredients—that’s what I want to recreate in my own freezer packets.

2. Seven Layer Dip (Our Version)

This has always been in our rotation, and it was perfect for this season. It’s actually more like a four or five layer dip because we skip the olives and onions.

Here’s what we include:

• Bean dip layer (vegetarian, no meat)
• Creamy sauce made from sour cream, mayonnaise, and taco seasoning
• Shredded lettuce
• Diced tomatoes or pico de gallo
• Shredded cheese

You can scoop it with chips, serve it like a burrito bowl, or set out tortillas so people can make their own wraps.

The shortcut: I bought canned refried beans instead of making them from scratch. Normally I’d use our home-canned beans, blend them with onions, garlic, and seasonings, fry them up, and run an immersion blender through them. But not this time. The frugal part of me is conflicted about keeping store-bought refried beans on hand, but it made this meal incredibly fast.

3. Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi

This wasn’t a full meal—just part of one of our snack nights where we graze instead of doing a full meat-and-two-sides dinner.

The spinach and ricotta gnocchi was so good that I’ve already bought two more bags. The ingredients are pretty clean except for one or two things (I think it had sunflower or soy oil, which we don’t usually use—we stick to avocado and coconut oil).

I looked into making stuffed gnocchi myself and decided it was way too tedious. We make potato gnocchi for our Olive Garden chicken gnocchi copycat recipe using instant potatoes, water, and flour rolled into balls. But stuffing them? I have no idea how I’d do that well. If you make stuffed gnocchi, please share your tips!

How we served it: The gnocchi takes about 10 minutes in a skillet with a little butter (you could microwave it, but we don’t use one). We threw those roasted vegetable bags I mentioned earlier on a sheet pan in the oven, and boom—dinner was ready with basically zero cooking time.

4. Shortcut Tacos

If you’ve been around this channel, you know we do taco night regularly (yes, usually on Taco Tuesday—so cliche, but it keeps meal planning simple).

Normally I’d pull preserved goods off the shelf: canned chicken or rabbit, jarred salsa, and our home-canned beans. Or I’d start with raw chicken and cook it in the oven, crockpot, or Instant Pot. But I wanted to skip even that step.

The shortcut: I bought pre-packaged rotisserie chicken. Now, here’s the thing—I originally planned to buy whole rotisserie chickens because they’re cheap and already cooked. But I know myself. I’d see those bones and feel compelled to make bone broth. I’d end up canning, and I really needed my brain and body to rest. So I skipped the temptation entirely.

Those little tubs of pulled chicken were about $5-6, which feels pricey compared to my usual $7-8 for a 10-pound bag of frozen leg quarters. But you’re paying for convenience, and I’m okay with that sometimes. The ingredients are decent, and I’m planning to keep one or two in my fridge at all times now because they make last-minute meals so much easier.

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5. Store-Bought Enchiladas

Full transparency: this is the most processed meal on the list. I grabbed a Stouffer’s family-sized enchilada dish, and the ingredients aren’t great. I’ll probably never buy it again.

But I needed something I could literally rip the box off and put in the oven. It served its purpose for that moment.

6. Chicken, Broccoli, and Cheese Stuffed Tortellini

This was a refrigerated pasta (not frozen), so it tasted fresher. The ingredients were pretty good—again, one or two things I don’t love, but it is what it is for short-term shortcuts.

I used that quick rotisserie chicken I mentioned and tossed it in with chopped broccoli. If I didn’t have broccoli, I would’ve used whatever vegetables were on hand—carrots, spinach, anything would work. It turned into something like a chicken broccoli Alfredo with tortellini.

It was really good, but I probably won’t buy it again. We stock pasta in bulk and it’s super cheap, so buying stuffed tortellini is just so much more expensive. Still, it was nice to have on hand and made for an incredibly easy meal.

7. Roasted Vegetables with Pulled Chicken

This has become one of our absolute favorites, and we’ve made it multiple times. I don’t have footage because when I’m making this, I really don’t feel great and I’m definitely not thinking about filming.

The star ingredients:

• That rotisserie chicken I keep talking about
• Better Goods Brussels Sprout Roasting Medley

This vegetable blend has Brussels sprouts, yellow and red bell peppers, onions, and mushrooms. It’s incredible. You open the bag, throw it on a baking sheet, and roast at 425°F for about 20 minutes (or 8 minutes on the stovetop).

The ingredients are: grilled Brussels sprouts, grilled red and yellow peppers, grilled onions, grilled mushrooms, 1% or less of olive oil, sunflower oil, canola oil, salt, pepper, granulated garlic, and onion powder.

I don’t love the canola and sunflower oils—why not stick with just olive oil? But otherwise, this is a very clean ingredient list.

This combination has inspired me to figure out how to make my own version. I haven’t had great success growing Brussels sprouts (only enough for a few fresh meals, not enough to stock the freezer), so I’d either need to buy in bulk or keep practicing my growing skills.

These roasted vegetables with pulled chicken are the two things I’ll continue stocking. I won’t lean too heavily on them, but having them on hand has been such a blessing during this season.

I hope some of these quick shortcuts are helpful to you!