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There used to be a time when dinner was a leisurely affair where family members got together and shared information about their day. Alas, with everything being dictated nowadays by a shortage of time, both dinner and its preparation have become rushed. We hardly have time to cook after a hectic day at work and supermarket casseroles, frozen dinners and take outs comprise dinner for a large number of families more often than not. However, with a little planning, you can make delicious home cooked dinners within a very short time. All you need to do is follow these simple tips to cut your time in the kitchen without compromising on health and nutrition.

· When you go grocery shopping, it would help if you have planned your meals in advance and buy all the ingredients that you would need for cooking in the coming week. A lot of times, we forget to buy a crucial ingredient for a meal which results in that particular dish never being prepared as we go back to our dependence on take outs and frozen dinners bought from the supermarket.

· Spend an extra hour in the kitchen on a weekend and you can find yourself saving at least half an hour everyday. Whenever you have some free time to spare, or when you get your vegetables from the market, chop them up first before putting them in the fridge. Take out your food processor and chop all the vegetables that you have bought. Store different vegetables in different boxes. Keep the ones you are planning to use within a day or two in the fridge and the rest in the freezer. This way, you would save yourself the hassle of washing your food processor everyday and chopping vegetables. All you need to do is take out the required box from the fridge and pop the already chopped veggies into your pan. Just make sure that you do not mix your raw veggies, otherwise they might turn bad.

· Another method of saving time spent in the kitchen is by washing and cleaning up as you work instead of piling up all the stuff that you get dirty to be washed up later. This way, at the end of the meal, you only have to wash plates and serving utensils. You can ask your family members to wash their plates and one serving utensil each if you want to and you will also have to wash just two pieces after dinner instead of tackling a huge load of dirty plates and pots.

· Before storing fresh meat in your freezer, divide it into portions, making one portion for every meal that you plan to make. This way, when you want to cook that meat, you will have to defrost only the required portion instead of the whole stuff.

· Defrosting meat also takes up a lot of time. You can avoid the delay created by this by taking out the meat that you plan to cook out of the freezer and keeping it in a bowl in the fridge while making breakfast. This way, you meat will be thawed and ready to cook by evening.