Back to School Easy Dinner Ideas & Tips Plus Grands! Mini Pizza Recipe

Kids are back and in school and that means a lot of busy nights! Am I right? From after school activities, clubs, sports, appointments it starts to really pull on your time. Then you have to add in homework, cleaning and chores.

If your house is anything like mine, the hours at home often get siphoned away and before you know it, it is dinner time and I don’t have anything in the oven! Help!

So we went to our friends and Facebook fans for ideas and tips! Together we’re going to help you have some great back to school dinner ideas and tips to help you pull off a fantastic dinner with very little time! Plus we are sharing our Mini Pizza recipe that we tired out this week and had huge results!

Tips & Ideas for Back to School Easy Dinners

• Menu plan! I know it’s not so much fun. But when you have a menu planned out for the week it helps you plan ahead and know what time you need to take a time out to start dinner and have it ready for the family. And you are ensured to have all the ingredients on hand that you need. 
• Easy baked Italian herb Chicken Recipe! This is one of my favorites. It is made from FROZEN chicken and only 5 ingredients. No worries if you forgot to thaw the chicken. It is also our 5th most popular post on JadeLouise Designs.
• Take a Saturday or one day of the week and plan ahead and prepare a large batch of freezer meals that you put together and freeze. It’s just like a TV dinner. Then during the week you can pull it out, heat up and serve.
• Keep your freezer and Shelves stocked of vegetables. Often times our meals consist of an easily prepared protein and we warm up a favorite vegetable from the freezer or can. It adds in nutrition and completes the meal and takes very little time to fix and add to the meal to complete it.
• Breakfast for dinner! Really, we all know pancakes are super easy to mix up and cook. We have some great recipes from Buttermilk pancakes, German Pancakes and even chocolate chip hot cakes. Add in some scrambled eggs or muffins and you are the favorite mom ever!
• Or maybe a super easy Sweet Southern Cornbread. Pop open a can of chili and you are set!
• Ham + cheese + Pillsbury crescent roll dough… unroll, fill, roll up, and bake. Huge favorite of our FB fans!
• Chicken nuggets over rice with Sweet and sour sauce.
• Use your Slow cooker (crock pot)! Toss everything in the morning and have dinner ready that night.
•  Fill the crock-pot with chicken and cook it. Cut it up and store it in bags (about 1 pound per bag). It makes dinner so much faster. Use it for Hawaiian haystacks, chicken tacos, enchiladas, stir fry, chicken noodle soup, pastas…pretty much anything that calls for chicken. Most dinners take no more than 20 minutes to make, mostly because the meat is precooked.

The ideas are endless! So let me now show you what we did for dinner this week. We had a very busy week. Kids started After school programs, plus 2 of my kids have speech therapy, plus Dr appointments, you get the idea. We were rushing one night and ended up late for dinner, yet again. So Pillsbury Grands! biscuits came to my rescue so we made the coolest Grands! Mini Pizza.

 Grands! Mini Pizza Recipe easy dinner ideas

Have you ever tried to get pizza for dinner before? For our family it can be a headache. Everyone wants different toppings. But when you make your own mini pizza recipe you can do just that, everyone can have what they want. Plus this Grands! Mini pizza recipe from Pillsbury is super easy and less than 30 minutes to make!

All the kids were excited for this dinner. Specifically because they were able to choose their own toppings and exactly how much of each topping too! Talmage doesn’t like a lot of cheese. So he put very little on his. Jonathan loves a lot of cheese and hates pepperoni. I like Canadian bacon myself. If the husband had been home his would have had a lot of veggies, green bell peppers, sausage and mushrooms. You know, the works.

 The other bonus is that the entire meal takes less than 30 minutes! That’s including prep work and cook time! Seriously how awesome is that! We have so many nights when we get so busy with appointments and homework that we lose track of time and realize it is past dinner!

 This is the perfect meal to get something delicious onto the table with very little time and effort. And the kids love it! Both boys said it was one of their favorite meals we’ve had yet. And Talmage even made up a second mini pizza! He liked it that much.

 Everyone said this should go on our “repeat meal” list. Meaning we need to make it again. If you are looking for more delicious and quick Back to school dinner ideas be sure to download the Pillsbury recipe booklet!

What toppings would you put on your mini pizzas?

Which Pillsbury recipe are you most excited to try out?

What are your tips for easy dinner ideas this Back to school season?

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective. The content and opinions expressed here are all my own and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of General Mills. Compensation was provided by General Mills via Clever Girls Collective.