Some nights you barely even have time to place an order for pickup, let alone try that new pasta recipe. Between scooping up the kids from practice, handling homework and getting everyone ready for the next day, there's basically no time left to make — or eat! — dinner. We get it. And so do these busy parents, who have almost perfected the art of weeknight cooking. Here's how they pull it off.

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As soon as Laura Fuentes, mom of three and blogger behind MOMables, gets home from the grocery store, she washes and chops produce and assembles salads into containers. "Chicken salad and egg salad — to be used during the week — get made ahead of time too," she says. She'll also cook up one 16-ounce box of pasta and toss it with olive oil to save for up to four days in the fridge. It's a handy base for nearly any veggie or meat combo. "That's enough for a family dinner and possibly one or two kid lunches during the week," she says.

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There's always going to be a day when things just don't go according to plan. Maybe you were hoping to stop by the store to pick up stuff for a salad — and it just never happened. Or maybe you totally forgot to defrost the steaks. If you consistently keep the ingredients on hand for at least one dish, you'll be set. "My go-to meal is my cheesy sausage bake," says mom and blogger Jenny Flake. "I've always got these ingredients available for days when things get crazy and I didn't plan anything else."

Photography courtesty of Jenny Flake

"With two working parents in our household, my rule of thumb is that cooking time should be 20 minutes or less, and prep time has to be five minutes or less," says busy dad Josh Grossman. That means no fussing with homemade sauce or anything that needs a lot of prepping. New recipes are fun, but anything that calls for a bigger time commitment should be saved for the weekend.

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