Cooking and meal preparation can take up quite a bit of your time each day, especially if you are trying to provide healthy meals for your family. With a little advance planning you can easily serve nutritious home cooked meals fast. There are some great time saving devices like slow cookers, grills and pressure cookers that can help you cook healthy meals and allow you to spend less time in the kitchen slaving over a hot stove. As an added bonus if you follow these tips you'll probably save money on your grocery bills as well.

Shop less often and buy in bulk! When you shop less often, you'll end up buying less spur of those moment items that you really didn't need and you'll also save time. Make a master shopping list of all the things you normally purchase, group like products together as to their location in the store,  then use a highlighter to mark the items you are running low on. This makes it easy to spot at a glance what you need as you go around the store. Buy the larger sizes of anything that keeps well, staples like flour, sugar, pasta, rice, etc it's usually less expensive. Stock up on canned goods when they are on sale.

Double up and cook extra! If you work full time try to do some extra cooking on the weekend this way you'll have things already prepared for busy week nights. By planning ahead you can make two meals in almost the same times as it takes to prepare a single one.  Use your slow cooker, or a pressure cooker to cook double batches of stews, chili, hearty soups ect. Cook two casserols in the oven at once, this saves energy and money too. Some examples of cooking once and doing double duty are:

As mentioned above you can double the recipe for stews, soups, chilli, spagetti sauce, casseroles and other one pot meals then freeze half for another meal.

Roast a chicken, use the left overs for sandwiches, a stir fry, stew, chicken pot pies or a casserole for another meal and then you can even use the carcass to make homemade chicken soup. This works well with turkey, roast beef and pork too.

Prepare in advance.  Anything that you can prepare ahead wil save you time. Here are a few of my favorite time saving methods.

This was my Mom's favorite, she figured when you cook a pot of potatoes, you might as well cook a big pot. Did you know that they reheat well in the microwave, are great pan fried and can be added to stews or casseroles? Potato doesn't freeze as well as some vegetables, you'll find it has a better texture and flavor if added later.

A basic salad can be made ahead and stored in a tightly sealed bowl in the fridge for about a week.  Wash, dry and tear lettuce, add some or all of the following diced celery, grated carrot, cabbage, broccoli, sliced radishes and green oinions.  When it's time to serve you can add cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet peppers or any other vegetables you like. This more economical and healthier than the bagged prepared salads.

Scramble fry a bulk package of ground beef, or other ground meat. I usually cook along with the meat, half a large diced onion and a clove of garlic per pound of meat which reduces another step in the future preparation. Then package the precooked meat mixture into freezer containers or bags, freeze for your spaggetti sauce, chilli, shepard pie and other hamburger casseroles.