• Make dinner your family time every night to catch up on your busy lives.Dinner table image by Laima Penekaite from Fotolia.com
  
  "What's for dinner?" is the question that is inevitably asked night after night in households everywhere. Whether you have a family to feed, guests you would like to casually entertain or are just looking to come home to something more substantial than takeout or frozen foods, there are a lot of things you can do to make dinner a pleasure rather than a chore.
  
  

Taco Salad

• No matter how many people you have to please with different tastes, you can't go wrong with taco salad for a versatile dinner idea. Put all the precut and precooked ingredients out like a buffet so that your family or guests can build the salad to their liking. Start with a bowl of tortilla chips. Produce selections may include shredded lettuce or cabbage, chopped onions, tomatoes, scallions, peppers, avocados or olives. To make the salad more hearty, you can serve a bowl of browned ground meat or diced chicken breast seasoned with your favorite taco seasonings, or refried beans if you have a vegetarian in the house. Shredded cheese, guacamole, salsa or sour cream can top off the salad.
  
  

Crock Pot Cooking

• If you don't have time to cook, you may find a slow cooker a worthwhile investment because you can throw ingredients into a single vessel in the morning and forget about it until dinner time. An easy yet tasty recipe is to place a thawed whole chicken into the crock pot and pour a can of soda over it. You can also braise a pot roast all day so that the meat will be fork-tender by the time you come home. Make side dishes, such as mixed vegetables in seasoned butter sauce, in aluminum foil pouches and tuck them around the sides of the meat. Set on Low, a crock pot can take up to nine hours to cook, depending on the meal. Check with your crock pot's cooking guide for time estimates. You can leave it on while you are away and come home to a hot meal that is ready and waiting for you.
  
  

Grilled Pizza

• Making personal pizza is fun, but it can be a messy kitchen chore, and setting your oven to 500 degrees can make the house very warm. Instead, make your pizza outdoors on your gas grill. Use your own homemade pizza dough, or purchase ready-made dough in the refrigerator or freezer section of your grocery store. Roll out 8-inch flat, round disks of dough. Set out toppings on the kitchen or patio table, such as pizza sauce, shredded cheese, vegetables and cooked meats so that your family or guests can each make their own personal pizza. Preheat the grill to 500 degrees and lay the pizza onto the clean, greased grates, but not over direct heat. Close the grill cover and remove the pizzas when the crust is browned and the cheese is melted.
  
  

Soup and Sandwiches

• Soups and sandwiches are a comfort food that can hit the spot after a long day. Having a soup and sandwich night once a week, mixing and matching your favorite types of soups and sandwiches, can be a simple yet satisfying solution to dinner. Jazz up your soups with roasted garlic, shredded cheese or pureed roasted red pepper. Grill your sandwiches on a cast-iron or nonstick pan to heat and melt the ingredients. If you want to go healthy, a bean soup and a roasted vegetable sandwich on 100-percent whole grain bread may be the ticket. If you want something to satisfy your comfort food cravings, have a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich with a French onion soup topped with melted mozzarella.