3 Crowd-Pleasing Summer Meals You Can Make in Under 30 Minutes

Ever been so tired after work or the gym or a long day with the kids that the best you could manage for dinner was a bowl of cereal and, if you were lucky, a banana? You’re not alone. Exhaustion almost always yields to convenience. Unfortunately, convenience isn’t always healthy.

Katriona MacGregor, author of the new cookbook Healthy, Speedy Suppers, hopes to change that. Like a lot of us, she saw her diet take an unhealthy detour when, after a brief hiatus, she returned to 9 to 5 office life. Despite being a trained cook, MacGregor says she came home from work each day and grabbed the first thing she saw.

Instead of the quality ingredients and whole foods that had made up her pre-workaday diet, MacGregor’s new “dinners” were typically composed of what she calls “boiled eggs and soldiers” (translation: eggs and sausages).

Her dissatisfaction with her new diet was the spark that resulted in Healthy Speedy Suppers, a practical cookbook bursting with delicious and healthy recipes that can be made in less than 40 minutes. The practical part is key. Healthy Speedy Suppers isn’t a coffee table cookbook and you don’t need paiche in your fridge and a wood-fired oven in your kitchen to make its recipes, all of which feature fresh, seasonal, easy-to-find ingredients and showcase flavors and influences from around the world.

We liked Healthy Speedy Suppers so much that we featured recipes from its pages in the June/July double issue of Latina magazine.

Click on for are our Latin-inspired favorites!

Lime and Coriander Crusted Tuna with Bean Salsa

• 1 14 ounce can small red beans, drained
• 4 tomatoes, deseeded and diced
• 1 avocado, peeled, pitted, and diced
• 1/2 red onion, finely chopped

Warm Squid Zucchini Salad with Chorizo and Mint

• 1/2 cup pine nuts
• 3 zucchinis
• 10 mint leaves, roughly chopped
• 4 ounces chorizo, sliced diagonally