I had always felt bad too because I felt like my family's dinner time suffered. I was just too pooped by the end of daycare to do these elaborate dinners. Not to even mention my motivation to eat dinner.
Now I do alot of crockpot meals. You can cook EVERYTHING in one of those. We eat from the crockpot 3-4 times a week.
When Daycare kids are eating breakfast, I throw the meal in the crockpot. By the time daycare ends. It takes 5-10 minutes to prep the table and we are all sitting down and eating. And we are all anxiously awaiting the meal since we had to smell the yummyness (is that a word?
) all day.
Plus there is always enough to feed the daycare kids the next day for lunch.