Give Prepared Foods Pizzazz!

Lifestyle Expert Sissy Biggers Tells How To Jazz Them Up

(CBS)  If you're short on time, but want to throw together a great dinner for your family, why not buy some prepared foods at the grocery store and add your own spin?

On The Early Show Friday, lifestyle expert Sissy Biggers shared makeover ideas to make store-bought foods seem like they're gourmet!

You can use prepared foods for a delicious, easy meal.

Biggers, herself a busy working mom, has come to rely on prepared foods, then adding her own twists to get yummy, simple-to-prepare meals.

What to look for at the store: The produce section is now a source of fresh, prepared foods. Go beyond the lettuce bags to pre-chopped onions and other veggies. Keep an eye on the produce section for the latest in prepped foods -- it's constantly changing and getting more convenient and flavorful.

The olive bar is a gold mine of flavor and texture that can have many incarnations on a plate and enable you to be selective in small quantities, depending on your family's tastes. Seek out sun-dried tomatoes or spicy veggies.

Look for quality canned products for the pantry, too.

Appetizer suggestion: Buy the pre-packaged hummus. Pair it with pre-made chick-pea salad loaded with flavorful peppers and herbs or tabouleh, spicy and crunchy! They're usually found next to each other. Serve with pre-washed baby carrots and English cucumber slices and/or pita chips.

For the main course: Biggers loves doing taco night at her house. It'd a great vessel for a family of different palates! She doesn't use beef -- she instead uses other ingredients pre-made at the store: tuna in Italian olive oil; whole rotisseries chicken; crab meat. These are fun, alternative choices to your standard ground beef. She uses packaged taco seasoning -- to get the flavors of a traditional taco -- then lays all the "fixings" out buffet-style. That way, everyone can load up their tacos the way they want. All the "fixings" are things you can buy pre-packaged or at the salad bar. We're talking about shredded cheese, salsa, guacomole, mozzarella balls, olives, picked peppers, tomatoes, and onion. If you put out enough fresh and new ingredients out, the most finicky of eaters is apt to be a little more adventurous if build it themselves. If it crumbles, it's reincarnated as a taco salad. Yum!

A tip: Freshen up the store-bought shells by warming them up in the oven. Biggers also uses a meatloaf pan or baking dish when warming up the shells.

Tip #2: Remove the meat from a whole rotisserie chicken while it's still warm -- it's easy to remove at that point. The whole rotisserie chicken is truly a versatile ingredient: You can use it in sandwiches, salads, wraps, and much more.

Dessert: Biggers loves angel food cake. It's so versatile. Use store-bought berry syrup -- puree it with some fresh berries -- then drizzle it over the cake. It's so good and easy!