I've stopped cooking dinner. Yep, you heard me. It's not that I don't enjoy cooking. I do! I know my way around the kitchen. I love trying new recipes and collecting kitchen gadgets. What I don't like is the planning, shopping, prepping and cleaning up associated with the chore of putting a dinner on the table night after night.
Yet, family dinner time is important to me. On the nights when my family is actually home, I want to sit down together and enjoy tasty, healthy food without spending a fortune. But how can I put a meal on the table without
- a) running to the supermarket every day and slaving in the kitchen every evening?
- b) resorting to quick-fix prepared food full of fat, sodium, empty calories and chemicals?
- c) paying big bucks for takeout from our favorite restaurants?
I think I've finally found the answer, and it's d) none of the above. I've become a big fan of my local "meal preparation store." In my case, it's Save Thyme in Virginia Beach. Once a month, I go to their website and choose dishes from their menu. Then I visit the store and prepare meals. It takes an hour or two, but it's a fun experience. They serve snacks! They serve drinks! There are nice people to chat with! And at the end of the session, someone else washes the dishes and cleans up the mess! When my schedule is particularly tight, I can pay a little bit extra and have them prepare the meals for me.
At the end of the session, I stock my freezer with tasty, made-from-scratch meals, like Greek Pork Tenderloin or Chicken Marsala. Come dinnertime, I only have to spend a few minutes in the kitchen -- most meals take less than 30 minutes of baking, grilling or sauteeing -- and then call my family to sit down to a delicoius dinner.
I've found that my grocery bill has actually decreased by using this service. While I outlay about $150-$200 for each visit, over the course of the month, I visit the grocery store less often and waste less uneaten food. I definitely could not prepare these meals on my own for under $200, certainly not that variety of dishes with fresh, quality ingredients.
My twin daugthers are excited about trying the new food. And if they don't like it? It doesn't bother me -- it's not my recipe, after all! Because I can pick and choose from the menus offered by the store, I am sure to get things that my kids -- and my husband -- will like; I simply pass by the dishes with ingredients that they don't care for. My daughters also enjoy accompanying me to my monthly sessions. It's a nice chance for us to spend one-on-one time together, and they are immensely proud of the meals they helped create.
Meal preparation centers like Delightful Dish are popping up all over the country. A directory from the Easy Meal Prep Association lists over 1,000 outlets in nearly every state in the U.S., as well as Canada, the U.K. and Australia. The meal assembly concept is one of the fastest growing trends in the food industry, where national franchise operations like Dream Dinners and Super Suppers compete with local entries like Coastal Cooks, a store in my town that is associated with a local restaurant and catering company.
If only I'd discovered this sooner. It would have been a lifesaver when my twins were babies. However, I appreciate it even more now. With homework, appointments, errands, sports and lessons taking me out of the kitchen between the busy hours of 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm, my freezer meals make it easy for me to work around the time crunch and still put dinner on the table.
Sound good? Find out what you should know before you go to a meal preparation store.
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