Dinner Preparation

I recently caved and went to Dream Dinners with my friend Carrie. For those of you who do not know, it is a meal preparation store. I purchased a gift certificate to Dream Dinners through the Warm 98 Deal of the Week. I feel like I am a good cook, and I can usually prepare a meal quickly. I grocery shop and prepare meals in advance so that we have things on hand, so I sneered at these places thinking, well I can really do that at home easily. While for some of their menu items this is true. I picked things on their menu that I felt I couldn't prepare easily at home, like Fish Almondine, Bombay Chicken with coconut rice, and pork with bacon potatoes. So I went and prepared my 3 meals, and it is OK. It is a good deal. The meals that Carrie prepared consisted of 13 meals, two of the meals were 6 servings and the rest were 3 servings. She paid 168.00 roughly. Not bad.
The servings are not too wimpy. My idea of a "serving" is not 1/2 cup of cereal, a "palm" of meat. I like things bigger. I like to eat. So my idea of a serving differs from the fictitious people who come up with the serving suggestions. The only wimpy serving is their pre-made steaks, they are pretty small. All of the meat is frozen and and prepackaged which I am not crazy about, but it is going to go in the freezer anyway to wait for you to prepare. The ingredients were mostly fresh. Some fresh herbs, some dry. It all gets put into Ziploc bags and that makes clean up easy.
I did feel like it took the fun out of cooking. I would not want all of my meals to come from here, but it would be nice to have some of the meals stashed away.
Carrie is a frequent meal preparer at Dinner's Ready. (a different chain from Dream Dinners). She says the prices are comparable, but that Dinner's Ready is better than Dream Dinners.
At Dinner's Ready you get a side dish will all of the meals. The marinade is directly on the food, as at Dream Dinner's it is separate. Dream Dinner's seemed more like an assembly line of people rushing to prepare their dinners, and it was crowded at the small stations and you were waiting to prepare.
Dinner's Ready was more spacious and laid back. They brought in wine and had a good time preparing the meals, I can't see this happening well at Dream Dinners (although they say you can or you could book a private party).
So it is worth trying, a good deal, but try Dinner's Ready.
The people vary cooking levels, etc. And I could have a whole separate post about the people there... for another time. : )