Dream Dinners

How many times do you come home from work & ask yourself "what should we have for dinner"? This is a question I ask myself at least 3-4 times a week & I hate having to think about it. I wish I was one of those wives who was better prepared during the work week & provided her husband a hot-cooked, homemade meal Mon-Fri but lets be realistic - my job is not bankers hours. 2-3 nights a week I am either on call or scheduled on the late team which means I don't get home until around 6pm - sometimes later. By the time I get home, I am not in the mood to figure out what's for dinner.

So last month, a co-worker of mine was telling me of a place where she goes & chooses meals off of a menu, prepares them, takes them home & freezes them. She will then take a meal out of the freezer in the morning & it is thawed & ready to bake when you return from work. Sounded awesome to me so I looked into it.

The place is called Dream Dinners. I checked out the menu for June & signed up to attend a session with my co-worker Lisa. For those of you who have never heard of Dream Dinners you are about to be enlightened!

First you select your meals online from a menu that lists up to 17 entrees which changes every month. You can choose either 3-serving or 6-serving meals. Next you select which session you want to attend to prepare your meals. Don't have time to go & prepare them? No problem. They can prepare them for you & all you have to do is pick them up.

When you get there, you grab an apron & start assembling your entrees. There are stations organized so that guests can rotate from one to the next. Each station has all the ingredients needed for a particular dinner, from main ingredients to sauces to seasonings. Easy-to-follow instructions are posted, all the ingredients are pre-sliced & cut, & appropriate measuring cups & spoons are provided. Scoop/pour ingredients into Ziploc bags or baking pans that they provide & store in the frig until you are ready to go. It’s that simple. Takes about 2 hours to make everything.

Since it is just the two of us, I opted to make the 3-serving meals - minimum order is 36 servings. Each meal cost me around $10-$12 to make & I got a total of 12 meals. To some that may sound expensive but to me, for 3 nights during the work-week I can come home, not have to worry about what's for dinner & can be eating a nice hot meal with my husband in 20 minutes. In my opinion, you can't put a price on that!

Off of the June menu, I made: Hawaiian Chicken w/Jasmine rice, Surf & Turf Pinwheels, Sweet Chipotle Chicken over Egg Noodles, Grilled Pork Chops w/sweet potato fries, Southwest Chicken w/ciabatta rolls, Mango Glazed Salmon, Calzones, Italian Pomodoro Burgers & Herb Dijon Chicken Breasts w/Garlic Bread. And to think there were 9 entrees on the menu that I didn't choose! They also provide you a "side suggestion" with each entree so you can create a grocery list of "sides" for the week. Convenient!

Tonight was my first night baking one of the meals. I pulled the Hawaiian Chicken out of the freezer, put it in the frig this morning & by the time I got home it was thawed. Took less than 20 min to cook, made a side of honey-glazed carrots with it & it was dee-lish & easy-peasy.

After just one meal, I am already "hooked" on Dream Dinners & can't wait to go back at the end of July to prepare more!

Let me know if any of you reading this from the KC area are interested & would like to join me ;)