Dream Dinners

A friend of mine, Roxanne (Yara's mom), introduced me to Dream Dinners. She has been getting meals for her family there for a few months now and when they had us over last, we tasted one of the meals from there and really liked it. Not only was the food good, I LOVED the idea behind it. If you aren't familiar with this sort of thing, you go to the place one evening or weekend morning, during a scheduled session, and put together meals that you choose before hand from their monthly menu. They have stations set up with everything you need to put together the meals that you have chosen. The supplies (freezer bags, oven trays, etc.) are provided, they have the recipes printed and placed at each station, and cooking instruction labels for you to place on the bags once you have everything assembled. All of the ingredients are fresh (though meats and some of the veggies that might go in a recipe are frozen ahead of time) - nothing canned or packaged. You simply follow the instructions (how much of each ingredient you put in each container provided), slap a label on the bags and take the meals home and stick them in your freezer until you are ready to eat them. It is a brilliant idea!! Let me just share some of the other amazing things about this:

1) The meals come out to be about $4.00/serving.

2) You know exactly what you are having for dinner each night

3) Everything is prepared and ready to either go in the oven, on the stove or the grill

4) The meals are much healthier (and taste better) than anything you could get for the price you pay.

5) You end up eating meals that you never would have thought to cook or would have been able to cook without buying lots of ingredients you may never use again or spending a lot of time measuring...chopping...(you get the picture)...

6) AND, it is absolutely amazing how much time it saves!! The last two nights, Dylan and I have fed Madison, cooked supper, eaten, cleaned the kitchen, given Madison a bath and gotten her into her pjs in or a little under an hour and a half!! Don't ask me how it is possible...I still can't figure it out.

7) Finally, the food is GOOD!

As you can tell, I'm really excited that Roxanne introduced me to this. I'm sure there are a million other good things I could come up with to say about Dream Dinners. We've only been eating them two days and I can already tell you that it has changed things for us tremendously! I don't dread coming up with something for dinner now or just giving up and driving through somewhere on the way home, we don't spend a ton of time in the kitchen and can spend more time relaxing and playing with Madison... the list goes on.

Tonight we're having honey and herb grilled chicken breasts. The chicken marinated overnight (I didn't do anything but take it out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator). All we'll have to do is pour off the marinade, rub on the honey and olive oil that is provided, and put it on the grill.