Where I used to work they had a great business called Dinner Done. Every month they had a new menu of seasonally appropriate dinner meals. You would pick out however many meals you want to order, then go to the business, and make it yourself with prepared ingredients. They give you aluminum pans to make the dish in, then go home and freeze it. Then, when you need a dinner meal, you take out a pan, and the directions how to bake it are one the lid. You'd think it would be expensive but it came to $2-3 a meal portion, which is not bad for meat based dishes. Also since you made it yourself you know it is fresh, plus it tastes just like a home cooked meal. Do you have a service like this near you? Have you tried one of these businesses?
I have never tried anything like that. I don't think there is anything similar around here. I've never heard of one where you go there and prepare the meals. Frankly, it seems a little strange to me. Why not just cook at home? Do they offer foods you can't normally obtain in the area? There is a service here where they do all the cooking, from everyday dinners up to and including a full holiday dinner with all the trimmings. You can have it delivered or pick it up. I've never used it, but some people like it.
It's not a bad idea if you're uninterested in cooking. It would make more sense then buying fast food every day or pre-made meals at the grocer. Personally, it's not my cup of tea. I can make meals at less per serving.
Never heard of these services either. But I think at $2 or $3 a meal it's not that bad. But . . . someone mentioned in another thread that they can live on about $10 a week so if we were to use that as our baseline to compare if this services are good for saving money then it might appear like you wouldn't save much. I'd rather buy whatever I need, supplement it with vegetables from the garden, etc and I'm sure I'd spend less.
Spending only ten dollars per week on groceries was kind of a challenge in that thread. People were doing a "how low can you go" thing, but most said that it wasn't something they could do all the time. It was more of if you had to could you pare things down to the bare minimum and get by on very little. Being able to make a meal for $2-3 isn't bad, especially if that feeds more than one person and it's a full, balanced meal. I think I would just feel awkward cooking elsewhere instead of just cooking at home.
They just have good ideas, like chicken stuffed with blue cheese and cranberries, wrapped with bacon. Or they have recipes that call for certain items you wouldn't want to go out and buy a whole thing for just one recipe. The food is impressive in that you could serve it to guests, it's always got some grown up flavors. You make it yourself so you can adjust the quantity of ingredients to suit yourself. The other thing I like about it is it just makes life easy, but then since you have made the dish once with them, it increases your cooking repertoire and you could easily go out and make the dish again on your own.
Ah, okay then, Sunshine, thanks for the additional details. It's sounding better and better now. That stuffed chicken dish sounds delicious, not gonna lie. I see. That makes a lot of sense, not having to buy a whole thing when you just need a little bit. This has proved to be a very interesting concept after all. Very inventive. I just couldn't wrap my head around it at first. It's definitely a great way to learn new dishes and now to prepare them, so you can make them again later. Well, I concede. This is pretty cool. Thanks for sharing.
We had one near us about 7 or 8 years ago, but it went out of business after a short amount of time. I don't think it was called "Dinner Done" though, it went by another name, but I can't remember what it was called. Two women founded the company, and they were on TV quite often when it first launched. From what I understand, one of the main conveniences was that they did all the shopping and the prep work on the ingredients, and you just walked down the line and scooped out whatever ingredients you needed for your given recipe, which was listed on some recipe card(s) you selected. My main concern would be that the ingredients were fresh - and not wilted, rotting or picked over from sitting in bins all day like a salad bar at a grocery store, or a buffet at a restaurant. It just doesn't seem that "clean" to me if people are coming in there possibly sick, and breathing and coughing over everything, as well as grabbing the utensils to scoop up stuff. The other issue is you're basically making a glorified TV dinner. Granted you are starting with fresher, higher quality ingredients, but the end result is always going to be some meal that has been frozen then re-heated. I would get a little tired of soft, stew-like meals every day, and would start craving stuff that was crunchy like fried fish, or more fresh like a cobb salad.
