My Experience with Dream Dinners and Why You Should Try it Out!

I have a confession to make. I do not know how to cook. My mother was a single mom who worked long hours and honestly, she didn't have too much time for cooking sessions. We had a lot of hamburger helper and "breakfast for dinner" nights (an added bonus for both of these options is that they are cheap!) so I told my husband when we first started dating that if he was looking for someone to cook and clean for him them he should probably look elsewhere. Luckily, he did know how to cook somewhat and so we managed to do just fine for the first two years with the combination of his pasta dishes and my truly excellent french toast. Then we had a baby and everything changed.

We decided that I would stay at home with our daughter instead of going back to work. This was a great option except that it left me feeling pretty lousy about having him still do the cooking. I tried to take over the kitchen and we made it about 2 weeks before we ran out of dishes that I knew how to make. Around this time my MOMS club was having a mom's night out demo night at a place called Dream Dinners. My husband had never stayed home alone with our infant daughter, but when faced with the possibility of edible food he quickly relented and agreed to babysit. I am not at all exaggerating when I say that this place changed our lives!

Dream Dinners has a very simple concept. They do all the grocery shopping, chopping and portioning of the ingredients for you so that you can make lots of dinners in a short period of time. Then you freeze them and thaw them individually when you want to make one for dinner. There are several companies out there that are similar (Meal Makers and Supper Thyme are two that I have heard of) but I will talk about Dream Dinners since I have personal experience with them. I was somewhat skeptical when they were describing their method to us, but I was willing to give it a try. As part of the demo we were each able to make one dinner (3 servings) and take it home and try it out to see if we liked it. I went behind the counter and felt like I was on a Food Network show. All the ingredients were right in front of me and even had the appropriate measuring device inside so that I could not put in too much or too little. It was foolproof! It took me approximately 5 minutes to make a Sundried Tomato and Artichoke Tuscan Chicken dinner and as I was zipping up the plastic bag with our food inside I thought to myself, "This might actually work!"

Of course we still had to see how simple it was to cook and how good it tasted. I made it the next night and read the instructions right off of the bag which instructed me to heat the chicken in a pan for 5 minutes on each side and then add the sauce bag and simmer for 15 minutes. Yep, that was it. Oh, well not quite. I also had to make some spaghetti to go along with it which they provided us. But hey, even I could boil pasta! The dinner took 20 minutes to make and tasted wonderful! We were sold. We decided to do a full session and find out how it worked out with our budget.

Signing up for a session is very simple. You go to their website, dreamdinners.com, pick a date and time and then choose from their list of meals what you want to order. They usually have a selection of about 15 entrees that you can pick from and you can choose to make 3 serving dinners or 6 serving dinners to make it work for your family's size. The only requirement is that you have to order at least 36 servings. Each meal is priced seperately based on what it contains (for example, steak is more expensive than chicken) and most meals also come with a side dish (usually rice, biscuits, pasta or veggies). Once you pick your meals it will calculate your total cost and you pay online with your credit card. I believe that you can also phone in your order or fill it out in person at the location if you do not want to use a credit card online. They will email you a list of what you ordered and a reminder of your session date and time.

So, how has this changed our lives? There is the obvious time saving factor, but besides that it has also saved us money on our grocery bill, allowed us to explore types of food that we would not have otherwise tried and improved the healthiness of our dinners. Here is the breakdown for the time saved. Each session takes me approximately 90 minutes to 2 hours to make 36 servings. Then each dinner takes approximately 20 minutes to prepare after thawing. This works out wonderfully for us because that is about the maximum amount of time that our daughter has patience for. Many dishes can also be prepared in a crock-pot if you are working and want dinner ready when you come home. There are a few dishes that cook longer in the oven, but the advantage there is that there are no pots or pans since it cooks right in the pan that you prepare it in.

Then there is the cost savings. Our average cost per month for 12 3-serving meals has been about $150. Although this sounds like quite a bit, when you consider the number of things that you no longer have to buy at the grocery store if actually works out to be less each month. Now when we go to the grocery store all we need to buy are breakfast items, beverages, fruits and veggies and snacks. We do not buy any meat at the store anymore and we are not spending money on side dishes either since almost every meal comes with a side item. The best part is that our grocery shopping takes much less time because we are not trying to plan out what we might be in the mood for over the next few weeks. We just buy staples and then head home. We also do take out much less often because it is so easy to cook at home and we have so many great choices. That saved us a lot of money as well.

Another great benefit for us has been the chance to try out different kinds of food. Spices and certain other ingredients can be expensive to buy for only one recipe. Therefore our cupboard had previously been limited pretty much to parsley, sage and oregano. However, with Dream Dinners, since they are providing all the ingredients it is no big deal to have a dish that includes saffron or artichokes. They have a wide variety of different types of meals each month that has allowed us to experiment with asian, italian, french and more traditional american dishes. These dinners also make a great impression when people come over. I am no longer threatened by unexpected guests for dinner. Now I can simply ask if they would prefer tuscan turkey medallions wrapped in bacon or kung pao chicken!

Finally, the choices that they offer are all healthy, well-balanced options. They use lots of healthy ingredients like fruits and vegetables and all of their meats are lean and many of their other ingredients are low fat. They have nutritional information available for all of their meals and they even provide the calculations to tell you how many points each dinner is if you are on weight watchers. Both my husband and I lost some weight after starting to use Dream Dinners because their meals were balanced and much better for us than the quick pre-packaged food options that we had been buying at the store previously.

In conclusion, I really recommend Dream Dinners to anyone who is looking for a way to make their life a little easier. Today's families are rushing around a lot and many times family dinners get set aside in favor of quick grab and go meals for everyone individually. A place like Dream Dinners allows you the chance to spend your quality time eating dinner with your family instead of making it. I think that most people would be surprised at how much of a benefit a place like this could be. Although it is ideal for people, like myself, who are not great cooks, it is also helpful for those people who do enjoy cooking but don't have as much time because it would let them eat well on the busy weeknights and then take the time on the weekends to really enjoy taking the time to cook. This company has locations in 34 states, but if they don't have one near you I recommend looking to see if any of the other similar companies have a nearby location. I think that they all work in a very similar manner. I hope that you enjoy your new kitchen experience as much as we have!