Dream Dinners
February 3rd, 2008
What can we say about Dream Dinners except that we love it. When Karen discovered that a franchise was opening up in Honolulu all of us busy mamas were excited, especially since some of us had heard about it on the Food Network.
If you’re not familiar with the concept, Dream Dinners provides all of the ingredients for you to prepare healthy, delicious meals at home. Each station in the store is set up for a different meal. An ingredient/instruction card is displayed at the station and all of the ingredients are provided for you to measure out into ziploc bags. Vegetables are already chopped so all you have to do is scoop. You don’t even have to clean up since they have people coming around to clean up after each person, wipe down counters, replace dirty utensils, and restock ingredients. They even pack up your cooler and help you to your car when you’re done! Cooking instructions are provided for each meal and side dishes are occasionally provided. When you get home you just pop the meals into the freezer until you’re ready to prepare them. What could be easier than that?
Once a month, our gang of busy mamas gets together at Dream Dinners to prepare meals for our families. As Karen likes to say, our husbands think we’re slaving away (okay, not really, but it’s just a game of denial we all like to play) when in actuality it’s more of a social hour for us. When we’re done assembling our meals we head out for some girl talk at a local restaurant and have been known to stay out till the wee hours of the morning. In the early months of going to Dream Dinners we would hang out in the Dream Dinners parking lot talking, sometimes for hours. Then we got tired of loitering so we decided to go to the mall for coffee - until one night we ended up closing the mall down and getting kicked out by security. So we headed out to our cars and resumed our discussion in the mall parking lot (I tell you, we’re starved for adult conversation!) and got kicked out AGAIN. By the same security guards. How pathetic. Regardless of the trouble we occasionally get ourselves into, we’re so glad to have Dream Dinners. Not only does it help us make dinnertime easier during the busy work weeks, but we also love the opportunity to get some quality girl time in with our friends.
In this section of our blog you can find our reviews of the Dream Dinners meals we try. Subcategories (located at the bottom of this page) include beef, poultry, pork, seafood, pasta and dessert. Our ratings are based on the following key:
This page has some sub pages.
3 Responses to “Dream Dinners”
Jojo June 23rd, 2008 at 10:19 pm #
Oooh something similar opened up near us, but I think it’s called Dinners by Design. I really want to check it out but I’m afraid that it’s expensive…what do you guys think?
BusyMamas June 24th, 2008 at 2:28 am #
Jojo - Yes, it is a little pricey compared to doing everything yourself but when you are short on time the convenience of having it ready in your freezer is great. If your daughter allows you time to prepare dinner you may not even need to spend on Dream Dinners or Dinners by Design. My husband and I ate take out until my son was 1!
Lucy August 27th, 2008 at 10:46 pm #
Actually, we have found the cost to be a great deal of savings for us. We could not replicate these same dinners for anything less, in fact we found that they cost quite a bit more when you try them on your own. The meal assembly businesses buy in bulk, and they only charge for the amount of ingredients used and not the whole jar of capers, seasonings, etc., like you would on your own. When my husband found we were spending a considerable amount less at the grocery store, he was sold on the whole concept and we now do dinners every month.