I’ve been thinking a lot about gear lately. To live a No Fuss Fabulous life, you really need the right gear. I mean essentially No Fuss Fabuous is a mantra. Yet in all honesty, you can’t be fabulous with a 1991 cell phone that is heavier than your chihuahua. Your shoulder will slump as you carry it in your handbag and the roaming charges alone would eat up your pedicure budget. Having the right gear is imperative. And I don’t know about you, but I hate spending money on things that I think will help make my life less fussy and then in the end actually make it more so. That’s why I am dedicating Mondays to product reviews. I am taking products that I think have potential to make my life easier and putting them to the test. I will give you my true opinion either way and you can do what you want with the information! Think of it as a much less professional Consumer Reports.
First product up for review is Dream Dinners. Dream Dinners is one of a few meal assembly stores popping up around the country. I don’t know if it’s because of summer or if life is just busier lately, but I haven’t been able to make the daily gourmet dinners I dream I make every night. (In my dreams I serve my family 110% organic meals sprinkled with fresh parsley straight from my herb garden – coupled with homemade ice cream and peach preserves I canned just six months before. Needless to say, it hasn’t been happening…or maybe ever happened.) I’ve been hearing a ton about these dinner assembly stores from my working mommy friends and since I had a new baby on the way, I decided to give Dream Dinners a try. Here is what they claim on their website, “Looking for solutions to life’s daily dinnertime dilemmas? Look no further than Dream Dinners where we provide everything you need to assemble delicious dinners for your family, store in your freezer and serve in the weeks ahead. We supply all of the essentials, from easy-to-follow recipes to fresh, pre-cut ingredients. You get fresh, healthy ideas for dinner and save hours of time each month.”
Essentially, you purchase a set amount of freezable dinners online, go to a nearby Dream Dinners location, assemble the meals in freezable containers and ziploc baggies with cooking instructions included, and then take them home and use them throughout the month as your “homemade” dinners. So I went and gave them a try. I went online and signed up. I paid $240 dollars for 26 3-serving meals using this 10% off new customer coupon code. Three serving meals range between ten to fifteen dollars each. What I liked about the website was that it described the dinners in detail and also had all the nutritional information for each meal. This made it easy to pick out meals that were condusive to my diet, although I am happy to tell you that most of the items were quite healthy. The company boasts to have all restaurant cut meats and the freshest ingredients there for you to use, which after going I would have to agree with. Okay…so back to my story… I went and I put together all my meals. It was a nice atmosphere and the ladies were very sweet. It took me less than an hour and a half to assemble all my meals. I went home pretty intrigued. The next evening, I cooked my first Dream Dinner meal, Spicy Thai Steak Kabobs. It took me less than 20 minutes from start to finish and I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that it tasted very very good. I liked them alot. Throughout the past four weeks, my little family and I have gone through the rest of our Dream Dinner meals. Some of them I have loved, others weren’t necessarily my favorite, but overall the convenience of the meals have been unbeatable, especially for a new mom.
Have you tried them? What did you think?
Here are my overall ratings:
Taste: For taste I give it four out of five. Most of the meals were quite good. They gave you a variety of options to choose from.
Price: Pretty good deal for the quality you are getting. I tried to add up how much it would cost me to make each meal provided if I purchased all the fresh ingredients and it did come out to quite a bit more. Overall, I would probably like to see more side items included in the meals though.
Convenience: You really couldn’t beat the convenience. It really was so simple to have a nice dinner every evening. I really felt “together.” This is a perfect gift for a loved one who is ill long-term or a friend who is about to have a baby. While my little one was in the NICU and I was running around like crazy, they really were fabo.
Overall: A solid four out of five for me. As much as I would love to be making “110% organic meals sprinkled with fresh parsley straight from my herb garden – coupled with homemade ice cream and peach preserves I canned just six months before” – it isn’t practical for my life at the moment and these filled in the gap this past month. Who knows? I may try them again this coming month…we’ll see.
For more reviews on Dream Dinners or stores similar to them, click below.
Duck Duck Cow – Product Review: Dream Dinners
About.com: Pheonix Dream Dinner Review
Slashfood: Dream Dinner or Cop Out?
It’s wonderful to eat these dishes on holidays