A Little Help in the Kitchen

Are you one of those people who just hates to cook? Or never even learned? Are you on a first-name basis with the pizza deliveryman? Well, you are not alone. According to the American Restaurant Association, 24% of meals consumed by Americans are eaten at restaurants. If you add to that the number of meals that are grocery store takeout, and I would imagine it approaches 30%, if not more.

With restaurant sales in the U.S. expected to top $500 billion in 2008, it is no surprise that home cooking is on the decline. Nowadays, people do not have the time, inclination, or know-how to make basic healthy meals, but there is help on the horizon in the form of a fairly new food service called the meal preparation and facilitation industry, also knows as Meal Facilitation and Preparation business (MFP). Companies such as Deelish! and Ensembles are part of this enterprising new category of businesses designed to ease the burden of the overworked, as well as the culinary challenged.

Facilities resemble upscale, open restaurant kitchens, with stations set up for specific meals. Customers schedule time or, with some services, drop in, decide on which menu items they want, and proceed to prepare healthy, and sometimes gourmet, meals that they can then transport home and cook at a later date. The majority of people taking advantage of this prepare a week's worth of meals at one time, taking them less than an hour from start to finish. In the case of Deelish!, they "offer a monthly menu of 14 ready-to-cook entrees, from which the customer chooses a subset (8 or 12 entrees) to prepare at a prescheduled session. At the facility customers will cycle through individual entrée prep stations, with each station fully equipped and stocked with pre-chopped, sautéed and otherwise prepared ingredients, so that the customer needs only to follow simple, step-by-step instructions to assemble the entrée. Completed entrees are taken home to be frozen for cooking and consumption at a later date." Current menu items on the Ensembles list include: 15-minute Beef Stroganoff, Filet Mignon with Gorgonzola Mushroom Sauce, Prosciutto Wrapped Chicken with Lemon-Caper Sauce, Classic Chicken Pot Pie, Shrimp Risotto, and Maple-Balsamic Pork Tenderloin. Ensembles also offers rice and vegetable side dishes, along with several dessert choices. Dishes serve four to six people, at a cost of $4-8/person. There are even menu items for vegetarian and gluten-free diets, among others.

For much of the population this type of service is unnecessary or financially unavailable. But for those that have busy lives, these businesses provide fresh and healthy food that trumps take-out any day of the week. By taking advantage of companies like these, you can become more comfortable in the kitchen, more confident in your food preparation skills, and at the very least, you will be sitting down to a healthy meal.

Resources:

➢ Ensembles: Home Cooked Meals in a Snap
➢ Entrees Made Easy: Real Food for Real Life
➢ Deelish: Meals Made Easy
➢ Super Suppers
➢ Dream Dinners
➢ Make & Take Gourmet
➢ The Dinner A'Fare: 12 Meals. 2 Hours. Simple.
➢ My Girlfriend's Kitchen: Go Healthy, Nutritious and Homemade
➢ Mr. Food No-fuss Meals: Home Cooking Without the Hassle
➢ MealMakers
➢ Supper Thyme: Bringing Dinner Back to the Table
➢ Cena to Go: It Means Dinner
➢ Entrée Vous: How Dinner Gets Done