Bringing It All Back Home

Super Suppers (Photo By John Anderson)

A number of years ago, my sister related to me the results of a study she read regarding indicators of "successful" children. Of course, there are only about a gazillion studies conducted by God-knows-who to either a) make parents feel guilty about the lousy job they're doing rearing their children or b) assuage parents' guilt about the lousy job they're doing rearing their children. The study that caught my sister's interest found that the single largest indicator of successful children wasn't family income or extracurricular activities or tutoring, but the frequency of family dinners. Dinners during which the family gathered together, broke bread, and talked to one another. Huh.

Of course, breaking bread with loved ones (familial or other) has been an expression of intimacy since the beginning of time. It builds community; it is communion. But it requires effort to produce a meal in which a family can partake. Was a time when preparing the evening meal consumed the better part of someone's day. My mother grew up in the home of her grandmother, and she recalls how preparations for dinner began shortly after breakfast. Similarly, my great-grandfather (a retired chef at a grand turn-of-the-century hotel) began his rounds to the butcher, the baker, the produce man, and elsewhere after the breakfast dishes were cleared to begin his dinner chores. My mother and my father insist that their grandparents really loved this duty, and it's possible that they did. I feel fairly certain they took pride in their work. But I also believe their enjoyment of this task wasn't really at issue: Dinner had to be prepared, and it fell on them to do it.

Dinner still has to be prepared today, although the definition of what suffices for dinner has relaxed to the point that eating cereal standing upright at a the kitchen counter counts as dinner, at least in some homes. More often, family dinner preparation often means a drive-through at some fast-food joint or responding to the ringing of the doorbell announcing the arrival of pizza. This deterioration of healthy, family meals has been blamed for soaring obesity in children and adults, at-risk behaviors, childhood diabetes, and a host of other societal ills. Somewhere, someone has probably found a way to blame 9/11 on the lousy American diet. The score of studies may be credible or perhaps hysterical, but you don't need a study to get evidence of the benefits of a family meal. You just have to experience one.

Making family dinners easier has led to a multitude of convenience items in the grocery store: Frozen dinners galore are available and takeout choices range from the ubiquitous rotisserie chicken to smoked seafood delicacies. Grocers have taken note of the hungry, time-crunched family and have scrambled to adjust their stores, devoting more and more space to prepared foods. These options range from the tedious to the delicious, but they can also bust a budget pretty quickly. A few years back, as if bursting forth from the collective consciousness, a couple of enterprises got under way to see if the home-cooked dinner could make a return to the tables of busy Americans in a manner that suits today's families. Dream Dinners and Super Suppers are dinner-assembly operations where, in an hour or two, a person can assemble 6 or 12 entrées for four to six people (or split them, doubling the amount) for your freezer, for about $3 a meal.

The concepts are virtually identical: Customers sign up online (www.dreamdinners.com or www.supersuppers.com) for a session at a store of their choosing, select the entrées they wish to assemble from the menu, and then show up for the assembly process.

Far from the warehousey, commercial kitchen environment I expected, the stores of Dream Dinners and Super Suppers are tastefully decorated, with decorator paints coloring the walls, appointments scattered about tables, and pleasant music wafting through the room. There's a vaguely corporate air, but these are destinations designed to be pleasant to visit as well as practical. Coffee, tea, water, and some nibbles (usually samples of one of the entrée selections) are thoughtfully available.

Dream Dinners (Photo By John Anderson)

There are entrée-preparation stations throughout the room situated at what appears to be salad bars. The stations are identified by the entrée name and the instructions for assembling the entrée. Customers park their personal items and the box or bags or laundry basket brought from home for carting the finished dinners at a shelf area. Then each person dons a chef apron provided, washes her hands, and finds an empty station with an entrée that she's ordered and has at it. And it really is easy.

At each station are salad bar bins filled with the necessary items each entrée requires. The instruction sheet walks you through everything. Containers (either foil trays with lids or large Ziploc bags) are provided. Customers are instructed to perhaps spray the foil tray with nonstick spray. The trays are at hand and the first item you spy is nonstick spray. Then you might be instructed to place fish in tray. Premeasured bags of frozen filets are stocked in the freezer section of the station. Veggies may be next, say chopped broccoli and/or carrots. Bins of the same are right in front of you with measuring-cup scoops to allow for accurate quantities. The assembly continues with whatever spices, sauces, cheeses, and the like are required at your fingertips. After the entrée is completed, you close down the top (or zip up the bag), slap on a cooking label, and move on to the next station and its entrée. If time is at a premium, you can easily assemble the most ingredient-laden entrée in two or three minutes. But part of the fun of the experience is taking an hour or two to relax a little, maybe have a glass a wine with a friend, and chat it up while you put together almost two full weeks' worth of dinners. You don't shop, you don't chop, you don't clean up, you don't stare into the refrigerator hoping a roast chicken will magically appear.

It was a little startling to make my way through the various stations at a leisurely pace, chatting amiably with other customers, and in about an hour have almost 24 dinners assembled (I split the entrées for our smaller family). Yikes! A fairly dedicated and proficient home cook, I typically buy my food fresh and only have a couple of chicken breasts and some tortillas in my freezer. Suddenly my freezer looked like the frozen food section at McGrocery! And there lies both the good news and the bad news.

Anyone, no matter how limited their cooking skills, can whip up one good dinner given enough time, inclination, money. But it's the day-in, day-out meal preparation that becomes a real challenge. People like to eat every day, and the prospect of coming up with, shopping for, and assembling and cooking yet another dinner in scant time can be discouraging to even the most fanatic foodie. No wonder so many families throw in the towel and scour the highway for some golden arches. But here was a freezer full of entrées ready to bake or grill or microwave, and all I had to do was toss a salad and get some veggies ready while it baked or roasted or grilled. A great thing at the end of a long day.

On the other hand, I take pleasure in selecting my produce, choosing what's fresh and in-season and, if possible, local. I'm particular about my chicken and beef, preferring organic and unfrozen. I like my fish in-season and my garlic pungent and fresh out of the press. I prefer whole grain brown rice to white, virgin olive oil to other fats, fresh herbs when possible. The only bottled dressing I take to is a locally produced sesame-garlic concoction made with expeller-pressed canola oil. For a cook like me, there's a heap of compromise and loss of control in these meals. Ingredients for both Dream Dinners and Super Suppers come from Sysco, the food industry goliath. That means while the food is industry-standard acceptable and wholesome, it is usually frozen and from destinations unknown.

The recipes at both enterprises are geared to families, and that means a somewhat conservative selection. That said, I found Dream Dinners to be the more adventurous and to my liking. The menus were originally developed by Stephanie Firchau, an admitted "food snob." It was here that I enjoyed a really lovely adobo pork roast that I would be happy to try again. Super Suppers caters a more traditional menu developed by founder Judie Byrd (who also founded the Culinary School of Fort Worth) with selections like sirloin and potato bake (which featured tater tots) and a timidly spiced chicken cacciatore.

With both endeavors, the home cook is required to come up with side dishes, suggestions for which are offered. With the plethora of prepped veggies and bagged lettuces widely available, this becomes an simple task to complete as the entrée cooks.

In addition to the extraordinary convenience factor, Dream Dinners and Super Suppers are a real bargain. At each, six entrées for four to six people can be prepared for $120, and 12 entrées for $210-$220 (depending on selection). That's fast-food prices for home-cooked meals. And if your children become "successful" as a result of their sitting down for family dinners, the bargain is immeasurable.