Can you share your fresh prepared meal delivery/personal chefs? We need help.

[Anonymous]

I am a chef who does this very thing: I prepare healthy meals in your home and freeze them so that you can just thaw and bake or thaw and serve. Email for references:
[e-mail]

[Anonymous]

Let's Dish. Has a local store in Alexandria (off Little River Turnpike close to Annandale) and will also deliver for an additional $30. We love it because the meals are well balanced and healthy, and even include weight watchers points. they freeze well and are perfect for those nothing-to-make nights.

[Anonymous]

I don't understand why people are giving OP such a hard time. I'm the same, but thankfully my husband enjoys cooking. Left on my own, I eat cereal or popcorn.

OP, I know friends that use SouperGirl and just adore it. I am not a soup person but just in case you are, there you go.

[Anonymous]

OP you could easily do snack dinners 1-2x a week. Cheese, salami/pepperoni/cappicola/prosciutto, veggies and dip or hummus, crackers or baguette and fruit. Literally would take no more effort than setting it all out. Breakfast just do frozen waffles and fruit or bakery muffins. Dinners could be grilled cheese and heated up box soup. I think I would love a chef but I would hate paying for it because I know so much would go to waste and shit, it's expensive! There's LOTS of easy quick meals that require very little cooking- deli chicken salad on croissants and a salad, rotisserie chicken and new potatoes (literally just quarter and boil red potatoes til soft then add butter and herbs). I like to cook but can fully understand why a person in your position wouldn't. I just think there's a gap you could fill that compromises between takeout every night and family chef.

[Anonymous]

OP, I have no helpful advice but thank you for making me feel better about my own food spending! I thought I was dropping too much money at the Whole Foods cheese counter but turns out our $700 a month grocery bill is not that bad!

[Anonymous]

Here are some ways to make shopping and cooking less annoying:

If it's too intimidating to find cookbooks or recipes, one solution is to subscribe to Bon Appetit and get "pushed" recipes and pics. It could be exciting and they're not necessarily hard.

Another is to commit to a cuisine or cookbook author (we do a lot of Indian...madhur jaffrey is very clear...and also italian, like giada). If you commit to a cuisine you'll have most of the supplies you need, minus the meat or veggies which makes shopping less stressful.

We aim to cook about 3 times per week , sometimes we do better and sometimes worse.

Also, a good meat thermometer can solve a lot of problems.

[Anonymous]

I rarely cook myself now that my kids are mostly out of the house. My DH is fine fending for himself. I can cook but am not terribly interested in food and completely blank out when trying to put together menus to shop for. So I get OP, though I get there from another route.

OP you have a big opportunity down the road with your kids. Send them to cooking classes when they are old enough and then pay them to cook dinner for the family. That way they learn an important life skill, get spending money and everyone is fed at a cheaper cost than take out.

[Anonymous]

Good day,

You may wish to visit http://www.Gourmet-Reviews.com Chef Piquanti has reviewed almost every prepared meal delivery service, and every type (fresh, frozen, diet, etc) He is a chef, turned food blogger and most of his reviews include videos and photos of actual meals purchased for the review. We found his website particularly valuable in helping us find an inexpensive meal delivery service for my mother, who can't get to the store as well as she used to. Here is his prepared meal section:

http://www.gourmet-reviews.com/Prepared-Meals/Prepared-Meal-Delivery.html

I hope this helps

[Anonymous]

I actually know how to cook and used to enjoy it, but the slog of getting home at 6 and feeding/bathing/putting to bed 2 kids by 8 means dinner has become annoying. I cook a real meal 1 or 2x a week and half assed cook (pasta with pesto, carrot sticks, etc) the rest of the time, and we go out 1/2x a week. I do not spend my weekends cooking because that is when I clean ,exercise and have family time--but OP can clearly afford a cleaning service.

anyway, I've done both Lets Dish and healthy bites. I don't think Lets Dish is all that innovative--very kind of 'basic' foods, but a lot of them tasty. The prep itself is fun--everything is chopped and its really fast and you don't have to buy a million ingredients. You do have to spent 15/20 minutes actually cooking it, but the rest is done and you're not dealing with much clean up.

I did healthy bites after the kids were born for a while. Healthy and fairly tasty and convenient to us. We just can't afford it on a regular basis.

[Anonymous]

Hire me. I would love to leave my job and be a personal chef if I could make enough money. Give me $3000 a month and I will cook for you (and teach you to cook if you'd like). I agree that working FT and doing everything else is hard. I'm glad you're not letting the PPs get to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you can read, you can cook. You are just lazy.

Who asked for your approval? Zip it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:why not sign up for some cooking classes

OP, in the long run this would be a good thing to do. Cooking for novices can be intimidating. You don't have to become gourmets but there are some simple cooking skills that you could master and teach your kids.

Also, get some kid cookbooks like Pretend Soup. You can develop familiarity with cooking and bond with your kids at the same time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The previous posters suggestions are all great bandaid suggestions. Sign up for one of them. However, you guys need to learn how to cook. Not like gourmet fancy things, but enough to do a stir fry, pasta sauce, Mac and cheese, brownies, baked chicken for your kids. I live in md, so none of my cooking suggestions would be helpful. I hope someone else can recc a place for classes.

I agree but for a different reason.....to be an example for your children. Please try to learn to cook and learn to enjoy cooking a few things so your kids can be part of the cooking process when they are the right age. If they never see you cook, they'll think that's normal and never want to learn. It's a very important life skill.

My husband can't cook anything (well, he can do boxed mac and cheese) and I hate that he can't help now that we have a baby - it's all on me. I would have appreciated his mother teaching him something (even though she's a shitty cook).

It CAN be fun if you don't act defeated out of the gate. Hire a chef to come teach you a few basic things.

we love soupergirl. I've heard good things about healthybites. However, for $3k a month, hire a personal chef and try to learn from them as well.

FYI: Healthy Bites has a chef on staff that does personal cooking for families. She's good too. Her name is Erica and I would recommend her to anyone!

[Anonymous]

Sorry, I confess to looking down on people like OP. Actually I'm scandalized.

Just because OP can afford to, OP is missing out on this essential life skill, and eating out constantly which is extremely unhealthy - even if you always pick what you imagine to be healthy options, they're always much too full of hidden fat, sugar and salt! And your children have been eating like this since they were on solid food???!!!

You are hurting your family's health, OP, by eating like this. And I would be leery of the services of a personal chef too, unless he comes recommended by people who eat really healthy, because you obviously won't be able to tell if he or she cooks with too much salt or fat, since you're used to restaurant fare.

Ugh. That's the evil of having too much money right there. You're an example of what not to do, OP.

And for the record, I couldn't cook when I had DC1. I decided I would eat and cook healthy meals for his sake, and managed to achieve this in a few years while working more than full-time. I spend $700-800 a month at Whole Foods for a family of 4, and cook mostly from scratch.

Come on, learn to cook.
You and your husband can learn with your kids, it will probably be a really meaningful experience!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Sorry, I confess to looking down on people like OP. Actually I'm scandalized.

Just because OP can afford to, OP is missing out on this essential life skill, and eating out constantly which is extremely unhealthy - even if you always pick what you imagine to be healthy options, they're always much too full of hidden fat, sugar and salt! And your children have been eating like this since they were on solid food???!!!

You are hurting your family's health, OP, by eating like this. And I would be leery of the services of a personal chef too, unless he comes recommended by people who eat really healthy, because you obviously won't be able to tell if he or she cooks with too much salt or fat, since you're used to restaurant fare.

Ugh. That's the evil of having too much money right there. You're an example of what not to do, OP.

And for the record, I couldn't cook when I had DC1. I decided I would eat and cook healthy meals for his sake, and managed to achieve this in a few years while working more than full-time. I spend $700-800 a month at Whole Foods for a family of 4, and cook mostly from scratch.

Come on, learn to cook.
You and your husband can learn with your kids, it will probably be a really meaningful experience!

When do you prep all your dinners? How long dos it take you to actually cook them?