Tasty Dinners That Save You Time and Money

Create your own customizable meals
With the economy in the red, and purse strings continually tightening, it’s safe to say everyone is working at least a little harder these days. Home cooked meals, however, are finally one area of your life where you can sit back and relax.

Moms, Dads or whoever else does the cooking can do something special for their families while taking pressure off their hectic days (and fine-tuned budget). The key to the equation? Getting your dinners fully assembled at Dream Dinners.

“We’re still very much word of mouth and that’s the only reason everyone in Pasadena isn’t doing it yet. Those people that have heard of us are doing it,” said Stephanie Irey, owner of the Pasadena franchise of the company cooked up in 2002 by two moms in Everett, Washington. “I think people think it’s too good to be true.”  And it just might be.

The easy way to describe Dream Dinners, is customizable, gourmet frozen meals. Instead of freezing cooked food, however, the ingredients are fresh and raw. And instead of just visiting the freezer aisle of you’re local grocery store, you’re choosing your own custom ingredients to make Dream Dinners taste-tested recipes. In other words, you get fresher food, better taste, and exactly what you want to eat!

It works like this: you set up an appointment at the store on East Colorado Boulevard, where you rotate through refrigerated recipe stations (which feature meals like sweet cider BBQ chicken or bacon and Swiss cheese quiche), where you assemble ready-to-cook meals from already prepared, uncooked ingredients. At home you store the meals in the freezer, thaw, and cook according to the instructions that come with the meals.

“The nice thing about Dream Dinners,” explains Irey, “is you get to customize all your meals. If you know that none of your kids are going to eat say red peppers, you don’t put those in your meal. We only control the portions of the protein. If there’s an ingredient that you and your husband or your spouse like but your kids don’t, you can put it in a little baggy and you can add it at the end so that you can completely customize your dinners.”

And there’s no membership required. Customers can purchase vary sized meal plans each month, but there’s no contract to keep buying. The minimum number of meal servings to choose from is 36, which translates into six, six-serving dinners or 12 three-serving dinners a month for an average of between $165 and $185 (It depends upon what you select. All entrees are individually priced). In other words, its cheaper than fast food, too.

Dream Dinners also makes sure that when you come to shop for the month, it’s a fun social environment too. They even sponsor kids night and a BYOB date night once a month.

“I don’t know how many times I go to the grocery store, spend a couple of hundred dollars, come home and say, ‘Okay, what are we going to eat?’” says Irey. “I still have to figure out what I’m going to cook. When you come home from Dream Dinners, you know exactly what you’re going to cook.”

Dream Dinners is located at 1274 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. For more information or to schedule a visit call (626) 796-7863.