Today I went to Dinner by Design. I'm struggling with the right word to sum it up because "fun" is a little bit too bouncy and "pleasant" sounds stupid.
My daughter and I had some time together, and that was nice, and we joked a little and got silly here and there, but it was work. It took an hour and a half to make six entrees.
The chicken pesto pasta was one of the easiest things. The spaghetti was already cooked, and we mixed in some chopped frozen carrots and broccoli, plus a bit of mozzarella, and then took alfredo sauce that was already made, mixed in some pesto, and something else I can't remember. Maybe garlic. (We worked for an hour and a half on six recipes so it's a little blurry.) Put it in foil pans, slap a label on them, and done. No chopping, cooking the pasta or the chicken, etc. Nice. It must be a HELL of a lot of prep work, or they get all the veggies prechopped and frozen. I dunno. I wasn't completely impressed with how much chicken went in. Didn't seem like enough for 6 people.
Next we made bourbon bbq chicken. The chicken breasts (bone in) were frozen, so they were easy to handle. We basically just mixed a bbq sauce from scratch with ketchup, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, etc. The chicken goes back in ziplock bags and is now back in my freezer. (Not much marinade goes in the bags but you bring home a small container of it so you can baste while grilling)
The mahi mahi looks really tasty - a salsa with peach and grapefruit to go on top. I was kind of hoping to try that tonight, but I let my daughter pick (and, the fish fit in my freezer, the pan of alfredo didn't. )
The nice thing was that I could take each entree I made and split it in half. (They charge $10 total extra for the half size foil pans but it's worth it.) My kids are going to be a little hesitant to try some of the things I made, so I more or less said "Ok, you're going to try a few bites of the third portion each time, and I'll have your stupid boxed Kraft macaroni and cheese made too if you bail out on it. No worries."
The hardest one was the salmon patties, that my daughter had a REALLY hard time forming. I felt like maybe there wasn't enough egg or something to hold it together.
(OF COURSE that was what I double ordered....)
Tonight we're trying the plank grilled cornish hens, and the pesto pasta. Film at 11.
4 comments:
One of our friends back in Saratoga got us hooked on Dinner By Design.
Good stuff and perfect for those of us not so saavy in the kitchen.
the pasta was good but I effed up grilling the cornish hens. Photo to follow...
indirect heat
indirect heat
must remember....
There's been a bunch of discussion around the net about some of those dinner places. Another poster wrote about Dream Dinners(?) and I guess you make 12 dinners (she split them in half also as it's just her, dh and one child) and was pretty impressed with it.
I'm interested to read your experience with this one, just to mentally compare. I can't see me getting into this, and we'd never have a place out here in the woods, but it's interesting all the same.
oh... grilling is tricky stuff. I'll never forget my SIL's husband, who went out and bought 40 dollar steaks to try out his brand new "awesome-expensive" grill. (eye rolls)
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