Please Recommend Your Favorite Meal Preparation Place (i.e. Dinner by Design)!

Meals in a Bag (formerly Mix It Up Meals) is by far my favorite. The dishes are MSG free and the meat is hormone/antibiotic free. The prices are lower than Let's Dish and they send me awesome coupons by email. I have enjoyed all the meals over the years except 2. They also will donate a percentage of your $ to the school (maybe other charities too I don't remember) of your choice if you ask to sign into their book of donations. The monthly menu choices always have a wide assortment of beef, pork, chicken, fish/seafood dishes as well as some brunch type options. They have wonderful side dishes (breads, seasoned vegies, potatoes, etc.) available if you want.

Since we are a family of 3, I always order s many dishes as possible that can be split. And then I always order the maximum number of dishes for one setup charge. That way I really maximize my dollar power. The meals that can't be split (big roasts or other) I typically save for when we have guests or I will plan to send leftovers with DH for his lunch.

I have not used a meal preparation place. Instead I have used books form the library like Frozen Assets and gotten together with a girlfriend and we both make a months worth of items we use a lot and put them in our freezers for quick meals when we need them. I make meatballs, lasagna, herbed chicken and a few others that I can take out the night before or just take out frozen and pop it in the oven and set set the timer and go! Hope this helps. There are a lot of great books on it at the library and you can customize the meals to match what your family likes better!
C. Louise H. - disabled mom and Part time Latasia Jewelry Designer

I have tried Lets Dish and Sociale Gourmet and am happy with both of them. I think it depends on what style of food your family likes. My husband is a meat and potatoes type of guy, so Lets Dish meals work better with him. I prefer more of the saucy and vege meals, which works at Sociale Gourmet. If you can find a friend to split the 12 meal at Lets Dish it brings the cost down quite a bit. I have a friend I do that with and then split half of those so I end up with about 9 meals and dont pay much. Sociale Gourmet already has it where you can buy 2-3 person entrees or 6-8 people entrees, so you dont have to worry about doing the math of spitting them up. Check out their websites for their menus.

I always wanted to try one, but after talking with a friend who did it for awhile I changed my mind. She said a lot of the meals were very similar (lots of chicken dishes that only changed a couple of ingrediants) and there were a lot of them that they just didn't care for. She also said a lot of times they would take a meal out of the freezer the night before and then the next night decide that wasn't something they were in the mood for. Or they would have something come up and they wouldn't be home for dinner and then she would worry that it would go bad before they had a change to cook it. They decided it just wasn't worth the time or the money.

I have used Let's Dish, and have really liked it. Go online for coupon codes to get a discount. Don't try something you have never had before, as it would be too expensive to get meals you don't like. We do the 8 meal, but split it since we are a family of 3. so I end up with 16 meals. Becuase we had a few we didn't like initially, I often will find the 4 meals I like and just order 2 of each. They freeze well and you can eat them over 4 months. To make it more economical, order the meals that are heavy on the meat(there meat has been good) such as crock pot roasts, seasoned steaks, etc, and not the noodle based meals. I will go every 3 or 4 months just to have more options in my freezer, esp if we know we really like a meal, it has been more than worth it.

I've done Let's Dish and Get Cookin'. I like Get Cookin' better, and it's right by my house (whereas LD is a bit of a hike), which helps. Really I've found that there are very little differences between these places, though I like that GC has side dished included in theirs. What I like about these places is the ability to customize to my family's tastes, and that I can have a "home cooked" meal without worrying about a recipe or if I have all the ingredients. I'd get on the e-mail mailing lists for a place or two, because they frequently offer coupons via e-mail. Good luck!

I have used Let's Dish several times, but stopped because it was too expensive, and because we were often disappointed by the food. Sorry I can't be more help!