November 2 will be our seventh anniversary as Dream Dinners customers. The unique part is we are a father and daughter team. Until I retired from teaching, my father who was 87 at the time tried to have dinner started before I got home. We were getting pretty tired of our small repertoire of entrees—meat loaf, spaghetti, stroganoff, Mexican chicken, and stuffed peppers. My father has macular degeneration, and it was becoming very difficult for him to read recipes.
I had heard about Dream Dinners in the newspaper and on TV, but only discovered that there was one close to us in Parker, Colorado in 2005. After our first visit, we were hooked. We have only missed two months—April 2006 and July 2007 since then. We made up for it by even going twice a month a couple of times. In July of 2008, we took Pulled BBQ Pork in a cooler packed in dry ice on the plane. My father celebrated his 90th birthday in Columbia Falls,Montana and we brought enough Pulled Pork to feed 50 people. What a hit that was!
My father often remarks that he has not had a Dream Dinners meal that he didn’t like. He was getting a little too thin before Dream Dinners. At his age, I thought that he needed to put on a little weight. He is now at a perfect weight at age 94 and very healthy. I didn’t need to gain any weight—and I never have. We only spend about $250 a month for our evening meals. I usually plan how many meals we need before our next session the following month. We always make the six serving entrees and divide each in thirds after thawing for three evenings. Typically we have one dinner on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Then we open another for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Saturday we have pizza and start all over again on Sunday. We love the freshness of the dinners and the ease of the preparation. Because I have a couple of food allergies, I just leave out those ingredients when I am putting the meal together. The preparation time during our session is the best part. I usually can make 6 to 9 meals in one hour time. I love that there is no buying ingredients that will probably be thrown out because I can’t use them up. The best part is no clean up. We even have our own personal aprons at Dream Dinners.