Dream Dinners: Turn Dinnertime into Family Time with 100 Assemble-and-Freeze Meals

by Stephanie Allen, Tina Kuna

"What's for dinner?" If the sound of those three words sends you reeling or, worse, straight to the nearest fast-food chain or take-out joint, then relax. Dream Dinners will change all that forever. With their new cookbook, Stephanie Allen and Tina Kuna, founders of Dream Dinners , bring the successful philosophy behind their hundreds of assemble-and-freeze-meal stores across America into home kitchens. Dream Dinners offers up one hundred recipes for flavorful meals made with easy-to-find ingredients. The premise is Scoop or pour ingredients into baking pans or plastic bags, then store the uncooked dishes in the freezer. Later in the week or month, when dinnertime rolls around, just pop one of the frozen meals into the oven. Each recipe is provided two One, prepare just one meal for the night, or two, prepare enough for three meals and freeze the other two. Dinner after sports practice, music lessons, and play rehearsals has never been easier! In addition to recipes for hearty, family-pleasing classics such as Baked Pesto Ravioli with Chicken, Beef and Zucchini Casserole, and Cider-Braised Pork Loin Chops, Stephanie and Tina give a wealth of time-saving shopping tips and cooking pointers. More than for convenience, eating dinner together provides benefits for the whole family. Study after study shows that mealtime matters. Families who dine together form stronger bonds, and kids get better grades and develop lifelong healthful eating habits. Dream Dinners makes it easy for families to gather around the dinner table and share the ups and downs of the day. With Dream Dinners , you will spend less time stressing in the kitchen and more time connecting with family and friends.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Rochelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unique things about this cookbook:

- gives quantities for ingredients for a single dinner, and also for 3 dinners, so you could make 1 for dinner tonight, and freeze 2 for later. Gives good instructions on freezing meals and cooking at a later date.

- the recipes are unique and not your ordinary "condensed cream soup on chicken". So far I made Reuban Casserole, Pumpkin Ice Box cake, and Black Bean and Rice Salad. All of them were really good and definitely something new.

Looking forward to trying more of the recipes.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

My personal preference is for cookbooks that have pictures for each recipe, but I'm looking forward to trying quite a few of the recipes - I marked almost a third of the 100 in the book as sounding yummy and worth attempting. It's helpful to know that these recipes will work when frozen and several look to have the potential to become regulars on our family menu rotation.

There were numerous typographical errors in the recipes (go to their website here for corrected copies of 23 of the recipes) and several editing errors and awkward or confusing instructions. Without those, it would have been 4 stars...

For more book reviews, visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.

[Marsena Adams-Dufresne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these recipes are truly fabulous and I love being able to pull dinner out of the freezer. There are mistakes in the book, however, so using the recipes calls for using common sense, and I also found corrections listed on their website (you have to search for the corrections; they don't advertise the fact that 45 of the recipes had mistakes!). The concept and the basic recipes are solid enough that I'm willing to laugh at the horrible editing job.

[Jennifer Fluegge · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I have not done a full OAMC session, I have enjoyed several recipes in particular from this cookbook--My Big Dream Greek Pasta and Five Spice Grilled Chicken. There are plenty of other recipes in this book that I would like to try out...once I find the time. :-)

[Jolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found a number of good recipes in this one. I liked how it attempted to cut back on unnecessary fat in ingredients.

[Maureen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The recipes in this book were disappointing. Not much like what you get at Dream Dinners although there were a few good recipes.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't wait to try this out with some of my friends.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

excellent freezer cooking cookbook. My favorite recipes are the Kielbasa Bean Soup and Spicy Lime Chicken.

[Metro · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty simplistic.

Nothing special with these recipes. Very plain, boring in my estimation. Use Pinterest instead; save yourself the money. Seriously 20 words?