Michael McDaniel’s Dawning Awareness

Bonnie and I went to Designed Dinners last week. The Redmond location is located in a strip mall right downtown. We arrived and were handed aprons and glasses of wine—a nice start.

After a brief orientation, we got started. We went to each of the prep stations, where the ingredients for each entree were laid out. Assembly was quite quick, and kinda fun. We ended up with 10 gallon-sized Ziploc bags each of which contained an entree for four people.

You just let one defrost in the fridge overnight and then follow the instructions on the sticker to cook. It’s easy, fast, and yummy.

Not having to plan, buy ingredients, or get out and put away stuff while cooking is a real timesaver. At $4 per serving, I figure it’s also less costly for food. And we don’t have to worry about using up the rest of the ingredients we bought just to make a particular recipe!

Overall, a huge success. Oh, and they do give out nutritional info on the dinners, including point values for those on Weight Watchers.

We’re already signed up for next month!

Well, I find out tomorrow, I guess.

Bonnie and I are going in to our first Designed Dinners session. We’ll sip wine as we “assemble” 10 different entrees (serving 4 people each). Then we’ll take ‘em home and freeze ‘em. The idea is, you pull out one in the morning to thaw and cook it up that night. At $157 for 40 servings, that seems a very good deal for premade dinners, if they’re good.

Report will be forthcoming.

Okay, so you’ve got your house bolted down, you’ve got your month’s worth of emergency food and water, and you’ve got all your camping/survival gear together. You’re all set. Except what if disaster strikes when you’re away from home?

When I lived in California, some friends and I devised a template “doomsday box” for our cars. This was California, remember, so public transit didn’t figure into the picture much—everyone drove. So, if you weren’t home, you were probably near your car.

Even living in the Seattle area, I still think the odds are I’ll be near either my car of my home. So, I’m re-creating the doomsday box for our two cars:

• 2 liters of water
• 1 box of Balance bars (200 calories, balanced carbs/fat/protein)
• 2 changes of adult clothes (they’ll still cover kids in a pinch) including sneakers
• first-aid kit
• flares
• fire extinguisher
• jumper cables (why keep ‘em separate?)
• 50’ twine
• duct tape

The key, of course, is getting the smallest possible usable items since you likely want to put other items in your trunk from time to time.