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Career Momma Investigates the Quest for Easy Dinner

Our columnist searches for an easy dinner for a working family.

Featured Author:

Brittany E. Hudson

Brittany Hudson is a seasoned business professional living on the South Shore of Massachusetts with her husband, Greg and 18 month-old daughter, Carli. Brittany has become an advocate for working families in America and is working to create a strategic resource for working families to find balance in family and career life as well as political action for the rights of parents in the workplace. Brittany writes a weekly column about being a working mom.

Check out her blog, Career Parent.

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More articles from this author:

• Smile! Put Your Best You Forward
• Hubby's Getting a Raise; Should I Quit My Job?
• Facing the New Boss Whose Job I Wanted

It seems that a growing craze these days are these places where you can put together meals in little baggies and containers and then take them home and make them at a later time. I have to admit, this did somewhat intrigue me when I first heard about it from a friend, but I didn’t really do much in the way of checking it out. Now I think I see one variation of the concept in almost every town. I was thinking they must be on to something, they are cropping up faster than the crab grass on my lawn. Being the investigator, I had to see what the big deal was about.

Seems fun at first. They certainly are marketing to the working family. They sell visions of you getting together with your friends, laughing and leisurely putting your week’s worth of preplanned meals into all these little containers and strolling out with your dinners for the entire week. Simply take out of the freezer and – BANG! ZIP! – a gorgeous, delicious home-cooked meal that your family will rave about for days on end. I mean, who wouldn’t want that? I come home after over an hour of driving home in traffic in a suit to a screaming toddler who wants both mom and dinner right now and would prefer to hug me with a fresh coating of macaroni and cheese on her hands and face. The very idea of being both Betty Crocker and Mary Poppins at the same time is pretty attractive. Not to mention, the idea of me and a few of my friends preparing dinner together. Sounds like working mom Nirvana to me.

Then there is reality. As I said, I am an investigator. I did my homework. I wanted to know. What is the real difference between the supermarket and preparing things ahead of time on my own and going to these little Dinner-in-a-Baggie joints. There are quite few. I can tell you, if you don’t want to watch your weight, cholesterol, or sodium, run (don’t walk) to the nearest one. Oh wait, you need to sign up for an appointment. I don’t need to do that at the supermarket. Can you imagine needing a reservation to do grocery shopping? That is another thing, this idea is not saving me a trip to the grocer. I have to do that for everything else anyway. You can’t get milk and toilet paper at these places.