The Home Plate - A Dinner Alternative

After asking Wayne Andrews of The Home Plate to donate a gift certificate to the auction I did for The Church Health Center, he offered to do a demonstration of the service for me and some of my friends. In order to make it more beneficial for him, I decided to invite a couple of bloggers along with some of my other friends. Luckily, my lovely colleague Elizabeth Montgomery agreed to allow us to use her home for the demonstration. (I don't think I actually have used my stove in over a year.)

Anyway, I invited my friend Aislyn from work, Patrick from Safeguy, EJ from Cherry Blossom Special, and of course, Drue Deihl and Maggatron.

The Home Plate is a food service where they put together all the ingredients for a fantastic gourmet meal and all you have to do is swing by and pick them up. You skip the grocery store and don't have to buy a bunch of ingredients for a meal that you might only use one time. They break it down for you in three steps:

Order

You can place your order in a matter of minutes using their convenient website. Just visit the "Plan Your Meals" section and select a location, time and what meals you would like to prepare.

Each month they offer 14 or more delicious entrees to choose from. In addition, many of their dishes have alternatives that you may use to customize your order. To view this month's menu, click here.

Assemble

The moment you step inside, your Home Plate Meal Coordinator will greet you and make you feel at home. After a brief orientation,you will be directed to your personal cubby where your apron and order checklist will be awaiting you. After you have washed your hands, you will travel to each recipe station you have chosen.

Following the provided recipe you will scoop and pour the pre-cut ingredients for your meals into baking pans or Ziploc bags.

While you're assembling your meals, enjoy chatting with friends or introducing yourself to those at neighboring stations. We hope you enjoy all of the selected gadgets and toys we've gathered that will make your meal assembly a breeze! You can customize each meal any way you like. If your kids don't like onions, leave them out. You prefer extra sauce? Take extra... You assemble it the way your family likes it! Once you have finished assembling, you won't even have to worry about cleaning up after yourself. Our helpful assistants love to do that for you.

During assembly, you will be stowing each completed meal on your personal shelf. In two hours or less you will have finished assembling your incredible uncooked entrees, and you will have had fun doing it!

At anytime during the process feel free to take a break in the front of our store where we will provide you with some refreshments.

And now it's time to

Cook

When you're ready to eat one of your dinners just follow the complete and simple instructions on how to quickly prepare your meal using basic kitchen utensils. Soon you will have a delicious meal that feeds 4 people without any of the grunt work. No shopping, no clean up, no waste...just dinner at home......on YOUR plate!

After Wayne did is demonstration it was time for the most important part of the evening, the testing of the food:

Everything down to the Toasted Head wine was super fantastic delicious. I don't remember the names of every dish, but the garlic mashed potatoes, the baja seafood tacos, and the beef tenderloin dish were all stand out favorites.

And then there was dessert...

Posted by Rachel at September 21, 2007 12:50 PM | TrackBack