WEST DES MOINES, Iowa -- Putting a good meal on the table every night can be a daunting task, but there’s a new option to help feed your family.
The Mills Civic Hy-Vee recently started offering a DISH Cooking Club. Registered Dietitian Julie Gieseman explains, "So everybody can just come in, cook one time, spend a couple hours cooking a week's worth of meals."
And, you don’t have to be a chef to be a part of it. Brooke Achenbach says, “My friend set it up, and I don’t like to cook. So, feed me wine, and I’ll cook for everyone else and get all these meals. It seems like a good deal.”
The program is simple. You get a group of friends together, Set a date and submit your favorite recipe a few weeks before. "I am making ham balls," Megan Anderson said while making eight meals of it. “This is one of my mom’s, so I’ve been making it for a while.”
If you don’t have one, you can pick from a healthy database. Then, you show up to the store’s club room that night and start cooking. Bridget Godes said, “I’m going to set up a little assembly line, and everybody walks out tonight with eight breakfast burritos.”
Gieseman said the meals can last for a week or more. "Depending on how big your family is, and how big of appetites they have, some of those recipes, even one recipe we ate off four times, so it lasted us about a month."
From the storage containers to the spices and all the ingredients, a staff member does the shopping for you. The cost is then divided by all the participants, including a $100 fee for using the facility. Gieseman said, "On average, I would say most of our customers are usually right around $100 or so."
Price depends on the number of cooks and ingredients. Organic meats and pre-cooked and cut items will cost more. The program began in Bettendorf. The Mills Civic Hy-Vee started offering it a few months ago, with plans for more locations to dish up the cooking nights there. Gieseman said, "I know the Ames store is offering it. The new Ankeny store is planning on offering it. Altoona is offering it in the near future as well."
Participants say the best part may be the dishes are done for you and you have a cooler full of meals to take home. Anderson said, “It’s kind of nice. It’s fun. It’s close to home. They seem to do a lot of prep work for you. There’s no fighting on who has to do the dishes.”
You can also get wine and appetizers to share. Most people still only pay $120 to $130 for their eight to nine meals plus snacks and drinks.
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