There was one of those franchised profiled in my home area of PA a year or so ago. It was doing a brisk business with folks who liked the home-made feel of the food, and the fact that they did the assembly, but didn't have the tedium of shopping/chopping prep.

About the mom of three, it's possibly less an issue of her not having the time, but that food prep for many has become such a low and unvalued use of time that she can't make time for it. For some it's just the next step in removing yourself from kitchen drudgery. Dishwasher anyone?

Perhaps she is active in her children's school? She may volunteer, or have interests at home that supercede cooking in her mind. I am a SAHM. One child is in 1st grade and one is home w/me. I know in high gardening season (heck-from May-October!!!) I find it hard to drag myself in to work on dinner! :^) I also paint, sew and do other artwork and at times have relied on DH to procure/prepare dinner.

I think most of the women in the generations before us spent a heck of a lot of their lives feeding and cleaning. Whatever works for her as long as her family is happy, healthy and fed.

BTW,

I agree that preparing homemade food for your family is a true art that is being lost. Many wives and mothers found great value and fullfillment in nurturing their families this way. Noone could cook like my grandma! The tables would sag during the holidays. She would do the main dish and at least 5-6 sides by herself. She also baked rolls/bread and at least 4 or 5 different kinds of pies.

Following dinner she and my mom did all the cleanup as well.

Also, your last two sentences made me laugh!

After I posted this I started thinking how the stay at home mom is the one who is usually in charge of little league, soccer team, scouts, what ever. people assume oh let her be in charge, just tell me how many bottle of water to bring. So you are right about not having anymore time than a work out of the home mother and also about cooking being next to drudgery. I like to cook, so I enjoy planning the menues for a week, and checking the grocery specials. Even as late as my 1980 Fanny Farmer cookbook there were recipes for left overs Heck, you cooked the big roast on Sunday so you could make those meals with the lef tovers. I am a dying breed. My kids tell me I barely made it into the 20th century and here it is the 21st.

we've tried Super Suppers here in the orlando area. food was pretty good thou after several meals in a row it was almost like eating frozen dinners or eating at a cafeteria day after day. each serving costs around $3. dh liked it so i let him finish the food. it was a time saver once we found the initial time to go to the place LOL. ~ liz

Here is a link that might be useful: super suppers winter springs fl

One of my bosses brought in info about this sort of franchise, one of which has recently opened near her upper-scale neighborhood. She and several others were very interested in the idea; I did note that the most interested people were also the ones who did the least 'home-cooking'... the average franchise-meal cost about $5 per serving, which I thought was high (oh well, the franchise has to make some profit), but certainly within that neighborhood's budget.

Imagine my surprise to find another branch of that same franchise open in an entirely different sort of neighborhood - which is not only a considerably lower-income area, but which has the county's best Hunan carry-out; not to mention that within a 1/2-mile are native-run eating establishments for Korean, Bolivian, Szechuan, Mexican, Vietnamese, Salvadorean, Italian, Japanese, German, Pakastani, and French cuisines, as well as a small pub I've been told is Irish. In every one of those places-except possibly the Irish pub, I can go in to get a superbly prepared, ready-to-eat dinner for four at approximately the cost of 2 franchise-servings. No membership fees. I don't think the franchise carefully studied the neighborhood.

It's an interesting concept, and perhaps fits in some societal circles, but I don't think it would fly here and it doesn't interest me in the least. I suspect a lot of it is the novelty involved. But, I don't have a problem whatsoever with the concept of it if that is what works for whomever. Anything prepared from scratch rates much higher in my value system than preprocessed foods floating in starch sauce and laden with preservatives and corn fructose.

I had to laugh at Tib's comments. Perhaps it's because we live in the same general geographic area, but my cooking is done pretty much in the same manner it was a century or two ago. I have access to fresh veggies, orchard fruits, local meats and dairy. I multi-task when I cook. So what if a piece of meat takes four hours? So, what if a certain meal take several stages of preparation? With modern stoves and freezers, the appliance doesn't need to be monitored to stoke coals or anything. Actual time cooking is not that much. Less than it would take me to drive somewhere to cook it, that's for sure.

My brother was all excited about this great new pre-prep idea(he does not cook) until he found out that the frozen things he would prepare at the store and take home to his freezer still required heating with a saucepan, baking in the oven (whassat??), or adding (gasp!) side dishes such as vegetables to each meal. He wasn't interested after that, and continues to eat out.

I fixed fried sausages cut in slices and mixed in with frozen potatoes and vegetables from Trader Joes the other day and he went nuts for it. It took me less than 20 minutes from key in the door to fork in my food, but he didn't really want to know how to fix it. It's a mystery to me. The guy can fix a tank. Go figure.

I thought the $ per serving was kinda high for those pre-prep places. Especially if you still need to add veggies or rice. We've been doing a sort of half prepared meal thing from the grocery store. Our local organic market has some great stuff in the deli case and pre-prepped in the meat case. I get teriyaki chicken meatballs, mustard stout pork chops, peanut sauce chicken kabobs or a turkey garlic and who-know-what-seasonings meatloaf that is just awesome. And yeah, I could figure it out and make it a little cheaper myself, but that 8-5 job thing really eats up my day, so we buy a week's worth of half-prep, and it all cooks up really fast. I cook "for real" on the weekends. Pot pie or shepherds pie this weekend. Mmmmm. Can't wait!

It would be nice but these days with all the foriegn objects in food.Ill do my own cooking.steak on grill tonight..Its really not hard to put a nice nourishing meal together.I enjoy it.

No one heard of a crock pot??

You know, I use mine but not all that often. I have trouble finding good recipes. Can't stand anything that starts out "2 cans of cream of something campbell's soup". That alone cuts out 80% of the recipes. LOL! I do have a few that DH and I both like. But neither of us really like lots of leftovers. And a whole crockpot full is definitely more than 2 people can eat in 2 dinners. So my crockpot doesn't get the workout it probably should. I've got a recipe book on order that has about 5 recipes that I know I want to try, and hopefully some others as well, so maybe there's hope yet. :-)

I really enjoy the slicing and dicing prep work but then I only really cook 2 or 3 nights a week usually...when I'm in the mood...LOL I'd hate having to do it every night. On the other hand, I have a whirlwind all day session of cooking up pots of spaghetti sauce, French onion soup, Senate Bean Soup, beef/vegetable stew, etc. every few weeks for freezer. DH can put together a meal just as easy as I can...and so could DS by the age of ten. Anyone can cook rice or potatoes or pasta. Steaming fresh veggies is easy in microwave.

Dessert is usually fresh fruit salad or as is. I don't bake. Marvelous breads of all type available at grocery.

Keeping it simple works for me. I do wash all veggies and fruits and herbs and trim before storing in fridge...it might shorten keeping time but I find it easier if everything's ready for cooking. Plus I don't want the outer leaves of lettuce, etc. to contaminate my storage bin.

One thing I do insist on is no lo-fat anything...I want the real butter, whole milk and yogurt, etc. Tastes so much better. We perhaps once a month have a Classic Coke and only at others' tables a cake or pie so I figure it balances out. Poor DH used to ask for banana pudding or fudge "like Mom made" but he settles now for a baked apple or popcorn...lol josh

We are in our condo in Mexico and have found that there is not much use of prepped food here. I mean you do not use canned tomatoes you start with the tomatoes. It requires some adjustments in your methods. There is canned food but it is very expensive. For example I looked and looked for a corn popper but there was none to be had. They had pop corn but they made it by shaking them I guess. So I have done that for the last five years but this year, after listening to me grouse about it my sister brought me a corn popper as a hostess gift. Oh Happy Day!! It was not that I minded the shaking so much but sometimes I scorched it a bit trying to get thoses last few pesky kernals to pop. The crock pop works great down here because the meat is a little tough. Also because it is hot who wants to heat up the kitchen. Nobody seems to use crock pots, I don't know why.

I'm willing to bet that the most attractive thing about this franchise is the socialization aspect. Imagine being a harried SAHM. Imagine all the demands on your time and always having to be in charge of organizing and coordinating everything, but being expected to pull everything off because "you don't work." Not only would this be a nice excuse to socialize with grown-ups, but not having to be "in charge" would be nice too!

Also, a lot of women my age were taught to scorn anything domestic as somehow beneath us. As someone who has come to voluntarily embrace domesticity, I realize how much about cooking I didn't learn. Now mind you, I cook from scratch nearly every night, but if I were still working 60 hour weeks in the corporate rat race, that wouldn't be an option, and this would be a nice compromise. It would be a safe way to transition from processed crap to home-cooked if a person didn't intuitively know how to do it.

Ell, your words made me laugh. My one cooking rule is: No cream of something soup! My parents thought I was snobby about this, as nearly everything they made for us growing up contained this. I don't care for the taste or the sodium. And the MSG gives Steve nasty headaches...

My crock pot gets A LOT of use... but so do all my kitchen appliances. I enjoy cooking and consider it artistic expression. I'd never look down at anyone for frequenting one of these franchises... I think they make a lot of sense for a big segment of the market... but at this time of my life, they don't make sense for me...