5 Dinners, 1 Hour Review

Website: http://5dinners1hour.blogspot.com/
Cost: $5 a month, billed $15 every 3 months.

The idea behind this menu mailer is simple and practical.  You spend one hour each week preparing meals.  Meals are then stored in the refrigerator and cooked throughout the week.  Each week contains at least one meal that can be frozen.

I was very enticed by the idea of spending just one hour in the kitchen each week making dinners.  Think about how easy clean up would be!

When I received the actual menus though, I was highly disappointed.  First and most importantly, the recipes were lacking.  Almost every week contained one sandwich recipe.  The most disappointing was the ham and swiss cups recipe (which, coincidentally was reposted on her blog just yesterday).  Take some bread, tear it up, shove it in a muffin tin, put some ham on top, and then put a slice of processed cheese on top of that.  Am I really paying for this service?  The other recipes consist of casseroles and cream of something soups.  Most weeks called for very few fresh vegetables, and there was only one recipe in the two weeks I used them that we actually liked.  The directions are sometimes unclear, and often very simplistic (cook according to package directions).

While it seems like there could be a lot of flexibility in this menu system, there really isn't.  You have to think carefully about the recipes you'll eat at the end of the week.  Planning ahead will be crucial to ensuring that you end up with edible meals by day 5.

The format leaves something to be desired also.  The fonts change from box to box, the grocery list isn't on its own page for easy printing, and there are no graphics or pictures.  The very first month of my subscription, there were a few errors in the menu.  Items necessary for a meal were left off the shopping list, and extra items were on it.  I e-mailed the author asking for an updated version, and she said she was afraid she might mess something up if she tried to correct the problem.  We e-mailed back and forth a few times and the problem was never solved.  I promptly cancelled my subscription.  I have 3 months (12 weeks) of menus I just won't use.

If the recipes were tasty and healthy, I could look past the menu format and maybe even the poor customer service.  I definitely wouldn't recommend Make 5 Dinners in One Hour.  They might be ok if you're seriously strapped for cash as there are almost no fresh fruits or veggies which keeps the cost down, or if you're very strapped for time.  The kitchen was clean in under 2 hours.  I still think I'd find alternatives in those situations, though.  The menus are delivered in PDF format to your e-mail, so you can save them to your computer and in your e-mail.  They aren't posted on a website.

From this, I'll take a few ideas.  Chopping and preparing marinades in advance does save a lot of time on busy nights and creates less mess.