San Diego Mom - Carmel Valley

The Junior League of San Diego is hosting a FREE family event on March 28 from 10am-2pm called Kids in the Kitchen.  It is an interactive health and wellness fair at the Toby Wells YMCA in Kearny Mesa that includes local chefs demonstrating/sampling healthy foods, fitness stations for kids, and more. 

Check out more information here: http://www.jlsd.org/?nd=kids_in_the_kitchen

I’ve never been to one of these events, but they’ll have interactive booths sharing information about health-related topics, such as reading a nutrition label, healthy snack alternatives, and the importance of wearing sunscreen and drinking water.  All good things.  Check it out if you can!

I haven’t been to this company but they are conveniently located in Solana Beach.  I have only tried ingredientz.com and that was largely from the menu selections.  The idea here is you pick menu selections and then go into the location and prepare the dish from fresh ingredients to be frozen at home and then taken out when you need a meal and cooked.  Less preservatives, more excitement then frozen food from the store and far better ingredients.

http://dreamdinners.com/ has the locations listed, select the location you want then select entrees and book a session.  I have friends who have enjoyed the meals here and recommended it to me.   

Though I’m not in love with the location in Poway as its far to go in the evenings when I visit, I really like this place.  Ingredientz is essentially a kitchen where they prepare the ingredients for various entrees you order in advance from their web site.  You go there then to put the ingredients (all fresh, not frozen) together based on their recipes and then freeze them before cooking at home.  The idea then is you have full meals to just put in the oven when you need to that are healthy, no preservatives and unique/tasty.

There are a number of these places in town.   But, when I review the menus, this one is my favorite as it routinely offers ethnic, flavorful choices.  http://ingredientz.com/

I have tried a number of recipes there, several are memorable and I have re-created them at home.  The chef there and owner is terrific and they really do go all out to make sure you have a great experience there.  Give it a try.  Its a real time saver and the cost is relatively good as compared with shopping.  No question having them do all the shopping, the chopping and organizing saves time.