Home Cooking Away From Home
Home Cooking Away From Home
Every month, Bakersfield Life sends the Dining Divas out to get the story of a local dining establishment. Lydia Rowles, Katie Kirschenmann, Penny Rafferty and Tracy Walker Kiser have brought you everything from reviews of local restaurants to their own home-cooked meals. This month, the divas look at a somewhat new style of business that will give you the opportunity to have a home-cooked meal without cooking at home.
With two businesses in town offering this service, Dinner MyWay and Savory Solutions, the divas visited the latter to bring you a new idea on how to bring your family to the table.
Home Cooking Away From Home
Lydia - Rarely does a week go by without at least one after-work meeting, practice or appointment. Whether it’s shuttling my son to baseball or rushing my daughter to dance, something always comes up that makes dinner a challenge. True, we often resort to the just- pick-something-up-on-the-way-home tactic, but frankly, we’ve done fast food takeout so much that even the kids are sick of it. So what to do when you’ve memorized every flavor of Hamburger Helper and the pizza place recognizes your voice when you call?
Katie - At Savory Solutions, you pick dishes from their menu, roll up your sleeves, put on an apron and assemble them yourself. Trust me, this is fun for even those who can’t stand the kitchen. They pre-prepare a number of ingredients and then you pick your menu and go about putting the meal together. Each dish has its own station with a refrigerator, countertop and utensils for the ingredients in the chosen meal. You compile the ingredients into containers and freezer bags and voila! You have a meal ready to bake that night or put in the freezer for later.
Lydia - Like any popular restaurant, the first thing to know about Savory Solutions is that it’s really best to make a reservation at least 24 hours in advance. A great way to do that is to visit their Web site, www.savorysolutions.com, where you can explore their menu and check a calendar to see what time slots are available.
Tracy - We began the evening with some fun sampling of already prepared dishes that were fun and amazingly very good. The White BBQ Chicken had a sweet, pepper topping and was very juicy. The Fiesta Casserole was creamy and hearty. The Thai Chicken Pasta was filled with sweet and spicy flavor. And the Bam! Salmon was excellent with its hot, spicy peanut glaze. My curiosity was piqued because I could not believe all these dishes were just prepared in this kitchen.
The Main Dish – With No Dishes To Clean
Kristin’s Chicken
Lydia - Properly attired and with freshly washed hands, Katie and I headed over to the Kristin’s Chicken workstation. Kristin’s Chicken, along with Chicken Mirabella, Beef Enchiladas and Heavenly Cheesy Ranch Potatoes, are Savory Classic dishes. While the rest of the menu rotates monthly, these four dishes are always available. Kristin’s Chicken is described as chicken breasts smothered in mushrooms and cheese topped with crispy fried onions. It certainly sounded good to me. Katie and I were ready to get to work.
Each workstation has a sign with instructions for assembling each dish. First, we each took out a Ziploc bag of chicken from the meat refrigerator at our station. I noticed that our 2-3 serving sized portion contained three large chicken breasts. We put our bag of chicken in the supplied large black crock, opened it up and started adding ingredients to the bag according to the recipe. Once the spices had been added to the chicken, we sealed it and filled smaller Ziploc bags with additional ingredients: one for cheese, one for mushrooms and one for the crispy fried onions. When we were finished, all four bags went into one big Ziploc with the Kristin’s Chicken label we received when we arrived. That label not only identified what was in the bag, it also had the cooking instructions printed on it.
Heavenly Cheesy Ranch Potatoes
Katie - Lydia and I continued working together to make the Heavenly Cheesy Ranch Potatoes. We were laughing so much I forgot that we were actually working in the kitchen. I had to recount my cups of potatoes twice because Lydia was making me laugh so much. We were having a ball.
Lydia - We followed directions adding scoops of pre-cut potatoes and spices to large Ziploc bags and following with spoonfuls of ranch and shredded cheese into smaller bags. Properly prepped and labeled, the potatoes joined the chicken on our shelf in the refrigerator.
Chicken Mirabella
Penny - Tracy and I started with the Chicken Mirabella. The literature states this dish is a taste of the Mediterranean in one deliciously moist baked chicken dish.
Tracy - We read through the in-depth instructions, pulled out chicken breasts from the refrigerator and placed a Ziploc bag into the black container for filling.
We read through all the ingredients and started combining them. From the fresh chopped garlic to dried basil, the brown sugar and fresh prunes, this dish was easy to prepare being that all the measurements were available for use. It was so easy. We just picked up the measurement tool needed, scooped the ingredient and mixed it all together.
Beef Enchiladas
Penny - Tracy and I moved on to the beef enchiladas. This really was a two-person job. Tracy spread the red sauce on the tortilla and I stuffed it with meat and cheese. The meat is pre-cooked and pre-seasoned. We placed them in foil cooking containers to be placed directly into the oven.
Tracy - The sauce was also prepared and ready to go. In less than a half hour, Penny and I prepared two meals each to take home and serve our families. We not only had fun doing it but also were able to learn some great techniques to make cooking easier.
Back To School Apple Cake
Penny - The final dish was the Back To School Apple Cake, made with apples, cinnamon and yellow cake. The four of us made an assembly line to construct this. There was a lot of laughing trying to coordinate this simple dish.
Lydia - We went old school mixing the ingredients in stainless steel bowls. Scoops of sliced apples were mixed with yellow cake mix, pre-beaten eggs and spices and then smoothed into aluminum pans and topped with butter, walnuts and cinnamon. It smelled divine.
Passing The Taste Test
Tracy - I placed the Chicken Mirabella into a baking dish and cooked for 45 minutes, basting several times with the marinade sauces. The chicken was tender and juicy and full of flavor with the prunes and white wine sauce. And the Back To School Apple Cake – that filled the entire house with scents of cooked apples and cinnamon – was very good and not overly sweet with firm apples and buttery-nut topping.
Lydia - My son really enjoyed the Kristin’s Chicken saying he liked that it was juicy and soft. He also liked the melted cheese and crispy fried onions. My husband was impressed with the quality of ingredients, commenting, “You can tell this is made with good stuff.” Even my ultra-picky 4-year-old ate some chicken and the fact that she ate anything at all is a glowing endorsement of the dish’s appeal.
Penny - Our friends asked us what was for dinner the following Saturday. When I replied beef enchiladas, they decided that dinner was at my house. I added refried beans and rice to round out the meal. The enchiladas were a hit. After the first bite, my husband declared that I have to make those again. I think that he gave Savory Solutions the highest compliment: He wants to be a repeat client.
Lydia - The Heavenly Cheesy Ranch Potatoes were an instant hit. Mix cheese and ranch with potatoes and it’s always going to win at my house. What I liked was that the potatoes had lots of ranch flavor and just enough cheesy gooeyness. They weren’t swimming in sauce. The potatoes would make a great accompaniment to any meal but they seemed to compliment Kristin’s Chicken particularly well. The portion size was large. Even after my husband and son took two huge spoonfuls and went back for seconds, our 2-3 serving size still provided leftovers.
Impressions
Katie - As the mother of a 3-month-old, my time is spoken for. For me, Savory Solutions is certainly a solution. I can put a few meals in the freezer and not worry about the grocery store or cooking on those days when things get hairy. I can thaw out a casserole, heat in the oven and eat around the table while feeling good about what my family is eating.
Lydia - The meals themselves were easy to cook, froze well, used quality ingredients in good-sized portions and most of all, everyone in my family enjoyed them. But perhaps most importantly, Savory Solutions turned what would have been another night of fast food into a warm home-cooked meal that allowed our family to gather around the table and reconnect after a busy day.