Cooking: Well Fed Studio Meal Assembly Classes

Dear Vancity Girlfriends,

I love cooking and having homemade meals that are healthy and easy to make.  I've watched cooking shows such as Jamie Oliver's 15 minutes meals and Gordan Ramsey's Best Restaurants to see how to go from home made comfort food to gourmet restaurant meals.  

However even every foodie loving chef has to take a break once in a while so when my girlfriend suggested that we attend North Vancouver's Well Fed Studio and meal assembly class, it didn't take me long to say "Yes!".  So Vancity Girlfriends went to our first meal assembly class on October 15th.  

Well Fed Meal Assembly class is where we "assemble" or "put together" eight dinners that will feed 4-6 people each.  There is a menu that you pre-order from before you attend the class and you can double order the dishes that you like.  There are snacks and drinks (even white wine) served during the two hours of the class.  I had never heard of this idea before but the class sold out so we were lucky that we signed up early.

The cost of the meal assembly class for your eight meals is $238 per person.  The hardest part for me was making space in my apartment sized freezer for the meals.  

When I arrived at the class, they already had our first tray of ingredients all ready for us and our own individual recipe books with our names on them.  Everyone did the recipes that they each choose in the order of their recipe book.  All the ingredients were wrapped in different bags for the different meals that you chose.  Even though initially I thought that meal assembly would be easier than cooking, it was still a LOT of work.  We were busy assembling the meals during the entire two hours.  Everyone else seemed to know what to do and had been there before.  Since it was our first time we had some catching up to do but Carolyn was on a roll and got to work right away as I was sipping on my wine ;)  

The recipe book provided instructions on how to assemble the meal.  Put the ingredients in different ziploc bags, add the spices, pack it all together in ziploc bags or containers and then slap cooking instructions on it.  Most of the ingredients would be in the bags but the staple ingredients and fresh herbs were in the middle of the table for everyone to use and share. 

With the stuffed chicken breasts, we had to put the stuffing and tie the breasts before we put them in containers to freeze at home.  I really liked the fact that most of the recipes that I choose were intended to be put in large ziploc bags because that saved a lot of freezer space for me.  I also liked that since we were assembling the food, I could choose which meals I wanted to separate into smaller portion sizes.  It was work but the good news is that I didn't have to do any chopping, or dish washing.  All of the shopping and preparation was done for me and I didn't need to buy a bunch of different spices that I might only use once or twice.  A few of the recipes such as Chicken Tikka Masala and Beef Tangine had over 10 spices in the recipes.  

Overall we both liked the meal assembly class and it was a great idea to try it out.  Now we just need to actually thaw and cook the recipes at home to see what they taste like!  

Well Fed Meal Assembly Class Website