Ready! Set! Assemble that dinner!

MILFORD -- It's 4 p.m. and you've spent most of the day at your desk, struggling to meet a deadline. Now you're stuck in traffic, en route to pick up your children from two different sports practices. You have absolutely no idea what's for dinner, but somehow the notion of yet another night of takeout seems unfair to the family.

This might not be your daily struggle, but odds are that if you're working and raising a family at the same time, it happens often
enough. At least that's what the people at Dream Dinners here have decided.The Massachusetts franchise of a two-year-old Seattle-based company, Dream Dinners is a commissary, open Thursday through Saturday, where you can go to assemble meals from ingredients provided. Customers also receive recipes and access to the equipment necessary to make the dishes on site. After several hours of work, six to 12 meals are ready to freeze until it's time to reheat them.

Dishes such as sesame chicken and old-

fashioned meatloaf with mashed potatoes are typical of the recipes here. Fancier meals for dinner parties include chicken cordon bleu and blackened cod with seasoned rice. Though prices for the meals vary, 12 dishes serving four to six people each cost about $180 and take roughly two hours total to assemble. The process of putting everything together goes relatively quickly, with the owners on hand to guide people and no one having to chop or wash a thing. "We're not trying to replace cooking," says

Ann Marie Parness, who owns the franchise with two partners. "We're just offering help for those busy days and nights." Adds co-owner Tiffany Duda, "We want to make it easier to bring families back together around the dinner table." The kitchen here is an immaculate, open space with well-stocked industrial shelving, refrigerators and freezers around the perimeter, and 12 well-stocked work stations in the center of the room. It looks something like a restaurant kitchen. What's missing is what you have to do at home: use the oven or stovetop to heat the food.

Two or three recipes are posted at each station. Ingredients necessary to prepare each one are in metal bins built into the counter and kept cold by a refrigerator below. All vegetables are already chopped or sliced. Meats that have been precooked -- such as the beef for shepherd's pie -- are frozen; all other meat is uncooked. When customers come in, they are each given recipes for the meals they have signed up to make; they move from station to station, putting their dishes together, then take them home in zipper bags or disposable aluminum trays and tuck them into the freezer.

Every month, 14 menus are posted on the Dream Dinners website, with nutritional information for each. Customers sign up online and choose the six or 12 entrees they will assemble. In the kitchen, in sessions lasting from one to two hours, customers assemble each dish. When they're finished, they receive labels with specific cooking instructions and suggestions for side dishes.

Jackie Batchelder of Walpole, a first-timer, recently completed six meals in an hour. "I love to cook, but lately, with my girls' schedules -- sports and dance lessons -- it's hard to find time to cook healthy meals," she says. "It's nice to have everything chopped for you."

The menus and recipes are all planned at the Dream Dinners corporate offices in Seattle, but customers can tailor recipes to their families' or friends' preferences. A tortilla egg bake with sausage, for instance, can also be made in a vegetarian version.

"You can't really mess up," says Holliston resident Alice Meyer, who admits, "I am not a cook. I don't like preparing, cooking, or cleaning." On her first visit, Meyer followed each recipe to the letter, including the one for ground beef burgers. "The next time, I'll think more about the individual ingredients and make it more kid-friendly," she says. "My [12- and 15-year-old] kids ate the Swiss burgers, but I made it too complicated. Next time, I'd leave out the mushrooms and green peppers."

The cook-it-yourself business serves other needs in the community. "A couple of weeks ago two men who work in the area came to prepare for a sailing trip," says Parness. "They made 12 meals, packed them in a cooler, and were ready for their two-week trip."

Duda recalls a group of women who prepared several meals for a friend who had just undergone surgery. Others have made meals for new mothers, or to welcome new neighbors.

Joanne Mahoney went to Dream Dinners recently to solve a logistical problem. She was going away and leaving her three children -- 15, 13, and 10 -- with her mother. "My mother is older, and I thought this would make it easier for her," says Mahoney. Before she signed up, the Hopkinton mom reviewed the menus on the website with her children. Then she assembled the meals they picked out together. "It helped my mother immensely," says Mahoney.

The dinner venue also serves as a place where friends can cook together. Esta Campbell, a Marlboro resident and the business manager of a publishing company, says, "I usually go with a friend, but if you go by yourself, it's still fun. You put the meals together and socialize."

Campbell, who is married with no children, says that since she started going to Dream Dinners, she and her husband have seen their food bills decrease. "Before, we spent about $100 a week on groceries. And we ate out three or four nights a week because I'd get home from work and be too tired to cook. Now, I pay $90 for several meals, our grocery bill is down to about $40 a week, and we only eat out once a week."

All the advantages of home-cooked, without ever having to pick up the chopping knife. Dream Dinners is at 206 E. Main St., Milford, 508-473-1888, or go to www.dreamdinners.com.