Fake It Till You Bake It

Home-cooked meals? Sure, you whip them up all the time. You made Instant Lunch just yesterday and popcorn and mac and cheese over the weekend.

If only there wasn’t all that slicing and dicing involved – you’d love to serve something homemade and healthy if it was as easy as nuking it.

Meet Michi Harris, owner of Cooking Fresh For You. A self-taught chef with a long background cooking for parties and events, Harris now cooks for families every Tuesday and Thursday. Every month she loads a menu of dinner entrees onto her website, and customers log on, choose which ones they want, then show up between 3 and 3:30 to pick up dinner to take home that evening.

On the menu are choices like baked penne pasta with Italian sausage, chicken enchiladas or Thai green curry. Dishes make the list if Harris can cook them in a healthy way, and they are economical for families – so you’ll probably never see filet mignon or lobster on the menu.

But Michi’s cooking is a far cry from typical to-go meals. She aims to cook without frying, uses as little oil as possible, and achieves flavors with creative spices. She makes all her salad dressings from scratch to control the high-calorie oils and creams, and bakes rolls and breads that are whole grain. The meals each serve four to six adults, and are packed in special pans and boxes so that they stay warm until dinnertime.

So you can stick to making your dinner specialty.
A call for takeout.

Order dinners for pickup on Tuesday or Thursday. Menus and ordering information are online at www.cookingfreshforyou.com.