Well, what do you know? Somebody's taken the community kitchen idea and made a business out of it. From csmonitor.com: Cooking out, eating in.
The company is called Dream Dinners and, like more than a hundred similar outfits across the country, it functions as a sort of communal kitchen where moms and dads whip up a few weeks' worth of freezer-ready meals in just two hours. It's home cooking - without the home.
It works like this: Customers use a website to select a time and date along with the meals they'd like to prepare - herb-crusted flank steak, perhaps, or chicken mirabella. When they arrive at the session, ingredients have been carefully doled out into stainless steel containers.
The would-be chefs simply mix and season, prepping meats and fish and pizza for the oven. The prepared - but uncooked - meals are then bundled into freezer bags and aluminum containers. Cooking instructions are affixed and the trove is tucked into a cooler for the ride home, where each customer will stockpile a dozen ready-to-cook meals. [continue]
I'd rather start a community kitchen or cooking club myself, but I can see where it would be handy to have somebody else do all the planning and shopping.
Related
Dream Dinners - dreamdinners.com
A full plate: Meal-preparation firm signs up 36 franchisees - Puget Sound Business Journal