Hot new trend

Grandma would never approve of something like this!

When we first heard about meal assembly kitchens -- where customers spend a couple of hours putting together a week or a month of dinners they can cook at home -- we thought the idea was ingenious. As we were reporting on the trend more than a year ago, half a dozen meal assembly places were set to open in the Washington area, all of them franchises of national chains such as Dream Dinners, Let's Dish!, Dinner My Way and My Girlfriend's Kitchen. Since then, the numbers have exploded.
The drill at the places is basically the same. You don plastic gloves and maybe a head covering and put together the ingredients for up to a dozen or so different meals. Think of it as a do-it-yourself meal kit, a cake mix writ large. Then you take the individually packed fixings home to your own freezer to be cooked as needed. Instructions are foolproof, meals are easily customized and the atmosphere's friendly.