Miraculous Meals brings dinner back home By KERRI SNELL, Sentinel Staff Writer Wednesday, February 22, 2006 12:14 PM CST Dave Jarrett, Deb Koehn and Maddy Petz assemble meals at one of the food stations in the newly built facility for Miraculous Meals, 1321 N. Highway 81 Bypass. With both parents working, and families busy with church, sports, music lessons, and all the activities that define the family in 2006, the family dinner table has become more of a revolving take-out door than a place to bond, share and unwind as a family. Miraculous Meals, a business owned and operated by Don and Tammy Rose, can assist harried families in bringing back the sanctuary of the family dinner table, providing families with 15 assembled entrees each month, which can be stored in the freezer and thawed and cooked according to directions provided on the freezer package. Miraculous Meals recently moved to a new facility, located at 1321 North Highway 81 Bypass, and a ribbon cutting and open house have been scheduled for Friday at the Miraculous Meals Building. The ribbon cutting will take place at 10 a.m. Friday, followed by an open house from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., during which time the public is invited to come and sample some of the meals provided through Miraculous Meals. Miraculous Meals started two years ago with assembly of the meals initially taking place at Central Christian College. Since that beginning, the business has grown from five families to more than 250 families who sign up each month for one of several food-assembly session times in which a customer arrives at the Miraculous Meals facility with a large cooler and spends one-and-a-half to two hours going from station to station assembling the meals according to user-friendly instructions. Miraculous Meals staff members always are available to answer questions during the assembly time. At each station, customers will find the ingredients, measuring tools, written assembly instructions, labels -- essentially everything needed to make an entre, whether it is Grilled Italian Steak, Quiche-in-a-Bag, Montreal Chicken or Lazy Day Lasagna. Whenever warranted by the recipe, meat already has been precooked to facilitate the food assembly process. “We estimate that we save our customers at least 30 hours each month in shopping time, food preparation time, and cooking and kitchen clean-up time,” said Rose, who became an expert on bulk cooking by participating with friends in the 󈬎-Day Gourmet” system as a means of saving time and providing well-balanced meals for her family, which includes her husband, Don, and their children, Zach, 14, Jenessa, 9, and Tanner, 7. Rose has over a decade of experience with bulk cooking and freezing meals for her own family. For an additional charge, Miraculous Meals staff will assemble the meals for pick-up. Meals must be ordered two weeks before assembly date and payment is due one week prior to assembly date. Rose continuously tests recipes and promises to rotate five different entrees each month, with the inclusion of two new recipes each session. The entrees are made from chicken, beef and pork, which Rose orders from Krehbiels Specialty Meats, Inc. At least one of the entrees each month is a breakfast dish, such as baked French toast, or a breakfast casserole, which qualifies because of protein value as a main course. Rose stated that she is working toward providing a diabetic menu at the request of a local doctor. More information is available at 241-1411 or online at www.miraculousmeals.com.