WENDI MAZER, a housewife in Long Island, has two-year-old triplets and struggles to find time to prepare the family meal. “I find it takes longer to prepare the meal and clean it up than to make it,” she says.

But Mrs Mazer’s life has been changed by the latest trend in American cooking — the fast-growing “meal-assembly” business.

Hundreds of “meal-assembly” centres are opening up across the US to help overworked mothers — and the occasional father — to bring home a “home-cooked” meal.

Selecting from the menu of the month, harried customers visit the centres to assemble meals from ingredients that have been pre-peeled, chopped or diced. The meals are packed up to be put in the freezer and later served at home. There is no agonising about what to cook, no time-consuming preparation of meat or vegetables and no washing up.

There are now an estimated 700 “meal-assembly” centres across the country — and they are opening up at the rate of 40 a month. The industry even has its own trade group, the Easy Meal Prep Association.

The centres, arranged like giant kitchens with different stations for each recipe, allow customers to prepare up to 12 uncooked meals in two hours.

For Mrs Mazer, this yields enough food to sustain her husband and three toddlers for a month. “I cook 12 meals and divide them into 24, because each meal serves 2-4 people, so we split each meal in half because my boys don’t eat that much,” Mrs Mazer says. “The food is definitely more interesting than I would cook at home on a regular basis.”

She also has more fun. At the weekend, she invited friends from her online triplets club to join her at the Super Suppers’ “meal-assembly” centre in Bethpage, New York. “It was a very social thing. We got a fun girls’ night out and were being productive at the same time,,” she said.

With more American families now depending on two incomes to survive, parents struggle to find time at home. About 68 per cent of American households have two people working.

The result is that the time that Americans spend cooking dinner has plummeted since the 1960s from 2½ hours to 30 minutes, according to market research by Mintel International and the NPD Group.

A survey found last year that 70 per cent of parents felt some type of stress associated with dinnertime. The study, commissioned by ConAgra Foods, said that 47 per cent of the stress came from deciding what to make, 23 per cent from preparing and cooking the meal and 8 per cent from worrying about having the right ingredients.

The “meal-assembly” business, which originated in Seattle in 1999, aims to remove the aggravation by providing the menu and the ingredients and cleaning up the mess. All customers have to do at home is to put the prepared meal in the oven or on the stove.

At Super Suppers, part of a national chain, customers can “assemble” 12 meals a month for $229, about $4 a portion. “My customers are busy people — people who do not have enough time to get dinner on the table because they have a job, or two jobs,” says Gina Scarda, a New York City police officer who started the “mealassembly” operation this year.

“It alleviates some of the guilt of going for fast food. You do not have to grocery shop. You do not have to figure out what is for dinner. You do not have to prep your ingredients. You do not have a dirty kitchen,” she explains. “It really saves 30-40 hours each time.”

Not all customers, however, are satisfied. Lisa Hayes, a business consultant in Long Island who is so busy that she regularly cooks dinner at 5.30am, says that her two boys, aged 12 and 7, missed their mother’s special touches. “Some of the ingredients tasted a little processed. My kids did not really like it too much,” she said. “The lasagne did not have any ricotta cheese. They said it tasted like pizza. They said it tasted different — but they still ate it.”

MAKING TIME

AND THE MEALS

Super Suppers presents: Tuscan “Hunter’s Chicken”

“A delicious dish featuring chicken, tomatoes, capers, garlic and Italian herbs. Served with yummy, fresh new potatoes”

Stuffed Shells Marinara “Parmesan, mozzarella, and ricotta cheeses fill a dozen generous pasta shells covered in our bold, herbed marinara sauce. Add a tossed salad for an Italian feast”

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