Creating cuisine

You can’t call it a kitchen, and food-preparation area is just too antiseptic a description for the funky workroom Lynn Alexander has created for do-it-yourself meal making. It’s a place she’s named Home on the Range, but it sure ain’t the Wild West.

With pastel walls, classical rock sounds, a pair of orange and blue couches, dangling art deco light fixtures and, as décor, 1960s-era food-preparation machines, this is a room obviously designed for fun, and Alexander encourages her customers to bring friends and a bottle of wine when they come here to create cuisine.

Alexander, a single mom, is the designer. Her two girls, Lily, 8, and Mae, 5, both adopted in China, are the painters who helped Mom put the place together.

The former owner/operator of Schlotzsky’s Deli in Coeur d’Alene opened her new establishment Feb. 1 to cater to folks on the go. Here they can slam together a month’s worth of suppers in just a couple of hours.

Great golf courses attracted Alexander to North Idaho 11 years ago from her previous life as a financial analyst for an energy company on Alaska’s North Slope.

And how did she learn the food business?

“From the ground up,” she says. “I worked as a waitress through high school in El Paso and through college at Texas Tech in Lubbock. Believe it or not, I learned to love it.”

Alexander says she modeled her new business after similar enterprises in larger cities, including Spokane.

It works like this: Call her or dial up her Web site and schedule a session, selecting entrees from an online menu. When you show up, grab the appropriate recipe cards, then assemble your meals by measuring the ingredients into the freezer bags or aluminum baking dishes that she provides.

When they’re together, slap pre-printed labels with cooking instructions on the containers, then take them home and slide them into your freezer.

“That’s the normal order of business,” she says. “But we can assemble meals for folks who are really pressed for time. They can pick them up here, or we can even deliver them.”

The cost per serving varies, she says, depending on the entree.

“For instance, a honey Dijon salmon dish won’t go as far as, say a lasagna, which can provide several meals. Overall, I’d say the cost works out to about $3.20 a serving.”

Alexander offers several options in amounts that depend on the size of your family and your home freezer.

For $180 and about two hours of preparation, a customer can leave with 12 packaged meals, each of which will serve four to six people.

That’s for large families.

For small families, customers can assemble the same amount of food, but in containers half the size, for $188.

“We offer other options, too,” she says. “Just give a call, and we’ll kick around the possibilities.”

Periodically, she hosts a “No Rules” day or night, when reservations aren’t necessary and customers can prepare as many or as few meals as they wish.

Alexander obtains her recipes from the Internet, cookbooks and friends, selecting those with ingredients that freeze readily.

None of the recipes follows specialty diets, “But,” she says, “you can modify them slightly by adding or deleting ingredients. The food is hearty and delicious, home cooking at its best.”

She adds that most menus posted on her Internet site include the amounts of calories, fats, proteins and carbohydrates in each meal.

Alexander buys ingredients from major distributors, including Sysco and Food Services of America. Then, she and an assistant dice the carrots, peel the spuds or tenderize the meat – whatever’s needed to ensure that all the customer will have to do is toss the ingredients together.

Most of her customers, Alexander says, are working moms, but she does get some couples. “And a few ladies send their husbands. The guys are a little uptight the first few minutes, but after a glass of wine or two they relax and pretty soon they’re gabbing with the women.”

Other customers have included ladies hosting baby showers, church groups, soon-to-be mothers planning ahead, families with loved ones in the hospital or friends of grieving families.

She’s even hosted a fund-raiser for the Special Olympics equestrian team.