Eileen Lamy and her son Matthew, 3, make herbed pork roast at Make and Take Gourmet in Manchester. Children are welcome to help their parents at the shop's kitchen stations, but the youngsters also can hang out in a kid-friendly lounge area. (DAVID LANE/Union Leader)

Voltaire, the 18th-century French philosopher, wrote that “nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.”

Eating and drinking are certainly pleasures. It’s the part about cleaning up that gets most of us.

Tiresome (and, you can add, time-consuming) is the best way to describe the chore of washing pots and pans, mixing bowls and measuring cups. There is nothing pleasurable about working all day only to have to come home, prepare a meal for the family and then clean afterward.

But what if you didn’t have to go to the store to buy the meat? Didn’t have to chop up the vegetables? Didn’t have to clean up the counter or wash the bowls after you were done mixing the ingredients?

What if all that was done for you? What if you could prepare a couple of weeks’ worth of meals or more in less than two hours? And, what if you could do it all as you were drinking wine, eating hors d’oeuvres and getting together with friends and co-workers?

Then you would have a night out at the Make and Take Gourmet. The store, New Hampshire’s newest meal preparation kitchen, is in the Maple Tree Mall on Hooksett Road in Manchester.

The last thing Nancy LaPorte wants to do at night is make dinner, so she jumped at the chance to join a group of teachers and staffers from North Elementary School in Londonderry for a weeknight party at the Make and Take. LaPorte, a music teacher, is married and the mother of two teenagers.

“The convenience is awesome,” LaPorte said as she assembled crispy onion chicken.

Owners Helen and Seth Williams opened the store in December, making it the first Make and Take in New England. Helen, a Manchester native, fell in love with the concept while living in upstate New York.

The first store opened two years ago in Cicero, N.Y., and there are now 15 stores in New York, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Maryland and California.

Make and Take is not the first food preparation kitchen in the area. Dream Dinners has locations in Bedford and North Hampton, and Super Suppers has a store in Windham. In addition to those franchises, the two largest in the industry, there are also independent owners in Amherst (Dinner Solutions), Merrimack (The Stocked Fridge) and Portsmouth (Dinner’s Done). But Make and Take goes a little further than most to make the experience feel like something more than kitchen work.

HELEN WILLIAMS

While some other chains do not allow children or walk-ins, Make and Take accepts walk-ins and the store is set up to include a separate area that gives you the feeling of being in a living room, so kids can watch television or play with toys or even join in as their parents assemble the meals. And it’s BYOB, so you can bring along beer and wine to enjoy as you work.

On their Make and Take night, the women from the North School spent as much time in the living room area talking and tasting the samples Williams set out as they did preparing meals.

The best part of the night for North School staffers Michelle Sossei and Sharon Cullivan seemed to be putting the meals together. While they were only getting a couple of meals on this trip, Sossei said her daughter regularly goes out to prepare meals for her family of four. The thought of saving time while making fresh, healthier food, and not relying on fast food, is appealing.

“She’s giving them healthy food and they get to spend quality family time together,” Sossei said.

There are 16 different entrees that can be made each month — January’s menu included crunchy coconut salmon, buffalo chicken soup, chicken drumsticks Diablo, Mexican meatballs, butternut squash ravioli, garlic-lime pork chops, calzones and spinach and asparagus risotto bake — as well as oven-ready side dishes that include garlic herb mashed potatoes and spicy corn bread. Prepared meals are also available.

Marcia Fowler and Paula Gosselin, both of Manchester, show off their finished and packaged creations. (JIM FENNELL/Union Leader)

The meals, which may be frozen for up to two months, can be tailored for just a couple of people or a family of five or six. The price per person for each entrée is around $3 and preparing the food is simple. The directions are easy to follow and the staff cleans up after you’re done. Most of the meals are packaged in foil pans that can be reheated in the oven.

Make and Take is open until 8:30 p.m. most weeknights, but Williams doesn’t hurry anyone out the door. Part of the store’s appeal is that no one feels rushed, making it more like a dinner party rather than a place to make dinner. That’s how three women who came in after the North School group felt as they casually talked while waiting for the calzone station to open.

“I read about it and I thought it would be a cool thing to do for a girls’ night out,” said Jennifer Woodfin of Nashua, who was there along with friends Jenny Surrette of Litchfield and Erika Lindquist of Amherst.

“I always cook the same thing and I wanted to learn to cook something different,” Lindquist said. “And, again, it’s an excuse to come out with the girls and have some wine.”

Voltaire would be jealous.

As a business model, it’s cooking

By JIM FENNELL
New Hampshire Union Leader

What started out as a “community cooking session” has turned into one of the fastest- growing business ventures in the food industry.

Kay Conley’s Month of Meals was a semi-regular program she started in the Seattle area in 1999. The idea of making a week or more worth of dinners and having someone else clean up the mess proved to be popular.

Since Month of Meals opened a permanent store in 2000 and Dream Dinners, another Washington-based company, became the first franchised operation in 2002, the concept of do-it-yourself meal-assembly kitchens has quickly taken hold across the country.

According to Easy Meal Prep, which tracks industry trends, there are now 1,353 outlets in the United States and 1,411 worldwide.

There are 453 franchises and independent operators, including six in New Hampshire: Make & Take Gourmet in Manchester, Dream Dinners in Bedford and North Hampton, Super Suppers in Windham, Dinner Solutions in Amherst, The Stocked Fridge in Merrimack and Dinner’s Done in Portsmouth.

“It’s not like someone woke up one morning with a ‘eureka!’ moment,” Easy Meal Prep president Bert Vermeulen said. “This evolved out of freezer cooking.”

Vermeulen said Conley expanded the idea by using a Web site to organize large-scale cooking sessions, where people would cook and prepare meals for several hours and then take them home to freeze. The concept gives families, especially the person responsible for cooking, an alternative to fast food or take out.

“It’s cheap and easy to go out and have bad food somewhere,” Vermeulen said. “A quality meal at home is a real luxury. That’s the fundamental appeal.”

Vermeulen predicts the industry is not done growing.

“Most of the target market still doesn’t know this exists,” he said.

Vermeulen thinks the product could change from the one that Conley offered in 2000. He said Make and Take Gourmet, with its relaxed, kid-friendly atmosphere and partnership with Old Forge Pizza to supply bake-and-take pizza, is one of the more innovative franchises.

“Different businesses have different angles,” Vermeulen said. “The concepts are evolving.”