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Don’t count on convenience foods to put dinner on the table faster. So says a report (which just happens to confirm my long-held suspicion) on working families’ meals from a researcher at the University of California-Los Angeles. The findings have implications for people promoting local foods.

If convenience foods do save much time, I further suspect, it is on the planning end, which UCLA archeologist Margaret Beck hints at. She suggests that people’s food choices are influenced by the food industry (we all saw the report about preschoolers and McDonald’s packaging, right?) and a reduction in people’s tendency to make grocery lists. She says:

When you don’t make a list, you don’t know what ingredients may be called for. So you grab food kits off the shelf. Then you know you have everything you need.

Although the study was limited in the number of families studied (32), it has the ring of truth, and it also has implications, I think, for those of us who believe there’s value in cooking unprocessed food, especially from local sources.

My friend Lynn, publisher of Growing for Market, tells me that farmers sell more produce when they offer recipe cards that use it. I’m wondering whether growers might want to go a step further and put together “food kits” at the market.

I can imagine a collective groan at the thought among growers, who labor long, hot hours for not-so-hot pay just to get the food from the farm to customers. Now they need to package it, too? Well, yes, I think, if they want to grow their customer base along with their products. (Heck, maybe they need to “brand” it, too, as producers such as Amy’s Meats have done, at least to a limited extent.)

Mercedes Taylor-Puckett has done a great job here in with the Lawrence Farmers Market e-newsletter, featuring appealing photos, recipes and promotions, including a monthly Market Meal giveaway. The meal is made entirely (save for, say, salt and olive oil) from market goods, and the basket includes recipes. She also prints the recipes and photo on a beautiful color postcard.

I don’t know whether the promotion increases sales of the specified items on those days (Mercedes, if you’re reading, let me know!), but what if the growers made such market meals for sale?

Imagine the possibilities: You walk up to a farmer’s table and find, alongside the pints of tomatoes and onions and so forth, a box with onions, beans, potatoes, rosemary and thyme plus a recipe for Packet-Cooked Vegetables (part of the July Market Meal, which I’ll run in another post).

Seems like a low-tech “value-added” opportunity for an enterprising grower as well as an opportunity to expand the consumer base for locally produced foods. If growers or market operators did something like that—and helped people eliminate the “plan” part of the equation for home-cooked meals—everyone benefits: the people who wind up buying and eating healthier, better-tasting foods, the growers who produce it and the communities that keep the food dollars in town.

Maybe some growers are already doing it. If you know of any, I’d love to know how well it’s working (or not).