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Cook like a chef, no shopping required, with the power of Science!

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Science, L.A.’s offbeat tech incubator, has just launched its latest creation: FreshDish, a startup that aims to get families of all sizes cooking fresh, healthy food with minimal time and effort.

FreshDish has a delightful and simple premise: You sign up for a plan; FreshDish delivers tasty, fresh ingredients to your door. You cook ’em up in 30 minutes or less, and you get to eat an awesome meal with the people you care about most.

You can choose specific menus each week, or you can just let the chefs behind the scenes do the picking for you. Menus include such mouth-watering options as lamb meatballs, Thai green curry, and a protein-packed jambalaya. The company sends you two nights’ worth of dinners for the number of people you need to feed as well as recipe cards and cooking instructions; all the ingredients are pre-chopped and prepped and ready to go. And the ready-to-cook kits can cost as little as $8 per meal.

Check out this promo video:

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/48115957 w=500&h=281]

Granted, in spite of its en vogue subscription commerce model, it’s a bit of a stretch to call FreshDish a tech startup. But the same could be said for most of Science’s launches, most of which place more emphasis on revenue than on pure technology.

FreshDish does have an upcoming iPhone app. Today’s launch was accompanied by the announcement of a half-million dollar seed round from Battery Ventures, as well.

And that’s absolutely fine with the Science team. As Science co-founder Mike Jones (a former MySpace CEO) told VentureBeat in an interview, “In L.A., there’s not that many large tech companies, so there’s not too many opportunities to build out your team. But there’s more opportunity to build out your revenue … People here want to build real businesses with profit, [and] we’re gonna build a whole breed of businesses over the next year that are incredibly successful.”

Such success comes not from high-tech bells and whistles but from something much simpler: Are the entrepreneurs in question building something people want?

Obviously, we all know that even though family meals are important for us socialogically, fewer folks have time to cook and eat together, let alone shop and meal-plan. For those who have the information and the budget, FreshDish offers a dang attractive solution.

Another recent Science launch is also at the intersection between food and wellness. Called Urban Remedy, the startup is a subscription service and online information hub for fresh, organic juices, the kind yoga enthusiasts and repentant partiers choose to detox, cleanse, and boost immunity.

Will Science’s oddball bets pay off? We’ll report back soon from an upcoming chat with its founders.

But for now, we’re actually considering a FreshDish subscription — it’s just what this writer’s dual-income-no-kids household needs. As ye olde husband just remarked when I showed him the site, “It sounds so nouveau riche — but it’s so practical at the same time.”

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