(no subject)
Thanks to the loverly tenillypo, I got a free delivery of Hello Fresh this week, to try it out. So I figured I'd give you all a little review of it here. Why not!
Whew. After writing this I realized it got long, so
The pros: Getting boxes of stuff in the mail is fun, less time in the grocery store is a win, less thinking about meals for the week frees up my brain cells to read more Oh No They Didn't. Fancy organic meat that I usually am too cheap to buy myself at the store.
The cons: EXPENSIVE! Delivery schedule is kind of wacky (they only deliver in my area on Wednesdays), the produce is not necessarily the caliber that I would choose for myself at the store.
So I made a chicken & chickpea salad last night for Drew & I to take as lunches today, and tonight for dinner I made sloppy joes with a salad. I also have a pork chops dinner to make in the next couple of days. The food came out well, though I would say it was not any more or less tasty than food I usually make for us.
Level of easiness: Medium. I still had to chop up all the veggies, but there was less measuring of spices. However, everything is in little bags that need to be opened, so I think the time spent measuring spices normally is about the same as opening all the little bags. I feel like for that price I need a little bit more prep done for me to push it in the worth the money territory. Like, I stopped chopping garlic cloves when I had West, I just use jars of minced garlic, and haven't noticed a huge difference in garlicy quality in my meals. Hello Fresh sends garlic cloves you need to chop. It's a little thing, but these are all efficiency factors when I am rushing to get dinner made while pausing to put Lego guys together for West and hand him Ritz crackers and beg him to use the potty and wash his hands.
Quality of food: Medium. I think they shine with the meats, which are great quality, coming from someone who buys Market Basket brand meats. Veggies I felt kind of meh on. The big double shallot I got for the chicken dish had mold in the crevice between the lobes of shallot, so I had to toss half of it away. Tonight I was supposed to have a jalapeno for the sloppy joes, but they accidentally gave me an extra bag of garlic and no jalapeno. Not deal breakers, but again, if I was paying for this I would expect better. The salad greens were in great shape.
Overall, I feel like Hello Fresh is solving problems I don't have. I don't have trouble coming up with meal plans for the week, and for the prep & cooking it takes just as long as the meals I normally make for us. It's three meals a week, delivered on Wednesdays. Drew isn't home for dinner on Wednesdays, and I give up on cooking on Fridays and Saturdays, so it is bad time of the week for us personally. Since it's only three meals, and we also need lunch food, breakfast food, West food, and random snacks/ingredients every week, I would still have to grocery shop anyway. If I still have to shop, I can definitely get all of the items Hello Fresh sends waaaaay cheaper at Market Basket. So it's not really winning any economical or efficiency points for us. I am really glad I had a chance to try it out for free, though! I will definitely keep it in mind should my circumstances change. I could see this would have been really nice to have back in our 20s, but then again, my 20s was when I taught myself how to cook and how to plan meals, so I can be a meal planning, grocery shopping automaton now.
What I really want is some kind of healthy kid lunch service that sends me packaged up lunches for West to take to daycare every day for a week. That would be gold. That and grocery delivery where I'd trust someone else to pick out produce for me, which I can't really envision happening. I am picky about produce.
Whew. After writing this I realized it got long, so
The pros: Getting boxes of stuff in the mail is fun, less time in the grocery store is a win, less thinking about meals for the week frees up my brain cells to read more Oh No They Didn't. Fancy organic meat that I usually am too cheap to buy myself at the store.
The cons: EXPENSIVE! Delivery schedule is kind of wacky (they only deliver in my area on Wednesdays), the produce is not necessarily the caliber that I would choose for myself at the store.
So I made a chicken & chickpea salad last night for Drew & I to take as lunches today, and tonight for dinner I made sloppy joes with a salad. I also have a pork chops dinner to make in the next couple of days. The food came out well, though I would say it was not any more or less tasty than food I usually make for us.
Level of easiness: Medium. I still had to chop up all the veggies, but there was less measuring of spices. However, everything is in little bags that need to be opened, so I think the time spent measuring spices normally is about the same as opening all the little bags. I feel like for that price I need a little bit more prep done for me to push it in the worth the money territory. Like, I stopped chopping garlic cloves when I had West, I just use jars of minced garlic, and haven't noticed a huge difference in garlicy quality in my meals. Hello Fresh sends garlic cloves you need to chop. It's a little thing, but these are all efficiency factors when I am rushing to get dinner made while pausing to put Lego guys together for West and hand him Ritz crackers and beg him to use the potty and wash his hands.
Quality of food: Medium. I think they shine with the meats, which are great quality, coming from someone who buys Market Basket brand meats. Veggies I felt kind of meh on. The big double shallot I got for the chicken dish had mold in the crevice between the lobes of shallot, so I had to toss half of it away. Tonight I was supposed to have a jalapeno for the sloppy joes, but they accidentally gave me an extra bag of garlic and no jalapeno. Not deal breakers, but again, if I was paying for this I would expect better. The salad greens were in great shape.
Overall, I feel like Hello Fresh is solving problems I don't have. I don't have trouble coming up with meal plans for the week, and for the prep & cooking it takes just as long as the meals I normally make for us. It's three meals a week, delivered on Wednesdays. Drew isn't home for dinner on Wednesdays, and I give up on cooking on Fridays and Saturdays, so it is bad time of the week for us personally. Since it's only three meals, and we also need lunch food, breakfast food, West food, and random snacks/ingredients every week, I would still have to grocery shop anyway. If I still have to shop, I can definitely get all of the items Hello Fresh sends waaaaay cheaper at Market Basket. So it's not really winning any economical or efficiency points for us. I am really glad I had a chance to try it out for free, though! I will definitely keep it in mind should my circumstances change. I could see this would have been really nice to have back in our 20s, but then again, my 20s was when I taught myself how to cook and how to plan meals, so I can be a meal planning, grocery shopping automaton now.
What I really want is some kind of healthy kid lunch service that sends me packaged up lunches for West to take to daycare every day for a week. That would be gold. That and grocery delivery where I'd trust someone else to pick out produce for me, which I can't really envision happening. I am picky about produce.