My dear friend Jenny sent me a signup link for a grocery delivery service called "Hello Fresh" a couple of weeks ago. I was leery of such a thing but who am I to turn down free groceries? I'm so glad we tried it out! We made some awesome meals. And by we I mean Jackson did most of the work. As he put it to me nicely the other day, "Jenn, you lack knife skills. You follow directions well, but you can't chop worth a darn." True. Story.
So the deal with Hello Fresh is that they have a menu for the week and you get either 3 or 5 meals delivered at once. We went with 5 because they were free! You select the day of the week and timeframe you'd like the shipment delivered and then it appears! We were amazed at the packaging. It was really well planned. Each meal comes in a little box that is well marked and ready to be put right in the fridge until you're meal prepping. There is a gorgeous booklet with the week's recipes in it that acts as your guide. It even tells you which recipes should be made first for optimum freshness.
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| Meal in a box! (meatloaf ingredients) |
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| Salmon- SO good! |
We had the salmon and couscous first, as instructed. To say that we were a little nervous about this dish based on the unfamiliar ingredients would be an understatement but we threw caution to wind and tried it out. Amazing. Seriously one of the best dishes I've ever had. The salmon prep style was incredible and I was sad when the meal was finished. Since you have all of the ingredients there things move much faster but you do certainly still chop, mix and cook on your own. I'm certain we both thought originally that it was more of a meal service than a grocery and recipe deal but it was a pleasant surprise.
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| Lemon chicken |
Another night we made the lemon chicken and were again blown away with a new preparation style (stove, not grill) for a normal chicken breast. The sweet potato wedges were an awesome treat and the salad was shockingly good with hardly any dressing on it. The salad was even better the next day when the dressing had really permeated the arugula. We are certainly going to make this dish again.
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| Italian meatloaf |
The Italian meatloaf was the only real miss for us. I don't eat meatloaf but Jackson loves it. He thought this one got too heavy with all of the extra ingredients. The mashed potato recipe was also not a great prep style for our taste. The green beans, though, were fabulous and we'd definitely prep them in that manner again.
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| I want this again- NOW! |
The pasta dish was probably the best pasta I've ever had. I've eaten my fair share of pasta so that's saying something. If you're like me you see butternut squash and apples and think gross! Not so, friend, not so.
There was also a porkchop meal that we heard great things about from friends but didn't get to prep before leaving for vacation.
Overall, we are going to get deliveries every couple of weeks to keep learning new recipes and techniques. We want to continue to expand our palates so that when we really start our travel lifestyle we'll be more easy to please. We have said a couple of times that we would pay more to have the veggies pre chopped but that would likely hurt the freshness. We also don't love how much packaging goes into the shipments but everything is recyclable so we do that. The price annoyed me a first but the convenience of the shipping it right to your door mixed with how gourmet the meals feel more than covered the roughly $20 a meal price. We easily spend $18 at Qdoba for food much less fresh without batting an eye. You also save on grocery bills and trips! Some meals provides leftovers but they are not really intended to so I did still need to pack lunches when normally we'd have leftovers when meal prepping at home. That didn't bother me since I am not the family chef. ;)
We have a code for $40 off your first order of you want to try it out: FCJWYL at
https://www.hellofresh.com I'd love for you to tell us what you think. It feels like a little adventure and makes the ho-hum feeling about eating dinners at home go away.
