First post! Meal Kit Reviews Part I
Howdy Dear Blog Readers!
I am a former English teacher, current theatre arts teacher, mom of 3, wife to the best husband ever, and I work in community theatres in my spare time. These are my adventures into simplifying my life.
So one of the things I love to do is cook. Unfortunately I live 45 minutes from a decent grocery store and if I am in the middle of a show, I just don't have the time (or energy) to shop, cook or eat healthy. Over the last two years, I have done 9 shows so that's a lot of fast food or cereal for dinner. In an effort to simplify my life, I have decided to try home delivered meal kits. You've seen them on TV; a happy young couple chopping veggies together and laughing together and sitting and eating together with a nice glass of wine and some candles.... Yeah right! That's not how it happens at my house. Let's be real. If I'm cooking, I'm also yelling at the dogs or the kids and both the kids and the dogs are either trying to help or complaining about the food. But still, I figure that's one less thing I have to do if these ready-made kits are delivered right to me and they look like they have healthy, yummy, easy to prepare recipes. Plus I got a $50 off coupon in the mail for Hello Fresh so I jumped right in. I am reviewing them here, partially for my own information but I thought it might be helpful to others. I am paying the regular customer prices in all cases (although there are coupons available if you google them) so I am not being paid for any of these reviews.
I signed up for Hello Fresh and Blue Apron for Test Week One. I got a 2 meals for 4 from each company and both meal plans run 69.92 per week without a coupon. (If you want to try these companies, you can get $40 from HELLO FRESH or send me your email for a free box with BLUE APRON---disclaimer: these are affiliate links)
BLUE APRONBlue Apron arrived first. For this plan we could pick two of three possible options and we ordered fish with rice and collard greens and chicken breasts with mashed potatoes and green veggies. The meals are packaged in a big cardboard box filled with iced gel packs with the larger menu ingredients loosely placed in the top (the smallest ingredients are in little labeled paper bags) and the coldest food is on the bottom under the gel packs. I live in Texas and this was outside on my porch half the day but everything was still nice and cold. The bad news was one of the ice packs leaked and there was gel all over everything in the bottom of the box. Another bad thing was the amount of vegetables. For the fish dish, the vegetables were adequate but the chicken dish had just 3 small potatoes, 1 small zucchini and a tiny pouch of sugar snap peas for 4 people. That's not even enough to make the plate look like the picture. I think we might have gotten the 2 person side dishes for the 4 person main dish.
The fish dish was barramundi which is a fish we've never tried. It was an easy dish to prepare and portions of fish were a good size, but there was something (tumeric maybe) in the spice mixture that turned my fingers yellow for 2 days afterwards. Not cool. The fish tasted fine but it wasn't anything particularly exciting or special and my family said they liked our regular fish dishes better. The rice was cooked in coconut milk instead of water which I loved. but two of my kids thought it was too weird. The collard greens were not a hit with anyone. My husband has eaten them before and liked them but this was new for the rest of us and we are not impressed. All in all the verdict was "eh" and everyone said they prefer the fish and rice we usually have (which is just as easy to prepare). This meal would have cost me around $25 at my grocery store so I paid about $10 for the convenience of having it delivered. I don't feel like this was worth it.
Meal two was chicken and veggies and mashed potatoes. The chicken was very tasty. The breasts were large and the dish was easy to prepare. My husband absolutely loved the mashed potatoes but there were barely enough for three people really. This would have cost me less than $25 to purchase at my grocery store and I'm being generous. This was NOT worth the money at all.
Unfortunately I paid full price for this box and the next box was processed before I remembered to stop it so we are getting another Blue Apron box next week. Fortunately I did get a coupon with half off this week so we'll see if it's worth it this time. Stay tuned.
HELLO FRESH
The other box is from Hello Fresh who sent me a $50 coupon off my first two weeks. I Hello Fresh also offers two choices of three and we got pesto tortellini and soy marinated steak with broccoli. The packaging was also a large cardboard box but the insulation and ince packs were much better quality than from Blue Apron and the packaging of the food was much better too. All the ingredients except the proteins were in individual boxes per meal with the proteins underneath with the ice packs. The amount of food for this box was generous for 4 people so I do feel like the value was better than Blue Apron from the start.
The pesto tortellini dish had fresh pasta, fresh asparagus and prepared pesto with a cheesy bread crumb topping. It was absolutely amazing. Everyone loved it and there was enough for leftovers! The leftovers were a little dried out compared to the original dish but they were still pretty good. This dish would have cost me about $20 at the grocery store but since I got this meal for just $25 with the coupon, it was worth it.
The steak dish bith broccoli and rice was less impressive but it was still pretty good. My husband and kids didn't think it had enough flavor. Since there was meat in this dish, I thought it would be a better value but broccoli and rice are pretty cheap so I'd say it was about the same or a little less. Still not a bad deal but not at full price.
We are skipping the next two weeks of Hello Fresh, only because I signed up for too many and the meals were not as interesting. We'll be back later this month with at least one more box from Hello Fresh.
Next week will be Plated, Green Chef and Home Chef.
I am a former English teacher, current theatre arts teacher, mom of 3, wife to the best husband ever, and I work in community theatres in my spare time. These are my adventures into simplifying my life.
So one of the things I love to do is cook. Unfortunately I live 45 minutes from a decent grocery store and if I am in the middle of a show, I just don't have the time (or energy) to shop, cook or eat healthy. Over the last two years, I have done 9 shows so that's a lot of fast food or cereal for dinner. In an effort to simplify my life, I have decided to try home delivered meal kits. You've seen them on TV; a happy young couple chopping veggies together and laughing together and sitting and eating together with a nice glass of wine and some candles.... Yeah right! That's not how it happens at my house. Let's be real. If I'm cooking, I'm also yelling at the dogs or the kids and both the kids and the dogs are either trying to help or complaining about the food. But still, I figure that's one less thing I have to do if these ready-made kits are delivered right to me and they look like they have healthy, yummy, easy to prepare recipes. Plus I got a $50 off coupon in the mail for Hello Fresh so I jumped right in. I am reviewing them here, partially for my own information but I thought it might be helpful to others. I am paying the regular customer prices in all cases (although there are coupons available if you google them) so I am not being paid for any of these reviews.
I signed up for Hello Fresh and Blue Apron for Test Week One. I got a 2 meals for 4 from each company and both meal plans run 69.92 per week without a coupon. (If you want to try these companies, you can get $40 from HELLO FRESH or send me your email for a free box with BLUE APRON---disclaimer: these are affiliate links)
BLUE APRONBlue Apron arrived first. For this plan we could pick two of three possible options and we ordered fish with rice and collard greens and chicken breasts with mashed potatoes and green veggies. The meals are packaged in a big cardboard box filled with iced gel packs with the larger menu ingredients loosely placed in the top (the smallest ingredients are in little labeled paper bags) and the coldest food is on the bottom under the gel packs. I live in Texas and this was outside on my porch half the day but everything was still nice and cold. The bad news was one of the ice packs leaked and there was gel all over everything in the bottom of the box. Another bad thing was the amount of vegetables. For the fish dish, the vegetables were adequate but the chicken dish had just 3 small potatoes, 1 small zucchini and a tiny pouch of sugar snap peas for 4 people. That's not even enough to make the plate look like the picture. I think we might have gotten the 2 person side dishes for the 4 person main dish.
The fish dish was barramundi which is a fish we've never tried. It was an easy dish to prepare and portions of fish were a good size, but there was something (tumeric maybe) in the spice mixture that turned my fingers yellow for 2 days afterwards. Not cool. The fish tasted fine but it wasn't anything particularly exciting or special and my family said they liked our regular fish dishes better. The rice was cooked in coconut milk instead of water which I loved. but two of my kids thought it was too weird. The collard greens were not a hit with anyone. My husband has eaten them before and liked them but this was new for the rest of us and we are not impressed. All in all the verdict was "eh" and everyone said they prefer the fish and rice we usually have (which is just as easy to prepare). This meal would have cost me around $25 at my grocery store so I paid about $10 for the convenience of having it delivered. I don't feel like this was worth it.
Meal two was chicken and veggies and mashed potatoes. The chicken was very tasty. The breasts were large and the dish was easy to prepare. My husband absolutely loved the mashed potatoes but there were barely enough for three people really. This would have cost me less than $25 to purchase at my grocery store and I'm being generous. This was NOT worth the money at all.
Unfortunately I paid full price for this box and the next box was processed before I remembered to stop it so we are getting another Blue Apron box next week. Fortunately I did get a coupon with half off this week so we'll see if it's worth it this time. Stay tuned.
HELLO FRESH
The other box is from Hello Fresh who sent me a $50 coupon off my first two weeks. I Hello Fresh also offers two choices of three and we got pesto tortellini and soy marinated steak with broccoli. The packaging was also a large cardboard box but the insulation and ince packs were much better quality than from Blue Apron and the packaging of the food was much better too. All the ingredients except the proteins were in individual boxes per meal with the proteins underneath with the ice packs. The amount of food for this box was generous for 4 people so I do feel like the value was better than Blue Apron from the start.
The pesto tortellini dish had fresh pasta, fresh asparagus and prepared pesto with a cheesy bread crumb topping. It was absolutely amazing. Everyone loved it and there was enough for leftovers! The leftovers were a little dried out compared to the original dish but they were still pretty good. This dish would have cost me about $20 at the grocery store but since I got this meal for just $25 with the coupon, it was worth it.
The steak dish bith broccoli and rice was less impressive but it was still pretty good. My husband and kids didn't think it had enough flavor. Since there was meat in this dish, I thought it would be a better value but broccoli and rice are pretty cheap so I'd say it was about the same or a little less. Still not a bad deal but not at full price.
We are skipping the next two weeks of Hello Fresh, only because I signed up for too many and the meals were not as interesting. We'll be back later this month with at least one more box from Hello Fresh.
Next week will be Plated, Green Chef and Home Chef.
Comments
Post a Comment