Sarah and I bit. We have seen and heard enough advertisements and radio commercials for Blue Apron and Hello Fresh and other meal service providers, that we finally decided to give it a try. After doing extensive research (about 30 minutes of internet searches) on several options available, we decided to go with Hello Fresh. It ultimately came down between Hello Fresh and Blue Apron. You can choose between a 2 person plan or a 4 person "family plan." Obviously I am not in the 2 person boat, so I won't even discuss these options, as I honestly know nothing about them. With Blue Apron's family plan, you can choose either 2, 3, or 4 meals a week. For 2 meals a week, it cost roughly $75 per week and that includes shipping costs. Blue Apron gives you a total of 4 recipes per week to choose from. With Hello Fresh's family plan, you can choose either 2 or 3 meals a week. For 2 meals a week it cost roughly $70 per week. Hello Fresh offers a total of 5 recipes per week to choose from. As I mentioned before, we chose Hello Fresh. We chose them because they offer one more meal per week to choose from (4 versus 5), they are slightly cheaper, and they had a better initial starting offer. Blue Apron offered $30 off your initial order, while Hello Fresh offered $25 off your first order and then a $25 credit off your second order for a total of $50 versus Blue Apron's $30.
So now you know why we chose Hello Fresh, here's why we decided to give this whole, "meals delivered to your door," thing. First off, I love to cook. I love making new recipes, I love the challenge of trying new things. Plus, we used to always schedule out our family meals more than a week out. And when we could, I would always scour the internet for some new tasty recipes. Whenever we did this, I would do our grocery shopping and I would buy all the ingredients, come home, store them, cook them, then undoubtedly, throw out the unused portions of the ingredients. I have no idea how much I would spend on any specific meal, and there is no doubt in my mind that, overall, doing this is cheaper per serving, than Hello Fresh. But, when you consider the cost of the unused food I was throwing away in the end, it was probably more than $35 per meal. Plus, when you consider that, and the fact that they take all the work out of meal planning, it was worth a try, especially when you consider how much more busier our lives have gotten over the past couple years, on top of the fact that we not only want, but truly enjoy eating healthy, natural foods and meals.
Now on to the fun stuff...our first order! The first two meals we chose were Honey Sesame Chicken Tenders and Cherry Balsamic Pork Chops. We scheduled them to be delivered on Wednesday the 3rd. We had planned on cooking our first meal that night, but unfortunately, the box didn't arrive until shortly after 7pm. Now, this wasn't necessarily Hello Fresh's fault, but bummer! The box was just like any other package ordered from Amazon or Target. Inside the box was an insulated liner containing two grocery style paper bags containing the ingredients for each meal. Outside the bags were the meats, which were seated directly on top of a huge reusable, disposable, ice pack. The ice pack and meats were all still frozen, but it was delivered during a polar vortex and the outdoor temperatures were below zero. But the package was still on heated truck for who knows how long. I then tossed our bags and meat into the fridge and we continued eating our replacement meal....frozen pizzas!
The first meal we cooked was the Honey Sesame Chicken Tenders. Each recipe comes with a giant recipe card with easy to follow directions and pictures. Delaney helped me cook up this recipe as she loves to cook with me as much as possible. Plus, I thought it would be a neat way to include the girls with these "special" dinners. All of the produce was fresh and honestly probably more fresh than if I were to have bought it a few days ago from the local grocery store and just thrown it into the fridge.
My favorite part of cooking a per-prepared meal was the fact that basically everything was premeasured and just needed to be added. It was basically just like watching a cooking show. Plus, that means there was no scraps. I wasn't throwing away the left over scallions, or the leftover ginger. I literally used everything that was sent. It was spectacular.
The recipe card for the tenders said that it had a 10 minute prep time and a total time to dinner of 30 minutes. We started cooking around 5:10pm and were eating dinner before 6:00pm. I thought that wasn't bad considering I was cooking with a 6 year old and I had to dish up 4 dishes before we actually were eating.
The meal was great! One of my concerns going into this adventure was the fact that we were receiving a meal reportedly for 4 people, when I have 5 super hungry...yet (somehow) super picky... mouths to feed. Would there be enough food? I dished up a total of 4 plates (Sarah was sick tonight and not eating). I was able to dish up one big plate (for me), and 3 other generous plates of my picky little monsters and still had left over tenders, broccoli, and rice. It would have easily been enough for all 5 of us. I think I can comfortably say, that if you bought this plan for a true 4 person family, you would have ample serving sizes and still maybe leftovers. As far as the flavor, the meal was very good. All kids love it! Delaney, who claims to "hate meat" even asked for seconds of the chicken! It was a success, from beginning to end. We are looking forward to our next meal on Sunday and look forward to regular family meals with new and varying meals!
If you want to try Hello Fresh, follow this link for $40 off!:
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