As 2020 is fast approaching and I am busy getting ready for Christmas and New Year, I am noticing that I just can’t keep up with daily demands of my family, kids, shopping, work, and all the holiday events. How do I know that? I am eating whatever and whenever without being able to allocate proper time for making and eating wholesome food.
Everybody is so busy these days that many of us experience the same problems of running ourselves ragged and the first thing that suffers is usually nutrition. I, a busy mom of two, definitely relate to those struggles.
This happens to me every winter; I gain quite a few pounds over the holidays and then struggle to lose them.
While I am pretty fit and involved in a workout boot camp every day, I still don’t always like my diet and constantly think about ways to improve it, especially at this time of the year.
I have tried Nutrisystem and Medifast recently, but did not like either one of them because the food was frozen, bland, ready-to-eat, and not fresh. I get the convenience factor and the easy weight lost without any need to count calories and measure portions.
It might work for thousands of people, but not for me.
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I like my food cooked from scratch and fresh. What I don’t like or have time for is going grocery shopping.
I am not crazy about cooking stuff either, but that’s a price I pay for feeding my family fresh hot meals.
It seems that all my problems are about to be solved and quite by a lucky accident. I recently started subscribing to FabFitFun boxes and while I absolutely love them and the products, I also discovered a coupon in the fall box for Hello Fresh.
At first I didn’t even know what that is, but after doing a bit of research I discovered that’s it’s a meal delivery kit. How convenient!
I remember that my husband has tried similar service, Home Chef, a couple of summers ago when I was visiting my parents in Europe with the kids for a few weeks, and he loved it. He is not a big cook and leaves that stuff for me, but living alone was definitely a reason to order something like that and to get his cooking on. He enjoyed the food, the convenience, and sent me all kinds of pictures of his meals.
Now that I held Hello Fresh coupon in my hands, all that came flooding back and I was ready to give Hello Fresh a try. To test the service I ordered 3 meals for 2 people for this week, which is when my husband is in NYC on a business trip, so it’s just me and kids at home home.
Our kids have never been big eaters and are still not interested in food at 7 and 9 years of age. Knowing this I decided that those 3 meals will be perfect for 3 dinners for the three of us. There were 21 meals to choose from.
I used the found coupon and was pleasantly surprised when I only paid $21 for those 3 meals and delivery. This is not bad at all! To top the price goodness, the food came promptly in 2 days, was cold, and nicely packed.
This is how the packaging works – in the top half of the box there are paper bags with all ingredients, except meats, split by meals. Then under those paper bags I found a thick carton layer, under which there were three vacuum packages of meat surrounded by ice packs and perfectly frozen. I took a few pictures, placed paper bags in the refrigerator, meat in the freezer, and recycled the box.
Since I received my order on Friday, I was going to wait a few days until my husband is on his trip to make meals for my and kids’ dinners next week. Finally, on Tuesday, I decided to make the first absolutely tasty looking creation – Crispy Parmesan Chicken.
I glanced over the recipe and immediately understood that it won’t require much time and won’t be difficult.
The recipe has a beautiful picture of how the meal should look on one side and detailed step by step directions on the other.
As promised, the preparation of veggies took about 10 minutes and the whole process around 40. The meal was 730 calories, but I did not understand if it was total value or per portion, since this meal is for 2 people. I am an optimist and chose to believe that each serving had 365 calories, which is very good for dinner.
I loved how all ingredients were included with me having to produce only a baking sheet, a small pot, a small bowl, salt, pepper, and olive oil. Evert kitchen has that, even if people in it don’t cook!
I thoroughly loved the cooking process. The food smelled great, looked good, and tasted even better. My picky kids found the seasoning a bit much and were not big fans of roasted carrots, but I loved it all.
After the meal we all were full and there were a few bites still left, so I can definitely say that the portion is perfect for 2 hungry adults or 2 kids and one mom. $7 is what the price for this meal came to be and you wouldn’t find anything like that anywhere, not even in fast food restaurants. In addition to saving money, I also didn’t waste time or gas.
I have only one little complaint, for which I am partially at fault myself – the scallions and the carrots were in lesser than perfect condition, but I did keep them in refrigerator for 4 days without checking on them as they were nicely packed in paper bags.
The scallions had two slightly mushy stems, and carrots were quite wilted, especially 2 out of 5. Scallions can definitely do that in 4 days, but carrots shouldn’t.
This simply means that they were packed not at their freshest. I still used them and they tasted fine, so not a biggie.
So far I am very happy with my order and looking forward to two more meals in the next two days and possibly more future orders, especially when New Year celebration is over and preparation for spring body begins.
Almost forgot to mention, the order came with a $25 gift card for Sharper Image and 1 free month for kiwico.com subscription service for kids STEM boxes. Both of those places are awesome for gifts, which I still don’t have even though it’s only 11 days left until Christmas!