Are you subscribed to any of those weekly, monthly or quarterly subscriptions where they send you curated things depending on the subscription? I am subscribed to probably 5 of them…I love getting packages delivered to me it’s like Christmas or my birthday 🙂
Recently Zulily (another shopping addiction) had a voucher for Hello Fresh, the deal was $20 for 3 meals for 2 people. For those bad with math that’s $3.33 per meal! Normally it’s $69 for 3 meals for 2 people. This offer is no longer going on, on Zulily but I’m sure if you go searching there are other coupons out there. The deal with these is that they are recurring, so if you don’t want to continue with it you have to cancel before a certain date or you’ll get charged for the next delivery. I went and got all signed up on their site, picked out my 3 meals and waited for them to arrive. They have 3 chef inspired meals and 2 alternatives if you don’t like the 3 default choices.
The three meals I chose were Chicken Paillard, Shrimp Jambalaya, Wild Mushroom Fettuccine. The package arrived on Thursday in a box that contained a very large insulated bag and 2 large still frozen ice packs. They used UPS 2nd day air for delivery I’m not sure how this will hold up in the Texas heat if one were to do this during the summer. Most of the ingredients were separated in a bag for each meal and it comes with the recipe cards with pretty pictures and detailed instructions.
So that night I decided to make the Chicken Palliard. According to the Nutritional Facts this one was 633 per serving and should take about 30 minutes to make.
It was easy to follow the instructions and I didn’t need any special pans or anything like that. It did take me slightly longer than 30 minutes but I have bad chopping skills and I also had to make different food for my two kids. When Mr. A sat down for dinner he looked a little scared of all that arugula. He wasn’t that impressed and neither was I, there was too much shallot and shallots can be very strong. Also, Mr. A said the arugula salad was like eating a tree :/
On Friday I tried the Shrimp Jambalaya. This one had 560 calories per serving. I forgot to take a picture of the finished product. This one was also just OK, there were 3 spice packets and I couldn’t really tell which one was which and I had to smell each one to make sure it wasn’t the cayenne. We like spicy but there was a lot of spice in each of those packets. This ended up making a lot of rice we didn’t finish the rice, the shrimp is all gone though and we also ended up adding some pineapple chunks, which made it taste a lot better. I also subbed the green bell pepper for yellow bell pepper because I don’t like green bell peppers and now I have a green bell pepper just rotting away in my fridge 🙁
Saturday and Sunday we were out for dinner, so we had the Wild Mushroom Fettuccine for Monday. This was the best one out of the three and it comes in at 599 calories per serving. This one doesn’t come with meat and we are big meat eaters around here and luckily I had some grilled chicken strips already laying around so I added that in (which of course ups the calorie count).
This one also makes a lot of food, so guess who gets this for lunch today (hint: ME) I’ve actually made a pasta like this before, only problem is Mr. A doesn’t like pasta, not to be confused with noodles because he likes noodles 🙂
(I took half of this off the plate and put it away after taking the photo)
I decided not to continue with this subscription, I don’t think it’s worth the full amount of $69/week. They do give everyone a referral code so if you are interested in trying it here’s mine and you’ll get $40 off your first box (again it’s $69 per box after that, so if you aren’t impressed make sure you cancel after receiving your first box!) and full disclosure if you use this code I’ll also get $30 off my next box. So if you want to try it out for a discounted price here’s the link: http://www.hellofresh.com/?c=92FGMB
What I did love is the fact that this was so effortless on my part, normally on Sundays I sit and think about what to make for the upcoming week, this allowed me to not have to come up with 3 meals. Also, no grocery shopping or waste of ingredients going bad from not using it.
I think I’m going to try plated next!
