It's Tuesday, so that means when I get home in the evening I'll have a bright green box waiting for me on my doorstep. What's that, you ask? HelloFresh! We signed up for HelloFresh just after the first of the year, and have been receiving it on a pretty regular basis since. We're signed up for the three meal/two person weekly plan, and I've scheduled our deliveries for Tuesdays. One of my favorite things about HF is that you can skip weeks! Sometimes I know we are going to be too busy to cook three {or any meals if I'm honest} during the week, so we just skip the delivery. There's no fee to skip which is another perk.
Before signing up, I didn't really understand how it worked so I wanted to give you a good run down in case you're interested. Basically, you can sign up at any time, but I recommend finding a good sale or code to get started. We used a "$20 off each box for four boxes" code which was really nice. Once you sign up and select a plan {how many meals you want a week + how many people, two or four} you can then choose your meals. There's about 16 different meals to choose from that change weekly. It took about six weeks of deliveries for us to see a repeated meal offered, but you can always choose different ones or go back to one you tried and loved!
There are a few different types of meals: Hall of Fame, Calorie Smart, Gourmet {extra fee of $5.99+ per person} or Dinner2Lunch {basically makes two meals at once, extra fee of $5.99 per person}. We've tried a couple Gourmet meals but didn't really feel they were worth the extra fee. We tend to try a lot of Latin and Asian influenced dishes, and we're both pretty meat-centric, so I often choose hearty meals with steak and pork chops over pasta dishes or the vegetarian options.
The box is delivered weekly with all the fresh ingredients you need for the meals besides the basics like butter, S&P, and olive oil. Each meal comes with a full color, step-by-step instructional sheet that I keep with my other recipes to reference if I wanted to recreate a meal on my own. They usually take about 30-40 minutes to create, and almost always include scallions which we often laugh about.
Our plan {3 meals/2 people/weekly} runs about $60 a box, which may seem expensive at first, but I honestly feel like we get a much better value for our money doing this. We always eat all of the meals, which isn't necessarily the case if I got to the store and buy a lot of food. It takes the thinking out of meal time which to be honest, is huge for me as I get uninspired quickly and am not interested in creating something new at the end of the day. It also takes out the grocery trip, which is another thing I really love. I've become a Click List user at my grocery store and really avoid going in anytime I can. I don't really enjoy grocery shopping so between HF and Click List, I feel like I'm living my best life!
HelloFresh does not offer carb-conscious meals specifically, but I try to cut carbs where I can. If it's a Mexican meal, I'll swap the included tortilla for one of my low carb ones from the grocery store. Or I'll give CJM more of the rice/potato/etc. and less for me. It's really taught me a lot about cooking {like how long to grill a steak, and how to make a lot of sauces} that I really didn't know, which is an added bonus.
Have you tried HelloFresh or any other meal delivery service? L
et me know what you think!
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