Friday 19 February 2016

Recipe Kit Revolution

I'm in a food funk! It's like a rut but worse. Not only do I not know what to cook for dinner, I also don't know what to write about. Most of it's just lack of time. Lack of time to shop, to cook and even just to think. But that's just what life is like these days. Kids or not, life is busy and frantic. Which is why I thought I'd try out this new craze of recipe kits. 

There's quite a few out there so it's hard to know which to go for. My initial thought was to try Gusto as I got a voucher for £25 off, but they were pipped to the post by Hello Fresh who sent me a completely free box via a recommend a friend deal. Free meals, you'd be crazy to say no. Although the catch is you have to sign up with credit card details and if you don't want to continue you have to remember to cancel your subscription. Neither of those two scenarios is easy for someone who finds she doesn't even have time to think, but never-the-less Thursday morning came and a box containing 3 meals for 2 people arrived. Beautifully packed, with all the ingredients segregated according to their use and storage instructions, I opened the box and my heart dropped. No don't worry, there wasn't anything amiss, except of course my unrealistic expectations. I'm not sure why I thought I'd open the box and find all the ingredients weighed, cleaned and prepped ready to throw together and make an exquisite meal. But they were just raw ingredients. A whole potato, garlic cloves with their peel on and green peppers with with seeds in. The outrage! Ok, I know I sound like the height of laziness, but I'd stupidly started to envision a life of luxury! But once I got over the shock of having to use a peeler and a knife the excitement of trying out a new recipe kicked in. I had a a choice of three, but the people at Hello Fresh cleverly put a sticker on the recipe to tell you how long the ingredients will keep for. So not only is the shopping done for you, so is the meal planning. I was recommended to make the Five Spiced Chicken with Bok Choi first. I throughly enjoyed cooking it and I definitely enjoyed eating it. The minestrone soup was pretty amazing too. Sadly the Prawn and Serrano Linguine didn't go down as well. No fault of the recipe of course, it's just that N doesn't like things with cream, except for chocolate eclairs of course! 

Hello Fresh Five Spiced Chicken with Bok Choi


For recipe see: