Written by Catherine Saxelby
on Friday, 31 January 2014.
Tagged: convenience, cooking for one, diet meals, dinner, fresh food, healthy cooking, healthy eating, meal planning, portion size, vegetables
Cooking a healthy dinner from fresh ingredients is a big goal of mine this year. At the moment, there’s only two of us at home as the 20-something vegetarian is travelling oversears so it’s never been easier.
Dinner for two, no ingredients to exclude, huge choice, but after a long day writing, I have to admit feeling brain-dead about the ‘daily dinner decision’, as I call it. You know the drill, thinking of what to cook or finding a recipe and heading out for a quick shop, or peering inside the fridge or freezer and doing a mental jig with the ingredients (this goes with that or that or that).
So I was tickled pink to be given a box of home-delivered ingredients and recipe cards that enabled me to cook up three meals at home as a thank-you gift from a colleague. Here’s how I rated it.
Each week (if you go for the 5-meal option Classic Box) you get three meat meals (beef, chicken, lamb, pork), one fish/seafood plus one vegetarian which is pretty balanced. There’s also a vegetarian box (Veggie Box) with yummy vego choices such as Spiced Tomato Penne with Feta, Smokey Ratatouille with Goats Cheese and Bruschetta or Lentil and haloumi salad.
Here are the three Week 3 meals I received from HelloFresh:
This was delicious. I loved the cute tiny tub of tandoori paste that I smeared over the chicken thighs to marinate (I didn’t cut them into pieces). The base salad from cos lettuce, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, red onion and coriander was lovely and super-fresh. I love how they pack their herbs in sealed bags. I even had ingredients left over i.e. 1 carrot, ½ onion, 1/3 punnet tomatoes and ½ lemon. Maybe I didn’t need it all for only two people but I got the same as for four?
Definitely the winner for us. The Lebanese bread transformed into a crisp thin base, the onion and capsicum added heaps of flavour, the lamb mince was ultra-lean and cooked beautifully, the pile of rocket on top after cooking added texture and crunch. My pizza-loving husband hoed in.
There was no instruction to place the pizza on an oven tray which I did. Maybe you cooked it directly in the oven? There was no need for extra salt mixed in with the lamb (we eat enough salt).
Note: I was supplied with a green capsicum along with the bread base, lamb mince, Moroccan spice mix, tomato paste, purple onion and a bag of baby rocket leaves. I used up a red capsicum I had in the fridge which is why you’ll see red in the shots.
3. Mushroom burger with feta and wilted spinach
Not as well thought out as the other two: the mushrooms were too small, the bread rolls too big and too 'tough'. Bit of a fiddle to prepare but OK. But I’m not complaining!
Hello Fresh lives up to its original concept that “cooking quick, healthy and exciting meals should be more accessible than it is for a lot of people”. It really does.
What I enjoyed the most was that I didn’t have to worry about what to cook for dinner. It was all there, ready and waiting for me in my fridge at home. I could just get on with the process of cooking it up, concentrating on the recipe, and turning out a healthy and tasty dinner. Someone else had done the thinking, planning and shopping for me!
It was so much better than the alternatives which are fast food (think pizza or burgers) and bland, frozen dinners that need more vegetables and protein. Believe me, I’ve tried a fair few and they’re always lacking in something! Read more here.
I was sent a sample of HelloFresh ages ago when they first launched. It was a Beef and Lemongrass stir-fry but I must admit I was a tad underwhelmed – it was plain and unimaginative – I recall the only sauce was soy sauce which just didn’t cut it. This time however my dishes were very good, more sophisticated and interesting.
A winner with me! I’ll be ordering more myself in a week’s time.
Catherine Saxelby has the answers! She is an accredited nutritionist, blogger and award-winning author. Her award-winning book My Nutritionary will help you cut through the jargon. Do you know your MCTs from your LCTs? How about sterols from stanols? What’s the difference between glucose and dextrose? Or probiotics and prebiotics? What additive is number 330? How safe is acesulfame K? If you find yourself confused by food labels, grab your copy of Catherine Saxelby’s comprehensive guide My Nutritionary NOW!
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