It’s been a LOOOOOONG time my little phoodies.

Life has a way of distracting you…for three years…

If I’m really being honest with myself, life gets busy…I get lazy and less creative when I’m tired…and blogging has to take a backseat for a while. My sincerest apologies if you were waiting for my next post anxiously.

Lately we have been eating out 75% of the week. Between long days, and ridiculous commutes with the Dallas lunatic drivers, I just have ZERO desire or mental capacity to get creative in the kitchen. However, in an effort to become adventurous again, and find that spark of creativity, we decided to try out one of those food loot crates.

So for the next two months, I will be writing about our experiences with them. Keep in mind, I am not being paid to do this, so there is no bias here. We are going to try out one program for a while, then move on to another to get a view of what options are out there.

The first crate we chose was Hello Fresh. We chose this because it seemed to have the most user friendly setup process, and being novices to a program like this, we weren’t looking for complicated.

Today’s post: GETTING STARTED WITH HELLO FRESH

It was super simple, but they seemed to guard their recipes until you pay. You set up an account, then pay, then you get to see the menus. They don’t charge you until your crate ships, so it wasn’t that big of an issue.

Once you enter your payment information, you are taken to the menu page for the next week. They have 9 recipes each week, of which you can select between 2-4/week depending on the plan you choose.

Each week has a vegetarian option, one or two premium options (add a $5 upcharge to the overall weekly cost and you get a steak or some lobster ravioli), a hall of fame or popular dish, a global eats dish, a 20-minute dish, and a dinner 2 lunch (essentially two small meals that you can take as lunch the next day…chicken tacos turn into stir fry for lunch).

You can pick the day you want your shipment to arrive, and the meals you want each week. You can skip a week or two, or end your subscription at any time, so if you are going on vacation, you just need to make sure you log into the app to skip a week.

We chose 4 meals/week to start, and we had it delivered on Sunday. The beauty of this is that I don’t have to have that “What do you want for dinner?” conversation four nights per week where NEITHER of you know what you want, but every option sounds equally awful.

We received our first shipment today, and it was exactly as expected. A large box showed up packed with a hard Styrofoam around all sides. At the top were the recipe cards with very straightforward instructions, and a few coupons for things like Hello Fresh’s wine crate (which we will soon be trying).

When you pull off the top Styrofoam panel, you are met by four bags, each with a sticker stating which meal they are for. Under those were two large ice bags to keep the shipment cool. Under the ice backs were all the various frozen meat products that go into the freezer.

Each bag is packed with exactly the correct amount of each ingredient. Little packages labeled with exactly the right amount (2 TBS beef broth, 1 cup jasmine rice etc)…

All you do is pop everything in your fridge, and make sure you pull the frozen items out when you need them with enough time to thaw.

I will say, I was very unimpressed with all the packaging. It is all recyclable, but it will definitely be a Sunday ritual to unbox and break everything down each week. You have a large box, 6 large Styrofoam boards, cardboard inserts, and two recyclable ice packs that you have to drain before discarding. If you don’t have recycling in your area, this is NOT an environmentally friendly option. If you do, it is just a chore to get it all broken down.

So tomorrow we will be having a sriracha tilapia with jasmine rice and green beans. I will post with pictures tomorrow and let you know how it goes!

Wish us luck!