If you know me at all you know I love cooking. And if you read my 2018 resolutions post, you know I’ve been struggling with that lately. It’s been better these past few weeks, but I’m still looking for ways to mix up or recipe repertoire in the easiest possible way.
Since I do not live under a rock, I’ve seen ads for a few years now for Hello Fresh, the meal service that delivers three meals worth of pre-measured ingredients to your door every week. I’ve always been intrigued by it, but never actually looked into it any further. A few weeks ago, a friend gave me a code for a free week of meals so we decided to give it a go.
Sean and I are fairly healthy eaters. I don’t like assigning any particular label to our diet, but if I’m honest we are Paleo-based. High in protein, low in carbs. I have major issues with the true Paleo diet since it’s centered on the science fiction story that human evolution stopped in the Paleolithic era (which ended 10,000 years ago) and we should basically eat like cavemen to be healthy. Before I get too sidetracked on a genetics rant I’ll stop there. We still eat dairy (hello, Wisconsin born and bred over here). We still use salt and sugar. We eat grains, and I would probably stop functioning if I was never “allowed” to eat pasta again.
Going into Hello Fresh, I knew it would be a departure from our normal diet, but I wasn’t upset about it. The three meals we received weren’t necessarily as healthy as we would pick out on our own, but they made up for it with flavor. And since we only got three meals for seven days, we were able to balance out the week with our healthier staples. Neither of us noticed a major change in our weight or overall health over the week of Hello Fresh eating – and I can tell you I have one of those metabolisms where if I even think about eating a doughnut it will immediately manifest itself as a visible bulge on my body.
Hello Fresh allows you to skip weeks, so while I don’t see this becoming a frequent trend for us, it’s nice to have this service to fall back on if there’s going to be a busy week where we don’t want to think about planning for food. It would also be a great way for anyone returning from overseas to ease back into cooking in the U.S. The three meals we tried were quick, flavorful, and required only basic kitchen appliances. In short, we approve.
