Skip to main content

Fresh Food

I was going to post something more thoughtful this week.  But... it's been a long day.  I got a grand send-off to work this morning; all three boys waving from the front door.  Which was very heartwarming - except that I leave at 6:30 am and really they should have all still been in bed!  Then I got back from work, and we had to run some errands and feed everyone and stop Toby and Theo from arguing and put them to bed and you know.  All that stuff.

I'm waaalkiiiing!

But at least dinner has been easy for the last three days.  Our latest impulse buy was a deal on a three-meal box from HelloFresh.  The idea is that they pack up the ingredients for three recipes, add in the cooking instructions, and deliver the whole lot to your door in a carefully insulated container.  Full price, as you might expect, it costs only a little less than our usual week's shopping bill, but with the offer it was relatively affordable.  About the price of a dinner out, for all three meals.

So.  Our box arrived, and we dug in.  All the food was fresh and in good condition.  The "exact quantities" of ingredients seemed a bit variable, though.  There were cute little tiny bottles of rice vinegar to add to the prawn stirfry, but then there was a 250g bag of spinach to put into the pitta breads with our Moroccan-style burgers.  Hmmm.  It's not as if fresh spinach keeps well, either.

The recipes were definitely tasty.  We are fairly adventurous eaters anyway, so they didn't strike us as being too out of the ordinary, but they had a good mix of flavours and were healthy and quick to prepare.  They also included a couple of ingredients that I'd heard of but wasn't sure I wanted to buy a whole packet: rose harissa paste and dukkah spice mix.  It was a bit of a treat for us to eat prawns, beef and chicken on consecutive days - all from highly-regarded suppliers, apparently - and the three-person quantities were more than adequate for two hungry adults and two picky little 'uns.

And I didn't cook a single one of those dinners!  Graham usually lets me get on with the cooking, but I think he found the step-by-step recipes and labelled ingredients very approachable.  He certainly had no trouble producing the desired result!  I got the impression that the company's target customers are people who never really learned how to cook, work fairly long hours, and have enough disposable income to grab a takeaway several times a week.  If that is the case, I think it works very well.  For us, it was far too expensive to consider doing every week, and the recipes were basically spruced-up versions of stirfry, burgers and chips, and chicken with (sweet) potatoes and veg.  Good, but not super-special.

For a one-off treat?  Definitely.  And thanks for the recipes.  As a regular part of our diet?  I think we're good enough cooks not to need such a tailored approach.  HelloFresh... and goodbye.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

One hundred churches

About the middle of January, I was walking to school one afternoon when it occurred to me that I must have visited quite a few churches on my explorations. I started counting them. But I quickly ran out of fingers, so when I got home I plotted them on Google Maps. Not only was the number much higher than I was expecting, it was also tantalisingly close to one hundred. Only a few dozen to go. So of course, every walk since then has had to include at least one church! Last Monday I visited my hundredth church: St John the Baptist, Dethick. It was a beautiful little 13-century building with an unusual tower - I was glad it had claimed the 100 spot. I haven't been inside every church. Sometimes they were locked; sometimes I was in a hurry and didn't try the door. St Leonard's Church in Alton had bellringers practicing, and I almost interrupted a funeral when I stuck my head through the door of St Mary's, Marston-on-Dove. A few, such as St Oswald's, Ashbourne, and St Wys...

Derwent Valley Heritage Way: Steep drops ahead

It's been a long time since I fitted that much up and down into an eight-mile walk! 740m of steep climbs and steps. My legs were not very happy with me the next day. Between Matlock and Cromford, the Derwent River runs through a deep valley, with Matlock Bath - a landlocked town which pretends to be a seaside resort - down at the bottom. The ridge of high ground used to run all the way round to Scarthin Rock, cutting off Cromford from the rest of the valley, until somebody blasted a hole through it to build the A6. Matlock Bath: pavilion and amusement park I started in Cromford and climbed over the ridge at Harp Edge, then followed a path along through the woods, with the ground dropping sharply away to my right. There were a few small caves among the trees. At Upperwood someone had thoughtfully provided a bench. I wasn't in need of a rest just yet, though. In fact, I was feeling so bouncy that I went down an entirely unnecessary flight of steps, instead of staying on the reaso...

The Churnet Way: a wonderful walk

The loop from Oakamoor to Froghall and back was one of the most enjoyable walks I've done in a long time. It had a bit of everything: woods, ponds, rivers and railways; steep climbs and sweeping views; an unusual church, an ex-industrial wharf, and, as a final bonus, car parks with toilets. Of course, the sunny weather helped too. I parked in Oakamoor and set off along a quiet lane called Stoney Dale. This is the route of the Churnet Way, which deviates away from the river for a couple of miles. After a while I turned right and climbed up through the woods on a gravelly path, then dropped down to the B5417. a spring in Oakamoor   Crossing the road, I entered Hawksmoor Nature Reserve. It has some fine gateposts commemorating John Richard Beech Masefield, "a great naturalist". I found a photo of the opening of the gateway in 1933; unsurprisingly, the trees have grown a lot since then! A track took me down through the woods to East Wall Farm. Lovely view! Nice duck pond as ...