Hello Fresh Dinner Date

I really like to cook. Like really. I think it relieves stress. I also love food (as you might have noticed), but my biggest problem with cooking is that I have to buy gobs of ingredients and there are always some things leftover and then I have to figure out what to do with them or they go bad, etc.

Which is why, when I got a coupon for a new service called Hello Fresh, I decided to try it.

The Pros:

• The recipes are "healthy" (this is in quotes because a few are probably not as healthy as I'd like but nothing is unhealthy either)
• The exact ingredients for three meals are delivered to my door on Wednesday. They're nicely labeled in separate bags and the recipe cards are included.
• Everything is fresh!
• The recipes are easy to follow--with pictures--and they take under 30 minutes.
• It's available right now in half the country almost--not just NY.

The Cons:

• It's a weekly subscription service. You can pause deliveries and it seems easy to cancel. Since I was trying it out, I just quickly paused week 2 when I first signed up.
• I don't think there's a gluten free option but there is a vegetarian option.
• The delivery time is between 8 am and 8 pm which is a pretty big window. Luckily for me I had someone who would be there to grab the box for me.

The box arrived Wednesday evening while I was at the gym, but there were some very interested customers that inspected it.

 

I got three recipes (which I chose out of five options).

And the boyfriend and I decided to go with the fish recipe first and make a date out of it.

So Roasted Salmon with Garlic Grape Tomatoes. Here's the recipe so you can see what it's like.

I will say that at the end I wish that I used less olive oil. The recipe calls for 1 tsp for each filet of salmon and then 2 Tbsps to cook the garlic tomatoes. The tomatoes and fish were both excellent but did seem a little on the oily side. So if Healthy is your thing, you could halve the olive oil.

Otherwise I really enjoyed this cooking experience.

To start, boil your potatoes and pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees.

Then halve your grape tomatoes, shred your basil, mince your garlic and cut the ends off your green beans.

Put your salmon on a cookie sheet. Pour a tsp of olive oil (or just a half) over each filet and sprinkle some salt and pepper on them.

Pop the salmon into the oven for 9 minutes.

Then put 2 Tbsp (or just 1) of olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Throw in your minced garlic.

By now your potatoes should be boiling. They need to boil for about 10-15 minutes so just let them go at it.

Add your tomatoes to your oil and garlic and mix it all up. Let this cook for 4-5 minutes.

When the time is up, turn off the heat and add your basil to your tomatoes.

Add your green beans to the potatoes for the last two minutes of their boiling.

At this point, your salmon should be just about done. When it is, take the salmon out. It should look like this (but maybe with less oil...).

Put everything together on a plate! 

I'm not lying when I say this was quite good. I'm going make the chicken fajitas tonight and the risotto tomorrow night.

Then I'm probably going to keep my subscription to Hello Fresh. I probably won't use it every week though. I have some weeks where cooking dinner just isn't in the plans (like when I'm on deadline--delivery is just so much easier.)

And...after I started writing this blogpost, I got an email encouraging me to share my experience on social media (check). In the email there's also a refer a friend code. If you want to try HelloFresh, this code (GYGE9Q) will get you $20 off your first delivery.

Last but not least--my next blog won't be about food. Promise.