Usually by the Solstice I am fully prepared for Christmas. I have the cards written and mailed, presents bought, wrapped and mailed and holiday baking well on its way. This year? Not so much. I haven’t looked at the boxes of cards, no presents have been wrapped or mailed yet and I have zero baking done. I’m pretty fortunate that I made it to the last day of school (in a week with a full moon) before break intact. Hopefully I will manage to get a few things done Monday, but I’m thinking New Year’s cards and presents maybe.

In our on going discussion about what has to get done around the house with two people who work full time, Bob came up with a possible partial solution to getting dinner on the table. He listens to podcasts and one had a new sponsor he thought I might want to check out. Hello Fresh takes some of the meal planning and shopping out of cooking, but still let’s you cook at home. Interesting concept, so I checked out the website and decided to give it a try. Three meals for two people, portioned out and ready to cook; quite literally everything you need to make the meal except salt, pepper, oil and the hardware. Now, I love to cook. I love to experiment with recipes, but I hate the rush of the weeknight dinner and do I have …. Did I forget … Darn it, I needed … that often goes along with it. And honestly, some days after work, I can’t think coherently enough to plan and execute dinner. So how did this go? Well, I signed up and picked three meals for the week. I got a “welcome” email and then a “your food has shipped” email and then a “was there any issue with your delivery” email. The last one included a little survey to determine if everything was ok, which I thought was a nice touch. Wednesday afternoon the box arrived.

Everything was well insulated and cold and packaged to make knowing which ingredients were for which meals very, very clear.

Everything is portioned so there is no waste (except for the box and ice packs, but no food waste.) Every meal has a recipe card with it with step by step instructions.

The cards are really nice but I do think you need a little kitchen knowledge with these. If you don’t know the difference between dice and chop and slice you may have an issue. But that wasn’t an issue for me, so I got to work last night on recipe #1 – Ginger chicken with parsnips and carrots.

I chopped everything up toasted the almonds and browned the chicken.

I sautéed the onions, ginger and garlic then added the veggies while the chicken went into the oven. Final meal took about 40 minutes, start to finish and came out …

I’m going to say, beautifully. The flavors were good, the quality of ingredients were great, the meal was easy to cook and it was as good as I could make on my own. Bonus for having everything I needed right there. Plenty of food for both of us and no leftovers to store. I have to say, I am pretty happy with this little experiment.

Gracie also got a box to play in which makes her super happy.