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walkitoutFirst, this is the first time I’ve ever done meal kits. So. Second, this is a household with some truly outrageous dietary constraints. My son is rarely around for meals. My daughter hates the smell of most food. I have a variety of allergies (milk products, some shellfish, lemongrass, maybe mango, buckwheat, etc.). R. is increasingly allium intolerant. I kind of figured that meal kits were never going to work for us, plus, I’m a capable cook and also quite capable of identifying tasty eating out / take out / prepared food at the store options. Hardly seemed like I needed this.
My sister decided to use meal kits as basically a curriculum for teaching her daughters to cook. Which, honestly, is one of the most brilliant parenting ideas ever. Still, see above dietary constraints. Over time, however, as I listened to her describe the various meal kits, I thought, you know, I should probably give this a try. I’m bored with my lunches, and I could order 3 days worth of 2 people meals and that would be lunch for a week plus a bit. My daughter would never smell it (at school). It wouldn’t matter that it had allium (R. at work). And I would get to eat something portion / calorie / sodium controlled, if I picked a meal kit that actually supplied that information. Which most if not all of them do.
I picked Sun Basket because, organic, and my sister’s family liked it. My first box arrived on Monday while I was at the Demi Lovato concert. I cooked one on Tuesday morning, and brought it to my Dutch lesson and shared it. It was a Turkish soup, flavored with lemon zest and lemon juice, mint leaves, and chili. It had chickpeas, red rice, tomatoes and carrot in it. It was Awesome. Served with ciabatta bread that came with, it was satisfying. Three of us (instructor, his husband and me) had lunch and I had leftovers that I had for lunch on Thursday when I felt like doing absolutely nothing. I wasn’t worried about what I might eat Thursday, because I knew when I opened the fridge to see what was easy, I was going to see leftovers that would be healthy. So. Yay!
I cooked the second meal Wednesday morning, for Wednesday lunch. It was a vegetarian paella with tofu. Way, way, way too much tofu. You could see it in the protein numbers in the nutritional information. I left out a lot of the tofu and it was still too much tofu. I would have preferred this dish with just the peas and a lot more of them. But that’s okay. I haven’t eaten the second portion or the leftovers yet.
I cooked the third meal Thursday afternoon, even tho my daughter was home. It was potato kofta with Malai curry sauce, and I was quite sure right up to the curry sauce that she wouldn’t mind, and, in the event, she never complained about the smell of the curry sauce, either. This was _amazing_. I loved it. The whole wheat naan was good and soaked up the curry sauce really nice.
Next week I’ll be receiving some fish and meat choices. I may update this post when I find out whether R. thinks the curry sauce has too much allium for him to eat (there is no allium in the kofta balls themselves). On the whole, I’m very pleased with this meal kit. The packaging was mostly recyclable (if your recycling accepts plastic bags, probably entirely recyclable). I intend to reuse the cold pack and the box as grocery shopping cooler material, because they can be tossed if anything happens to them. It is probably true that over time the packaging will grind at me, but for right now, I’m prepared to do this meal kit at this level (2X3) indefinitely.
I have done some looking around for more low sodium options (not happy about anything I’m finding out there — there are some good options in Sun Basket if you look for them). I’ve also looked for other organic / dairy free and found a variety, but none are obviously better than this one. I have not been able to find anyone focusing on the allium-free space, which is a bummer (you’d think there would be a Jain friendly choice, but I can’t find it). Sun Basket is highly customizable, which is not the case with all meal kit subscriptions, and which works in my favor in terms of letting me pick things for the complicated dietary restrictions.
If you’ve used a meal kit subscription (or a prepared food subscription) service, I’m interested in what other people’s experience has been, particularly if you are trying to meet constraints like the ones I am, or which, like some of the ones I am trying to meet, are not generally covered (so, sorry, all you paleo, gluten free, etc. folks — you’re covered thoroughly and I’m just not that interested).
My sister decided to use meal kits as basically a curriculum for teaching her daughters to cook. Which, honestly, is one of the most brilliant parenting ideas ever. Still, see above dietary constraints. Over time, however, as I listened to her describe the various meal kits, I thought, you know, I should probably give this a try. I’m bored with my lunches, and I could order 3 days worth of 2 people meals and that would be lunch for a week plus a bit. My daughter would never smell it (at school). It wouldn’t matter that it had allium (R. at work). And I would get to eat something portion / calorie / sodium controlled, if I picked a meal kit that actually supplied that information. Which most if not all of them do.
I picked Sun Basket because, organic, and my sister’s family liked it. My first box arrived on Monday while I was at the Demi Lovato concert. I cooked one on Tuesday morning, and brought it to my Dutch lesson and shared it. It was a Turkish soup, flavored with lemon zest and lemon juice, mint leaves, and chili. It had chickpeas, red rice, tomatoes and carrot in it. It was Awesome. Served with ciabatta bread that came with, it was satisfying. Three of us (instructor, his husband and me) had lunch and I had leftovers that I had for lunch on Thursday when I felt like doing absolutely nothing. I wasn’t worried about what I might eat Thursday, because I knew when I opened the fridge to see what was easy, I was going to see leftovers that would be healthy. So. Yay!
I cooked the second meal Wednesday morning, for Wednesday lunch. It was a vegetarian paella with tofu. Way, way, way too much tofu. You could see it in the protein numbers in the nutritional information. I left out a lot of the tofu and it was still too much tofu. I would have preferred this dish with just the peas and a lot more of them. But that’s okay. I haven’t eaten the second portion or the leftovers yet.
I cooked the third meal Thursday afternoon, even tho my daughter was home. It was potato kofta with Malai curry sauce, and I was quite sure right up to the curry sauce that she wouldn’t mind, and, in the event, she never complained about the smell of the curry sauce, either. This was _amazing_. I loved it. The whole wheat naan was good and soaked up the curry sauce really nice.
Next week I’ll be receiving some fish and meat choices. I may update this post when I find out whether R. thinks the curry sauce has too much allium for him to eat (there is no allium in the kofta balls themselves). On the whole, I’m very pleased with this meal kit. The packaging was mostly recyclable (if your recycling accepts plastic bags, probably entirely recyclable). I intend to reuse the cold pack and the box as grocery shopping cooler material, because they can be tossed if anything happens to them. It is probably true that over time the packaging will grind at me, but for right now, I’m prepared to do this meal kit at this level (2X3) indefinitely.
I have done some looking around for more low sodium options (not happy about anything I’m finding out there — there are some good options in Sun Basket if you look for them). I’ve also looked for other organic / dairy free and found a variety, but none are obviously better than this one. I have not been able to find anyone focusing on the allium-free space, which is a bummer (you’d think there would be a Jain friendly choice, but I can’t find it). Sun Basket is highly customizable, which is not the case with all meal kit subscriptions, and which works in my favor in terms of letting me pick things for the complicated dietary restrictions.
If you’ve used a meal kit subscription (or a prepared food subscription) service, I’m interested in what other people’s experience has been, particularly if you are trying to meet constraints like the ones I am, or which, like some of the ones I am trying to meet, are not generally covered (so, sorry, all you paleo, gluten free, etc. folks — you’re covered thoroughly and I’m just not that interested).