Meal Subscription | Living Life in the Fast Lane

Are you living life in the fast lane and don’t know which way is coming or going?

I completely understand! I’m a mom of two boys with school, sports and tons of other activities, remember? I know how it is to not have enough hours in the day. Especially when it comes to dinner time! A big issue for us has always been meal planning for weekday dinners. Who wants to think about dinner after a long day of work and mommy duties? My husband and I have tried everything to try to get healthy pre-made meals on the table. From easy crockpot recipes to meal prep in freezer bags, we’ve tried it all.

Crockpot recipes? My husband is great at finding recipes but they always taste like roast to me! Now, I’m not complaining about it because I love me a good pork roast with potatoes, carrots, and brown gravy, but I certainly don’t want every meal to taste like that! Meal prep in freezer bags works fairly well (I do love how everything is ready to go) but in order to make it work, you end up spending a big chunk of your weekend preparing all those bags of freezer meals. There is no easy solution but luckily, we have finally figured out the perfect solution for us!

The solution

A good friend of ours (who loves to cook 😉 introduced us to a meal subscription service. Food delivery in a box!  The concept was new to us at the time but it sounded so interesting.   Their motto was “From the farm to your kitchen, ripe and ready to cook”.  While that part may have been correct, (as many of their foods are organic and everything came fresh and ready to prep), we found that the recipes with this box service company were a little more tedious for the time we had to prepare them.  Sometimes we would end up having to help each other with the meals in order to get them done.  Each step had several components, which was far too many steps for us. But I was definitely hooked on the concept!

Introducing our newest secret to yummy weeknight dinners!

I started doing a little research on these refrigerated box, pre-measured, meal subscriptions and quickly came across one that I really like everything about. Have you heard of Hello Fresh? Hello Fresh has quickly become the solution to our problem. If you’ve never heard of it, Hello Fresh delivers fresh ingredients and healthy recipes straight to your doorstep. The number of meals that they deliver depend on the meal subscription that you pick but the recipes are always simple, easy, and fit our lifestyle perfectly.

Since I know a lot of my readers are working parents, I thought I’d share this wonderful discovery with you! I know there are many parents out there who live life in the fast lane like we do, and instead of filling up on fast food to save time, I’d like to help you with at least this one tedious part of every weekday. Hopefully, I can introduce this easy fresh box meal idea to help you just like my great friend did for us. Having the help of a meal subscription during the week makes a huge difference in our life as a busy family of four and I know it can do the same for you.

Behind-the-scenes in our kitchen

Here is what comes out of the box and ready to prepare.

I recorded a short video showing you what comes in the box and then did time lapse recording while I prepared the meal. It was fun to make but most importantly, it keeps you from having to sit and watch me cook for 30 minutes.  I have to give you a little warning, though, I did all of this with my iphone camera so don’t judge the quality, I didn’t pull out my pro camera for this one!  I have to keep things quick and easy for myself on weeknights!

Here is a quick look at the final dish:

It was delicious and you can’t beat prepping a meal in thirty minutes!

Frequently Asked Questions

I took a poll from a group of busy working parents about meal subscriptions and they had some great questions I thought I would do my best to answer.

What happens if I need to skip a week?

– Easy! You can go into your account and skip the week by simply saying you don’t want a delivery for that week.

Is it kid-friendly?

–  Yes, my kids are extremely picky and for the most part they have loved every one of the meals that we’ve gotten from Hello Fresh.  Keep in mind, you can pick which meals you would like ahead of time so if there is something you don’t really care for, don’t add that to your plan.

I feel like we don’t have enough time to prep for something like this.  Does it take forever?

– With the first fresh boxed meal service we tried, I definitely think it took too much time and wasn’t worth it.  With Hello Fresh, I feel like most meals takes about 30 minutes from prep to table.

Would it work for a large family?

– You can pick between the plans they offer and most say that they feed 2 to 4 adults.  We have two adults and 2 kids and we always have enough leftovers for my lunch the next day.  You could always order 2 meals of the same and have a double serving.

These are just a few of the questions they had but if you have others, Hello Fresh has a great FAQ section here.  Check it out and see what you think.

If you are a busy parent and you’re looking to save a little time in the kitchen, look into something like Hello Fresh. Their meal subscriptions are explained here.  I hope this helps some of you busy parents during the crazy weeks that we live shuttling kids around, doing homework, making practices and attending games during the week.

Also, if you sign up at the top of their page, you’ll receive $15 off your first order.

Have a great week!  If you are interested in seeing more about what I do to keep me so busy during the weekdays, check out my blog.