To just get one of those meal prep boxes?

[GreeneryGrass]

We have a 3 year old and a 5 month old and we're so out of shape and have totally fallen off the healthy bandwagon we were on since LO came along. I love to cook but I don't always have all the energy for shopping, planning, prep and cooking - but I do enjoy cooking as a bit of down time so don't want to stop completely, plus I find frozen meals a bit uninspiring sometimes? AIBU to just want to try a subscription meal box whilst we're in the thick of sleep regressions and other life chaos?

Can anyone suggest a meal box that's good for the above? Happy for a bit of cooking, not tons of dishes, enough to feed 2 adults and a small child and just a good start to being healthy again after losing it all due to the madness of a baby!

I had them from Gousto and Hello Fresh for a few years, for the exact reason you give. I found them both good and they do great intro offers, so it's worth giving them a go. I loved not having to measure ingredients or do any thinking about what to eat every evening.

Thank you! Can I ask which you preferred?

I’ve got Gousto boxes booked for the rest of Jan. I’ve been asked “what’s for tea?” Too many times in the last fortnight and work is going berserk.

I’ve had HF before but I’ve used Gousto on and off for years, I prefer it; choice and quality of the stuff seems better.

I got Gousto for the same reason as you - it was life changing especially when DD wasn’t sleeping properly. I much prefer Gousto to Hello Fresh

We are happy with Gusto. Previously had Hello Fresh for quite a while but then had missing items a number of times - always refunded promptly but a pain having to buy replacements ourselves. Also began to get short dated meat - eg an order for 5 meals but all the meat needed using in 3 days, so we were having to freeze it. Experience with Gusto has been much better.

We went one step further and got a Frive subscription. No cooking, no washing up. Meals are lovely. Freed up so much time and headspace it was unbelievable and worth every penny.

I recommend Mindful Chef. I like their health conscious focus and tasty ingredients. Their customer service is also excellent if you need to contact them.

I love recipe boxes. We’ve had hello fresh, gousto and green chef.

I think gousto was the best in terms of enjoying the meals but we’ve been getting green chef because it’s less carbs.

I can give you a free green chef box I think if you want to try?

We use Hello Fresh (we’re in the US so might be different) and are very happy with it. We have freshly cooked meals 4 or 5 nights a week with lots of variety. We tend to pick dishes that can be largely made ahead of time and cook them up in the same day usually. There’s no waste and it just makes our lives easier.

I’ve tried both Gousto and Hello Fresh and much prefer the choice and freshness of ingredients from Gousto, I usually get 3 or 4 meals (for two) a week. The customer service has always been great too on the very rare occasion where something has been missing.

if you’re interested in a referral code pm me. I think you get 65% off the first box followed by 40% and 25% on subsequent boxes for the first two months.

I’d definitely recommend even if it’s just to give it a try.

We get Hello fresh but the meals aren’t appropriate for very young kids. Maybe the three year old if they like a wide variety. We like it as portion controlled, a large variety of meals and very tasty. Never enough veg though.

They were of a muchness TBH. Both fine!

They’re ok, but tbh I find them more faff than chucking a tray bake together or a simple pasta dish. All the tiny sachets and reading the instructions take longer than making up something as I go along 😂

We've used gousto many times of the years, it was great for us with young babies, working full time etc.
I would say though that all meals aren't particularly "healthy", although they've improved the amount of veggies over the past few years. But you do have to make the right choices when picking your meals, which can feel quite restrictive.

Also, we've recently tried with our toddlers and it didn't work at all. Most meals will have spices or strong complex flavours (e.g. Asian). That's what me and my husband liked about it actually, but it was too much for our kids so we stopped after a few weeks. We tried to adapt the recipes for them but still they didn't eat much of it.
I looked at HelloFresh but as far as I could see from the menu, it would have been the same problem.

I think Mindful Chef is probably a better option for you. It's meant to be healthy options so you'll have more choices, and from what i remember when we used it a few years ago the flavours were simpler, so better for children. It's much more expensive though.

We’re doing hello fresh at the moment and I like the not having to think and the ease. But, I think that you would struggle to use it for weight loss. Portions are generous and most of the recipes are quite carb heavy. My kids are older than yours, but both happily eat the food and enjoy picking what we’ll have.

I can send you a free box to try if you pm me your email address.

Grubby - vegetarian meal boxes. Or Riverford. I too have referral codes if you are interested PM me.

I have bought weekly from Grubby for 18 months - not bored yet. They do 2 person and 4 person boxes - you could do a 4 person and use left overs the next day.

I like the variety of recipes. And the fact it makes it easy to have vegetable based meals. I haven’t bought a takeaway curry since buying grubby as I think they are are oily in comparison and the grubby ones are really tasty. I can’t see me buying takeaway/restaurant curry ever again. In fact we buy takeaways so rarely now as they are just an expensive disappointment in comparison.

I used to use a lot of m & s convenience foods (pre marinaded or breaded meat and fish or prepared veg) when I had toddler and baby to deal with.

I can't see that faffing round with a meal prep box is easy. They are terrible value for money.

It's also easier to make meals that last more than one night. Cook once eat twice and freeze a further meal. One bit of effort but at least 3 meals so 2 no effort meals.

Those bags of Chicken roasted should be just bung in oven with frozen roast potatoes one night and then reheat leftovers in gravy another night plus boil veg.

AI meal planning is also easy to make shopping lists.

Try these ideas-much better than meal boxes
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DO3_2kQgGQ_/?igsh=MXZndWZuamo1OHlscA==
https://www.instagram.com/p/DTFpjGjke0C/?img_index=1&igsh=Zzc3MHR4NjRudXFw

We've used Gousto and HelloFresh, mostly so I can get my DD's to cook, and to give some inspiration.

I much prefer Gousto. It might look a bit more expensive, but the meals are a lot more sophisticated. You can pretty much see where you are with ingredients, so the food is not ultra-processed. They have a huge range, so you can always find something suitable for your whole family. Gousto can often take around 45 minutes to prepare.

HelloFresh looks cheaper, but in reality, if you want anything beyond a very basic offering, you have to pay quite a hefty surcharge. Sauces are proprietary blends, so you don't really know what you are getting. Nor do they teach much in the way of skills or interesting food combos. One advantage is that they are quick to make - often in the 20 minute region.

I like them but their portions are tiny. I treated myself last month having not had them for about a year and they seemed smaller than before (and they weren’t that big to start with). The quality is really good though. If I get them again I’d buy some extra ingredients like mushrooms and rice to bulk them out.

I e tried Gousto, Hello Fresh, and Mindful Chef and we thought they were all awful and very poor value for money, with not much to choose between any of them. The quality of the fresh ingredients was really poor, many things weren’t very fresh at all, and the portion sizes were minute. One of them (I can’t remember which) came with multiple tiny packs of different spices and other ingredients in one big bag which took ages to sort out. I found Simply Cook much better because each recipe comes with three pots of spices/sauce and you provide the rest of the ingredients so you can buy decent quality meat, vegetables, or fish.

Hello Fresh helped me through a period of poor mental health. It took the thinking out of cooking for the family. However, I have teens and a husband with huge appetites and the portion sizes are smaller than they’d like. I often ended up adding something extra and extra vegetables but despite that it was still easier than cooking from scratch.
I didn’t actually eat any of the meals myself but all were well received by DH and the kids.
DD tried Hello Fresh and Gousto in university and preferred Gousto.

I love Gousto - massive choice of recipes, no food waste and good portion size . They do a lower calorie range. All recipes are on Nutracheck if you are checking your macros etc. We get 5 meals for 2 per week and it costs around £55 which I don’t think is too bad for the convenience and time saving. We often have leftovers too which fill the other 2 days! For example last night I did bean enchiladas, they provided 3 wraps per head but 2 are plenty so I have another portion in the freezer for another day

I tried HelloFresh, but stopped as it was working out as being more expensive than a normal shop, and the portion sizes were so small that I was eating their version of "for two" by myself... and still feeling hungry! The meats were arriving with shorter dates, too.

My neighbours have recommended Gousto.

@Catza Are they all microwave-only meals at Frive? (I don't have one, that's all, but it must be nice to take the cooking out of it sometimes, too!)