I would like to start by saying that I typically avoid cooking. The very process fills me with rage and living with the worlds pickiest eaters doesn’t help. I can count on 3-4 fingers the meals we’ll all actually eat together. Me–I’ll do all kinds of meats and veggies and try new stuff, that’s not for them. I just gave up. This is my effort to try to regularly cook for my family.

SO, I would like to stop hating cooking and be able to use it as a time where I connect with the food I’m putting in my body, enjoy the peace an a lil music, and hopefully find a new hobby.

So here’s where the mess starts…

You know how when you get a good promo code you immediately put ish in your cart and see how much the discount will be, right? And you go down the rabbit hole of looking at comparable offers and their sales and yada yada yada. Well, it’s Saturday or something and here I am, just playing around getting prices on food subscription boxes and what not and what shows up at my doorstep 2 days later? A giant fn Hello Fresh box (I didn’t get any unboxing pics or anything bc honestly I was just confused). I think this was on Monday that it got here…and I was charged but I said screw it, it was 50% off and that mess is expensive and I wanted to try it.

Tuesday comes and so does another box. This time it’s from the main company I was doing my price comparison with, Home Chef, and I wasn’t charged. Ya’ll. Have I forgotten how to internet or something?! How am I over here ordering all of these boxes? What the hell?

Anywho, I figured I’d do a little comparey-pare between the two. I’ll start with the boxing and recipes…

This is what I got with Hello Fresh (minus the rigatoni meal bc I made it and honestly, 10/10–PLUS it’s a 1-2 person serving and I got 3 large ones).

Cute packaging and the recipes all are about 35 minutes or less. This is a perfect meal service for me but not the family. Can you see me getting my strong-headed teenager and “I don’t eat vegetables” fiancé to eat couscous or zucchini? NO WAY.

So, since I got so much (ON ACCIDENT) I think I’m gonna give the Hello Fresh to my mom to try and she can give me her feedback while I try Home Chef.

So Here’s Home Chef…

And I love how all of the recipe pages have holes so they’re binder ready!

Now, THIS is more my kind of family friendly [Don’t need a lecture on how I feed my family, Karen, nobody said I was mother-of-the-year] and I’m gonna do my best to get them to at the very least try it. Worst case, I have meal-prep, right?

So I’ll keep y’all posted as we try the meals and if we think it’s worth continuing.