From Meal Kits to Self-Sufficient
We always love refreshing our food and eating habits with HelloFresh, but there comes a time when we feel it's most important for us to also break away from using them. This month, we're adjusting to switching away from meal kit delivery services and showing what to keep in mind for when you eventually do it, too!
Keep the Magic of the Mystery
We love being able to choose from a list of options every week, but we are TERRIBLE at meal planning ourselves. So, we wrote down ALL our favorite recipes from our service plus a few of our own originals and placed them in a small bowl. Each week, we plan on choosing 4-6 and ordering just what we need for those. Since Drive-Up pickups and ordering online at grocery stores are so much more the norm, reinstating our weekly shopping trips is easier than ever.
Keep the Organization
I bought large paper lunch bags to help keep our meals organized, but I'll be trying to reuse them for as many meals as possible, unlike how I could with meal kit services. We filled up our waste and recycling cans more than we liked because of how much had to be tossed or recycled. Not having the boxes, cooling packs, large paper bags and individual tiny plastic bags anymore is a huge weight off our shoulders. Pre-portioning all of the ingredients out is helping with the convenience we've gotten used to with grabbing and mindless prepping. I'm hoping to eventually replace the bags when they aren't reusable any more with trays or baskets.
Keep the Schedule
Don't go into your switch thinking you will suddenly become a full-time home chef and shop like you would. That's a great way to watch half your groceries end up in the trash can. If you only ordered 3 meals a week, only replace those three meals. Add the fourth when you're ready. Then the fifth, and so on and so on. We did 5, but lately we've been ending up overlapping 2 meals by the time our next shipment would arrive. So, we changed our schedule to 4 meals to see how we could handle the adjustment. It's been working out very well so far, and I've been able to focus on meal planning our lunches, as well. I plan on making us a lunch meal bowl and a dinner meal bowl for us to pick from since it makes things so much more fun.
Uprooting your schedule doesn't have to be daunting. Try out these 3 must-keeps and you should be able to switch over very successfully! We've been able to make more mindful decisions with our revised planning and, ultimately, we've also ended up saving a lot of money! I can't wait to make our lunches next week and put all the lessons I've learned into practical everyday use.
What was your favorite recipe from your meal kit service that you're keeping in your recipe book? Let me know in the comments below! I'll be sharing how we've modified some recipes to be a little bit more fancy in the future! So be sure to follow me on my Instagram (@withlovejoey) or subscribe to my monthly newsletter for a preview (and quick links) to all the posts that get released every month.
I almost never use pre-cooked delivery services, wince I normally cook from scratches myself. But lately, I've become more organised, with a template from a nutritionist. It's very handy because I have only to adjust the recipes and the menu is already done 🙂
HelloFresh has been great for us especially at the beginning of the pandemic when things were in short supply. Now we’re on a hiatus from the service, but I definitely draw from their recipes for inspiration.