Retail Meal Kits…

While waiting for our first Factor 75 order to arrive, we decided to try Home Chef’s retail meal kits sold at Fry’s. After all, we already tried their meal kit service.

Comparing them to their home delivery, there’s definitely less trash buying them this way! (Read my Home Chef home delivery review here: https://rusticcountrymarket.com/meal-time-update). There’s also less meal choices when buying the retail version of Home Chef.

For the most part, we enjoyed the meals. The food is average quality and flavor. Definitely better priced than a restaurant; however, the retail portions don’t leave much left overs.

Did buying the retail version of Home Chef cause us to want to return to using Home Chef’s delivery meal service? To be honest, no. We will occasionally buy the Home Chef retail version in the future if there’s a meal we like available to purchase.

I’ll be sharing our Factor 75 meal experience soon. Until then…

Inspiring Home Life,

We aren’t just a market, we are Rustic Country Market Living.

Inspiring Home Life ♥️,

THE RELENTLESS REDECORATOR

Cooking at Home…

We’ve been enjoying Sun Basket for awhile now.

In fact, the featured picture on this post was one of our Sun Basket meals we recently cooked at home, Sesame-crusted Salmon with Orange and Roasted Carrot Salad. It tasted AMAZING!

We were ready to add another company to supplement our Sun Basket meals. I did some searching and decided to give Home Chef a try. They ship for free if you order over $45, so I ordered the following meals for 2: a meal to cook, a “no cooking required” salad meal and 2 smoothies = free shipping!

Here’s what’s on our 1st Home Chef menu this week:
  1. Mojito Pork Chops
  2. Sesame Chicken Salad
  3. Strawberry Colada Smoothie(s)
The Home Chef menu will be added to our Sun Basket menu for this week:
  1. Shrimp tacos diablo with pickled cabbage & lime.
  2. Sicilian chicken breasts with salmoriglio sauce and broccoli.
  3. Piri-piri shrimp with curried sweet potato-coconut mash.

Home Chef will be our 4th meal kit company we’ve tried. Our first experience was Blue Apron, the second, Sun Basket (our favorite), and third was Green Chef. You can read about our experiences by clicking the preceding links.

Our first Home Chef shipment arrives this week, so be sure to check back to find out how our  meal kit experience with them goes.

Until next time….

We aren’t just a market, we are Rustic Country Market Living.

Inspiring Home Life ♥️,

THE RELENTLESS REDECORATOR

Home Cooked Meals…

I grew up during a time when girls were taught Home Economics. I was taught how to be a stay at home mom and manage a home and family. Kind of like that movie Pleasantville. It was never my desire to be a working professional, juggling a job and family. How could I??? I wasn’t even taught how to juggle home, family with a full time job.

Change happens…

Today, we live in a double income world. Most families juggle home and work life. Single parent families typically struggle to make ends meet. While a double income household is advantageous; it also has it’s disadvantages, like less quality time at home. Grocery shopping is the last thing I want to do after working all week. As a result, we have a tendency to go out to eat too often.

Are Meal Kits Really Worth It???

The idea of having meal kits delivered to our home seemed intriguing to me, but was it really worth it? After trying a few, I’ve concluded it is! Since we started to use meal kit services, we’ve enjoyed more home cooked meals and increased our quality time at home. We’ve seen less left over food waste at our house. We cook restaurant quality food at home. Time permitting, we can prepare the meals together. We don’t have to spend time shopping for ingredients. We don’t have to buy extra ingredients that end up spoiling. I get to review the proposed meals in advance and make changes based on what we might like to eat. I can skip a delivery week, which works well if we are going to be traveling. I can even change the delivery day if needed. All we need to provide is a few pantry items (IE: salt, pepper, oil) and kitchen tools (IE: pans, utinsels).

Sun Basket…

I recently cooked Sun Basket’s Braised chicken with carrots potatoes and thyme recipe. Cook time was 20-35 minutes. I was waiting for my husband to get home from work, so I extended the cooking time by reducing the heat. I chose to add Vermouth instead of white wine or water. We really enjoyed this meal, had plenty of food to eat and there was a small amount of leftovers.

Click this link If you’d like to read more about our Sun Basket Meal Kit Experience.

Inspiring Home Life,

THE RELENTLESS REDECORATOR