I've gotten HelloFresh boxes on and off since September. To be fair, more off than on, I would say. Well, since moving in with Charles, one of my goals was to cut down on the number of times that we have been eating out. HelloFresh, in theory, is perfect for this. The restaurant quality recipe and pre-measured ingredients arrive right to your door, and then the meal for two can be prepared in less than half an hour.

If you're not familiar with HelloFresh (or BlueApron, or Plated, or one of many similar boxes), it's a weekly subscription, where a box of fresh produce and meat in pre-measured quantities arrives at your door with directions to make three gourmet meals. It's about $60, which, full disclosure, we didn't pay the full amount of.

Last week, our box arrived, after a serious shipping error, and we got ready to cook.

Here are the three meals that we (well, I), selected:

Zucchini Flatbread (vegetarian) 

The flatbread was essentially a particularly jazzy pizza. It had ricotta, zucchini ribbons, onion, walnuts, and sundried tomatoes. This was one of my favorite meals. It was overall very flavorful, and I would like to think generally healthy. I think that we would make this again. I'm knocking a star off because this came with the most awful salad. It had a mustard-based dressing. The "premium mustard" really ruined the taste. It was like drinking a bottle of mustard. Ick.

Overall rating: 4 Stars

Beefed Up Bolognese

Charles has already said that this was his favorite thing. Poblano peppers make up the majority of the vegetable. It's a pasta dish, but not one that's heavy on sauce. The portion on this was very generous, with really enough for 4 meals (for our appetites). 

Overall rating: 5 Stars

One-Pan Chicken with Chorizo

This one was...not great. It wasn't bad, but it was not spectacular. For starters, even though we followed the cooking directions exactly, and we're not bad cooks, the chicken was pretty raw. The ten minutes of cook time wasn't enough. The elements of the dish also didn't go well together. It was standard white rice, with red bell pepper, a chicken breast on top, and a little chorizo. This was not special. It's the kind of thing you'd see for $7.99 on an Applebee's menu. 

Overall rating: 2.5 Stars

We would get a HelloFresh box again, but I think that I would pay more attention to the individual recipes before I chose them next time. I felt that the recipe choices were kind of weak (you pick three of the five options), and I wouldn't have chosen the other two recipes. That said, there was definitely something lacking from at least one of the recipes.

We're going to be taking a break from HelloFresh to try out some other similar options, but I would say that it's a good service if it fits your lifestyle. If you're interested, you can get your first box for only $20 (shipping is always free) here.