New Menus

When my wife and I were still engaged, and in the process of discussing the nuts and bolts of how the future marriage was going to progress, one of the important things to discuss was who was going to do the cooking. My wife’s parents were amazing cooks; for many years they ran a dining room in conjunction with the motel they operated in Upstate NY. But the apple sort of didn’t fall from the tree with her, she really didn’t want anything to do with cooking, she was happy to have someone else take the mantle of that responsibility. So, it became my job every evening (neither of us ate breakfast before work, and lunch was usually at work as well, except for days off, and since I worked retail, I didn’t have weekends, so that sort of took care of itself) to make sure there was something on the table instead of just the cat.

After 30 plus years, we’ve sort of gotten into a rut of specific items that we eat on a weekly basis and admittedly, it’s getting a little worn. Even me, the guy that could eat chicken for 20 days straight and not complain (or pizza for lunch every day when I’m at work) is getting a little tired of the options that we’ve come to count on. Our most oft go to is what my wife texts “S&S?” meaning Soup and Sandwich, which ends up being either egg salad or tunafish for her, and a cup of microwaveable tomato soup, and for me whatever deli meat happens to be in the meat drawer (chicken or turkey) with bread and mayo, and I tend to skip the soup course.

Our other mainstays seem to be chili, (more often in the wintertime) or goulash (which my wife has recently told me she only eats because I like it) tuna noodle casserole, and some other dishes that are relatively easy to prepare, but aren’t really overly good for us, but they’re filling. And when I don’t feel like cooking, we opt for takeout, because of course fast food is the easiest of all, but very lacking in anything that might be remotely called healthy. So it goes.

Many years ago, before COVID, like many we tried the ‘cook your own’ mail order meal services. Hello Fresh, Blue Apron and so on. Admittedly, they were in their infancy, and there were a lot of businesses to choose from, and the menus themselves were pretty varied. Since the businesses were trying to find their own footing, they had deals galore, so people didn’t have to pay a lot to get a lot. But some of the businesses weren’t as serious as others, and quality was all over the place. Which in a way was to be expected. If you’re trying out a new service, things generally don’t go the way that you were expecting when you’re sketching it out in the boardroom. Food is a perishable source, and it needs to be treated in a certain way to arrive at it’s destination in a useable manner. Just packing it with dry ice (or ice packs) doesn’t always do it justice. What works for a pre-prepared item doesn’t always work with something more fragile, like lettuce, or herbs.

Some worked, others didn’t but when it came time to pay full price for those services (deals don’t last forever), it became less of a bargain for something (if I wasn’t lazy) I could actually make myself. The one thing that the meal services may not have taken into account (or maybe it was something that they just couldn’t get past) was that with the ingredients, they were giving the customers a recipe and ingredient list that could be replicated. For the most part. Some of the services were crafty in making recipes that had unusual ingredients that might not be available in some locales. Or there weren’t easy substitutes that would work as well with that particular recipe. We all don’t have a Wegmans, Whole Foods, Harris Teeter, or some other higher end grocery chain within easy striking distance (technically I do, but I’m not driving 40 miles to Wegmans for one particular item, that’s not reasonable).

Consequently, a lot of those early businesses either failed, or were absorbed into larger companies. For better or worse, I honestly don’t know. This year my wife suggested we try some of the newer companies that have evolved from the older ones, to see what they have to offer, and see if we could spruce up our choices for meals. Admittedly, we’re both getting tired of the mainstays, and there’s nothing wrong with trying something new. Certainly beats going to McD’s, BK and Subway in a pinch every few days. (Especially Subway, we’re getting very disillusioned there, $12-14 for a sandwich? I used to live on $5 footlongs when I was younger…and they tasted better too)

So far we’ve tried Hungryroot, Factor and Home Chef. Similar to our previous foray into the genre, when it came to initial interaction, we were able to score some pretty good deals on the costs of the services. Of course, that’s the typical business model, make it convenient and relatively inexpensive to get the customer interested, then give them the real price point. And see if they’ll stay a customer.

Hungryroot was sort of a hit and miss for us. While they had the shipping part figured out, the items were expertly packed, arrived in good form and were fresh and useable, the recipes that we picked out were cook your own (which we knew ahead of time) but the ingredients were a bit too specific, and the recipes weren’t easy to follow. And in some instances they seemed to presume you had more than one oven to work with, as they wanted you to be able to cook two different items at wildly different temperatures, which for us; with one oven was impossible. I had to take the medium, almost overcook one item just to make sure the other one was heated completely. I do have an air fryer, but the whole point of this wasn’t to use every item in the kitchen just to make dinner. And having a galley type kitchen, its difficult to juggle that sort of thing anyway. Don’t get me wrong, the food was good quality, fresh and so on, it just wasn’t easy to make, which was a big turn off.

Our next contestant was Factor (or Factor75). This service has microwaveable meals packed in trays, and it actually wasn’t bad. I had seen adverts for them on different social media platforms, and more than one YouTuber was being paid to shill for them in order to support their channels. Our first box from them was definitely a hit, there wasn’t a meal in the 8 that we got that we didn’t like. The meals seemed to be well prepared; professionally put together (the ingredients made sense together) and except for one or two times that we had a difficult time getting the cling film off the container (have to find out what glue they use, it’s almost industrial!) it was fairly easy to prepare and consume. Of course you have to pitch the container when you’re done, but you do the same thing with tv dinners from the supermarket.

Since the first box was a winner, and we still had a discount, we tried a second. And this one wasn’t quite as much of a hit as the first. For the most part it was more of a condition of what we had chosen, as the meal offerings changed from week to week. So you couldn’t necessarily order what you had before, (I expect the company wants to keep up with variety) even if you liked it. Out of the eight entrees we bought, I think we ended up liking maybe half? Some of the items were a little deceptive in terms of spices used, some were just plain inedible when doused with peppers or some other sauce that didn’t hit the palate just right. Unfortunately, that’s kind of what happens when you’re sort of ‘flying blind’ with a meal service. It even happens in restaurants, you read the menu, guess what it’s going to be, and perhaps you don’t like the result. It happens.

Our most recent service is Home Chef. Like Hungryroot, the boxes came packed with their own proprietary gel packs for keeping things cool. I forgot to mention that these gel packs are reusable, so that’s a good thing as well. Too, I’ve read they’re supposed to be biodegradable, so if you wish to pitch them, it’s not something that will wreck the enviornment if it happened to end up in a landfill. To me, that’s a good selling point.

Again like Hungryroot, Home Chef’s offerings are mostly prepare on your own, but it’s not a huge leap to make the recipes. The ingredients are well labeled, and on the recipe card it has the ingredients you’re using in extreme detail though there are some generic ones that you might have to guess what they’re made from. I noted on more than one recipe it had an item called ‘Cream Sauce Base’ that had the consistency of heavy whipping cream. Now I can’t be certain that’s exactly what it was, but it could very well be. It certainly acted like that was what it was, given what it did with the other ingredients that it was paired with. On one of the recipes, it was paired with a brand name pasta (Rana) but it wasn’t a commerically available package, it seemed to have been specifically made for Home Chef. Which admittedly is a nice touch.

On the HC website, you’re relegated to meal sizes of either 2 or 4. Obviously 2 is intended for 2 people and 4 is the family size. You can get extra items of protein as well as breakfast offerings. (My wife chose tamales for her and a waffle/egg/sausage combination for me) The waffle sandwich wasn’t that great, but I did try to heat it in the air fryer and it got dried out as well as crisped a bit. Perhaps not the best choice. Just now tried to heat it in the microwave, and it came out a little moist. It’s not bad really, just different.

Of the four entrees were got, I’d say we had a success rate of about 75%. The only one that didn’t hit the spot was a pork meatball and pasta dish. I’m not sure where they sourced the sausage from, but if I was going to make it again, I’d try sweet Italian sausage, not their version. So basically that one came down to personal preference. But again with all these things, personal preference is a big part of it. You’re never going to know what you like until you try what’s available and possible. We’re going to order another box and see what happens. Though I was cautioned that it might be the last one for awhile as this box only carries a 20% discount, not 50% like the first one. They still have to make their budget, I get that.

Bottom line, I do have a pile of cookbooks in the house. And I know how to cook. Just have to get a little motivated and work out some menus of my own. And get busy.