This week HelloFresh launches #cookitforward, making a tasty difference in this season of good will.
HelloFresh is a food box delivery service with a difference, they also have a head chef with recipes and meal plans for you too! They sent some over for me to try, and my #cookitforward is dedicated to my wife, battling a chronic condition (Chronic Daily Migraine) that leaves her often without enough spoons to cook a decent meal.
The spoon theory is an analogy used by some people with a disability and people with chronic illness to describe their everyday living experience when their disability or illness (physical or mental) presents in a reduced amount of energy available for productive tasks. Spoons are an intangible unit of measurement used to track how much energy a person has throughout a given day. Each activity "costs" a certain number of spoons, which will only slowly be replaced as the person "recharges" through rest or other activities that do not require (or even refill) spoons. A person who runs out of spoons loses the ability to do anything other than rest.
So, with a helping hand from HelloFresh it leaves more time and energy for me to help out around the house in other ways. The box arrived on time and within the 5 hour time window - very handy to be able to pick an evening slot!
So with the haste of a small child opening Christmas presents I unpacked my box, all kinds of things inside and having not read the recipes yet my mind boggled at what the 3 meals could be!
We'd got back from a trip out (using many many of my wife's aforementioned spoons) so the thought of everything being ready for me when I got home was comforting, and would mean dinner wouldn't be ages whilst I faffed about in the kitchen. Here are the ingredients for the first meal: Cheesy tomato, chorizo, and mozeralla orzo risotto!
Simple to follow instructions step by step in a very organised way to cook. Loved that I could use the whole bag of spinach without worry I was removing an ingredient from another day.
So here it is, almost like the picture. The portions were MASSIVE - my bowls are rather on the large side but I stuck to the recipe religiously, and we both felt rather stuffed by the end. There are instructions for 2 or 4 people's worth, but even the 2 person was large for us. Perhaps we have smaller portions usually as spoon theory also affects how much exercise is possible. I'ts a good idea therefore to keep portions to proportion. For the other meals I only served what we needed, and saved leftovers for another time!
The next day we had the: Pan-fried chicken breast with sweet potato mash & peppercorn sauce. I was somewhat at an impass with this dish, whilst it was a good recipe, had flavourful ingredients and methods which saved time and effort, the use of barn-reared chickens left me saddened and cheated. 'Roaming Roosters' is the name of the company supplying the chicken to HelloFresh, and although they do sell free-range chicken, what they send out in the boxes is definitely not.
Lastly was the best meal of the week we thought, perhaps also because neither of us could be bothered to cook, but the hard work was already done for us: Jerk pork with coconut tomato rice and beans.
Some interesting info came to light following a recent survey too:
- Nearly half of respondents (48.8%) never cook for someone that isn’t their partner or child/children and more than a third never cook a meal together with someone else.
- A fifth of people said that they eat alone on a daily basis.
- When asked if it should be the woman’s job to do the cooking in the household, nearly 80% of people quite rightly disagreed with this. However this doesn’t seem to transcend to Christmas day, as nearly half of all women surveyed said they do the cooking on Christmas Day versus a third of men.
- And less than 10% of over 55’s are cooked for by their children on Christmas Day.
- Being made a home cooked dinner is clearly still highly regarded, as a third of us would forego being taken out to a restaurant if it meant being cooked a surprise meal from a loved one.
(Research carried out by Opinion Matters on behalf of HelloFresh, from 17th - 25th November 2015, on a sample of 1886 UK Adults)
So would I recommend HelloFresh to my friends, if they have the money and not the time then yes I really would. We all have cook books but I rarely follow them, this made it hard to add personal pride to the dishes but when time is short, and shopping can get easily as expensive, then HelloFresh have hit on a good thing here. Just the free-range chicken to go and it'll be perfect!
I think #cookitforward is a great initiative, because life is not always about confit duck legs and beautiful pork terrines - it's about weekday meals that need to be healthy, tasty and in my case, easy to do when looking after someone.
for more information take a look over at their website: www.hellofresh.co.uk
