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Bookish Tay

Good Books + Good Living

Categories: Food, Lifestyle

Why I Love HelloFresh

This post is not sponsored. All thoughts and opinions are my own, and we pay for a HelloFresh subscription.

A few weeks ago on Instagram, I mentioned that I was going to try HelloFresh. I’d been thinking about it for some time, and after a random ad for them came in the mail, I decided to go for it! And I’m so glad I did.

What I Like about HelloFresh

Meal planning is 100 times easier

Meal planning has always been one of my biggest pain points. As much as I love cooking, I don’t really enjoying picking new meals to make every single week.

Enter HelloFresh.

Now, each week we pick 3 meals together and they come straight to our door. I still make dinner 3 other days a week, but having this meal service had made my life so much easier, as I don’t have to come up with new meals every week.

We get more variety

We’ve been married almost 6 years now, and I feel like we eat a lot of the same things for dinner, over and over again. While some of the recipes we love are tried and true (and we’ll never give up), it is nice to have more variety.

With HelloFresh you get 3 new meals (or however many you choose) every single week. We’ve tried things, like chicken Shawarma, that we never would have tried before and loved them!

Is the cost worth it?

HelloFresh isn’t exactly cheap. You can get $70 off your first order when you sign up, but once the discount is used, the boxes are on the pricey side.

Right now, the extra cost is worth it, at least for our family. We have been spending less on groceries and eating out less, so it does almost even out completely.

For me, getting meals that are fresh, healthy, and tasty right to our door is worth the extra cost. On days when my anxiety is bad, it’s so easy to just grab a bag and the recipe card and know that in 30 minutes I’ll have a healthy meal in front of my family.

I don’t know right now if we’ll keep the service forever, my husband is a fan and he’s asked to keep it for a while. All in all, it has made meal planning + cooking so much easier, and that’s what I was searching for. I definitely recommend trying it out if you want to mix up what you’re eating, and make mealtime simpler!

Have you tried HelloFresh? If not, do you have any questions that I could answer for you?

Categories: Food, Lifestyle

How I Simplified Meal Planning

Earlier this year I did Productivity Bootcamp with Jordan Page and one of the big things she talks about right at the beginning of the course is figuring out your different pain points throughout the day.

My biggest pain point?

Meal planning.

Every week when I sit down to make a meal plan, I feel stuck. It takes forever. I feel like I made all the same things last week, and I never know what to make or when/if I should try a new meal.

Then, a few weeks ago I read this post from Everyday Reading about how she started a meal plan rotation. She plans enough meals for two weeks then rotates them for the next 6-8 weeks.

I decided to give this a try too, to see if it helped me with my meal planning woes.

We’re only a week into it, so I haven’t actually done a rotation yet, but I know exactly what I’ll be making for the next month or so already and that makes me feel so calm!


Meal Rotation Plan

How the rotating meal plan works

Last Friday night I sat down and made up a list of 15 meals. I have 3 weeks worth of food for this rotation (assuming I make pizza on Friday nights and then we have take-out on Saturdays. I’ll make all of week 1’s meals this week, then week 2, followed by 3 and then I’ll start over.

I decided to do 3 weeks worth of meals, because I know that when we eat something too close together, we all aren’t that interested in eating it. I feel like 3 weeks is a great amount of time! I also mix up our pizza toppings so that having pizza each week is still fun!

My meals for this fall

Here is my list of meals that I’ll be rotating the next 6-9 weeks (depending on how it goes!) I’m only trying a few new recipes, that we can rotate out if we don’t end up enjoying them! And I’ve already got a list going of recipes I’d like to try next time around!

  • Spaghetti & meatballs OR sweet and sour meatballs with a side salad

  • Chicken Cordon Bleu Rolls (my own recipe) + fruit we have

  • Creamy Chicken Taquitos (one of our faves!) with Spanish rice

  • Easy Marinated Pork chops with roasted veggies

  • Easy Au Jus Sandwiches with chips and fruit

  • Chicken Corn Chowder with Zucchini Muffins (got this meal from Janssen)

  • Pesto Chicken Sandwiches with chips and fruit

  • Caesar Pasta with a side salad

  • Crepes

  • Brats with salad and baked fries

  • Steak and potatoes

  • Quesadillas with Hatch Chili Pork (which we get from our local dairy delivery service) similar flavor profile in this recipe

  • Loaded Chicken Salad Sandwich with fruit salad

  • Chicken Stroganoff with mashed potatoes

  • Homemade hamburgers and baked fries!

Have you ever tried a meal rotation plan? Did it work for you? Also, do you have any favorite fall recipes that I have to try next time?!

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    Hi there! I'm Taylor! Welcome to Bookish Tay, a book and lifestyle blog. Looking for a good book or way to make life better? You're in the right place.

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