Wannabe Chefs

With 4 kids and 2 jobs, I just can’t be good at a lot of things and that is ok! I know when I need to delegate or ask for help, and my most precious resource is my time. One thing I dislike doing is meal planning and grocery shopping. After years of not doing a good job at either, and eating out almost every night, something had to change. When I was diagnosed with melanoma about 6 years ago, I started taking my health more seriously. Torchy’s and In ‘n’ Out are delicious, but it was getting out of hand. I weighed about 10-15 lbs more than I do now and my dietary habits were so bad, add in restless leg (LOL that RLS is even a syndrome, but it sure as heck keeps me up at night and I have noticed it is directly related to my poor diet) and an overall feeling of bleh and I was ready to step up my health game. I started with a personal chef that would deliver meals once a week to my house. These were already prepared and just had to be reheated. She knew I was wanting a cancer fighting diet, but gosh darn it, I’m so picky and for around $1,000 a month, it just wasn’t doing it for me. I mean, my mortgage payment was barely more than that and if I didn’t feel like I was eating like Oprah, I couldn’t justify that much money.

I have since tried 4 home delivery meal plans: Blue Apron, Freshly, Sunbasket and most recently, Home Chef. We gave up after a few weeks of Blue Apron because it was taking us an hour or more to prepare, even if it only said 30 mins or so. Maybe we are just slow, I don’t know, but I got over it quickly. Freshly was just ok, it was delivered cooked and all you had to do was microwave or heat it, but that got old and there wasn’t a ton of variety. Sunbasket is my second place, it was healthy, not too terribly time consuming, but the menu was often weird and I would struggle to find 3 meals that were normal enough for me to get excited about. Even with my picky pants ways, I was able to keep using Sunbasket for over a year. Home chef entered my life about 7 months ago and I have been a huge fan of every single meal.

If you have never tried one of these fabulous, life changing services, here is how Home Chef works:

1. You go to www.homechef.com and create an account, there is usually a screamin’ deal for new members.
2. Every Monday you get to pick from 15 meals.
3. Receive your ingredients perfectly proportioned and nicely packaged on ice in recyclable packaging.
4. Cook! Each meal takes us around 30 minutes to cook and it is so so so so good!

You can skip weeks whenever you want, I skipped a few weeks around the holidays. The meals start at $7.99 a serving and it is one of the best things I have done for myself.

Here is what is on the menu for the week of the 25th.

Also, sometimes I’m not feeling like a heavy dinner, so I order the smoothie instead!

So if you see Jeni and I slaving away in the kitchen, now you know where it is all coming from! We have been cracking up a little when people keep asking for our recipes, but now our secret it out! Bon Appétit!