Hello Fresh! (Review and Giveaway!)

Have you heard of Hello Fresh? If you are a sub box junkie, you probably have, but if you have yet to join the subscription box craze sweeping the land lately, you should listen up. How about fresh ingredients and recipes for three meals delivered to your door weekly? All you have to do is follow a few steps and dinner is done in less then 30 minutes. No shopping, no planning, no super skills required. There is a Classic box for omnivores and a Veggie box for herbivores. We tried one of each. The branding is cute (and I'm a sucker for cute branding), and the food arrives nicely organized and cooled by a very funky cooler box. Yes, we kept the cooler box, and the reusable freezer packs inside (hey, I'm thrifty!).

Each box includes labeled bags of ingredients for each meal, and a colorful recipe card with step by step instructions for preparing each meal.

 As soon as I open my box, I pile the ingredients for each meal together and pull out anything that won't need refrigeration. Shelf space in my fridge is prime real estate, so I don't shove anything in there unnecessarily. Anything that needs to be cold goes into a large pasta bowl (one for each meal), and I slide them into the fridge in order of how I will cook them. The recipe cards are clipped to the side of my fridge with a magnet, and everything else goes into the pantry at eye level in a little pile. OCD? Perhaps. 

Then the fun part, getting cooking. The recipes are very simple, and none take more than 30 minutes, so they are perfect weeknight fare. However, if you are clueless in the kitchen, read carefully. I have noticed that a few of the cards missed small details in the instructions. For example, a chicken meatball dish required cooking chopped scallions and setting them aside, but then they never reappeared in the instructions. The photo of the finished dish on the card actually showed raw scallions as a garnish. I ended up folding my cooked scallions in to the meatballs, so no big deal, but again, if you aren't someone who normally cooks, it could mix you up.

That said, I am not sure advanced cooks would be head over heels for the recipes either. They are healthy, simple recipes, nothing that will stretch your culinary imagination. The Asian Sloppy Joe sauce was simply tomato and soy sauce. I added shredded carrot and zucchini to the onion and garlic included in the box to kick up the veggie component. In the end is was delicious, and Jude scarfed down two huge servings.

All in all, I believe that the best customer for this company is a busy family that is interested in trying something aside from the typical meat and potatoes Americana for dinner, but who isn't so advanced in culinary feats that they'd be bored by fresh ginger and soy. It is amazing if you are short on time, and need something healthy and new.

Sooo, is that you? If so, and you are interested in trying out a Hello Fresh delivery, I have a giveaway for you! I have one Hello Fresh Gift Card worth $25 to get you started!

You may earn up to 4 entries for this giveaway:

1 Entry for leaving a comment on this post, just tell me why you'd like to try Hello Fresh!

1 Entry for liking Jojobean Designs on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/jojobeandesigns

1 Entry for Following Jojobean26 on twitter and tweeting about this giveaway.

1 Entry for following this blog via GFC.

Please leave a comment for each of the above!

Thanks and good luck!

Food Should Taste Good

I don't buy junk food. I actually don't even like junk food all that much, with one huge exeption: chips. I love salty, crunchy chips, especially rippled potato chips dunked in creamy, fat-laden onion dip. E's weakness is Doritos, any flavor really, though he's partial to Cool Ranch and Spicy Habanero. Between the two of us, we could easily polish off a whole bag in one sitting, hence my not buying chips. However, a few months ago I was wandering around the fancy grocer's in Ann Arbor when I stumbled upon Food Should Taste Good chips. They were all natural. They had interesting flavors. They were baked instead of fried. And most importantly, they were on sale. I am a cheapskate, after all.

I bought two bags: Multigrain and Sweet Potato. When I got home, E was, as usual, skeptical of my new chips. Then he tried them. Soo good! These chips are more like crackers than chips really, since they are a little thicker and so much more flavorful. We ate the sweet potato chips with pumpkin dip, and the mulitgrain ones with hummus. Thus began a serious addiction. I checked out the Food Should Taste Good website for coupons, and noticed they also do a recipe contest. So duh, I entered my pumpkin dip recipe, then joined the mailing list. I emailed the link to a bunch of my friends, then I got an email. I won a case of chips! Sweet. They even let me choose which flavors I wanted, so we went with two bags each of Cinnamon, Sweet Potato, Jalapeno, Olive, Buffalo, and Multigrain. Between holiday parties, going away parties, and general snacking, we finished off most of those bags fairly quickly. I was saving the Cinnamon bags for baking. It took me a long time to decide what to do with them until I stumbled upon a blog post by Melissa. Her aunt had a genious idea for a pie, and since my parents were coming for a visit this past week, it was the perfect opportunity.

You may remember that my mother is a health food nut, so if I'm going to make her dessert and it isn't a holiday, it had better be relatively healthy. I switched up this recipe to use whole wheat instead of AP flour, reduced the sugar and fat, and used my Cinnamon FSTG chips instead of the cornflakes. This was, seriously, one of the best desserts I've ever made. Not too sweet, creamy and crunchy, and with just a little tartness. Yum!

Food Should Taste Good Cottage Cheese Pie

Topping:

1/2 c. FSTG Cinnamon Chips

1 Tbls. Sugar
1/4 tsp.cinnamon

Dough:
1/2 c. butter, cubed
1/2 c. sugar substitute
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2 Tbls. fat free sour cream

Filling:
1 lb. 2% or nonfat cottage cheese
2 eggs
1/4 c. sugar
2 tsp. fat free sour cream
dash of salt
2 tsp. lemon juice

Preparation:
For topping,  pulse ingredients in a food processor or crush in a plstic bag to create coarse crumbs.

For dough, pulse butter, sugar, egg and vanilla in food processor for 2 minutes, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add remaining ingredients and pulse to combine. Press dough evenly into the bottom and up sides of a 9 inch pie plate.

For filling, pulse all ingredients to combine, scraping sides of the bowl as needed. Pour into pie plate and spread evenly over dough. Sprinkle with cinnamon topping. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Let stand at room temperature for one hour, than chill overnight. Serve with fresh berries, warm jam, or fruit compote.

Print this recipe!

Perfection, my ass

I am such a sucker.

I'm also a bit of a girly girl. I love pink, fluffy slippers, bath and body products, and sparkles. I can't ever buy enough scented lotion, and I spend too long getting ready on date nights. However, I've always considered myself to have a pretty good grasp on reality when it comes to what I really NEED to have. I'll shop sales and only buy when I'm running out of something, except for two very glaring exceptions. Mascara and lip-gloss. Very few people in the world have ever seen me without mascara and lip-gloss, and it is essentially my one true goal in life to prevent that number from growing. Therefore, I keep secret stashes of these products in every conceivable hiding place: pockets, glove compartments, drawers, the toolbox. I do have my favorite, go-to brands and shades to which I will always stay true. But on occasion, some glossy new ad or gimmick will tempt me, and I fall into Freak Fad Frenzy.

This is what happened to me when I discovered the emergence of the new vibrating mascaras. I first spotted the Lancome vibrating mascara (sexily dubbed Oscillation) in a magazine this summer. I got giddy. I had to have one. But I didn't want to pay 34 bucks for it, so I waited until there was a cheaper version sold at CVS. Happily, a few weeks later I discovered Pulse Perfection™ by Define-A-Lash® Vibrating Mascara. See all of those trademarks? It's patented technology people! It must be good! The packaging promised that this product would give me the 7 elements of amazing lashes. Now my lashes are naturally light and not super thick, so that sounded good to me. I waited until I had used up my other mascara to try it, and this was the week. Bring on the perfection!

It was only when I was standing before the mirror yesterday, wand in hand, that I realized I was now about to angle a piece of hard plastic covered in tiny, vibrating spikes, into to my eye. Maybe I hadn't thought this through. But I wasn't about to cave that easily. I followed the detailed instructions on the packaging and waited to see my glorious lashes emerge...

"Uh, why do I look like a large, furry spider is napping on my eyelid?" Because this crap doesn't work. It's ridiculous. I looked like I had a solid clumps of lashes, like one of those old napping baby dolls whose lids flap up into their heads when you pick them up. It took me almost five minutes of slow separating with my lash comb, followed by wiping all of the excess on a tissue, and more combing. There was so much mascara on that wand that even Tammy Faye would have cringed. Sadly, I had to go to work, so I had to do it again on the other eye or risk not matching and looking like an even bigger wacko. It usually takes me a total of ten minutes to do all of my makeup, but it took me longer than that just to put on this mascara. At the end of the day, my eyes started to itch. I looked in the mirror and realized it was because the mascara was flaking off and nesting inside my lower eyelids, where it created the appearance of smudgy, dark liner and also an increasing amount of discomfort. I'll admit that the liner effect, while entirely accidental, looked kind of sultry, but I'm not into all that pain in the name of fashion bullshite. I couldn't wait to get home and either wash my face or tear my eyes out.

The good news is CVS has a great beauty returns policy, so this shit is going back to the store. When someone invents injectable lipgloss, remind me of this experience.