Category: Food

Do you remember when I talked about trying a food/recipe delivery service called Hello Fresh? It is a service where you pay a fee to have three recipes worth of food delivered straight to your house. We love it because the recipes are easy to follow, they are something different for me to add to my dinner rotation and it is a fun way to try something new without the commitment of wandering through the grocery store looking for ingredients I’ve never used before.

There are a few options, but we get the “classic” service which provides three meals for two people. I’ve found that this is plenty of food for the three of us and sometimes we even have leftovers. We pay $69, which includes shipping… however I have an awesome promo code at the end of the post that will save you some major moola if you decide you want to try them. You can check out my initial review here. Hello Fresh also offers a larger classic service for four people and a couple different veggie options as well.

Since we have been using Hello Fresh a couple times a month since December, I thought I’d share some tips for getting the most out of the service.

Tip #1: Set a Weekly Reminder
Use your phone or your calendar to set an alert to go off each Thursday. This way, you can take a few minutes to click into your Hello Fresh account and check out the upcoming meal list. Here are my choices from April 2^nd (which will be delivered April 12 – 18^th) – the first three are automatically checked unless I’d prefer one of the alternates. I like this because I can click on each meal to see what ingredients are included in each recipe.

Tip #2: Skip Deliveries
It is really easy to skip deliveries whenever you want for whatever reason you’d like. For us, maybe I don’t like three meals on a particular week. Or, perhaps I’ll be working a bunch of late nights and know that I can’t commit to cooking three times. Well, all you have to do is click on “My Subscriptions” and decide which days you’d like to pause. Most of the time we only get one or two deliveries a month, so I go in and pause on Thursdays after I check the meal choice options.

Tip #3: Move your Delivery Date Around
When I first signed up for Hello Fresh, our orders were scheduled to arrive on Thursdays. After a few weeks of this, I realized that it would work best for our family if we could have the food come on Monday instead. I typically don’t cook a lot on weekends, so by changing our delivery to Monday I could ensure that the ingredients would be as fresh as possible for meals that week. I also tend to work from home most Mondays, so when the delivery is dropped off I can transfer it right into the refrigerator.

Tip #4: If You’re Unhappy, Tell Them
Over the past five months of using Hello Fresh, we have had a couple issues. For one order, the recipe was incomplete and after chopping up the garlic I wasn’t really sure where to put it. For another, an ingredient was left out of the box. While both of these are kind of annoying, they weren’t HUGE deals. However, I emailed Hello Fresh both times to let them know and their customer service department was really great in giving me a small discount to make up for the inconvenience.

Would you like to try Hello Fresh for yourself?
They have a referral program where if you use my special code on your first box you will be able to get $40 off. That brings your total to $29 for three meals which will serve 2 people. Pretty great, right?! When you get your checkout, just use this promo code: ETXYKD.

If you do decide to try Hello Fresh, please let me know what you think. A little tip though, when you sign up for your first delivery go in and immediately “pause” your second delivery date. That way you can try out a box and decide whether you want to keep the subscription before having to pay for a second box. Then, if you don’t like it just hit “cancel” and you won’t get any more boxes or be charged more than the initial payment of $29.

Have you ever used a food delivery service like Hello Fresh? Tell me about it in the comments!

 

{Disclosure: This was not a sponsored review. I pay for my Hello Fresh subscription with my own money. All thoughts and opinions in this review are my own. If you choose to use my special referral promo code, I will receive a credit towards my future Hello Fresh orders. For anyone who does decide to use the code… my tummy thanks you!}

Fun fact: when choosing which language I wanted to learn in school I chose French, even though everyone else I knew took Spanish. I actually took one year of French in middle school, followed by two more years of French in high school before deciding to take a year of Spanish.

Another fun fact: I can’t speak French OR Spanish. However, I know JUST enough French to be able to ask for directions and understand the answer (proven on a trip to Luxembourg) and enough Spanish to order a meal (proven on a trip to Spain). So, that’s a win in my book!

One of the only things I remember from middle school French class was when we were able to eat French food. Obviously. Because food is the most important part of ANY language class. Even to this day, I have a weakness for crepes and croissants.

A super-weakness, which is why when I saw croissants in the freezer case at Trader Joe’s I jumped on it and threw a few into my cart. I’m having some girlfriends over for brunch soon, so I figured it would be a fun addition to some brunchy snacks. Of course, I needed to make sure they tasted okay (obviously), so I decided to make a couple to try before my get-together.

Here’s what they look like when they come out of the freezer, super frozen little blocks o’ croissants. You’re supposed to put them on a baking sheet and let them rise over night.

And RISE they do. Holy Stay Puft Marshmallow Man! I literally yelled out It’s so FLUFFY, I’m going to DIE! I don’t know if I let them rise for too long or if maybe I should have smooshed them back down a little bit… any ideas?

I followed the directions and put the pan in the oven at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Then, I spooned on a little powdered sugar.

YUM! They are certainly puffier than I expected them to be, but they are so delicious that I could probably pass them off as homemade. Of course, none of my friends would believe that I actually made homemade croissants because who actually has time for that?! I’m thinking I’ll add these to my list of Trader Joe’s staples though, along with their awesome mushroom risotto and cookie butter!

Have you ever tried the frozen croissants from Trader Joe’s? Do you get something awesome at Trader Joe’s that I should try? What is your favorite random movie quote to yell out?

 

Disclaimer: This post is not sponsored by Trader Joe’s, or anyone. I just thought these croissants were pretty darn yummy and wanted to share.