The Meal Subscription Service That Got Us Out Of Our Takeout Rut
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Deciding what to have for dinner? Relationships have ended over less.
My husband, Jake, and I used to just land on Seamless after bickering for twenty minutes or so. Ordering seemed like the easy way out, but it became way too expensive. That’s why we were so excited when our friends started inviting us over for home-cooked meals — something that was missing from our lives.
We had no idea our old college friends Tom and Elissa even cooked. Where did all this newfound time and ingenuity come from?
Well, turns out Tom and Elissa get their recipes and ingredients sent to them by EveryPlate, a meal kit delivery service that lets you to cook stress-free, pre-planned recipes at home without having to do any shopping (score!). And drumroll please — each serving costs $4.99. No, that’s not a typo—$4.99.
If I’m being honest, had I known that before we started joining them for dinner, I would have taken each bite with a bit of trepidation. That’s not to say that I go out of my way to eat expensively. It’s quite the opposite. It’s just that I would never have imagined that you could have a flavorful, filling and quality meal for $5 bucks. We’re talking the price of an avocado at the grocery store, people! So long story short, we signed up. And man is we glad we did.
The first recipe — Creamy Lemon Herb Chicken (pictured above) — was almost impossible to mess up (thanks to the really straightforward recipe steps), and just generally delicious.
Jake and I actually had a lot of fun making this one, and even though the website said it would be easy, I’m not sure I thought it would be. I figured all companies say stuff like that. But it really was a cinch. Just six easy-to-follow steps and voilà — a deliciously home-cooked meal in under 30 minutes! The mindblowing part is that we cooked a meal that would have cost us 40 bucks on seamless for five dollars each. And it tasted just as great, if not better!
Another thing — I felt fulfilled from prep to plating to eating. Doing something for our bodies and our minds (rather than binging on chips and Netflix) was a much better way to spend our time together. The whole process made weeknight cooking feel way less overwhelming and intimidating. We listened to music, or sometimes we just listened to a podcast together while we cooked. The kicker is (well, I can’t say for sure) I think Jake might actually be good at cooking. The ease at which we were able to make the meals ended up motivating him to push himself, and by the third meal (each box comes with three recipes) he was adding in his own techniques and eyeballing measurements. I’m not there yet, nor do I really care to be, but Jake would have never known that about himself unless we signed up for EveryPlate.
Here’s how it works: when you sign up, select the number you’ll be cooking for — we chose the Dinner For Two Plan (there’s also a four-person option, probably better suited for families), which gets you a large box each week with three flavorful, yet unfussy meals delivered to your door. Another extremely convenient feature — you can skip deliveries whenever you need to as long as you do it by the cutoff date, plus you can cancel at any time. We’re definitely going to continue receiving deliveries but it’s nice to know that when we take our honeymoon (we waited a bit after the ceremony because of work), we have the option to pause.
We’re totally sold. We ate at the table like adults and found a way to spend some quality time together. The days we cook with EveryPlate are better than days when we don’t. That’s how I know the service was right for us.
The folks at EveryPlate are extending a special offer to our readers! Follow this link to get 50% off.