Trying Hello Fresh

I know friends who have used Hello Fresh to help with meal planning and to give them new ideas for cooking. My parents recently signed up for it, too, and I cooked one of the meals last night. I have to say it: I was not impressed. 

First of all, the amount of overpackaging is staggering. All of this is just for one meal. Imagine how much trash you would have if you did Hello Fresh for all three meals, every day, for a month or longer! A lot of it is stupid stuff, like a packet that contains just a teaspoon of paprika, or those plastic tubes of mustard and mayonnaise like you would get from a fast food joint. I understand the idea of wanting to make sure the user has all of the ingredients, but don't most people have condiments in their homes? The recipe assumed that I had access to water, oil, and salt and pepper; what if I didn't? It doesn't make sense to assume a user would have some ingredients and not others. 

Here's an idea: a Hello Fresh "start-up" kit. Included with you first order (not for free, but part of the total charge) would be large quantities of basic ingredients that would be used in many of the company's recipes. This would include condiments, spices, salad dressings, sour cream, etc. And they would come in recyclable packaging so when you're finished, you're not just dumping everything into the landfill!

Now onto the recipe itself. It's hard to read in the photo above, but the second step should be the first one. The potatoes take the longest amount of time to prepare, so they should go first! Also, I was given tiny potatoes for potato wedges...It's hard to make a wedge out of something that's already small! And frying the fish was a mess! Oil splattered everywhere while attempting not to burn myself. In the end it wasn't even enough oil, so the breading on the last piece of fish was completely burned off. I was also surprised that there's a explanation of how to make a salad. Like, really? (and can I add that some of the mixed greens were already going bad; gross!). Plus, this recipe called for putting shallots in the salad. No thank you! So I saved those for scrambled  eggs in the morning. And only one of the quarters of lemon is actually used in the written recipe; why even bother and just save the fruit for something else? And while the recipe does say on the left what you'll need in terms of tools, it never states just how many plates/bowls/cutting boards you get dirty during this recipe. I feel like I could have filled up half the dishwasher just from making and eating this one meal!

In the end, the food was good, but not worth the trouble. I thought the idea of Hello Fresh was to make cooking easier, but I didn't find that to be the case. It took longer to make and made a bigger mess than anything I would just cook on my own. And when I make my own recipes, I don't create nearly as much waste. I'm glad I made this using my parents' Hello Fresh account instead of making my own account and spending my own money on this!