Hello Fresh review

I kept seeing ads all over Facebook for a website called Hello Fresh. Every week they come up with three meat based meals and three vegetarian meals, and they ship you the recipe and all the ingredients for the three meals. You can order a box for two servings per meal or four servings per meal. I always thought this would be a cool idea, ever since I heard of Blue Apron, but they didn't deliver to our area so I could never try it. So, when I saw a coupon code for Hello Fresh on facebook for $35 off, I figured I'd give it a try. They don't have any option to customize your food, like to make it vegan, however since they just send you all the ingredients we were able to just make the meals without adding the dairy products.

The box the food came in was very well packed. It had an insulating liner around all the food, and two big ice packs to keep everything cold. All the food was divided by meal, into three boxes. It also came with a nice booklet with the instructions for each recipe.

This week's menu for vegetarians was:
1. Potato Latke's, with Beet Salad
2. Israeli Black Eyed Peas, with Fenugreek and Eggplant
3. Quinoa Veggie Loaf with Baked Radishes and Broccoli

The photos I have are of the Quinoa Veggie Loaf, which was our favorite of the three.

Here is the box the meal came in:

 All the ingredients from the box:

 The competed meal:

The loaf wasn't very solid, like the sliced pieces in their photos, but it tasted very good. That may have partially been because we didn't use the pack of Parmesan cheese which may have been a binder for it. We also used our own ketchup (Full Circle organic) for the sauce, since they sent a mini bottle of Heinz ketchup which has high fructose corn syrup in it. Other than that, though, the rest of the food was very fresh and healthy. I'll definitely be repeating this recipe with my own ingredients.

The Potato Latke's meal was plain, but tasty. I used vegan butter instead of the sour cream that came with it. The beet salad side dish with it was a bit too beety for us, but my mom tried it and loved it so she took it home with her.

The Eggplant meal was great, the only part of that meal I wasn't crazy about was the tomatoes in it. I'm not a big fan of tomatoes and there was quite a bit in there. I may try remaking it sometime with some organic fire roasted tomatoes and halving the quantity. Then I think I'll really like it.

Overall, I really liked the food and loved the convenience of Hello Fresh. Although, I don't think I'll continue getting it on a regular basis for two main reasons. Firstly, I can't really afford to pay essentially $10 per person per meal, which is what the standard cost of the meals is when you don't have a coupon. If I'm going to pay $10 for one meal, I'd rather it be a night out where I don't have to cook it. Also, many of their vegetarian meals would not be able to veganize. For example, they do versions of grilled cheese quite often, which would make my plan of just leaving out the dairy impossible.

Really, I think it's a better idea to just use their recipes and buy the ingredients myself. WAY cheaper, and then I can get organic produce and vegan cheeses (if necessary) all while supporting my local suppliers.

Also, if someone really wanted to have the ingredients delivered to them as well, they could just order the ingredients from the ingredient list on the recipes online from a grocery store that delivers and then even with the delivery charge it'd still end up costing far less money. Plus then you can get whatever else you want to snack on as well besides the main meals included in that delivery.
So, unless they dramatically drop the price, I won't be ordering from them again. However, I do like their recipes and will be using those with ingredients I buy myself from time to time.