Before we signed-up, we downloaded the recipes off the website for a few weeks and went to the supermarket and bought the ingredients. Our finding was that buying the ingredients yourself is significantly more expensive, and resulted in significantly more food waste.

I wonder about that. I cook most stuff from base ingredients and my food bills are tiny, as is the food waste. At times I think if I was on minimum wage I’d still cope fine at least for food (so long as you avoid all the convenience options). It all depends what you buy and where from though. Said before about the expensive wrapped packaging, but loose items being far cheaper, less packaging and would be far less wasteful just buying what you need. And of course local market, butchers etc can be better for this, though they are rare these days, especially traditional markets rather than exotic food stalls.

I wonder about that.

You need to see the ingredients that are used and you will see that although you could save money you wouldn’t save that much, i.e. buy exactly the same brand of passata, the same brand of haloumi etc,.

Was given a voucher code for 5 days free meals for 2 people . Only stipulation it was the “Classic Box”. Starting after the bank holiday. Silly not to try with that deal.

I have a friend who was very busy in his personal life and with work and never grew up with proper meals – as a result he lived off takeaways and ended up with diabetes (despite being pretty thin!). He used these sorts of services for a while to get nice fresh healthy meals to improve his diet and food knowledge and was really chuffed with them. I could imagine being the same if I was on my own and they would probably work well for me too.

I would also like Drac’s list of weekly meal suggestions please! We always end up having the same things. Googling “food ideas” doesn’t really narrow it down. No repetition on a 6-weekly cycle please.

We used Abel & Cole for a bit, which is just the veg, but they provide meal suggestions with the sort of stuff you’d have in stock. Wasn’t bad, the quality degraded noticeably over a couple of months, presumably as their subscriber numbers increased. I can absolutely see the appeal of Hello Fresh etc.

No repetition on a 6-weekly cycle please.

Why would you need this? Good for learning what you like to cook and eat but no one needs that much variety long term.

I see it as a good educative concept for people who never got into the habit of cooking properly and don’t have the wherewithal yet to buy and plan smart to reduce waste. But as a long term solution for decades of food shopping, no.

I would not not put it past them to design their output to make cheaper replacement with conventional buying harder to achieve. You can normally plan out most waste by pairing up meals that use parts of an item or with enough cooking knowledge and experience knowing what you can substitute with minimal negative change.

It was a tongue in cheek comment to Drac’s repeated “ermahgerd how stupid are you that you don’t have an inexhaustive list of meal ideas?!” comments.

Quite incredible you can’t think of meals for a week. Even more so you can’t find inspiration from google.

I don’t know what impresses me the most, this, his perfect quoting with none of the shit the rest of us get or his modest house.

I suggest you check out the reference to the modest house Mike.

Don’t worry Drac I know what the reference is, I’m just so in awe of your culinary creativity.

Ah just thought you’d tag it on the end then, yeah right.

I use Riverford for my veg and the local butchers for meat. My cupboards are pretty well stocked with all the herbs, spices, rice, pasta, pulses, tinned tomatoes etc. Riverford sell recipe boxes but I don’t need them as I usually have everything I need in the cupboards.

The Riverford delivery comes with recipes for that weeks box contents and when I signed up they gave me a recipe book that covers all the veg they supply.

Where before I would go to the supermarket three of four times a week to get things (and end up buying loads I didn’t go in for!) I now only go maybe once a week if I need to restock cupboard items. So by paying weekly for a veg box to be delivered i’m saving money by not impulse buying!

Love it

It has helped us transition to 75% vegetarian diet

So how to plan meals for a week….

Decide what’s in season and we’ll priced

Look up recipes and make lists (couple of stops may be needed)

Pick ones to complement each other both using ingredients and balance diet

Get to shops and realise 2 key ingredients are either crap or really expensive

Swap out stuff

End up with no what was planned and left overs for more £ than you planned

Repeat again….

Or few clicks, get what you need and make steps to cooking fresh food from scratch. Try new things and become more confident in the kitchen. How is that not a win win?

I’ve cupboards with tins in such as beans and tomatoes, a fridge with fresher stuff in, always have garlic and ginger stashed away, loads of dried herbs and species. The freezer has batches of a base curry sauce in and maybe 1 or 2 curries left but I think I may have used them for work. Unless the freezer has frozen meat stored then it’ll usually just requires buying enough fresh meat or fish for the chosen dish, pretty much everything else is there except fresh herbs as I’ve never got around to making a successful herb patch. Loads can be made from that Mrs makes a cracking lasagne nothing was bought for it this weekend as we had all the stuff. I made teriyaki salmon the other night all we needed was salmon as we didn’t have any.

Cheating tonight as it’s sausages from the local butchers baught a few weeks ago and put in the freezer. Other times we cheat with frozen items such as crispy chicken or such like.

Buying from these food companies seems to gain very little at all, sorry it’s nothing to do with being superior just that there is no real hassle in coming up with and cooking dishes. If I fancy something new I’ve cookbooks in the house, my iPad has a few on, I’ve spotted ideas on TV, had a meal out somewhere and thought I’d try that, seen ideas on here from other amateur cooks and Googled.

We did Gousto for about 5 or 6 months – just 2 meals a week for the two adults. It worked well when we just had one kid, wife went back to work full time and we had a couple of evenings where we didn’t have to think, just follow the instructions and have a decent meal quickly. No faffing about or finding you’re missing a key ingredient as you’re getting started. Cheaper and better than resorting to takeaways anyway.

More hits than misses, although as we’re veggie it was getting a bit samey – there’s only so many ways you can do halloumi – but plenty of the recipes were good enough to keep and have become part of our usual rotation.

Wouldn’t want to do it long term (the packaging is silly – so many sturdy boxes, little plastic pots and packs of wool insulation to get rid of) but good for a short while to mix things up.

I’ve cupboards with tins in such as beans and tomatoes, a fridge with fresher stuff in, always have garlic and ginger stashed away, loads of dried herbs and species.

…

Unless the freezer has frozen meat stored then it’ll usually just requires buying enough fresh meat or fish for the chosen dish, pretty much everything else is there except fresh herbs as I’ve never got around to making a successful herb patch.

That’s great – but not everyone has that sorted, not everyone has got round to getting that cupboard full of stuff. The general feature of STW is the inability to see how other people might live, with the way work goes I’ll probably be in for 2-3 meals a week a lot of the time – having the stuff sorted and ready for that would be great.

Buying from these food companies seems to gain very little at all, sorry it’s nothing to do with being superior just that there is no real hassle in coming up with and cooking dishes.

Do you  mean for you or for other people?

I think the large number of people who are positive about them, along with their success tells you they are offering something useful to a lot of people.

What’s the monimum order value for Food Service, Brakes, 3336, Ribble Farm Foods or any of those chilled delivery companies who supply the pubs and hotels?  Wouldn’t it be cheaper to place an order once a month and fill a big freezer? All you need then is a microwave and a grill.

Tried Hello Fresh and got bored after a while.

At the time they added paprika to too many dishes so there was a similar underlying taste that cropped up too often for me. Many of their dishes also took too long to cook / were not worth the effort for the end result. Find you can copy from restaurant menus better where they are under pressure to create dishes that are tasty and can be made quickly to maximise profit – the problem there is ingredient sourcing.

None of the meals featured any ingredients that you couldn’t pick up at the supermarket. I could achieve the same cheaper just online ordering everything for the week with a set time slot, while getting more interesting items delivered from other sources.

If you are busy and life is hectic they are perfect. If you’re just starting to cook and moving away from ready meals / takeaway they are great.

£35 per week for 4 meals for 2 from Gousto works great for us. Gives me more time to spend with family and biking, plus has helped kick-start healthy eating. Lost over 12 pounds since April. Think we’ll stay on it.

Got a nice load of recipes I can dip into. Used one for a meal with mates a few weekends back, just bought the ingredients, doubled the amounts.

They do need to address the amount of packaging.

That’s great – but not everyone has that sorted, not everyone has got round to getting that cupboard full of stuff.

It didn’t take not long Mike.

Success doesn’t mean they are good McDonalds is massively successful as are many takeaways but it’s not a good way to get food.

Probably didn’t, I know I did it a few times having started from scratch about 5 times now, it is however expensive to start, annoying as stuff loses it’s flavour and makes every new meal a right what do I need for that one exercise.

At the moment this seems like a great way to kick start the next 6-8 weeks and get some variety into my meals for one.

Don’t get me wrong I see the appeal why some may see it as easier maybe more so for those on their own but simple planning or having stock ingredients means you can do the same without these companies. I’ve looked at them before with interest when these threads have popped up but they didn’t seem to offer much at all for the money. They seem to be based around simple to prepare meals anyway which is what I will cook if I want something quick and simple.

The menus seem simple and the ingredients basic. Yes they are something that you can knock up for yourself . However, our current situation is that we have a young family and long working hours with long commutes. Finding time to shop and menu plan is hard. We rely on family favourites but realise we want variety. Hello Fresh seem like giving us the direction we need. Maybe after trying their meals we will be inspired to buy the ingredients and widen our cooking repitoire again. We have always cooked from scratch, just at the minute we are stretched but recognise that a good varied balanced diet is essential. I don’t think people use these companies with a view to using it forever, and neither do they as the app is easy to navigate on terms of start/stop deliveries.