Many moons ago, my judging eye was very alert and strictly mean every time I saw grocery deliveries straight to people’s door. ‘How lazy could you be?’ was my initial penny-pinching, honest, childish thought. Yet, of course, this was shopping before motherhood; the process itself was then a relaxing activity, pretty therapeutical, and weirdly enough, it also felt like a bonding time with my better half who was clever enough not to let me shop on my own (and I just thought he wanted to spend time together, silly brain of witless woman…). Saved me though from a lot of financial damage, so thank you, darling (because I’ve now spent it all online).
It was indeed simpler times, no tantrums in the middle of the veggie aisle, no cans of goods viciously removed from the shelves by tiny hands and for no sane reason. I had no baby brain back then, and most often I was surprisingly prepared with the most organised shopping list, paper or mental. So, I decided: life with a toddler requires a pretty massive change, one to give me much much much more flexibility around the kitchen, more time to calm down thy lovely tantrums and a creative twist to impress thy mother in law. No more shopping down the aisles, no more half days spent picking up goods from the supermarket floors, no more motherhoody meltdowns; well, at least not in public.
While I still had to pop in certain shops for quick items I was forgetting to get with my weekly Ocado delivery (during baby’s naps of course!), Hello Fresh came as the breeziest and coolest surprise. There are three words that could describe it better: easy, clever and convenient. No, more words: easy, clever, and convenient FOR thy mum.
Here’s what I think of my very first delivery (unsponsored blog post, yet the perks of blogging did get me this ‘gratuit’ box, comme disent nos amis, les Francais)…Let’s find out if I stick to it.
1. Easy. Cool dishes from scratch.
Smooth indeed. The entire concept is easy to follow. Go to the website, pick up a box, fill in your details and get a delivery slot. Easy peasy. There are several options where you can choose from and they are all cleverly designed. I’ve tried the veggie family box and it offered a dinner make over to my family evening time. Yes, overall impressed.
2. Clever. Your insta feed will be so colourful.
It’s the prime principle of its entire business idea: it comes with recipes! They are not randomly chosen, but pretty colourful, obviously tasty and the level of difficulty is completely on the lower side (the final presentation on the other hand is more sophisticated than you’d expect it to be). Ok, I initially called them recipes for dummies, but believe me, they can impress a posh people party starting with thy mother in law. One of the three recipes I got with my delivery was written in collaboration with Jamie Oliver.
3. Convenient. No food wastage.
No more food wastage, all portions come designed exactly for the number of people you choose the box for. For me this is important as the thing that bothers me the most during the grocery and cooking processes is the food wastage we are capable of creating…It’s the saddest thing that can happen, luckily Hello Fresh can sort this out for you (but I’ll be honest, the tiny downside of this is probably the packaging itself: it’s clever, it helps portioning everything up, yet it can easily fill in your rubbish bin with wrapping packaging. Maybe a solution will soon be found in order to avoid the individual packaging of each veggie? I hope so.
So yes, I am now a fan of the online shopping madness. I think it’s brilliant despite those fun family and cinema mall days. Bring on Amazon Prime, Ocado, Hello Fresh (no minimum subscription period by the way, you can easily pause and manage your boxes), cool boutique online shops like Little Green Home, add on anything that could allow spending more time in the parks chasing squirrels and pigeons (kidding, I wouldn’t dare, I’m only chasing toddlers chasing them!). Go on, add some Netflix endless tv screening time too. For the ruthless sleepless nights…
If any of you already tried Hello Fresh, don’t be shy and drop a line, your thoughts, questions and feedback are the reason I’m keeping busy writing my own here (I also think I’ll be sticking to HF, it’s rather cool).
Aly
AllMumsTalk
