This article is sponsored by Home Chef.
If your family would like to try Home Chef, sign up now at www.homechef.com and use my code JENNY35 to get $35 off your first order!
I don’t cook. Ok, I cook enough to keep the family fed. A casserole, crock pot dinner, breakfast for dinner… but I don’t like to dirty up a bunch of bowls, measuring cups and pans to make dinner. So when Home Chef offered to provide me with free meals to cook for my family and friends I was excited. Then I thought “oh no, I’m not a Chef! How can I make food that I’m going to serve to 8 friends?!?”
I went to their website in search of meals to make. It was easy to use and once I signed up I showed me a list of 15 meals I could pick from. Each meal had a photo and a short description about the main dish and its sides. Clicking on the photo gives you more information about the recipe, including how long it takes, its level of spice and the difficulty to make. It even shows you what comes in the box and how to prepare it so there are no surprises when it arrives. I picked the date I wanted it to arrive and got a confirmation email. There is also a small time frame that you can log back in to your account and change your meal order before shipping. I chose these:
After my first order shipped, I easily paused account online to stop the meals from coming the following week because I knew we wouldn’t be home to make them. Pausing just took the click of a button and there is no penalty for doing so. While your account is paused you can still log on and look at available meals. Just click again when you want to un-pause and order as normal.
FedEx delivered the box the day it was scheduled to arrive. When I opened it the ingredients were surrounded by a liner and ice packs (both of which can be recycled). Each meal’s ingredients came in individual bags with a zipper close. The bags were labeled and packaged in portions of two (i.e. The meals meant to serve 6 people came in 3 bags of ingredients.) and the meat was individually packaged. It also included a nice plastic binder and hole-punched recipes to put inside. 
One of my favorite features of these meals is that all ingredients are pre-measured in individual, well-labeled containers. This saves me from digging up various measuring utensils and dirtying additional items. The only items not included where Olive oil, salt, pepper and cooking spray. All of the meals that I made used only a pan for the stove and/or a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. The instructions on how to prep, combine and cook the items were clear and simple to follow. Clean up was as simple as tossing packaging in the trash and/or recycling containers and washing a bowl and a pan. The food turned out as expected and all of my guests left happy and full. Not bad for a non-cook turned Home Chef! if I do say so myself!
I’m looking forward to trying other meal options, including a couple of the “no cook” lunch meals.
If your family would like to try Home Chef, sign up now at www.homechef.com and use my code JENNY35 to get $35 off your first order!
