Review Wednesday - HelloFresh (Week 14)

This week is a little different for our Hellofresh review. This week I am talking about the food I ordered at the end of January 2020. I was home that week for my parents' birthday and so one of my little "bonus" gifts to my mom was a free box of Hellofresh. They send these little coupons all the time in the HelloFresh boxes. You can give up to $120 worth of free food to anyone who hasn't already been a customer. So for $120 I got four meals (for two people) for free basically. Which is a good thing because this week was rough going. Usually, HelloFresh delivers on Monday. When my box didn't show up, I messaged their customer service. Now I want to say right out the bat that they were very accommodating and really helpful and apologetic for everything that happened. So they tell me, give it a day, it should turn up. By noon the next day, I tell them, I still don't have this box, it says it's been delivered and it hasn't. Again they tell me to wait another day and see if it turns up. It did and it didn't. It didn't show up at my house, but thankfully since I live in a small town, it showed up at someone else's house and they called me to go get it.

Thankfully, it was winter, so the box stayed out all night in the cold, which is perfect. The person hadn't even opened the box, and when I did open it the ice packs were still frozen. If any of these things weren't met, I would not have chanced it, and I encourage anyone not to either. If the box is open when you get it, or the ice packs aren't still frozen, message HelloFresh and discuss that with them.

Alright, with that being said, let's get into it. This week I had four meals Steak Taquitos, Veggie Taco Bowl, Herby Chicken and Orange Salad, and Greek Sheet Pan Chicken and Veggies. So the first night we decided to make the Steak Taquitos and then realized there really wasn't much to those so we also had the Taco Bowl.

So here is the Steak Taquitos with Guacamole. You can see already from the ingredients there isn't much meat. And if you look closely at the photo you'll see there are only three, one is cut in half to look like there is more. That is one thing I don't like about HelloFresh, while I get that they counted the Salsa as kind of a side, it really isn't. Most people expect a side with their meal. This would have been a great lunch but as a supper, there really wasn't enough here to be a meal in itself. (Full Disclosure, we did have leftovers. I have one Taquito and a little salad over and my mom also had one and some salad left, enough for a lunch but not a full other meal.)

One of my main problems with this dish was that it was supposed to be a healthier alternative to the traditional Taquito. They said on the paper that traditional Tauqitos are deep-fried and these would bake. If I knew how to wrap these things better I would have deep-fried them. They did not crisp at all, they were just soggy (I left it even longer than they suggested in the oven). Also, the Guacamole was just avocado, lime juice, and cilantro, so it wasn't the best guacamole it could have used more seasoning. I will say this though, I have tried to make guacamole at home so many times and I have never found a fresh spice blend that is as good as the pre-mixed one. Maybe I am just too used to those flavours but, it is really hard to get guacamole right.

Once I started on the Veggie Taco Salad with Beyond Meat and Mexican-Style Red Rice, I was so glad I decided to put them together. The Beyond Meat smelled awful and looked worse if that is possible. It reminded both of us of pet food, in the can, both in smell and look. My Mom refused to try it but I was more open-minded. So I cooked it like regular ground beef and added the seasoning and it was okay. Maybe it was all in my head because I knew it wasn't mean but it wasn't anything special and it certainly wasn't a good replacement. (Just a quick note, the garlic was not fresh in this bag at all. This could 100% be because of the little adventure it had before coming to me, but it is not the first time.)

The next dish we made was Herby Chicken and Orange Salad with Strawberry Vinaigrette. Now because of how delayed the box was, and our schedule we only had lunch together one day so we had this chicken salad for lunch. I had concerns about this. I didn't think I would enjoy the orange in a salad so I didn't add it to mine, I also didn't like the idea of using Strawberry Jam to make a Vinaigrette. Now what I did was I made a small salad the way they suggested and I made a larger salad the way I wanted.

So above is what the salad would have looked like if I had followed their recipe properly. It was good, I can see why they picked the oranges. The Strawberry Vinaigrette was very sweet so the orange cut the sweetness. I think if it wouldn't have had the chicken it would be better, I wouldn't care about the sweetness so much. But I didn't like the chicken in this salad.

What I did was I took some Mayo, I added some White Wine Vinegar, some Sugar and a little Lemon Juice along with Capers (optional) and made my own little Salad Dressing.

And finally, the last recipe Greek Sheet Pan Chicken and Veggies with Feta on Tomato Orzo. Now this recipe did not look like the photo at all. And the reason for this is simple. In their photo, they use a lot more veggies than you will have. You have one zucchini for two plates there is no way it will look like theirs, same with the pepper. Also, they layer theirs which is what they say to do. But that isn't how you eat food, you want a little of everything in one bite. So I mixed everything together to get an idea of just how disproportioned everything was. The only real comment I have on this besides that is that Sheet Pan is a little deceiving. I thought everything would go on the sheet pan and bake together and it didn't. However, now that I looked at the recipe again they seem to have changed it to all one baking sheet. Maybe I just misremembered that but I feel like I needed two different sheet pans when I originally made it.