Review Wednesday - HelloFresh (Week 24)

We have five more meals this week! Again, because of the pandemic, we had to choose at least one meal that we weren't too thrilled about, but it worked out well and I learned a very valuable lesson this week that I am going to share with you. This week we had Chicken Power Bowl, Fattoush Salad, Turkey Burrito Bowl, Peppercorn Rubbed Steak, and Paprika-Spiced Chicken in Paprikash Sauce.

Alrighty, we started with the Chicken Power Bowl with Lemon Dressing. I have made this dish before and I liked it. This time I loved it. I added Bovril (or Bouillon) to the water for the rice and that made a world of difference. It was sooooo good this time. I also breaded the chicken like we usually do (again that's a personal preference). I am allergic to Cherry Tomatoes which is what came with this recipe so I didn't add them, but they would have been a nice freshness for sure. I did end up adding some capers I had in the fridge (leftover from a different HelloFresh meal). I love them and you never use a whole jar for a dish so I always keep them and sprinkle them in other dishes later. They taste a lot like olives, very salty, so anywhere you would add olives, capers will go really well (they also work great in dressings, salads, and certain pasta).

Next, we had Peppercorn Rubbed Steak with Warm Zucchini Antipasti (unfortunately, when I was writing this the link to the HelloFresh website for this recipe was not working). It's hard to go wrong with steak, so the meal was good. I just found it kind of disjointed really. There was no seasoning for the wedges at all except the salt and pepper I put on them. I feel like that was a letdown, they were very bland with not much flavour. I got the ketchup and even then I didn't eat them all. The vegetables were okay, the tomatoes were cold and everything else was hot so once they sat on the steak for too long, they got soggy. I think maybe mixed with the zucchini in a makeshift salad would have been better, they really didn't add anything to the steak so there was no need for them to be on top. Overall, it was fine but could have probably been a lot better.

Next is a dish that is going to look awfully familiar. This one is Turkey Burrito Bowl. And by the picture even, you can tell it's a bit of a rip off from the Chorizo Burrito Bowl we made a few weeks ago. This is a good point, you can exchange any protein in this dish and it will still be great.

As a matter of fact, I replaced the Turkey in this with chicken thighs from one of the other meals this week. The turkey for this was Minced Turkey which was the only "ground" meat they had this week that we could get. So we kept that to do turkey meatballs and spaghetti later on, and we replaced it with the chicken from the Paprika-Spiced Chicken. In all honesty, my Picky Eater (PE) wasn't gonna eat that anyway. And chances are I wasn't either.

Which brings us to that dish. Instead of making the Paprika-Spiced Chicken in Paprikash Sauce with Sweet Pepper on Buttered Parsley Fusilli, I made two dishes from it. And that's perfectly fine. Sometimes we struggle with this because we have the recipe and we feel like we have to follow it, but these are just basic ingredients, what you make of it is completely up to you. So I already talked about how I used the Chicken and Turkey, now for the rest of the ingredients. I mixed them all together with a little Bovril (bouillon) and some Chicken Noodle Soup in the cupboard and make a soup.

Finally, we had the Fattoush Salad with Roasted Chickpeas, Spiced Pita, and Feta Cheese. I have never cooked Chickpeas in my life, the paper said to coat them in oil, the seasoning and put them in the oven at 425 degrees for about 28 to 30 minutes! DO NOT cook chickpeas for this long, that is what I learned. They said stir them halfway and basically not to worry about them. Before even the halfway point they started EXPLODING in my oven. (Side note, always wash your chickpeas once you open the can, this will help them cook easier also.) Personally, I would say 8 to 10 minutes instead for the chickpeas, but check them, try them if they are too hard for your liking a little longer but there is no way they should be in the oven for 30 minutes especially not being looked at in regular intervals. Besides that everything else was delicious, it was basically a Greek Salad without lettuce. Very good, but not very filling, I ate almost the whole thing myself so keep that in mind. (Another note, the chickpeas act as the protein here so, if you add a chicken breast or something, this could easily feed two or possibly three people.)