hello fresh

Vine Post: Hello Fresh Spiced Moroccan Lentil and Chickpea Soup

| Rhiannon

Right, I thought to myself when looking at this recipe. This can’t possibly go wrong. I love soup. I make soup all the time. Granted, normally it has less spice in it, and we’ll use the unhealthiest bread possible rather than wholemeal pittas. But it’s soup. What could possibly go wrong?

That all went down the drain almost immediately, when it turned out the packaging around the pittas had split at some point and they were already mouldy. That meant a hasty reschedule of the dinner timetable and a trip to the supermarket to replace them. I was still wishing for a nice hunk of cheesy bread instead, but I’d seen the calorie count on the back of the recipe, so I thought I had better comply.

Hello Fresh Spiced Moroccan Lentil and Chickpea Soup

I have to say I wasn’t fully with it when we eventually did make the soup. I managed to forget to wash the lentils until the moment they were supposed to be in the pan, and I spilled sauce everywhere while I was checking the soup. But, it turned out alright. It was not really spicy at all, to my delight and J’s disappointment, and the pittas were predictably far too small and weedy to satisfy. Still, it was the best of the batch – and it did actually thicken up after being on the heat for a while, which was a relief after last week’s watery debacle. 

Hello Fresh Spiced Moroccan Lentil and Chickpea Soup

This is now definitely our last Hello Fresh post, as I’ve cancelled the subscription and won’t be going back. Mind you, they’ve called me twice since then to see if I’m enjoying my box, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up getting a new one through some computer glitch. Fingers crossed I don’t – I wouldn’t look forward to another high-calorie dose like the recipes we have tried so far, especially when I’m not able to control when I eat them or how far I can spread the meals out.

So, here’s our final Hello Fresh vine:

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Vine Post: Hello Fresh Sweet Potato and Carrot Curry

| Rhiannon

This week’s Hello Fresh dish was a sweet potato and carrot curry, which contained more of the dreaded green beans but did promise goodness with the sweet potato at least. This is a good example of a recipe I would never have tried normally – I hate green beans, carrot always seems a bit boring, and I’ve certainly never heard of a curry that combines the two of them. We gave it a try though – as always!

The first thing I noticed was that the directions are a little off. You are told to put exactly 400ml in a pan to boil the carrot and sweet potato, but that was nowhere near enough. I added more to help them cook, which they did beautifully – but then you’re told to add the curry paste without draining the water. Even with boiling it for 20 minutes, there was far too much water. I drained the extra and then about half again, and as you can see below, the sauce was still far too watery. 

Hello Fresh Veggie Curry

The veggies were also just really boring. I would have preferred to add the stock pot to them instead of the rice – in fact, I cooked my own recipe and did exactly that a few days after we ate this, and it was amazing. The rice did taste good here, but it was a little too creamy – the taste and texture not something I normally associate with rice, making it a bit off-putting. 

There isn’t much I would leave the same about this recipe if I was making it again – in fact, I think you’d have to call it a new recipe by the time you got to the end! The green beans were more palatable than I expected, however: boiling brings out the best in them.

So, let’s see a #curryfail in action – here’s the Vine!

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Vine Post: Hello Fresh Vegetable Mac ‘n Cheese

| Rhiannon

First things first, a lesson. If you try out a subscription service one time and put it on hold so you can see whether you liked it or not before you carry on, remember to cancel it before it comes off hold. Otherwise you end up paying for the next box by accident and getting a load of stuff you didn’t really want.

That said, we’ve recently had our second Hello Fresh box and of course decided to share the Vine posts with you once more. This week it’s the “No Fuss Vegetable Mac ‘n Cheese” recipe, which did not sit well with me at all. First off, who puts vegetables in mac and cheese? Secondly, we’re in the UK, which means it’s actually called macaroni cheese, thanks. And thirdly, the blurb that came with the recipe describes this as a healthy version of macaroni cheese – which is kind of crazy considering the 551 calories per portion.

Hello Fresh Mac n Cheese

Well, anyway, we gave it a try. You can see the Vine at the end of the post, but first, let me tell you what we thought. The sauce was watery and definitely needed a lot more cheese in it, or at least cheese flavour. One tiny block of cheddar and a sachet of parmesan was not enough to make this taste like macaroni cheese. The green beans could also have been left out, or cooked for longer, as they were just too outlandish compared to the rest of the flavours and textures. I used less than half the butter recommended by the recipe because I just refuse to use that much, and it turned out fine at that stage of the cooking, so it certainly was not necessary to put so much in. The breadcrumbs turned out quite well, making a nice layer on the top.

Hello Fresh Mac n Cheese

One thing that consistently annoys me about Hello Fresh is that, while they claim to allow people with no experience to cook because everything is provided, they also assume that you have all of the equipment under the sun. Here you needed a frying pan which was sturdy enough to hold the entire mixture and go under the grill (a grill which we don’t have – leaving us to make do with the oven, of course). The other two recipes for this week, as you will see, required a variety of large pans – where most people with starter sets may only have one pan, or several of diminishing sizes. When cooking is simple, it should be just that – simple. This doesn’t fit the bill in my opinion.

Anyway, here’s the Vine:

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Vine Post: Hello Fresh Too Tasty Beetroot and Lentil Salad

| Rhiannon

We’re on to our third and final Hello Fresh week, featuring the meals we had in our free starter box. If you’re looking to try it yourself and get a discount, there’s some money off lurking in that link! Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the last meal, what it was like, and whether we liked it or not. This was the Too Tasty beetroot and lentil salad, and I have to say it’s not something I would have tried myself. I hate walnuts and salad is never a word that makes me feel hungry – I’d rather have a wrap and pretend it’s a full-blown meal rather than a salad in disguise, but we followed the recipe and we had a big surprise.

Hello Fresh Too Tasty Beetroot and Lentil Salad

The recipe contains a lot of variety, which is really great. There were walnuts, new potatoes, lentils, goats cheese, rocket, and onion, as well as beetroot. Now, anyone who has been following this blog will know that I only recently started to fall in love with beetroot, and I’m starting to want it with every single meal, so this was definitely a good start. We both love goats cheese too, so putting our reservations aside, we gave this one a try! The first thing to say is to be prepared for bright red hands, chopping board, surfaces, and generally food, as the beetroot really gets everywhere. That was not necessarily a bad thing however!

Hello Fresh Too Tasty Beetroot and Lentil Salad

When we had it all together, I was really surprised by how tasty and filling this meal was. The potatoes help to make it more substantial, while the rocket gives it a nice zing. The beetroot brings everything together with that warm and sweet taste, matched perfectly by what is quite honestly the nicest goats cheese I’ve ever had. Seriously – we’re hunting this one down in the supermarket as soon as we get a chance. It was so soft and creamy that I had a hard time pulling it into chunks without it just getting stuck to my hands! All in all, this was a really delicious meal, and much healthier than the other two options as well. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Hello Fresh Too Tasty Beetroot and Lentil Salad

Overall, I have to say that the final Hello Fresh verdict is that it’s very convenient and good if you know you don’t have much time on your hands. It allows you to get all of your ingredients delivered and recipes picked out without having to spend time on it. But aside from the convenience, I’m not too sure about it. Would I like to have new recipes and ingredients delivered to my door every week? Yes, absolutely – but if I can’t choose the recipes, I’m not sure I’m a fan. A lot of things were done differently to how I would have done them. For example, if I saw sour cream in a recipe, I would ditch it for a low fat and calorie alternative, or just use something like cream cheese to get the desired effect. If I saw an onion required for a recipe, I would always switch it out for a red onion. With this structure, you don’t have a chance. I’d be interested to see whether they can establish a wider pool of suppliers at some point in the future, and therefore give people a few more options to choose from.

In the meantime, if you fancy making this salad yourself, here’s the Vine of how we did it:

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Vine Post: Hello Fresh Strolling Rigatoni

| Rhiannon

Our second Hello Fresh meal was rigatoni with cherry tomatoes and mozzarella, which was surely going to be an interesting one. For starters, we never eat pasta unless it’s in a sauce, and we also usually go for a healthy version rather than just the normal “white” pasta. Secondly, we never eat white onions, always red. And thirdly, I don’t like olives. Basically, this recipe had a lot of work to do to win us over!

Hello Fresh Strolling Rigatoni

The rigatoni is cooked separately to the rest of the meal, which is a mixture of cherry tomatoes, onion, yellow pepper, basil, olives, and mozzarella. It is then combined at the end and tossed together for an even spread. There were some things that I definitely liked about this recipe – the mozzarella and cherry tomatoes go nicely together, and for once the olives weren’t utterly horrible. Perhaps simply because there were so few of them that I was able to disguise them with tomatoes and pretend they weren’t there!

Hello Fresh Strolling Rigatoni

However, there are a few changes I would have made. It was just far too dry, and could have done with more of a sauce element. Perhaps a larger quantity of tomatoes would have helped to create the right kind of sauce, especially if they were blended together rather than just being cooked in the pan. I also would have seriously preferred either having red onion, or just doing without. There’s just something so bland about “white” onion when it has been cooked in this way that I hugely dislike. A better blending of the basil throughout the dish would also have improved it.

Hello Fresh Strolling Rigatoni

So that’s what we thought of meal number two – and with the leftovers from this added to the leftovers from last week’s post, we ended up making some Italian and Mexican themed wraps on the third day! Here’s the Vine of this meal being made so you can see it in action.

 

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Vine Post: Hello Fresh Mexican Tortillas

| Rhiannon

This month on Vine we’re sharing with you three great new recipes from Hello Fresh. We signed up to the service through a free trial for one box (although this is not a sponsored post – we have a family member who already uses them and who received a discount code!), and decided to try them out. For this Monday and the next two weeks, we’ll be sharing the results.

Hello Fresh Mexican Tortillas

This week was the turn of the Mexican tortillas with feta and black beans. This seemed like a great place to start, as we do love Mexican food anyway and eat tortillas often. All of the ingredients came in one big box which we were able to open up and sort through after it arrived. We noticed quite early on that you have to be careful with the measurements – for example, although a 175g bag of rice is included, you only needed somewhere around 150g. It’s difficult to be too precise, too: the measurements on these items were provided in grams, but the recipe cards use cups.

Hello Fresh Mexican Tortillas

I won’t recreate the recipe here as it is part of the package sold by Hello Fresh, but I can tell you what it was like to make. The quantities of everything were a little off, in my opinion: the tortillas were far too small, and as a result I had to serve some of the food on the side of the plate. Even after I had squeezed on as much as I could, there were still lettuce pieces and some tortilla mix left over. It was not comforting to know that the recipe created 964 calories per serving… Much more than I expected from a company branding themselves as healthy!

Hello Fresh Mexican Tortillas

It did taste good for the most part, although a lot of the lettuce was quite young and the tomato sauce just would not reduce down to anything nearly resembling enough. It was far too watery, making these quite hard to eat in one piece. I also found the rice a little uninspiring, although the lime flavoured sour cream was a nice touch. Generally speaking, I would have used less filling and perhaps tried making it with actual fresh tomatoes rather than a tin of chopped tomatoes.

Here’s the Vine, showing you the process as laid out on the recipe card:

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