Our Green Chef Experience :: $50 Discount Code!

This post is sponsored by Green Chef but the thoughts and opinions are all our own. Thank you for supporting 2BlondeMamas

As much as I love cooking for my family, time is something that is not on my side. I recently made the life changing decision to go back to school to pursue my dream of becoming a teacher, and while this decision is one that I am very excited about, it has made my time even more limited. Now, not only am I juggling two little ones with all of their activities, trying to maintain this blog and all of the day to day needs of my husband and home, now I have my school work to squeeze in too. With all of this said, cooking meals has become a real chore. It has become almost impossible to find the time to plan meals with the grocery shopping, prep time and preparation. Not to mention, most of the time Kolton refuses to eat his dinner and Shayne throws half of hers on the floor. We have become all about about simplicity. The less stress I put into dinner, the less frustrated I am when I am mopping it up.

My first week back at school, I decided it would be a good opportunity to try a meal delivery service. This way, I could still prepare nutritious meals for my family but would not have to worry about grocery lists and prep time. It is nice to not have to look up recipes ahead of time. We tried Green Chef since they have a family plan and are certified organic from CCOF. Also, there are no synthetic pesticides, no genetically modified organisms and no artificial ingredients as well as no growth hormones or antibiotics.

I filled out the online form and selected the Carnivore Family Plan. When my package arrived, I was impressed with the packaging. I was curious as to how it was going to be delivered with meat and vegetables inside that needed to be refrigerated. The boxes were like mini refrigerators, carefully packed with reusable ice packs.

The meals we received included BBQ Pork Meatballs and Greek Chicken Flatbread. Our meals are generally pretty basic, so I was so interested to see how these would turn out and how the family would react to them. I was also curious to see if I could find the time to pull out cooking such elaborate meals with my impossible schedule.

The first meal I attempted was the BBQ Pork Meatballs. This sounded delicious and came with buttermilk mashed potatoes and a green bean slaw. There was no way that I would find the time to make this especially since Kolton was home from school. I loved that the ingredients were separated according to recipe with their own color code. This made it easy for me to know which ingredients went to which meal. I put all of the ingredients for our first meal to the side and began to prepare our dinner according to the very descriptive directions.

While there still was some prep involved, de-stemming the cilantro, dicing the scallions and peeling and chopping the potatoes, but at least I wasn’t buying more than I needed since everything was already portioned.

It turned out pretty delicious and didn’t take long at all!

The only issue I had was with the pork. It was still a little frozen on the inside, which made it more difficult to mix. That didn’t seem to affect the taste though. It was still a big hit with the whole family, especially Shayne, who went for seconds.

Our next meal was the Greek Chicken Flatbread with quinoa salad and hummus. I was feeling pretty confident by this second meal, and had a good rhythm.

The estimated prep time was pretty accurate, and I had this meal out in almost no time at all (about 40 minutes from start to finish).

While my husband and I loved this meal, unfortunately it was not a very big hit with the little ones. They are still a little too young to appreciate more creative tastes and textures and didn’t take too well to this. Shayne loved the quinoa but not the rest of the salad. She also liked the chicken but not with the onion and hummus. Kolton only ate the olives off of his flatbread. I hope that in a few years, they will be more willing to experiment. For now, we usually stick to more simple ingredients for their still new tastebuds.

I would love to try this one again, but maybe without the hummus. I could make it more like a pizza for the kids.

All in all, it was a really fun experience, and I really enjoyed trying something new for dinner. Green Chef has broadened my horizons a bit, and I would definitely like to try more recipes in the future. Now if only they provided me with a clean up crew.