While I’m a huge proponent of making your own meals for health, ingredient identification, and weight management; with a full time job, a family, friends, an active blog, and people who depend on me; sometimes coming up with a recipe, shopping for, and preparing dinner just doesn’t seem viable.
Enter the meal kit. A few years ago several companies started advertising a completely new service where they deliver ingredients and instructions to make several dishes for the week, eliminating the guesswork and planning that goes into fixing dinner on a weeknight.
As a working foodie, I’ve tried several of these meal kit services. I love the fact that one day I can come home to a full week’s worth of meals which have been dropped on my doorstep.
Sunbasket Rocks!
I have tried a couple of these kits, but among all the kits I’ve tried, Sunbasket is by far my favorite, for many reasons.
I’m allergic to wheat which means I have to eat gluten free. As such, I have specific dietary needs to pay attention to. Lots of other meal kits say they’re compliant with dietary restrictions. But my understanding is lots of them just tell YOU how to adjust the recipes to comply with your dietary restrictions. To me, that’s not convenient. It also defeats the purpose of these kits when I still have to hit the grocery store to pick up the “few ingredients” necessary to adapt the recipes to my specifications. All that means is I’m spending double and still spending time to adapt these recipes to my lifestyle.
I was also a member of one meal kit service for a while that, while they were great with natural and organic ingredients and they did have a gluten-free service option, when you chose the gluten free option, you were stuck with the three options they sent. There were no choices.
Sunbasket avoids both of these issues completely. They offer several choices of meals with many dietary restrictions in mind, and there’s so many weekly recipes available that people with almost any dietary restrictions have tons of options to choose from.
Quality
As you all know, I’m a big supporter of real, quality, mostly-organic ingredients. While there are some services which brag only organic ingredients, Sunbasket strives for the best, mostly-organic, but always local ingredients to give you the best, most well-rounded meals that are nutritionally valuable, visually beautiful, and downright delicious. Plus, they support a locavore-type existence; supporting the farmers closest to them and encouraging seasonal eating and sustainability. Honestly, Sunbasket provides the exact type of meals I’d want to make myself.
Time-Saving Tuesdays
So, I realize it’s a bit strange for me to be supporting and promoting a meal kit when the whole premise of my existence is either going out or making your own recipes. But honestly, during the week, sometimes that just isn’t an option and I’d love to have something that is still healthy, home-cooked, and delicious, but which I also needed only minimal time and attention. THAT is what Time-Saving Tuesdays are to me.
Date Worthy?
Another big thing here at The Hungry Dater is that when I review other food (or other restaurants) I do it based on the assumption that you’re probably eating there on a date or with a significant other. So are these meal kits date-worthy? I think so.
Of course, you don’t want to invite a date over on the first or second date to cook dinner (unless of course that’s your thing–personally I think that’s a bit unsafe), but I think once things go a bit more forward and get a bit more steady, a meal kit makes a relatively great date. First, the instructions and the actual cooking are pretty darn easy. Because everything is so straight forward, there would be fun kitchen time without the potential stress that could come with that in any other “cooking together” situations.
The kits are also put together to feed two. In my experience, though, Sunbasket pretty much serves me for three meals. Also, in my experience, men tend to eat more than I do, so this would probably work out pretty well. I get as much as I want, and he gets the leftovers. Hahaha.
Conclusion
Bottom line is: When you still want a great home cooked but know your week is crazy and that you just won’t be able to bring yourself to cook every night, Sunbasket is a stellar option. A true testament to Time-Saving Tuesday.
Happy Cooking!
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