Dinner Dining Favorites with Green Chef

Dinner is the most important meal in our house and we always make a point to sit down as a family and have a nice (and hopefully healthy!) meal. My husband grew up with that tradition and I completely agree with it. It’s the only time we all are gathered together and focused – no toys, iPads, phones or tv allowed. It’s great to be able to talk about each other’s day and anything noteworthy or eventful. I love hearing about the Mister.’s job, my daughter’s favorite class or my son’s share day.

Working from home, you’d think I’d have a lot of time to prepare and cook dinner. Lately I’ve found that I sit at my desk and work until my husband gets home – at which point we frantically throw something together for dinner. We end up eating way too late and rush through the meal in order to keep the kid’s bedtime routine in tact – not fun at all. I miss those days pre-kids where I’d have time to meal plan and take all the time I needed to prepare dinner before the Mr came home. And I’ve realized that I no longer like cooking, but when you’re making a meal in the least amount of time possible, it really sucks the joy out of it.

Over the years, many friends have recommended meal kit delivery, but I’ve never really given it a shot. Why? Mostly because it seemed expensive and if we were going to spend that amount of money on a meal, I’d prefer it to be cooked for me. Also, I’m pretty damn picky; I’m vegan/vegetarian/pescatarian depending on my mood that day 😉 And the last reason? We eat mostly organic. Most of the meal kits I’ve looked into weren’t organic and that was a hard pass for me.

So when Green Chef reached out to me to see if I’d like to try some of their meal kits, I realized it was time to give meal kits a try! Meal planning has been such a chore lately. With my food preferences, coming up with easy and quick, tasty dinners was feeling like a full time job. I thought it would be such a relief to have someone else figure out the meal and do the grocery shopping for me! We utilize delivery services all the time from household goods, groceries or just ordering from a restaurant – so it couldn’t hurt give a dinner kit a try. Green Chef really stood out as being the top-runner of meal kits in my eyes. First of all, they use premium, organic ingredients (yay!), second of all they offer vegan meal options (along with a bunch of others like Paleo and Keto!) and lastly they also have a family plan (meals for 4).

At this point my husband and I were ordering dinner from restaurants 2-3 times a week. Definitely not budget-friendly. I was also getting pretty tired of eating delivery all the time. None of our usual restaurants were appealing anymore. You know how when you travel and get tired of eating out all of the time? Well, we were feeling the same way! Plus food is never as good as if you were at the restaurant eating out, by the time it arrived at our house it was inevitably lukewarm and soggy. And we’ve been saving money because: One, we’re not ordering restaurant delivery as often and two, groceries aren’t going to waste in our fridge!

When we got our first Green Chef box I was impressed with the unique recipes and fun ingredients. They were recipes that I would never think of attempting, but Green Chef makes it so easy to do. Pre-measured ingredients are the BEST. And nothing beats a home cooked meal fresh out of the oven, right?

 

And I realized once dinner wasn’t as rushed, that we really needed updating all around. Since we’re now having such nice meals, it was important to me that the whole experience be just as nice. We got rid of our 10 year old chipped dishes, switched out our ill-fitting dining room table, got new flatware, you name it. And another thing we started doing? Not buying paper towels. Yep, we are a paper towel/napkin free household. We’ve been using dishcloths for everything in the kitchen and cloth napkins for every meal. It just feels like a huge step up. Here are my favorites in currently in rotation:

 

one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten | eleven

It’s funny now that we’re using Green Chef our whole dinnertime experience has improved from our moods, to the food to the flatware! Have you guys tried meal kits before? If not, I highly suggest you give it a try – I mean it. It’s been such a game changer in our house. And really, it can’t hurt to try it, right? I even have a special discount link for you to use for $40 your first-time: http://bit.ly/copycatchicxgc. When you guys give it a try, I’d love to hear if you’re a fan and what you think!

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on a link. Thank you for supporting the affiliate posts and sponsors that make this blog possible!