Random Ramblings :: Trying Something New

Hi there everyone 😀

I’ve been contemplating trying out a meal delivery box for a while really ... but had always thought it a bit unnecessary. Both Martin and I enjoy cooking and have a real wide range of favourite meals in our repertoire that we like to cook from scratch.

Saying that ... every now and again we struggle for inspiration and choosing another seven meals we fancy for the coming week can be a bit tedious.

A few weeks ago the timing just fell right and an ad with a 50% discount code for the first week, followed by 30% for the rest of the month, appeared on my Facebook timeline for Gousto. I clicked through just to have look and easily saw four recipes that I liked the look of and decided to give it a go.

I timed our delivery for a Friday ... on the basis that we have our weekly shopping delivery on the Sunday. This would give us time to have a good look at what was provided and, if the portion sizes looked small, I could add extra veg or sides to our normal shopping delivery.

Whilst you can't opt for a delivery time ahead of the delivery day, which is a bit frustrating, we did receive a text on the Friday morning specifying a two hour delivery slot, which is trackable.

Friday came and there was much excitement. We had our text telling us our delivery would arrive between 8.10am and 10.10am and our big red box arrived well on time.

We couldn't wait to get the box open and see what was inside ... it was only at this point that I really thought about the amount of packaging involved ... though a fair amount is recyclable ...

The box was really well packed, with recipe cards for each of the meals that we'd chosen and all of the fresh ingredients looking really nice and fresh ...

There were a couple of effective ice packs keeping any meat or fish cool and an envelope pack of bits and pieces to accompany each recipe ...

We unpacked the whole of the box and checked off all of the ingredients against the recipe cards ... we were pleased to find that everything was as it should be.

We had ordered Lemony Chicken & Crushed Potato Colcannon ...

Oven-Baked Cheesy Portobello Mushroom Risotto ...

Creamy Chicken Potato-Topped Pie ...

And ... Baked Creamy Chorizo & Leek Pasta with Rocket ...

Whilst we could see that the portion sizes would not be what we are normally used to, they were reasonable and we could easily see how we could add a bit of bulk by adding extra veg here and there, which we tagged on to our supermarket grocery order.

So ... four meals sorted, so only three for us to have to think about ourselves. The meal planning and shopping list felt nice and easy.

Just as a bit of a tester from a value point of view we decided to cost the ingredients by putting them into the Tesco shopping site to do a bit of a price comparison. The total cost with Tesco came out at £19.25. We'd paid £17.50.

It wasn't a total like for like comparison as I didn't include the store cupboard ingredients ... as we already have all of those so, if needing to buy those, that would account for a bit more.

Also some of the fresh ingredients came in higher quantities from Tesco ... so would yield a bit more.

My initial verdict on cost is that, for us, it definitely wouldn't be worth paying the full price for the box of  £35.00, though we were very happy with the value with the 50% discount.

I'll leave it there for now, but I promise I will come back and let you know how we got on ... what the meals were like and what, if anything we added.

Please note ... I am not affiliated to Gousto in any way and this is a totally independent review of my own personal thoughts on the box ... though if any of you are interested in trying a box I believe I am able to share a discount code with you that, if taken up, provides me with a £15 credit towards my next box.

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