A reminder to look for beauty in darker times
Over five years ago, I started my blog to write about the centenary of the First World War, and paired each post on a commemorative event with a traditional war-time inspired recipe.
Over 100 years on from the War, the world is engaged in a different kind of conflict. Coronavirus has swept the globe, leaving a trail of devastation in its path in the form of many thousands of grieving families.
It’s an enemy we cannot see and which we have limited weapons to fight against. It doesn’t discriminate against old or young, men or women, rich or poor, those in power or ordinary people.
But it is a war that has required us to fight together rather than with each other. These are indeed unprecedented times.
The impact of historic events on our everyday lives
One aspect of history that tends to capture my interest (prompting me to start this blog) is the societal changes and trends that historical events spark. It wasn’t the war itself that interested me – the fighting abroad and strategies adopted, etc. It was all the changes it evoked at home – for example women going to work and fighting for their right to participate in civic life.
In the years since the War, you can see the changes reflected in the way families consume food. Today’s hectic lifestyles tend to dictate our choices in favour of convenience. There’s the rise of supermarkets, of takeaways and fast food, microwave meals and frozen food. It was my own change in circumstances (a new home and a new, sometimes demanding, job) that saw me put down the oven mitts and step away from the kitchen, and this blog.
But recently there’s been a rise of different types of meal subscription boxes which has inspired a return to the kitchen to prepare fresh and healthy meals from scratch. Not only this, the popularity of social media (think Instagram) means that we can show off our newly acquired cooking skills, myself included.
There are many meal subscription boxes to choose from in the UK. A simple Google search throws up many options catering for all types of consumer. Some of the better known ones, which I have tried and offer my experiences with below, are Hello Fresh and Gousto. But there’s:
- Mindful Chef – offers the UK’s first vegan box
- Bodychef – a diet subscription box
- SimplyCook – delivers letterbox sized packs of flavour pots and 20 minute recipe cards, although differs from other boxes in that you have to use fresh ingredients from your own kitchen
For many these flexible subscriptions are a welcome and exciting part of the week. You get to choose your meals and receive measured ingredients (meaning less waste) and recipe cards to help you cook like a pro. It’s also a good solution for the health conscious with busy lifestyles – it gets people back to the kitchen but keeps convenience at its heart. For me a big part of the appeal is cooking with ingredients I’ve never used before, although Hello Fresh could have issued a warning about the burns from cutting up chillies. Below I offer my own experiences of Hello Fresh and Gousto.
Hello Fresh verdict – Delicious food but customer service left a bitter taste
Motivated to eat healthier, I went back to cooking but didn’t like wasting ingredients if you could only buy a large amount of something you only needed a smaller amount for. My flatmate kept suggesting Hello Fresh, and with one of her boxes they mistakenly included an extra recipe kit, which she kindly gave to me to try. I enjoyed the process of preparing (and eating!) the meal so much that the prospect of agonising in a supermarket aisle over what to prepare for the week seemed less appealing than ever.
So I signed up with the same discount code my flatmate used (first box for £10). The order went through but I received an email the following day saying my order was cancelled and my subscription was deactivated as our household had already used a discount. This was fair enough for families taking advantage of the offer more than once but my household is not a family and my flatmate and I cook our own meals independently.
This wasn’t a deal breaker though. I’d enjoyed the food so much that I ordered another box at full price (£29.99 for three recipes feeding two people). The order was confirmed and on the day of delivery the app on my phone indicated that a box was on its way. It transpired that the box was never going to be delivered as I had reactivated my account the day after the cut off date for deliveries for that week, yet the app still allowed me to book a delivery for the same date as the previously rejected delivery. I called customer service who unapologetically informed me that as I had missed the cut off date, the app “would not have reflected” the situation and there would be no delivery. A shame for them as my complaint could have served as useful feedback for them in improving their clearly misleading app.
Given this experience I gladly took my money to their main competitor, Gousto.
Gousto verdict – Some pros and cons but overall a more reliable service
Gousto has its pros and cons compared to Hello Fresh. A Gousto box doesn’t separate out its ingredients per meal like Hello Fresh does (which satisfies the organised neat freak in me!), but good practice with either box is to pull out the recipe cards and tick off each ingredient. Gousto hasn’t missed out a single ingredient yet, whereas I saw some reviews of Hello Fresh complaining about missed ingredients.
A major pro for Gousto is that they occasionally throw in helpful freebies like utensils. You’ll also get a binder to place all your recipe cards in.
“good practice with either box is to pull out the recipe cards and tick off each ingredient”
I’ve already said that these boxes are great for cutting food waste but what about plastic waste? There doesn’t seem to be much plastic in their boxes anyway but Gousto want to go even further in ensuring that they operate as environmentally friendly as possible. They make clear on all of its recyclable packaging that reducing plastic usage is a top priority for them, and rather than making some vague statement to that effect they say their aim is to cut back on plastic by half this year.
So what about the food itself? Most of the recipes are very good, and you can review each one and give feedback on their app. You can choose two recipes for two people (which I don’t think you can currently do with Hello Fresh) and this costs £24.99.
What now?
Following another busy period with work, I put my subscription on hold (I was too busy even for the quicker recipes as it felt like, contrary to our current predicament, I was hardly ever at home). I found out that I can’t now re-start my subscription due to the pandemic, which felt like a bit of a slap in the face especially as they are holding money on my account (after I chose to cancel a box the morning after the cut off for delivery), but I appreciate that at the moment everyone is doing their best.
And I have to also appreciate that I am not going without at all. There may have been some shocking scenes in supermarkets up and down the country over the past few weeks but I like to remind myself that, although these may be uncertain and worrying times, there are plenty less fortunate than me, both today and from a different time.
bella's kitchen 