Dinnerly review.

I subscribed to Dinnerly a few weeks ago. I picked Dinnerly on a whim, based on this article, which I bookmarked to refer back to. 

I think it was the best deal, price per meal, even though it wasn't a company I'd heard of before. 

Immediately I was annoyed: you must put in your card information before you pick your meals. Which means, you are locked in to a shipment before you pick and see what's available. Which led me to immediately, also, cancel my subscription as soon as I picked 6 dinners. 

The price was right with the hefty first-time customer discount, but I felt a bit like I was doing this:

...as I tried to navigate canceling without accidentally giving them more money.

I think I wrote that in the "why are you canceling?" reason box too. 

In addition, because I ordered on a Thursday, for a following Tuesday delivery, a lot of the meal kits were sold out. Friday is the last day on Dinnerly to make adjustments to your order for the following week. I didn't want to wait almost two weeks for a box (like, I was doing this so we could eat dinner the next week) so I just took what they had. 

Plus, my reason for doing this altogether was to get more variety in our dinner routine. Taking their recommendations seemed like a small price to pay and $70 was a good deal for what we got for sure. 

But that was a logistical issue on my end; I initially wasn't sure how the process worked. 

Anyway. It was about $70 for 6 dinners. 

The box showed up right on time. I don't know when it was actually put on the porch, but the timeframe was 9am-8pm and it was there when I got home from work at 4pm. 

Everything was packed in ice packs and still cold. 

There was one bag of chicken that leaked on the bottom of the box though, so I had to scrub down some of the items and throw away the ice packs away. 

I did report this on the website, which was very easy to do, and I immediately was given an $8 credit...

...after I reactivated my account of course and was set up with another delivery for a few weeks from now. 

Scott really enjoyed these dinners. They were, I admit, very easy to make and the 4-person portion gave us lots of leftovers because the kids didn't eat it. They have pb&j most nights with fruit and yogurt. They also like to eat their dinner at 4:30pm so there's that. 

I was okay with the dinners. I don't really do pork. Ground beef is hit or miss for me. I like chicken and vegetarian meals most. This box had a mix of all of them so I hit my goal of variety and they were all very easy to make. 

Here's the details:

Ravioli. This was really good. I'm usually not a fan of stuffed pasta and never buy/make tortellini, but this sauce was great and it made a lot. The ravioli in the box was round and the ravioli in the picture was square. I don't know why. 

Shepherd's Pie. This was like a bbq beef with veggies cooked in it. It was supposed to be "sloppy joe". I took a short cut and used a package of instant potatoes for the top. Scott liked it a lot. It was fine but not my favorite. Wells didn't try it either. 

Boneless pork chops. Scott, again, liked this a lot. I've literally never made a pork chop before because, shocker, it's not my type of food. I was in a hurry so I saved the rice for another night. 

Garlic Butter Steak. I made the rice with this. Skipped the potatoes because of time. Probably our favorite of the meals. 

Okay, this fascinated me. I could not get behind the cooking method of putting raw turkey sandwiches into the oven, so I cooked the turkey first. The sauce was good. It needed some tomatoes and cucumbers and it would've been make-at-home Greek food. So I feel like that was a missed opportunity.

Fresh dill on potatoes is a must after making this. The fries were very good. 

Flavor palate-wise, this was tasty. Stone ground mustard on chicken, and ranch on potatoes. You kind of can't beat that. 

Liked:

Lots of food for the price.

Very simple recipes but lots of flavor.

Some new cooking methods learned (cottage fries, put dill on fries, put garlic butter on steak)

Disliked:

Very potato heavy. We still have a bunch of potatoes on the counter.

Very meat-and-potatoes, which Scott liked but I didn't care about.

You are given nothing but raw ingredients in a box and you have to sort out what goes with what. 

In the end, I really liked the convenience of it. While I don't mind *cooking*, it's the finding recipes, making a list, physically getting the groceries, making sure I have everything...and then cooking that just wears me down in this particular season. 

This was a good experience so I do have another order placed for this week. I do recommend them 100% for the price vs. some of the other companies. 

This is obviously not a sponsored post but here's a link if you want to try it. 

Opening the box was a lot like the co-op experience I had in Colorado, when my friend and I would get fruit/veggies every week and then have to figure out what to do with them all.