I am feeling kinda bad because it’s been several days since I’ve posted a recipe on here!?! Things have been hectic at home and it’s one of those weeks when I don’t have a ton of time to plan, shop and cook the way I’d like to.  Knowing this would be the case, I finally bit the bullet and decided to give one of those meal service plans a try, and scheduled our first delivery for this week! So instead of a recipe, I figured I’d share my two cents on my meal service experience thus far. Keep in mind, it’s Week 1, Meal 1 at this point but I’ll share my first impressions anyway…

Why Sun Basket?

• For starters, I’ve been saving up advertisements and coupons from various companies for a while now and Sun Basket offered the best start up deal ($50 which works out to be a 30% savings) on the first order. Not to mention, most of their ingredients are organic, they’re committed to sustainability and they encourage you to recycle the packaging and make it easy to do so.
• Variety; once you choose a theme (including but not limited to Paleo, Mediterranean, Vegetarian or Family Friendly) you get to choose from a wide variety of recipes for the week.  I found the selection to be eclectic and unique, allowing you to try foods and flavor combos you might not otherwise expose yourself too; this in addition to traditional fare as well.  What’s also great is that the website includes eye catching pictures to make it easy to get a sense of what your going to be making.

First Impressions

• Arrival… The first delivery was scheduled for Tuesday by the “end of the day”.  For me that meant 5:00pm and that I’d be able to cook something from the box that night for supper.  Well that didn’t happen.  According to FedEx, the end of the day is more like 7:30pm, so Tuesday night we ate out, lol!  All that said, the perishable food items were still cold and packaged well and nothing was damaged in transport.
• The First Supper – Spicy Roasted Shrimp with Kale and Ajo Blanco.  See… cool flavor combos like I said!!! I chose to make the shrimp our first meal simply because they were the most perishable item in the box (and also the recipe I was most excited to try). The order came with a magazine which contains all the recipes for that week (at the very least I’ll use this as a guide for recipe design and meal planning on my own in the future). Anyway, the directions were easy to follow and all the ingredients and nutrition info is listed as well.  What I liked were the tips and the suggestions they include like ways to make the dish your own. This idea wasn’t listed but I actually cooked tri-color quinoa on the side and transformed this dish into more or less a grain bowl, giving it a little more oomf.  And although I was supplied with enough food to feed four people, we actually split this among three (because my youngest is super picky and won’t go near spicy shrimp or unusual white sauces…).  Not surprisingly, we three finished everything on our plates!  Leaving me to wonder if I hadn’t added the quinoa side or had split this among four, we might be hungry later this evening!?! Overall however, we were really happy with the taste, it was appealing to look at and easy to make, taking less time than the recipe called for.  Two thumbs up for Meal 1!