Review: Plated

I was trying to figure out how to plan more veggie heavy interesting meals AND get the kids to take over some more cooking when their dad (who is our main family chef) is at work. He suggested I try one of the home delivery meal services – and wow did that work out well!

Today I want to share with you how it went, how I’d use it in future, and what I liked about it. To be clear – I signed up and paid for this the company has NO idea who I am, nor is this a sponsored post. I’m just a busy as heck mama who likes to try and do better for herself and family! 

We went with Plated because the recipes looked good, there was a trial few weeks discount and they’d send servings for 3 of us. Most places was even numbers only. Note that the portions ended up generous – which was perfect as one of us (our elite athlete!) tends to eat a bit more and she always finished up any leftovers but was full as well.

Above you see the French Onion burgers Miss Elizabeth made. Tasty! So the way it works – honestly the best way to do this once you’re ready to sign up is download the app. SO easy! You select which meals you want – and all the info calories to how long to cook are there. It even says what ingredients will be coming.

Then on the day you selected a box arrives with everything you need for your meals (we selected 2 at a time) all labeled and lovely. You also get two 8 1/2 x 11 thick cards with instructions, photos, and one side has a lovely photo of finished dish. This was AWESOME because I set these into my recipe book if they were deemed ‘a winner’.

I hung around as needed to stir or help – but really the girls (11 & 14) were able to create on their own! I love the skills they learned, as well as how it has helped them in reading recipes and learning a lot! We did several boxes over four weeks, and here is my recap/rundown. This is NOT a great value from a strictly “value of stuff inside the box” standpoint. It is on the expensive end – however we were absolutely spending more on once a week going out to dinner before this – so I can argue in that way it was the same money wise. It IS a great value if you’re using it for these reasons:

• quality meal in exact quantities needed delivered to door with full instructions
• lots of veggies “hidden” at times even within each meal ensuring balance
• time saving shopping and deciding on recipes!
• trying new recipes  and things you’ve never done

After 3-4 weeks of this, we did cancel our subscription. Now I can restart at any time for as little as one week. You can also skip weeks at any time. I quit because of the expense it would be full price, because the girls are ready to do their own shopping lists and hunt down their own recipes, and because quite honestly the recipes got repetitive. While they do offer about 20 choices a week, many times things keep showing up so it felt like more of the same/repeat.

Overall? I’m glad we tried this and with the right coupon and during a busy time I would absolutely bring this back in for a few weeks. I’m thrilled with the cooking the girls did, and that this helped us get off on a great start to a new household weekly chore/activity for them!