Trying the HelloFresh Family food box – does it work for a family with mixed diets?

I seem to spend half my life either in the kitchen preparing meals or thinking about what I’m going to feed us. With one vegan {me}, two vegetarians, one fussy toddler and one who avoids too much lactose, it can be tricky to come up with meals that all of us can eat. I like to prepare one meal that we can all eat, rather than four or five different things, yet that doesn’t always happen. Kiki and Beastie both eat meat, I’ve always left it to my kids to make their own decisions on eating meat or not, while I’ve been vegetarian/vegan for most of their lives, and everyone eats predominantly meat-free meals at home, I don’t think it’s my place to make that decision for them. They know why I choose to eat a vegan diet, yet in the same way as I’d never force them to eat meat if they didn’t want to, I also don’t force them to live by my beliefs either.

So when HelloFresh asked me if I’d like to try out a month of their Family Food Box I decided it would be a good experiment to see how easily I could adapt those meals to suit all of us AND give my meat eaters a chance to have meals they’d love.

I often avoid buying meat at home for them, as I will only buy organic, free-range, top quality products, and that is one reason I love these boxes – I can rest assured that all the products they send me are good quality products, that I’d happily buy for my kiddos.

How it all works

Now, if you’re not familiar with HelloFresh then this is how it works. Each week you’ll get a delivery of the ox you chose {they offer this Family Box, as well as the Classic and Veggie Boxes}. The Family Box feeds 2 adults and 2 children {though the portions are generous, and would stretch to feed more children too}, the other boxes you can choose how many people they’re for as well as how many meals you’d like each week.

Inside the Family Box is a bag of all the perishable as well as four other bags each with all the other ingredients for one meal inside. The bags are also colour coded to match the recipe, so you can just grab the bag you need and you’re all set! We’ve enjoyed meals such as Cheesy Tomato Orzo, Pizza Burgers, Shephards Pie and a delicious Sausage Stew.

Does the Family Box work if some of you don’t eat meat?

In a word, yes. Now, obviously, many of these meals are meat-based. However, I easily adapted any that I needed too – for example, the sausage stew, I just cooked in two dishes – one with the meat sausages, and one with some veggie/vegan ones. The Shephards Pie I did the same, switching the pork mince for some soya mince in one dish. IT was actually a great way to ‘allow’ my meat eaters to have meat-based meals, as generally, I’ll just cook everything vegetarian – which is fine, but it’s nice to accommodate everyone – and it’s really not difficult to make two separate dishes of basically the same meal at once.

The recipes are easy to follow, with step by step instructions to guide you through – great if you’re not a big cook, or like me you’re a little out of your comfort zone when cooking meat {I learnt to cook vegetarian, so am never 100% confident on my meat cooking skills!}. THey are also great if you have kids who want to do some cooking – my girls managed to easily follow the recipes with barely any help from me.

What we thought

The meals themselves were delicious – everything was happily received, and due to the generous portion sizes we often had leftovers for lunch the next day {tat’s always the best bit right?!}. We’d definitely recommend the family box. It’s a huge time saver if you struggle to get home cooked meals on the table in the week, it takes out the meal planning {the recipes are obviously well thought out, and not ‘samey’ from week to week, there’s no waste as everything is pre-measured out – there’s none of that buying a whole jar of something for one recipe, then it sitting on a shelf for a year or two {not just me right?!}.

The recipe cards also tell you how many each meal is of your five a day, as well as giving you a break down of fat, sugar, carb content etc. ALl in all it’s pretty good value for money. The meals work out at from £4 a meal – which given they would feed the five of us with elftovers, isn’t bad I don’t think! PLus…. the boxes they come in give Beastie hours of fun!

If you want to try the Hello Fresh Family Box for yourself, you can use code HFPIXIE for 50% off 2 boxes!

Post in collaboration with Hello Fresh – all thoughts and opinions are our own :)