It’s time for dinner. Again. Lockdown languish has certainly set in at our house. And it comes in full force around dinner time when we’re trying to work out what to cook night after night. There’s plenty of restaurants doing home delivery or heat up meals, and sure we could get takeout delivered in minutes, but we’d like to be able to afford to go travelling when we finally can, so the lockdown budget is in full effect.

In comes EveryPlate. They’re all about offering meal kit deliveries for budget-savvy Aussies, so they’ve got my attention! They’re billed as ‘no frills’ and ‘fuss free’. Now I’m not going to lie, I’m a little worried that translates to the type of meals I used to eat in my uni days. Rice, lentils and um more rice and lentils. But a quick peruse of the website and the twelve or so menu items I get to choose from fixes those fears. I could be eating lemon thyme chicken with a creamy mash, spiced pork tacos, or even halloumi and roast veggies – there definitely wasn’t any halloumi in my student budget.

When my four meal box lands on my doorstep, I’m unpacking a week’s worth of goodies – jumbo-sized carrots, glossy beetroot, fun little sachets of spices, breadcrumbs, even serves of shredded cheese. I can’t say anything about it screams no frills, except perhaps a lack of overpackaging that has quite frankly bothered me about other meal kits I’ve ordered before. And from $3.98 a plate (from $2.39 per plate for newcomers), I’ve got no complaints.

Then there’s ‘no fuss’. On that Wednesday night, when work finished late and eating cereal straight from the box seemed tempting, in about half an hour I’m eating a healthy Mexican pork salad instead. The instructions are simple, four-step recipes, and the dishes come together fast. Sometimes at the end of the day my brain can’t take reading the fine print of a recipe, but the steps are nice and clear, nothing is too convoluted. My favourite dish turns out to be rissoles, which let’s face it certainly don’t sound like the most modern dish on the menu, but basted in a honey mustard sauce, they’re a serious hit in our household.

The other big seller here is flexibility – with all the subscription services and memberships I’ve got under my belt I’m always nervous to sign up to something new, but there’s no need to have a box delivered every week. You can skip a week, drop down to two meals, bump up to four, and pause or stop your deliveries whenever you want.

So long breakfast for dinner, frozen meals or takeaway too many nights a week. Well, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, but at our place, I think there’ll be a lot more cooking these days.

EveryPlate
https://www.everyplate.com.au/