My Food Bag - My Experience

Lately, I've been in a deep funk of dead-end ideas when it comes to food.

I recently saw something going around social media with three choices. 

If you only had to choose one, what would you choose?

A nanny

A housemaid

A chef

That's easy for me. A chef. Every time.

And just lately, being in the depths of winter, cooking every night just became a chore. I was really struggling to come up with original and tasty menu ideas that everyone in my family would eat, and I am just bored of doing the same dishes, and tired of cooking uninspiring food that if you gave me a cent for every time I'd cooked them, I'd be rich by now.

Someone happened to mention Nadia Lim's My Food Bag. I had heard of it, of course. Masterchef is one of my favourite reality television shows, and I was watching when she won it back in 2011, and heard about her new business venture.

Food and chef-prepared recipes delivered to your door every week sounded amazing!

Whenever someone talks about My Food Bag, they always qualify it with, "it's great food, but expensive." And that is what has put me off trying it out before now. 

Let me just say now, before I carry on, that this is NOT a sponsored blog post. I am in no way affiliated with Nadia Lim or My Food Bag and have not been asked to write a review on this. I'm blogging about it because I write about everything anyway, and thought you might all be interested.

But when I realised how much money I was actually spending going to the grocery store every other day to get something for dinner because I hadn't had any inspiration to write up a menu, I thought I might as well spend that money on My Food Bag instead of wasting time and funds running back and forth from the market.

There are six people in my family. Two adults and four children, and one of those children is a teenage boy, and two of those children are picky eaters and small eaters, so I thought the 2 adults and 2-3 children might be fine as far as quantity.

Screenshot from My Food Bag

On Sunday our first food bag arrived. It was so exciting!

The list for extra ingredients that you need in the pantry to do My Food Bag was so small and insignificant, that after doing the sums I don't actually think this is very expensive. Apart from a few basics, like oil and salt, eggs, butter, milk and flour and a couple of other things, Nadia provides everything, even down to the one garlic clove that I need for tonight's meal.

And the menu looked delicious!

A couple of days after ordering an email arrived in my inbox with a list of extra things I would need to buy and photographs of what I'd be cooking for the week, and it looked amazing!

My husband's eyes lit up when I showed him. I could tell he was so over my done-to-death chicken nibbles, sausages and fish and chips on rotation every week.

To tell the truth, I was a little sceptical when I opened up the chillbox and took out the meat. I though I better check all the dates in case one was close to the expiry and make sure that the recipes I want to cook line up with those dates. Later I was pleasantly surprised to read in the instructions that come with the box that Nadia actually suggests you do this - but I also found that the fresh meat was not only the best available in New Zealand, but the expiry dates were also well within the dates of the menu - if I cooked them in the order they arrived. That's a girl after my own heart, I have to say right there. Careful attention to the small details. I was impressed.

For the first night, we made Cashew Lemon-Crumbed fish with roast veges and sundried tomato mayonnaise.

The fish has a panko and cashew crumb over it and was so delicious some of us went back for seconds, and yes, there was enough for seconds. If this is (literally) a taste of what is to come, then I think I'm going to want to do My Food Bag for the rest of my life - or at least until I get my cooking mojo back - which might be never.

What I like about it is:

* the food and recipes are super-healthy. Fresh, organic vegetables and the finest meats - no unhealthy processed stuff here.

* It's easy to prepare. This took me 45 minutes max, and a lot of that time was stand-down time, waiting for the vegetables to roast.

* the hard work of menu planning is taken away

* The hard work of "what's for dinner" is taken away

* If the kids don't like it, they can't blame me!

* I'm not impulse buying anymore.

* The variety of dishes. Goodbye boring food!

* It tastes REALLY good.

Two things to watch out for if you are going to try this:

1. You have to order a week in advance.

2. You will automatically be charged for the second week unless you request that not to happen. I didn't read the fine print and discovered last night that I've been charged for this to arrive next week also. Oops. Don't care. I was going to do it anyway.

* This is NOT a sponsored post. I am in no way affiliated with Nadia Lim or My Food Bag and have not been asked to review this product. I am blogging about it because I wanted to try it out and writing is how I process everything good and bad in my life. This just happens to be good!