August 2017

Mine vs. Theirs (Chefs Plate #3)

stargrace August 13, 2017 0Comment

Today I made the third and final meal from Chefs Plate – garlic noodles with squash and spinach, and some toast with ricotta cheese and cherry tomatoes. It was incredibly delicious and unlike the other two meals the portion felt huge (I had enough for 3-4 plates like the one you see above). The noodles were fresh, and now that I’ve had fresh pasta I’m not sure I can ever go back to the boxed stuff. It was light and fluffy and full of flavour.

It was one of the easier meals to cook and prepare, and as far as value goes it came closest to what I would actually consider paying $10.95 per plate for. It was also their vegetarian option, but you could always add a little chicken or something to stretch the meal out if you wanted.

Final thoughts? Well, Chefs Plate is just not aimed at people like myself. Solo parent of an infant, with no time to cook. It would be great for someone just learning, who wanted to impress themselves (or friends) with delicious meals. Someone who has a bit of time to cook, but no ideas of what to make, and of course, who has the cash. I do like that we can keep the recipes, I’ll make them again in the future using my own purchased ingredients and customizing them the way I prefer. It also gave me some good ideas, like using lime to flavour a slaw (the carrot & cabbage slaw was delicious) and how you don’t need complicated meals to have big flavour. I think the instant pot is geared at me in a much better way – less time in the kitchen, less time watching my food cook and preparing it. So I’ll look for more instant pot meals instead and maybe I’ll post one here weekly (or maybe not, I have no idea if people care that I post food things on my gaming blog).

In the end, I’m very glad I spent the $32 to try Chefs Plate out – but there’s no way I’d pay full price ($65) for three meals (6 servings total). That’s almost my entire weekly budget for groceries, and doesn’t cover lunch or breakfast (or even 7 days of dinners) or anything for my kid. That being said, if you want to give it a try you can get a discount on your first order by clicking here.

Lets get back to some gaming posts!

Theirs vs. Mine (Chefs Plate #2)

stargrace August 12, 2017 0Comment

My second Chefs Plate meal was fish taquitos with a cabbage & carrot slaw. None of the ingredients were rotten this time which was nice. I was worried about the avocado because those have such a short “not ripe not ripe BAM RIPE rotten” stage, but it turned out excellent.

The food itself was fantastic and very filling – but I had a few issues. I had to grate the giant carrot and the chunk of cabbage by hand which was a pain. When it comes to value, I didn’t think that the supplies were worth $10.95 (the cost of a single plate) even if the overall meal was delicious. They sent me 2 fish fillets (very good), a small pouch of spices, a small container of sour cream, an avocado, a lime, 2 cloves of garlic, 6 flour tortilla wraps (very small), a carrot, and a chunk of purple cabbage. Now sure if you buy this stuff in the store it comes to more than $10.95 because the portions are a lot larger – but I felt like they sent me very little and I had to do all the work on top of it. I’m a busy mother of a 10 month old baby doing the solo parent thing for 6 months, cost is only a portion of what I was trying this for, time it takes to prepare the meal is another one. If the cabbage and carrots had come pre-shredded that would have made a world of difference.

For this meal I put the little guy in his bouncy chair and tried to keep him entertained long enough to make everything. I got right up to the stage where they go into the oven for 10 minutes which was pretty good. The meals all advertise to take between 25-30 minutes to make from start to finish and I find this to be pretty accurate – but I am rushing around doing things the entire time, so if you happen to work slower the meals would probably take around 45 minutes.

I’ve got one more meal to go, a fettuccini meal that I’m pretty excited about. That’ll be tomorrow (or when I can find the time to make it). I’ll do a final blog post with overall thoughts and if anyone has a question don’t hesitate to let me know.

Chefs Plate (Canada edition)

stargrace August 10, 2017 0Comment

Gasp, I know, a non-gaming post, but a few folks were interested in details so I figured I’d put it here. Chefs Plate is another one of those meal delivery type things like Blue Apron or Hello Fresh where you choose from a selection of weekly recipes and they send you the ingredients and you cook it. There are tons of different plans and prices, but for Chefs Plate it’s $10.95 (CAD) per meal. I happened to have a 50% off coupon. They don’t offer meals for one person, but they did have a 2 person meal combo, so I went for that. They have 2-3-4 meal options. I went with 3. This put my order at $32 (CAD) for 3 different meals, 2 of each meal.

The box is 100% recyclable, as is everything in it (yay). My stuff arrived and it was nice and cold, even the meat. The recipes are printed on GIANT pieces of stiff paper, I wish they were more index card sized. Even if you decide not to go with further shipments (there’s no commitment here) you get to keep some (hopefully) amazing recipes.

My fist meal was grilled beef & pesto burgers with grilled mushrooms, peppers, and a nectarine salad. The facebook page claimed meals “could feed 3-4” but that’s not true, especially not for these burgers where you only get 2 buns. Ingredients are supposed to be local to Canada, but my red pepper has a big “U.S.A” sticker on it. The meat is Canadian, and I do like supporting our local farmers. Cutting into the red pepper showed me it was completely rotten inside, black mold everywhere. Gross.

The beef was *amazing* whoever they’re getting it from in Canada is doing a fantastic job. It was probably one of the best tasting burgers I’ve ever made. With the grilled red pepper and mushroom on top, it didn’t need anything else. Making the pesto by hand was a pain, you have to dice up arugula and sunflower seeds. The pesto wasn’t that great, but when you added the red wine vinegar to it, the flavours were incredible. No complaints about the burger at all.

The salad.. was nothing to write home about. The red wine vinegar was used there too and it overpowered the nectarine and the radish. Was this plate worth $10.95? I don’t personally think so.  I do have two more dishes to go, plus the second portion of this one (which I will have tomorrow) and if the steady price was $32 I’d be MUCH more inclined to purchase from them. In the meantime, at least I got some neat recipes to try out on my own.