Families With Grace

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Tag: Meal

Meal kit review: EMeals

Posted on by Stacey A. Shannon

A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons

A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.

So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!

Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!

Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over a few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.

EMeals

From the beginning of this journey, I was most intrigued by EMeals. It is much cheaper because you’re only paying for the meal plans and buying the groceries yourself. They partner will various grocery stores to help make shopping easier. I do like that. As a rather DIY person, I figured EMeals would be the best fit for us.

Signing up for EMeals was pretty painless. I signed up online but then had to download the app to do much else. You can see your account and payment information online, but finding recipes and creating shopping lists has to be done through the app. I’m not anti-apps by any means, but I often have my laptop and like having the option to use it as well. Plans that have both make me happiest!

Menu choices

Since EMeals doesn’t have to source the food for its recipes like other meal kits do, they have many more menu options. There are a few that are family friendly options, and I started with those. Of all the meal kits we have tried, this one definitely had the most options that worked for my entire family. Quite a few of the meals were similar to things in our regular rotation, but there were lots of new options as well. My concern was whether I’d push outside of our comfort zone as much as I have with other meal kits!

EMeals also goes with some premade items on many recipes to make cooking time quicker. That’s a nice bonus for this mama on busy weeknights!

I’d love to have a search feature in EMeals to look for meals that utilize specific ingredients. For example, the first week using EMeals, I bought a half gallon of buttermilk for a blueberry muffin recipe. That’s not something I usually use, so I wanted to find other recipes to make use of the buttermilk.

While you do select a specific plan you’d like to go with (like family friendly, low calorie or budget), you can easily access and pick from recipes in all of the plans. I really like that!

Cost

EMeals offers 14 days for free, but you have to put in your payment information for them to start charging at the end of 14 days. Instead of being a monthly or weekly charge, EMeals charges either every three months at $9.99 a month or once a year at $4.99 a month. I opted for the three-month option when signing up, because I didn’t know how much we’d like it. Honestly, I’d prefer a monthly option at least to start with.

For additional fees, you can also add on a breakfast plan and a lunch plan (each costs additional). Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anywhere to view these plans ahead of time and they aren’t included in the free trial, so I didn’t go for them.

Shipping

Shipping wasn’t relevant to EMeals for me. I order my groceries online and pick them up. EMeals partners with a variety of retailers to help you make your list. So, I worked with Walmart, which is my go-to for grocery pick-up anyway.

Once you pick however many recipes you want for the week, then you can click and see your ingredient list in the EMeals app. It will pull up every single ingredient needed to make everything you have saved for the week. One negative to me is that it often automatically adds alcohol to pair with meals to the shopping list. We don’t drink alcohol, so I removed it from the list, but it sort of irritated me I even had to do that. However, it wasn’t difficult to remove. Each item has a box next to it to check whether you need it. It starts out with everything checked. And the list also tells you how much of an ingredient you need and what recipe you need it for. (I like that!)

Before even connecting to Walmart, I was able to remove items from the list that I had on hand. Once that was finished, then I clicked a button and it took me ingredient by ingredient through the Walmart app to add whatever choices I wanted. It pulled up a selection of items and I picked from them. It was easy!

I also was able to add on additional items as well. The items I added to my Walmart cart through the EMeals app also were in my Walmart cart in the Walmart app. For the rest of my shopping, I just switched to the Walmart app itself because that’s what I’m most familiar with.

If you really love having the groceries delivered to your house, then opt for your grocery store’s delivery service.

Ingredients

Again, this is a bit different from the others in that the ingredients being fresh or not didn’t depend on EMeals. I liked the way I made selections of ingredients in the app. However, I also wondered how difficult it would be to find and purchase the ingredients needed for recipes. With previous meal kits, we used multiple ingredients that were a bit more specialty. I wasn’t confident my local Walmart would carry some of them.

However, EMeals recipes are more simplified and use some convenience foods as well, like refrigerated mashed potatoes or mac & cheese. I had no problem finding any of the ingredients I needed.

Cooking the meals

Of all the meal kit meals I’ve made, EMeals were the very easiest. The recipes are more like recipes I usually make for my family on a weeknight. While I love making things from scratch sometimes, a lot of weeknights, I just need to get food on the table and move on. I never felt out of my depth with anything I made from EMeals. They weren’t as challenging as the other meal kits, which is both a positive and a negative. Though they were easier to make, they didn’t push me out of my comfort zone.

I don’t like using my phone to read recipes, which I thought was going to be an issue with EMeal. The recipes are only on the app. But, I discovered that if I share the recipe via email to myself, then it takes me to the recipe on the website and has a print button right there for easy printing. I loved that!

The estimated cook times seemed accurate and sometimes it took me a little less time than estimated, which was great!

Portion sizes

The portion sizes vary on the recipes you make. All of them are clearly marked. Since you purchase your own ingredients, you can adjust the portion sizes as needed. For example, my family isn’t big on eating meat. The first week, I halved our ground beef purchase for the recipes. So we got fewer portions as a result. But feeding a family four with the family plan was super easy. Many of the recipes feed up to six people. The portion sizes seemed spot on for the recipes we tried.

Overall rating

I’d give EMeals a 5 out of 5 stars. It is certainly a different type of service, but for the price, I liked it. I debated back and forth about whether it was any easier than just doing meal planning on my own using recipes I find on the internet. (Check back next week for a post about meal planning without a service.) I definitely could, but having everything narrowed down in one place is helpful. So, EMeals is definitely one of my top picks.

Other posts from this series:

Meal kit review: Every Plate

Posted on by Stacey A. Shannon

A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons

A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.

So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!

Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!

Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over a few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.

Every Plate

The next meal kit delivery service we used was Every Plate. It was like Home Chef and Dinnerly in offering three meals a week as the lowest option. While Every Plate focuses on its lower prices, those prices are in part because there are many premium offerings cost extra per serving. Other meal kits did this, too, but Every Plate seemed to do so even more.

Menu choices

The menu choices for Every Plate were a bit so-so to me. They don’t seem to have quite as much selection as some of the others — at least of food that my family will eat. I have a couple of picky eaters, but getting three meals a week minimum in four portions made it more noticeable to me this time around. With the other meal kit services, I was able to find two meals per week my entire family would like and then maybe have one other meal my daughter and I would eat alone. That was a challenge for us with Every Plate.

Cost

I selected the minimum amount of meals per week, which was three. I went with four portions. Unlike Home Chef, you couldn’t modify portion sizes. The cost for three basic meals for four servings was $59.88 plus $9.99 delivery. Each serving is $4.99. In order to get the premium selections, add $3.99 more per each serving for a total of $8.98 per serving. So if you get all premium recipes for four people for one week with three meals, which would bring the cost to $107.76 plus $9.99 delivery. Premium recipes included things like hamburgers, steak and salmon.

Shipping

My Every Plate boxes arrived via UPS in a large cardboard box lined with foam and with two big ice packs included. I like that the boxes arrived UPS because they get to me in the middle of the day. I didn’t especially like the ingredients were all thrown into the box and had to be sorted out by me. However, the large box also include a smaller open box with handles that my non-perishable ingredients fit nicely into once I pulled everything out. That box was easy to store on a shelf in my pantry.

Ingredients

The ingredients were fresh and not frozen. They were individually packaged. A couple were branded as Home Chef, which was interesting. It really does seem that most of these meal kits get their food from the same vendors because they are very alike.

Just like with Dinnerly, Every Plate needed a few extra ingredients from my kitchen to go with meals like ketchup, flour and butter that weren’t included in the box. The produce was mediocre on freshness, but I also live in the Midwest and it was March when I received Every Plate meals, so I’m not sure how much I can dock them for that.

One of the things we noticed is that the recipe cards for Every Plate did not include the nutrition information. All the other meal cards we tried previously did so.

Cooking the meals

The recipes were similar in writing style to Dinnerly and Hello Fresh. While they didn’t take lots of extra time like some of the others, this meal kit delivery service did take slightly longer for some recipes than the time estimated. But, overall, the estimated time was how long it took. It really depends on how much produce you’re using in the recipe and how long it takes you to prep it!

Portion sizes

The portion sizes were good on this one. They were good-sized portions without seeming way too much or too little. I guess like Goldilocks says, they were just right. We only tended to have leftovers when I made four portions but one or more of my family members either didn’t eat a portion or ate only a small portion.

Overall rating

I’d give Every Plate a 3.5 out of 5 stars. I don’t feel like their selection was as great. It just wasn’t a good fit selection-wise for my family. I also didn’t like that the smallest number of meals you could do a week was three. Two really does work best for my family. But, that’s certainly not the case for everyone! I also didn’t like that the nutrition information wasn’t included. While I didn’t pick a low-calorie meal option, I still like to have the nutrition information to keep track and make sure I plan accordingly for the calories needed for the meal.

Other posts from this series:

Easy baked quesadilla recipe

Posted on by Stacey A. Shannon

Crispy, delicious quesadillas made in your oven

Affiliate links are used in this post, if you make a qualifying purchase via my link, I receive a small percentage of the sale at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products and services I use and love. It helps support my blog, so thank you for your support! Read my full disclosure here.

I love easy recipes that are customizable for what my family likes. I’ve got a couple of particular eaters in my house. This easy baked quesadilla recipe fits that category.

Before we had kiddos, I came up with this recipe for my husband and me and I continue to make it now. This recipe is pretty straightforward and simple but you can switch it up to include whatever your family likes.

Preheat the oven to 400-degrees (F) and prepare your baking sheets. You can spray them with non-stick cooking spray or line them with sheets parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

I prefer to line my baking sheets for easier clean-up. I also like the parchment paper because then I can use a marker to write the first initial beside the quesadilla of who it belongs to since they are all different in some way.

Once you’re all set up then get out your tortillas. I use two tortillas per quesadilla, but you could also use one quesadilla folded in half.

Tortillas are where the baked quesadilla recipe starts. You could use wheat tortillas. I used flour. And you can pick the size. I made smaller soft taco-sized tortillas for my son’s quesadillas. I used the larger burrito-sized tortillas for my husband, daughter and me.

To help them crisp up nicely in the oven, I spritz one side of each tortilla with margarine spray. You can also use melted butter and your spray bottle to spritz the shells or lightly brush it on. I do around 10 squirts for the large burrito-sized shells. I spray the bottom first and then spray the top shell after I place it on top when the filling is in.

The spray margarine is the easiest for me to use, but you can also work with melted margarine or butter. Non-stick cooking spray works as well, but not quite as great.
Once the tortillas are sprayed, I use my clean hands and smear the margarine around a bit so most of the shell has a light coating.

With the buttered side face down onto the cooking sheet, put the filling in your quesadillas. Get creative with what your family likes. My son’s was just cheese. My husband’s had bacon and onion with a small amount of cheese.

This is my son’s quesadilla filled with only cheese. I use mostly Mexican cheese blend but also add in some Italian cheese blend.
My husband’s quesadillas are filled with precooked bacon cooked until it’s crispy and not too much cheese, because he doesn’t like cheese so much.

My daughter and I opted for a chicken bacon ranch version. It was so incredibly good. To make it easier, I used precooked refrigerated chicken, precooked bacon cooked to a crisp in the microwave, ranch dressing, tomato, onion and roughly chopped baby spinach.

The chicken bacon ranch quesadillas were quite delicious! Mine is on the left, because I like cheese much more than my daughter.

Put the quesadillas into the preheated oven and bake them for 6 minutes. Pull them out and flip them over. Put them back in the oven for another 6 minutes. Check and see if they are golden brown around the edges. If so, they are finished. If not, leave them in there and check again in 2 minutes.

Fresh from the oven!

Use a pizza cutter (or sharp knife) to slice the quesadillas and serve them warm. We always eat sour cream with ours, because our family LOVES sour cream!

Easy baked quesadillas

Print Recipe

Ingredients
  

  • Flour or wheat tortilla shells soft taco or burrito size, depending on how big you want your quesadillas to be, 2 per quesadilla
  • Spray margarine can also use melted margarine or butter or, in a pinch, non-stick cooking spray
  • Shredded Mexican blend cheese
  • Shredded Italian blend cheese
  • Quesadilla fillings such as bacon, chicken, ground beef, steak, onions, peppers, tomatoes, etc.

Instructions
 

  • Preheat the oven to 400-degrees.
  • Prepare baking sheets with non-stick cooking spray or line them with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
  • Get out one tortilla shells per quesadilla. Cover on side of it with the margarine or butter. (For spray margarine, I use 8 to 10 squirts and smear it around with my clean hands.)
  • Please the shells buttered side down onto your prepared baking sheet(s).
  • Put your filling ingredients onto the top of the shells. Top them with cheese. I use 3/4 Mexican blend or colby jack cheese and 1/4 Italian blend or mozzarella cheese. The amount of cheese varies based on the size of your shell and your family's preferences.
  • Then add whatever ingredients your family prefers. I love chicken bacon ranch using precooked, refrigerated chicken, precooked bacon cooked until crispy in the microwave, shredded cheese, ranch dressing, tomato, onion and roughly chopped spinach.
  • Place another tortilla on top. Lightly cover it with margarine or butter, just as you did the bottom shells.
  • Place into your preheated oven for 6 minutes.
  • Pull out the quesadillas and carefully flip them over.
  • Bake for 6 more minutes or until the edges are a nice golden brown.
  • Use a pizza cutter or sharp knife to slice and serve hot. We usually serve ours with sour cream because we love it!

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