New Eats: Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen

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I hate to break it to everyone, but this week's review is far less exciting than the Cowford experience from last week. Zach and I headed to Cheddar's for an impromptu dinner last week and were sorely disappointed. I get it...every new restaurant has its learning curves. We were expecting average, slow service, but our unfortunate experience went far beyond that. Food For the record, we ordered totally normal food and I did no prior research on Cheddar's specialties. Honestly, the food isn't even worth discussing. It was somehow a combination of cold and overcooked with average flavors (at best). The spinach and artichoke dip appetizer was the best part of our entire meal but still completely average when compared to other restaurants. Service Our poor server. He couldn't have been over 16 years old and was waiting on close to 15 tables. With sweat drenching his shirt and an overwhelmed demeanor, we only got to see our server about once every 20 minutes.

What I Love (And Don't Like) About Hello Fresh

It's clear by now that food and cooking is a huge passion of mine, but finding time in the day to make it all happen is another story. I work a full-time job, take 18 credit hours and freelance write...yeah, cooking a full meal is often the last thing I want to do after a long day of work. But, I might've found a solution. I recently received a coupon in the mail for $30 off my first Hello Fresh box, so hello I couldn't pass that up! Here's how it went:



Online Experience

Props to Hello Fresh for having an awesome and easy-to-navigate website. I was actually excited to enter my credit card information. Why? The last step of the process is selecting the meals you'd like to receive in your upcoming box. There are six meals to choose from, rotating weekly. Hello Fresh doesn't give you the option upfront to specify allergies or dietary preferences, so the meal choices are fairly diverse as to accommodate most needs. I selected my meals, picked a delivery date and waiting for their arrival. It was that easy.

Food Quality

This is the first meal kit delivery service I've tried, so the packaging and method of maintaining freshness intrigued me. Each meal came in a labeled brown bag and was kept cold in the box of dry ice (at least, what I think was dry ice!) This girl has no clue what those long chemical words mean. The food kept well in the fridge and I froze the meat until the day of. Overall, the food quality seemed good. My only concern is the amount of chemicals that might go into the ingredients to keep them from going bad.

Meals:

1. Spaghetti Bolognese
2. Pork tenderloin with roasted green beans and sweet potatoes
3. Cheddar-stuffed hamburgers with a tomato onion jam and a lightly dressed arugula salad

Prep and Cooking Process

This is the part I love. It was such a nice change of pace to not have to meal plan, go to the grocery store, go back to the grocery store because I inevitably forgot an ingredient, measure ingredients and dirty numerous pans. Guys, it was so easy. The large recipe cards come with pictures, simple instructions and an ingredient breakdown. Meals were straight-forward and perfectly portioned for two people. No complaints here.
The process overall is a total winner. Hello Fresh is a great way to make my life a little bit easier. The meals are more basic than what I usually prepare, but it's also stuff that I wouldn't normally cook in the first place. Hello Fresh is great for chefs of all skill sets, as they assume you have the bare minimum in your kitchen. I have my next box arriving Sept. 26, so right now it's just a waiting game!








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