Recently I’ve been trying to figure out how to balance “me time” with work and kids constantly wanting just me. By kids wanting me I mean, they need to be crawling all over me and I cannot for the life of me get anything done. Both kids like to use the line ” but I just want to cuddle you”. How to break my heart in one easy lesson. I mean how do you say no to cuddles from a three and five year old. So the million dollar question is how do you get things like grocery shopping and cleaning the house done while still managing to keep peace with the kids that want to cuddle?
In order to decrease the time I have to be running errands and increase the time I spend with my kids( not dragging them to stores and having to deal with crankiness and fighting and begging for every item imaginable), I have been trying out grocery services and home meal deliveries. It is definitely a trial right now to find what we like and works for us. But for now I will share what I have tried and perhaps it can help you find some sanity/ extra time you can spend on yourself.
So far, I have tried the Stop and Shop Peapod service, both home delivery and in store pick up and the Shop Rite Shop from Home both home delivery and in store pick up, as well as Hello Fresh. I am planning on trying Blue Apron soon but haven’t done so yet.
So here’s my take on the Grocery store services. They are fairly similar, you place your order online and pick time and date for pick up or delivery. The lovely folks at the stores do their best to pick out what you have requested. Pro’s for this type of shopping? Well I found a ton! 1) You don’t have to do the shopping yourself and you can be running other errands while someone does the shopping for you! That is a great deal in my book! That’s like gaining an hour or two of time in your already busy day! 2) You don’t have to deal with crowds if you’d rather stay home and have it delivered! Great for those days you just can’t get out of the house whether it be due to illness( cause you know those kiddos are germ factories!) or you just can’t mentally deal with getting the kids dressed and ready and out the door. ( We all know those days when you just can’t deal with the constant fighting with the kids just to put clothes on)
Great you think this sounds like an awesome deal! Someone shops I pick up or have it delivered and it’s a win win situation. Well hold on there, I did find a couple issues that makes it less than ideal all the time.
So my con list contains: 1) Someone else is picking out your produce and meat. By this I mean they likely wont be up to your standards for what you would pick to feed your family. Everyone has different standards. Once I got home to find some rotten veggies that had been included in my order. I could have returned them but was running behind as usual and just threw them out instead. 2) Sometimes they substitute items if they are out of what you requested. Granted you have to OK these substitutions, but they aren’t always ideal substitutions. If you were shopping you would likely find something else that would work for the item, but I often find the substitutions they provide are really far from anything I would pick. So not a huge time saver if I then need to go shop for those items especially if around the holidays or if I need to make a specific recipe for a party etc. 3) The times to either pick up or have delivery don’t always fit into my schedule. I mean I place my order and I would like to pick it up later today. Well that usually isn’t the case. You usually need to place your order at least the day prior. So not so great for last minute shopping.
Now on to Hello Fresh. I got a coupon to try it out for 50% off one week. I figured why not lets give this a try! It may even save me some money. If I stay out of the grocery store I wont buy those random items that I see and think “hey we really need to try those” and then never eat. So I picked the family of 4 meals to try at 2 meals per week. I picked a roast pork loin and chicken tenders. My first disappointment was that there were only 3 recipes total to pick your two meals from. These meals were supposed to be kid/family friendly. Well other than the chicken tenders we got last week and the rigatoni we are getting this week I’m not so sure they are toddler and preschool palate friendly. ( we are getting another week as I forgot to cancel and I figured we should try another week before I make a decision on cancelling. Who am I kidding I’m just lazy too busy to have actually gotten around to cancel.)
So the Hello Fresh was delivered to my door packed in frozen ice packs! I didn’t actually get to see what it looked like all packed up as I was at work and got a notice it had been delivered. I had the Nanny grab it and put everything in the fridge as it was 80 degrees out and figured it shouldn’t stay on my front stoop until I got home at 8:30 pm. What I did see was well labeled boxes with all the fresh ingredients as well as vacuum packed meats and instructions cards.
In my infinite wisdom I ordered our first week to be delivered the week my husband was away for a work conference and I was working or away 2 of the 3 following days. So I invited my parents over for dinner and made both boxes so there would be leftovers for the following night for the kids while I was at work. That was my first mistake. Definitely make one meal and eat it hot! Duh I know. So my mom and I got to work making the pork first, we should have done the chicken tenders with sweet potatoes and snap peas first. The pork was really easy to do and done fairly quick. That was the problem. I just had to prep, roast the potatoes, sear the pork and then stick it all in the oven. Well I overcooked the pork. I do not like dry meat so in my mind it was a fail. If I had only been doing the pork I would have paid better attention and it would have been fine. I was making the chicken tenders, which ended up being delish, and was distracted. The sweet potatoes needed more time to cook but it could have also been user error. My mom didn’t cut them all that small. So in the end it was a learning experience to be sure!
One thing I did realize was that these meals would be great portion control. My husband and I need to work on that definitely. I think if he had been home he would not have been thrilled with the amount of food expected to feed 4 people. I think the food sent for 4 people for the pork roast would have been good for him and I with some leftovers but not enough for 4 adults. The chicken tenders meal seemed to be a little more generous in portions, but difficult to really assess as we did both the same night and gave the kids the chicken tenders and my parents and I had the roast pork. We did have to try the chicken as well as a taste test though. The chicken got 2 thumbs up from the adults! The kids were hesitant and not a fan the first night but gobbled it up as leftovers the next night. My kids are weird what can I say?
The only other thing I was kinda disappointed by was that it was $40 dollars for those two recipes and that was supposedly 50% off. This next week without a coupon is like $70 dollars. I hold judgement for after this week’s meals but I think it’s a little steep pricing. I am looking forward to trying Blue Apron in a couple weeks as they seem to have a couple more choices that may work better for my family.
I don’t have the answer to what is best regarding these grocery/meal services, but I do know I like them in theory. I like the fresh food that I don’t have to spend time shopping for. Best case scenario, I just need to find a personal shopper. Maybe I just need to win the Lotto first….
into the toys and arts and crafts areas. I found 
Momma and Me Baby Gear 