life and puppies

Folks, Pasture and Plenty. Just. I mean, Pasture and Plenty.

Delicious. Local. Fun. Easy.

Repeat. Times 1,000.

Guys, I just think if you’re doing meal delivery, and you’re not using Pasture and Plenty, you’re doing it wrong. P&P’s model is more than a zillion times better than the others we’ve tried.

Here’s where I started on this short journey to asking someone else to step in to help out with our meals. First, as those of you who know me know,  I don’t cook and I have about zero interest in it. Second, I know that we need to be fed good food. Third, and most importantly, Aaron. He loves to cook. LOVES IT. And he’s so good at it. And he loves feeding people, especially those he loves. But when your life is overwhelming you in other ways, your joy can become just another stress and obligation, or some sort of funhouse mirror to you that’s distorting you’re vision of yourself.

We need our household to take more deep breaths, enjoy each other, and wait for the blue wave. But in the meantime on the latter, I’m trying to spend money on some things I think will really improve our quality of life by cutting out stress. And one of these things, I’ve decided, could be, meal deliveries. [Aaron was not really on board with this experiment, but I nudged him to let us try. And just wait. Semi-spoiler, I know. He. Loves. It. Thank goodness because otherwise I’d come off only like a controlling jerk.]

Over the last year, we tried a few meal delivery services. And this is my report.

Goal: less stress; easy, feel-good and wholesome meals, that would give us more time together.

In tries with the nation-wide meal deliveries companies (I think we ordered from Blue Apron & SunBasket, but I could be wrong on the latter. I should have written posts contemporaneously with the cooking, but honestly, both experiences were both a bore and a headache, I didn’t want to bother.), what we generally got were:

• oodles of non-reusable packaging, which caused us stress for the clutter and guilt for the waste
• lots of prep and cook time (fine for me if I were trying to cook and learn something new, but silly for Aaron bc he could do this without the delivery and did nothing to ease the goal of giving us more time)
• uh, fine meals, kinda. nothing to write home about — honestly, I can’t remember a single one. I think maybe there was a burger?
• of course, not local and all that shipping that accrues food miles and oy

But behold! Pasture & Plenty!

Holy Eden!

• they’re still remodeling their kitchen, so the packaging has been a little bit disposable since we started, BUT NOTHING like the others we tried. And the meals come in these cute reusable tote bags. And I really can’t even. Amazing. UPDATE: Now things are in awesome Pyrex, which we return each week.
• And here’s maybe the bigger thing. Aaron knows how to cook. And I’m 43. I want to do other things. These meals are—you get 3 a week—for the most part, ready to go. One of the three involves some cooking. But, even it is really simple and won’t take you long. These meals are designed to simplify your life.
• HOLY BANANAS ON FLAVOR AND SPECTRUM AND MEDLEY. The larb-style lettuce wraps show up in my dreams. And M-Bear loved the chicken parmesan, which shouldn’t be crazy, but is. Because she’s 6 and M-Bear. It’s just beyond.
• And it’s local. And sourcing local. And we can walk to pick it up. In short, #nailingit

But because Aaron is such a phenomenal cook (best chef anywhere) and a complete I-can-do-it-all-er who has not fully embraced his 40s and accepted that it means that you can now socially justify hiring people to help you, it took some convincing for him to give into trying this. But I wanted him to ease up on expectations he puts on himself and let go, give in, embrace the gray, and enjoy the spoils.

I mean, look, we all know he’s *awesome.* I’m consistently (if not daily, or hourly) told how I really lucked out. And I agree. He’s an amazing cook, dad, husband, lawyer, person, friend, handyman, etc. But can we just get some meal delivery so he doesn’t have to go bananas all the time trying to do it all for us?!

We can! And now do.