We had the opportunity to try out HelloFresh for a week and I was hopeful a meal kit service could be the solution to reduce some of my weekday meal time anxiety.

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post in collaboration with Hello Fresh. All ideas and opinions expressed are wholly mine.

The Basics

HelloFresh is a meal kit delivery service based in Germany that entered the Canadian market in 2016. Customers can choose between receiving 3 or 4 recipes per week for 2 or 4 people starting at $11.49 per serving. There are 22 recipes to choose from each week. When picking your recipes, the preparation time, calories, difficulty level, allergens, included ingredients, not included ingredients (ie. oil, salt, pepper) are all clearly listed on a pop out window. There was a good mix of proteins within the recipe choices and a handful of vegetarian options.

What I liked

All three recipes I chose from HelloFresh were simple with a handful of quality ingredients and steps to prepare. This was great and exactly what I was looking for. I really liked the sauces in both recipes and how recreatable they were. Why wasn’t I making a dill sauce with every meal? The produce was fresh and kept in our fridge for over 5 days. Packaging was minimal and only when really necessary like with creams, sauces and spice packets. Portion sizes were generous. We ordered the 4 people plan and my mom was staying with us that week so it was great timing. There was easily enough leftovers to pack for my lunch the next day but one of our 4 people was a toddler.

Another plus was the wide variety of recipes to choose from. There were options for all the traditional proteins, plus seafood and vegetarian recipes. For me, being able to quickly identify low-carb options would’ve been a plus.

Other things to consider

The week I placed my order, most of the recipes that caught my eye had an additional charge per plate. This makes sense with the high quality cuts of protein (often steak or multiple proteins/plate), but it was a bit disappointing. Each week only 3 out of the 22 recipes had an additional charge per serving, which isn’t unreasonable, and the pricing was clearly indicated.

With generous portion sizes, the calories per serving on the majority of recipes was >700cals. For my size and current health goals, this is a lot. However, the recipes were easy to adjust with reducing sides/sauces to accommodate my preferences or even saving leftovers for lunch the next day. This was really not a bad problem to have.

In Conclusion

Overall as a meal kit, I found Hello Fresh hit the mark on all the key points. The recipes were easy, quick and appetizing. All the ingredients were fresh, good quality and lasted over 5 days in our fridge. A+ for convenience during a busy week and Alivia approved.

I am not a morning person. Regardless of when I went to sleep the previous night, 8pm, 2am, my natural waking time is 9:00am and I often don’t feel awake until 10am. This, of course, isn’t functional for most of day-to-day life, which is why my cup of morning coffee is a necessity. When I went to work, I would alternate between splurging at coffee shops and using the kitchen coffee machine. At home, I’ve gone through a handful of coffee making methods from drip to single-use pods to instant. Now with Alivia in the mix, and often less than optimal sleep, my coffee ritual has become even more sacred.

Our newest appliance is the Melitta Heritage Series Pour-Over™ Coffeemaker in pastel pink, which comes with a porcelain Pour-Over™ Coffeemaker and a 20oz carafe. Stephen and I have been using the set on weekends for a while now and it brews the perfect amount for two.

Although I’ve been making coffee at home for years, I never knew the importance the filter played in the process. Since inventing coffee filters in 1908, Melitta has only improved over time. Their filters are made from a bamboo pulp that absorbs the bitter oils and acids during the brewing process resulting in a smoother, richer cup of coffee. The cone filters also have micro-perforations that help extract more flavour and are guaranteed never to burst with double crimped edges. Brewing with the Pour-Over method and Melitta filters will help any brand of coffee taste better.

I loved how quick and easy the Pour-Over™ method was to use, great in my current sleep-deprived state, and with minimal cleanup, amazing when Alivia’s calling for attention. Just put in a filter, add fresh coffee grinds, and pour hot water. I’m sure Stephen and I still have a ways to go before we perfect our pour, but even with our amateur technique, the result is a solid cup of joe. The design of the carafe spout also helps prevent dribbles and the pastel pink colour is so pretty.

Melitta has been in Canada since 1960 and has just launched their new online shop, which contains all the #MelittaPourOver equipment and beans needed to brew a perfect cup of coffee at home. The new website has more information about the Pour-Over method, tips on how to brew a better cup of coffee at home, and even coupons. There is also a subscription program that allows subscribers to save up to 7.5% on Melitta coffee products and delivered right to their doorstep.

Visit https://shop.melitta.ca/ today and use promo code Xiao15% to save 15% on your purchase! #pouroverisbetter

Disclaimer: Products reviewed below were provided complimentary by Buddha Brands Co. All opinions expressed below are wholly mine and not indicative of the opinions or positions held by Buddha Brands Co.

The Basics:
Thirsty Buddha Coconut Water comes in 520ml cans, is all natural and Non-GMO Project certified. Varieties include coconut water with and without pulp, coconut with mango and the newest offering Coconut Water with Aloe Vera. Aloe Vera is a common addition to drinks in Asia (ie. Bubble Teas), is high in antioxidants and can help with digestion. Thirsty Buddha Coconut Water with Aloe Vera can be found at Whole Foods and London Drugs in Ontario.

My Experience:
90% of the time, when I’m thirsty my go-to drink is water. The other 10% belongs to Coke Zero. The only time I’ve drank coconut water was on a beach in Bali from a coconut and enjoyed the mild, salty flavour. I found Thirsty Buddha’s coconut tasted very similar, without any added flavours or colouring. I had chilled my can of Thirsty Buddha to enjoy after a gym workout and it was refreshing. Shaken well, each sip a few chunks of aloe vera, which added a sweetness to the drink.

What I liked:
Only 100 calories per can with no added sugar
A good source of electrolytes and I prefered the natural flavour to the artificial taste of sports drink
Comparably priced ($2.50 regular at London Drugs) to other brands
A reliable source of Aloe Vera, I used to drink Aloe Vera drinks from Asian grocery stores regularly, but have stopped due to stories about fake aloe vera being used.

What could use work:
Honestly, I didn’t have any points for this section. The product is solid, honestly labeled and a great drink.

TL;DR: All natural coconut water that’s well-priced, refreshing, and with a hint of sweetness from the added aloe vera.

Disclaimer: Products reviewed below were provided complimentary by Ely Products. All opinions expressed below are wholly mine and not indicative of the opinions or positions held by Ely Products.

The Basics:
Made from ingredients sourced from Ontario farmers, Fudi offers a healthy alternative to frozen dinners. Using an all-natural, preservative-free sous-vide cooking process, Fudi maximizes flavour while maintaining the nutrition of their ingredients. Each entree comes with pouches of kale, pearl barley and a quarter chicken (de-boned) seasoned with one of the Fudi spice mixes. To prepare, the pouches are reheated in boiling water for 15-17 minutes. There are 5 Fudi entrees available and 6 spice mixes, which may be purchased online through their website or in store at Whole Foods and select Foodland locations.

Fudi is currently running a contest on their Facebook page, featuring photos of their product taken by bloggers, including my photo of their Santa Fe Chicken. Find out more about their products and vote for your favourite photo here!

My Experience:
I have a soft spot for frozen dinners. Often I’ll grab one for lunch at work for the convenience and knowing the calorie count if I’m trying trim the waistline. While healthier options have emerged, frozen dinners generally still have low protein content and high grain. Preparing one of the Fudi entrees may be slightly more work than throwing it in the microwave, I found the ingredients healthy (often more so than my home cooked meals), and the portion size filling. While testing out Fudi, I ate way more kale, whole grains and lean white meat than I would have on my own.

• What I liked:
  Each entree was a balanced meal and only 400 calories
  The chicken in all 5 entree flavours were well seasoned with a mix of dark and white meat
  My favourite flavour was the Santa Fe while The Hubby favoured the Cacciatora
  The convenience, even though preparing the meals took 15-20 minutes, this was still quicker than making a similar dish from scratch
  Minimal clean up! All that was needed to prepare Fudi was a pot (and some tongs)
  I was surprised at how filling each entree was. With a ¼ cup of pearl barley and 1 cup of kale I often ended up passing scoops of barley from my plate to The Hubby’s

• What could use work:
  Distribution of kale leaves – in some entrees, my kale was only ends of leaves while others only had tips. This meant even re-heated for the same amount of time, some packages my kale became a boiled down clump
  When reheating the bags in boiling water, they kind of float, which sometimes meant uneven re-heating. I followed the preparation instructions to the tee and I’m not sure what could be done to fix this. Is a rolling boil needed for the entire reheating time?
  After reheating, the bags are super hot to handle, larger print of this warning would be helpful.
  The kale is unseasoned and needs to be seasoned after, maybe a small seasoning packet for the kale could be included?

TL;DR: Full of high quality and healthy ingredients, Fudi offers a quick, convenient and unique frozen meal solution that doesn’t involve the microwave.

The Basics:
Founded in 2008, Zomato is an online and mobile restaurant search and discovery service that originated in India. Users are able to search for restaurants, add their own review, rating and pictures. Today, Zomato employs 800 people across 17 countries and provides detailed information about over 270,000 restaurants. Toronto is Zomato’s first foray into North America and the company has invested a substantial dollar amount into their Canadian expansion.

My Experience:
With both the website and app, Zomato is beautifully designed with drool worthy images and simple to use navigation. I’ve been using the app to “check in” to restaurants over the past month on my phone and the app has found every location so far. Their database is impressive in it’s breadth and depth of coverage. There are franchises, mom and pop shops and all the trendy new spots around town. Adding reviews have also been easy and there is still so much functionality in the works like conversations directly with restaurants and easy payments through the app. Integration between Zomato and all other social media networks to allow for easy sharing.

• Collections – Zomato uses themes and curates a collection of restaurants in the city to fit that theme. For example “Achin for Bacon” or “Healthy Eating”. Looking through the collections, restaurants included are all ones that I would recommend or want to try and fit each theme perfectly. This is a great way to discover new restaurants.
• Instagram integration – Including the hashtag #zomato in an Instagram post automatically pulls your picture into the Zomato food porn stream that’s featured on the front page
• Menus – This is huge! I love that Zomato actually has a team in each city that goes to each restaurant, takes pictures of the menu and updates them regularly. When choosing a restaurant, the menu is always the first piece of information I look for and Zomato does the research and leg work for their users.
• Again, the fact that Zomato made the investment to have a team in Toronto that organizes community events, physically visits restaurants themselves (not just relying on their user base) is a huge plus for me and makes me buy in to the app.

• There are still a few bugs. When rating a restaurant, even when disabling the send to Twitter function, a tweet is generated with your rating. This causes me to spam my Twitter every now and then when I’m writing reviews.
• The feedback form for editing a restaurant information is very general.
• Currently the homepage feed only shows reviews and activity from people I’m connected to, I’d love an option to read/see reviews in general from all users.
• A page highlighting new restaurants would be great.

TL;DR: Zomato is a restaurant discovery and review service that has launched in Toronto with a slick design, the resources and potential to win over users.

Disclaimer: All foods eaten were compensated by Spork. All opinions expressed below are wholly mine.

Two weeks ago, I met with two of the faces behind a new mobile app called Spork. Spork is an app that specializes in micro marketing for restaurants, allowing them to run limited promotional deals (ie. buy any size scopp and get a scoop free at Lick it Gelato) that target nearby consumers. Each deal is customized by the restaurant and tailored to their needs.

We met at Queen’s Quay station to take advantage of a new “Spork” offer at Lick it Gelato. The main screen of the app is a map with indicators of deals that are running. Clicking on each indicator brings up the details of the deal and a button to “Spork” it. If a user does choose to take advantage of an offer, they have a limited amount of time to get to the restaurant. For Lick it Gelato, we had 30 minutes to arrive for our free scoop of gelato.

While we discussed the app, I had the pleasure of eating some delicious dessert. Lick it Gelato offers up to 16 flavours, pastries from Dufflet, a selection of coffees, sodas and sandwiches. A few of the gelato flavours were running low but for the middle of May, the selection was pretty varied between fruit and creamy. I had a sample of the Burnt Caramel and was sold. The flavour was rich, smokey and the perfect level of sweetness. Sadly there was no pistachio, my go to flavour, so for my free scoop I went with my second favourite, Chocolate Hazelnut. Both scoops were rich and smooth.

A small dining area is available along with bar seats along the front window. A few two-seater tables are set up outside as well. Lick it Gelato is a nice spot for a sweet break if you’re in the neighbourhood.

Overall, Spork aims to help restaurant build consumer loyalty and increase traffic during slow periods with enticing offers. Restaurants are currently recruited to the app personally by one of the founders and based on positive reviews. Currently, Spork has already partnered with popular restaurants like Snakes and Lattes, I went to Philly and Utopia Cafe and Grill. Building a mutually beneficial relationship between users and restaurants, Spork has a the potential to become an app that I use regularly because who doesn’t love a good deal.

Disclaimer: Products reviewed below were provided complimentary by Ely Products. All opinions expressed below are wholly mine and not indicative of the opinions or positions held by Ely Products.

The Basics:
Imported from Latin America, Natural Sins is a baked, dried fruit snack that is 100% natural with no preservatives or dyes. The fruit is sliced very thin and each re-sealable package contains 1oz of the snack. There are 6 fruits available; mango, coconut, apple, orange, beetroot and pineapple. Each package of Natural Sins is 100 calories or less, with the exception of coconut at 168 calories.

My Experience:
When I’m bored at home or work, I look for a snack. While I love to eat fruit naturally, I will also gravitate towards fruits that are easily accessible. It’s why I have to pre-peel my oranges, and pre-slice my apples in the mornings. Otherwise they’ll sit untouched on my desk for days. With Natural Sins, it was super easy to throw a package into my purse or leave them at my desk and have a healthy snack ready with no preparation required. Natural Sins can be purchased online through Ely Product’s website or at a wide variety of stores in the GTA, including Rabba’s fine foods and Starsky.

What I liked:

• I liked 4/6 of the flavours. Coconut, mango and beetroot were amazing.
  • I assumed I would like mango but I was surprised at how sweet beetroot was.
  • I’ve never been a fan of coconut and again was surprised at how good the Natural Sins version was. Each package of coconut also provides 8g of natural fiber, which is amazing.
• The ease of having a healthy snack that’s ready to eat, tasty and needs no clean up.
• The idea of the re-sealable package was great. The execution needed some work.
• Beetroot, seriously I wouldn’t have thought of it as a fruit but it was one of my favourites.
• The texture of each fruit slice was super crispy. The mango slices were reminiscent of chips.

What could use work:

• The apple thins were only ok, I found the slices weren’t as crispy as the other fruit.
• I really didn’t like the orange thins. The entire fruit was used in each slice, including the peel and albedo (the white stuff) making each crisp quite bitter. I’m sure it’s healthier but not so tasty.
• As mentioned above, each bag has a re-sealable zip stripe. However, some of the packages were sealed very close to the zip stripe. Therefore using the tear away indent didn’t actually open the bag.
• At over $3/bag, it is more expensive than buying fruit.

TL;DR: Conveniently packaged, Natural Sins fruit thins offers a quick, delicious, accessible, healthy snack choice at a gourmet price point.

Disclaimer: This post was sponsored by Chekplate. All opinions expressed below are wholly mine and not indicative of the opinions or positions held by Chekplate.

The Basics:
Chekplate is a mobile app, currently available only for iPhones, launched in September 2013 that aims to provide users with restaurant reviews from their social network. Users can add friends, write quick reviews and search for restaurants nearby and read existing reviews.

• The app is responsive and quick to load with a clean user interface and easy to read icons, it’s not crowded
• Searching for “Nearby” restaurants provides a list of results within seconds
• There’s a section on each restaurant page for “Deals”, this has great potential
• Simple rating system out of 5 for Food, Service and Price
• As wordy as I can be, I’m a big fan of concise information. I like that the rating is broken out into three factors with a straight forward approach.
• Being able to flip back and forth between list and map view in the restaurant search results

• There are still bugs, right now there’s no way to delete a review so if you accidently click submit twice (which I did), both reviews show up. The developers are working on a way to prevent duplicate reviews.
• This feature is to prevent restaurants from enticing users to remove poor reviews, a great move to maintain the integrity of the app
• Better integration with Facebook and Twitter
• The framework to integrate is built into the “Settings” section of the app, but toggling the “On/Off” didn’t do anything
• More data, like any new app that relies on user input, Chekplate’s restaurant database is just starting to be built up. Right now, there’s a great baseline of restaurants but there’s a lot missing. As a user, It is easy to add a new restaurant if you’re at the location. If you’re not though, you need the exact address, which can be a bit more effort than users are willing to put in for a mobile only app.

TL;DR: With an increase in usership, Chekplate has the potential to provide users with restaurant recommendations on the fly by being a well-thought out and responsive app.