My lovely fresh delivery from Daily Dish

I love when food companies invite me for demonstrations or sends me boxes of food. I dislike grocery shopping and cooking almost equally. When Daily Dish asked if I’d be interested in trying out one of their meal boxes, I jumped at the opportunity.

I’ve been following Daily Dish for a long time and get their weekly menu mail, often leading to water damage to my keyboard from salivating over the recipes. Several people I know have tried them out too. For me it was always a matter of cost. Well, to be honest, also cooking. Because you’re supplied with 99% of each dish’s ingredients and beautiful menu cards with cooking instructions, but yes, you still have to make it yourself. The nice thing about it is that you choose your weekly menu and you’re very likely to try at least one new dish that you’ve never cooked before.

I have a confession. After getting the chilled box bursting with lovely fresh goodies, I still haven’t cooked any of the recipes I’ve received. In my defense, we had load shedding on two consecutive nights, and then to prevent wastage, I kind of just made stuff from the ingredients in a random fashion. Cooking during the week is my absolute worst because I get home late and all I want to do is listen to my book while knitting a few rows before going to bed and doing it all over again.

When I say the ingredients were fresh, I mean it. You could tell that everything in the box was quality and sourced for flavour and culinary pleasure.

But what exactly is in a box and how does this work?

Every week you get a look at the next week’s menu of four dishes, and you have until Wednesday afternoon to place your order for delivery on the following Monday. You can choose between a classic menu, low carb menu, vegetarian menu, and they recently launched a budget menu. Once you know which dishes you’d like to try, you place your order for two or four servings.

The addition of a budget box leads me to think I’m not the only frugal shopaholic out there. Yes we watch our money carefully, but it doesn’t mean we don’t want nice stuff or to try convenient new services. I’m not sure if I would order the budget box. The reason? While I absolutely love the idea behind Daily Dish, I’m not dedicated enough to my kitchen to cook the meals.

Recipe cards for my four dishes

For me, ordering another box would be to get those amazing ingredients, and to build my recipe folder with those gorgeous cards. And to be honest, the classic and low carb menus always have the best dishes.

Considering that I generally cook once a week, and that a Daily Dish meal for four would provide one meal a day during the work week (the portions are not skimpy!), it won’t be the worst way for me to buy groceries. Except that it only covers my food, and nothing extra like milk, coffee, cleaning products, etc.

I think it is a wonderful concept, and if you’re looking to spruce up your meals without missioning around for ingredients or spending nights at a cooking school, you absolutely need to try Daily Dish. Do it once and see if it would work for you. I know that although it’s not an option for me now, it might be in the future, and now that I know the ins and outs, I can honestly say it’s the best service I’ve had the privilege to try recently.

*Images from Daily Dish website unless captioned.