Easy and healthy meals delivered to your door

Fresh ingredients delivered to our front door 

I don't know about you, but every night it is a hassle to think about what to cook the family for dinner. I work from home, have two young kids and I am busy running my girls to extracurricular activities after school, so making a healthy meal sometimes gets put on the back burner.

I have been trying to get my meals for the week on Sunday and make them ahead of time or find simple recipes for the crock pot. It's hard because when I go to the grocery store with some of my new recipes, sometimes I don't know what some of the ingredients even are that I am trying to find. It can get frustrating. I also overbuy the amount of food I need and end up wasting food sometimes.

HelloFresh box with 3 meals

I have seen advertisements for meals that get delivered to your home by a company called HelloFresh and decided to try it out. How could I resist with a $40 off coupon? I didn't really know what to expect. I didn't know anyone else who had tried it yet, so I decided I would see how it worked.

The regular cost for a family of four with three ready to make meals including the meats and shipping  is $105. Since I had the $40 coupon, it was $65. This is a service you sign up for and the food can get delivered weekly, monthly or whatever you want and on the day you want it delivered. It works out to be about $8.75 per person per meal if you buy for a family of four three meals a week without any discounts. With the $40 off the fist box it ended up being $5.41 per person per person per meal. You can also buy the meals for a                                                           family of two. 

Here are the boxes each meal came in
plus the meats 

I had it delivered on Monday, so we could have the meals during the week. I couldn't wait for the package, because I was excited to have healthy meals at my fingertips. When the box arrived, I was very impressed. Each meal had it's own separate box labeled with the ingredients inside. The meats were separate. The package also included a card with each recipe including photos. I love photos because then I know what to do and what it should look like when finished.

Randi last year
learning how to cook at
All Children's Fit4Allkids

Last year my 11-year-old daughter Randi, took the AllChildren's Fit4Allkids cooking classes and learned the basics for cooking. I decided this might be fun for her to do since she loves to cook. We tried it out and she did great. I helped her a little and oversaw the process, but overall she was able to make the meals on her own. It was an experience for her and the whole family benefited from the wonderful healthy meals. Randi made sausage and broccolini orecchiette with pesto and apricot-glazed chicken. These two meals were scrumptious. The cook time was suppose to be 30 minutes. It took Randi about an hour. I think as we make more meals we will get faster.

Randi cooked this
sausage and broccolini orecchiette with
pesto

I will say the portions were also really good. The sausage meal gave us leftovers for another day. I think it tasted even better the second day.

Loved Randi's presentation of
apricot-glazed chicken

I decied to try my cooking skills and
made the Lemongrass beef stir-fry

Overall, this was a pleasant surprise to my cooking dilemma. I have everything delivered right to my door and it's fresh. I don't have to look for ingredients at the store and I don't waste food. It's awesome! The meals are so simple, even my 11-year-old can cook them, and it's a great way to share the cooking experience.

I also found, I can share a special code with friends and they get $40 of their first box and I can get $20 off my next box. You can also send up to four friends a free meal after you get your first two orders. I thought that was pretty good too. Here's the code to start today and get $40 off your first box. Got to HelloFresh and enter this code X7TYB3.

How to Raise Money for Your School

As the kids go back to school, we are hearing more and more about budget cuts in the school system. As a parent, I want my kids to get the best education possible. I think it’s important to help our schools raise money, but I don’t really like the door to door sales for kids. As I thought about the budget cuts, I tried to think of some simple ways we as parents can help our schools earn extra income. Some of the ideas are things we already have at home and may just be throwing away. This trash could be money for our schools.

If you have a printer at your house or your office, start saving the empty ink cartridges. Did you know that every “used” ink cartridge is worth at least $2? If every parent of a school turned in just one empty ink cartridge the school would raise over a thousand dollars. Not only are you raising money for your child’s school, but you are also recycling. I started an ink recycling program in my daughter’s preschool and without having to do very much work, we raised $200. The preschool director was thrilled and the teachers were happy because they had some extra money to spend on school supplies. It’s easy to start at a school and you can recycle the ink cartridges locally at any Staples or Office Depot.

How many of you use the computer to look up things? I know I do. I just discovered that by using Yahoo and the GoodSearch.com as your search engine, you can raise money for your school. It’s simple and easy to do. Every search you do, GoodSearch.com will donate a penny to your school.

If you drink Coke products including: Dasani, POWERADE, Minute Made, Sprite and other drinks, you can donate your points to help get rewards for your school. You just register at mycokerewards.com and click on the “donate to your school” tab and enter the codes to get points.

Have you seen those small little labels on some of your boxes of food? They are called Box Tops. Last year America schools earned $49 million dollars from Box Tops for Education by collecting those labels. My daughter’s elementary school earned $2,500 cash. Schools can receive 10 cents for every box top collected. Start looking at you food boxes more closely and start clipping the box tops. If you don’t save the box tops, it’s like throwing 10 cents out the window.

Several stores like Target and Office Depot have a way to donate to your school. Target’s program is called Take Charge for Education. When you use your Target visa or Target card, a percentage of the amount of each purchase can be donated back to your school. You will need your school’s ID number, but you can look that up on Target’s web site. Office Depot has a similar program; it’s called the 5% Back to Schools Program. When you shop 5% of your qualifying purchases go back to your school for free supplies.

The companies are out there willing to help our schools, we as parents need to make sure we are doing our part by participating in these easy fundraisers. It only takes a minute to clip a box top, cut a label or send in an ink cartridge. If each family helps we can make a difference in our children’s education. Enjoy!