Subscription Box Review: Pasta Evangelists

I've been tempted by one last subscription box. After this one it's either subscription addicts anonymous or a bleak life with no more food parcels! I saw an advert for £15 off your first Pasta Evangelists box and I couldn't help myself.

This subscription promises restaurant quality pasta in your own home. I already feel like we're on top of our pasta game so I don't know why I was hooked in so easily. Normally around £30 for a 4 portion box I got ours for £15.

My parcel came only two days after I ordered it. Pretty efficient. It contained everything needed for 2 fancy pasta meals for 2.

I was a bit disappointed with the contents of the box. It didn't look like much. Still, I was looking forward to trying it for lunch. I made the Spinach & Ricotta Rotola Al Forno with Besciamella Cherry Tomato Sauce & Parmesan. Bit of a mouthful :D

It was pretty delicious. Pasta filled with spinach and ricotta, topped with a tomato sauce. We enjoyed it and it was really easy to put together. Like a posh ready meal.

The next day JD made the Giant Gorgonzola & Walnut filled Gnocchi with Sage Butter & Walnuts. It was our first time trying gnocchi and I have to say I loved it. Really filling and tasty. Yum!

If you're REALLY into fancy pasta dishes then maybe this subsciption box is for you. They do a wide range of different pasta dishes, some with meat too. They're really easy to cook usually needing only about 5 minutes of prep. It's quite convenient for a nice pasta meal. Of course it's a bit pricey and you could make it cheaper yourself but it does seem to be well thought out recipes that are simple to make and delicious. Nice treat for date night perhaps :)

Playing Silly Burgers 23: Teriyaki Hawaii Burger

A pineapple slice on a burger seems very exotic in England. The Hawaii burger is almost always a choice on a burger takeaway menu. It's not a burger I'd usually have so I'm keen to revisit with this burger and see what I think. This recipe includes a home-made pineapple teriyaki sauce to garnish the burger.

 

Ingredients:

 

500g minced beef

1 carrot

1 tablespooon soy sauce

1 teaspoon sriracha

1 teaspoon ground ginger

 

For the teriyaki sauce:

 

1/4 cup cold water

1/4 cup soy sauce

1 tablespoon cornflour

1/2 cup pineapple juice

3 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon garlic granules

 

Garnishes:

 

1 can pineapple slices

Bread buns

Lettuce leaves 

 

 

Grate the carrot and then mix all the burger ingredients together. Form them into burger patties. Cook them in your preferred way in a pan, under the grill or in the oven. We had oven baked burgers this time.

 

Mix the teriyaki ingredients in a pan and stir well as the pan heats up. At a medium heat let the sauce simmer for about 5 minutes. You'll end up with a thick, smooth, glossy teriyaki sauce.

 

 Warm up the pineapple slices by frying them in a pan or grilling them. 

 

To assemble your burger place some lettuce on the bottom half of your bread buns. Top with a burger then spoon on a tablespoon of teriyaki sauce and finally top with a slice of pineapple.

 

 

Ooh this was a good one! I was so impressed with myself for making such a tasty teriyaki sauce and it made this burger. The sauce keeps each mouthful moist and delicious. We really liked the pineapple too, even JD who isn't usually keen on fruit in a savoury way. We might be having teriyaki sauce on everything in the future!

Ratings: JD - 4, Emma - 5

 

Subscription Box Review: Sourced Box

Sourced Box is a subscription service that sends you healthy snacks each month. Suitable for vegans these snacks are often organic and don't include refined sugar. The box contents are different each month so you never know what you'll get. I stick mostly to Nakd bars so it'll be nice to try some new healthy snacks.

£18.95 a month for a subscription or you can buy a one off gift box. I got my box for £12 using the Earthmiles app.

My box arrived just a day after the notification email. It was well packaged. Unlike a lot of other subscription boxes it's too big to fit through the letterbox which is a shame as that's an appealing feature to me.

A little booklet was included with extra information about all the products inside along with in depth features on several of the companies. It was an interesting read and a nice addition to the box.

My box had 11 items inside. The products were quite diverse, which I enjoyed. There was a cookie, faba beans, tea bags, pea puffs, dried fruit, cashews, blackcurrant water and several snack bars. I haven't eaten everything yet but all of the snacks we tried so far have been lovely. Our favourites so far are the Salted Vanoffee Cashews and the Lightly Salted Faba Beans. Both were delicious!

It's really nice to have a range of products picked out for you and sent to your home. I like trying new foods and I haven't seen a lot of these products in shops near me.

On the down side it's pretty expensive for what you get. It is a convenience over frugality situation so it's not for me but I did enjoy giving it a try. I'd recommend this service for anyone wanting to try some new healthy snacks.

Burger Off 22: The Juicy Lucy Burger

This burger is basically a cheeseburger but with the cheese inside the burger instead of on top. Sounds good to me :)

 

Make your burgers like normal but sandwich some cheese in the middle before flattening out the patties. Use small pieces of cheese or grate it so it will melt easier. Here's me finishing off the last one. 

 

Cook the burgers in a pan but make sure to cook them a bit longer than usual so the cheese will melt. About 5-7 minutes each side.

Make the burgers up using whatever toppings you like. I've got mayo and lettuce on mine.

It's hard to see the cheese inside on the picture. I should have used some orange American cheese maybe. It does make the burger juicier which is always a good thing. The cheese flavour is more distributed through the burger this way which I think makes it tastier than a cheeseburger. We enjoyed it.

 

Ratings: JD - 3, Emma - 3

Be Prepared!

Here at A Family Against the Flow we're always trying to find ways to save money and time. One of the ways money gets wasted is when you buy a lunch everyday for work. It's understandable that we all do it, it's convenient and the last thing you want to do in the morning (or the evening before) is make a lunch to take to work.

This past year JD and I have had a go at prepping lunches at the weekend for the week ahead. We bought some cheap plastic boxes with lids from the supermarket. Then on a Sunday afternoon we make up a batch of food to be heated up for lunch each day. If your workplace doesn't have a microwave you can buy a food flask. We've made a few different things so far. Pasta with bolognese sauce, spicy minced beef and broccoli, chilli, macaroni cheese and corned beef hash.

Spicy minced beef and broccoli

Pasta with bolognese sauce

Pasta bolognese is filling and really cheap to make. We can make a week of lunches for about £6. Most meal deals you can buy cost around £3. That gives us a saving of at least £24 a week. Almost £100 a month!

Another thing we like about making our own lunches is that we can add as much veg as we like to make sure we get our 5-a-day. We often add spinach, peas, sweet potato, sweetcorn or brocolli to our lunches.

In the warmer months when we don't really want a hot lunch we switch to prepped salads. When our shopping is delivered on a Sunday I prep all the salad ingredients in boxes ready to be made up on the mornings. It's really quick to make up a salad when all the ingredients are chopped ready. We store the prepped ingredients in the fridge to be kept fresh.

It's really nice to be prepared and save time on busy mornings. It's also great to have home-made nutritious lunches with plenty of vegetables.

On the negative side it does take time to prep meals. About 30-40 minutes to make up a huge batch of lunches or to chop salad ingredients. It can also get a bit samey sometimes unless you make an effort to source new recipes quite often. We've had pasta bolognese a few more times than I'd like.

Overall though it's a great money saver. We always feel pleased when we've made the effort to prep our lunches. I'd recommend giving it a try if you want to save money this year :)

Burger It 21: The Kimchi Burger

Kimchi is a Korean food made of fermented cabbage and Korean radish. It's supposedly strong tasting and quite sour but I'm still keen to give it a try! I bought this jar from Amazon for about £4.

I wanted a quick and easy burger this time so I just bought some burgers ready to grill. While they were cooking I warmed up the kimchi in a pan. I also made some spicy mayo by mixing 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise with 1/2 teaspoon of chilli powder.

Spread the spicy mayo on the bottom half of the bread bun, add the cooked burger and top with kimchi.

I was worried the sour kimchi and spicy mayo would be too much together but I really liked this burger. It was so flavourful. Kimchi is spicy and sour at the same time but in a lovely mouth-warming way. It went great with the meaty burgers. Now we've got half a jar of Kimchi to use up

Ratings: JD - 3, Emma - 4

Coming next - Juicy Lucy

Subscription Box Review: The Honestly Good Smoothie Company

When I discovered this company I was excited to try out their subscription service. Frozen smoothie packs ready to blend delivered to your door. Sounds great to me. I picked a box to come the following Saturday with 5 smoothie packs. The best part is you don't pick which ones come, it's a surprise! Usually £27 a month, I got my box discounted to £14 through the Earth Miles app.

It was delivered in a 1 hour slot by DPD. Packed in a sturdy box with dry ice and wool packaging to keep it cold.

My smoothies all had intriguing names. The Bee-nefit One, The Almond Tart, Good Morning Sunshine, The Christmas One and The South American One. I'm really curious to find out what ingredients they have in them.

On Sunday morning I was ready to try one and I had to pick Good Morning Sunshine on this cold, miserable January day. Organic ready to blend banana & strawberry with jumbo oats, sunflower seeds, almonds and flaxseed. You just tip everything into the blender including the contents of the little pouch. Add 1 cup of liquid (I added milk) and blend.

 

It was nice! Colder than my usual smoothies because everything was frozen this time. I usually only add frozen berries. It was like drinking slightly melted ice cream with chopped nuts in. It was great to just take it out of the freezer and make it. Especially all the seeds which would be time consuming to get a little bit out of several packets. The only problem for me was using my Breville blender made it tricky. The smoothie ingredients were a bit reluctant to blend, maybe because they were all frozen and stuck together. It might be easier in a bigger blender.


Next I tried The South American One. Pineapple, broccoli, cucumber & blueberry smoothie with chia seeds, macqui berry and camu camu. I don't even know what camu camu is! Apparently a berry with antioxidant properties. We're learning together here. I let the ingredients thaw a little before I blended them this time but nope, they still got jammed in the blender bottle. Bah! I managed to get it out and blended but it was a hassle.

It was another nice smoothie but not as nice as the ones I make myself. I'm probably just used to the ones I've been having all year with all my favourite ingredients. It's nice to try some new flavours anyway.

Sadly, this subscription isn't for me. It wasn't really working with my blender and all the convenience of having the ingredients pre-chopped was lost in having to un-clog every time. Oh well. I'll just have to go back to peeling and chopping my own bananas. Haha :)