In collaboration with You Plate It
No More ‘What’s for dinner’ Woes with You Plate It!
The team at You Plate It are on a mission to make the lives of their customers a whole lot easier, helping them enjoy more free time with their family in the process. They do this by simplifying the meal planning and cooking process. You Plate It design easy to follow recipes and deliver all the fresh ingredients you need, straight to your door, ready to be cooked. As I’m all for working smarter not harder and making my life, especially in the kitchen a whole lot easier, I had to find out for myself if this would work for my family.
You Plate It & Me
If you’ve been following me on Instagram you would know I’ve been having a whole lot of fun putting You Plate It, a meal delivery business based in Perth, through their paces this past week. Rather than just road test, I decided to attempt a little You Plate It & Me challenge. Kind of like Nikki Parkinson’s (Styling You) Model and Me Monday, where she attempts to style an outfit that a model is wearing, only in this case it’s with food and a recipe card photo. Attempt being the operative word here.
My plating up and food photography skills, with my hangry (hungry and verging on angry) family, were also put to the test. My family kind of have an unwritten rule, much like the rule for edibility if you drop food on the floor (is it 3 seconds?), whereby if I don’t get a photo in the first three attempts and a certain time frame (generally under 3 minutes) it’s a NO from them. They just want to eat the food because HANGRY food, especially hot food, is meant to be eaten, not photographed. I agree. Which is why I’ll never really make it as a food blogger and why I stick to my mystery shopping restaurant audits and reviews that don’t generally require photographic evidence.
How You Plate It Works
You Plate It PLAN – each week there are 6 delicious and seasonally inspired recipes to choose from.
You Plate It SHOP – picking only the freshest local ingredients.
You Plate It MEASURE – saving you even more time in the kitchen and reducing food wastage.
You Plate It DELIVER – FREE of charge on a Sunday evening. Goods are in an insulated box, so you don’t even need to be home!
All you need to do is unpack all your ingredients for the week. Then it’s a matter of cooking, cleaning up afterwards and of course, You Plate It…
The Results
Ordering was as simple as selecting a box (Classic or Family), the number of recipes required (2, 3, 4 or 5) and the number of people for Classic box (2-4) with the family box enough to feed a family of 2 adults and up to 3 children. Then the tough part, choosing the actual recipes. Each week, there are 6 delicious recipes to choose from. All equally tempting.
Even though we are a family of 5, I opted on this occasion to go with the Classic Box over 4 nights for 4 people. Mainly because my girls are older (16, 17 & 19), are all self-confessed foodies and we were down one child for most of the week. In the end though there was more than enough to feed all five as my eldest generally took one look at the recipe before leaving for her night shift and insisted we plate a meal up for her to eat when she returned home. It just meant a disappointed hubby didn’t have leftovers to take to work the next day.
I found the recipes easy to follow and all meals were on the table in 30 to 35 minutes. You Plate It assume you have 6 basic ingredients on hand (oil, butter, salt, pepper, milk and eggs) and everything else is included in your weekly delivery. EVERYTHING, including the ingredients to make the pesto in the pesto pasta dish from scratch!! Which means there’s no chance of needing to hit the shops for forgotten ingredients and coming home with extras you don’t really need.
There’s no contracts or commitments either, so you can skip or pause your delivery subscription when you need to.
The meals were absolutely delicious and well received by my entire family. Even Miss fussy 16! I must confess, I was a bit skeptical about one of my choices (Winter Salad) and wondered if we shouldn’t have gone with the family friendly recipes from the Family Box but in the end this recipe actually surprised and impressed the family the most. So much flavour and super healthy to boot. So, let’s start there for You Plate It and Me…
Roasted Winter Salad with Crunchy Ciabatta Croutons
Pea & Basil Pesto Pasta Salad with Pine Nuts, Parmesan, Sundried Tomatoes & Rocket
Spanish Chicken Casserole inspired by Neil Perry
Crumbed Salmon with Sweet Potato Fries
While I’m the first to admit, I fail when it comes to plating up and photographing under pressure (hello hungry family), I certainly didn’t fail in the kitchen this week. I’m not a natural when it comes to menu planning and I don’t have time or patience for complicated recipes or shopping right now, as I pack up our house for our 24th move. Who am I kidding, I don’t have time, period.
We generally have a quick and uninspiring menu on rotation most weeks and meal time especially when I have events on two or three nights a week, can be fairly chaotic. There’s also always far too much food wastage for my liking with my local supermarket never having produce fresh enough to last the distance. As much as I would like to, I honestly don’t have time to go running all over town to source fresh local produce.
For me there are so many things to love about You Plate It, they do all the menu planning and food shopping hard yards for you and we will definitely be back for more…
- Convenience and time-saving factor
- Reduction in wastage
- Fresh local produce in the right quantities
- Variety
- Easy to follow recipes
- Avoiding hitting the shops for last-minute ingredients and buying the shop out
- No more ‘what’s for dinner’ woes!
Where to Start…
Firstly, I would head over and case the recipes on offer this week and try not to drool. Still not sure if this is for you but keen to give it a go? Perhaps, start with one of the You Plate It trial boxes, which have 2 chef selected recipes delivered to your door.
If you do decide to try You Plate It, pop back here and let me know or even better pop a photo up on Instagram and tag #youplateit and #nomorewhatsfordinner.
**You Plate It are official sponsors this month and are generously donating a Classic Box to our nominated charity Breast Cancer Care WA for their next fundraising auction. We couldn’t be more impressed with the team at You Plate It. You will be too!
These services are brilliant for time poor families and people who want to eat well! The prices seem reasonable too.
Absolutely brilliant. When you’re time poor their tends to be a lot of extra spending on takeaways and other things, this helps to avoid that.
We just tried Hello Fresh but it didn’t really work for us, mainly because of the 4 meals a night I have to make (don’t ask). But it was interesting trying the vego dishes out (however our super fussy vego doesn’t eat many vegetables so that is why we ditched it)
Oh no but now I kind of have to ask?
I can see how these companies are handy especially for busy families! Sounds like this one is a winner! #lovinlifelinky
Definitely, I’m thoroughly impressed.
What a fantastic idea! I haven’t heard of them before but I guess that is because they are in Perth and I’m in Brisbane (boo hoo!). You did an awesome job at cooking and plating up the meals Raychael! I tend to get in a rut cooking the same ‘ol meals over and over. Something like this would provide new ideas, inspiration and great new recipes! #TeamLovinLife
We’ve been in a cooking rut in this house. Mainly due to the less than dream kitchen. Can’t wait till we move at the end of the month and I can get to work on creating my ideal kitchen.
This sounds perfect! So convenient and easy after returning home from work, not having to wonder what to cook and whether I have all the ingredients or need to do a dash out to the local shops. I also love that there is no wastage! It’s horrific the amount of food wastage that normally happens in our household each week!
Ingrid
http://www.fabulousandfunlife.blogspot.com.au
So very convenient. I’m ashamed at how much food we’ve been wasting each week. Just think of the money we’ve been throwing away.
I love things like this – but have never been tempted mainly because I also enjoy planning our meals – which, of course, rarely seems to happen. As an aside, your plating is pretty good too. #TeamLovinLife
I’m hoping in our new house with my new and improved kitchen, I might get back to loving menu planning more. I’ll certainly be signing up for another delivery again, especially on the weeks I have back to back night time events. This just makes life so much easier.
Such a good idea and I am glad it went well. I tended to be ‘same old’ favourites cook when I has the kids at home but I can see why this would be very helpful at tempting tastebuds to try something knew. I thought your pics were fine!!
My girls all still give me a hard time when I whip out the camera. They want Tshirts made up with… it’s not bloggable. LOL
Your dinners look amazing! What a great service!
SSG xxx
They were pretty amazing and so fuss free.
What a great idea
What a great idea, and the recipes look #Yummy too 🙂
With so much on my plate right now, this was a godsend.
Oh the food looks so delicious and what a great idea for busy people or even those who just don’t feel like being a Masterchef!