Making Meal Delivery Recipes on a Tight Budget
Meal delivery services like HelloFresh and Purple Carrot make cooking delicious dinners a breeze, but they can be pricey if you’re on a tight budget.
Several of my friends subscribe to one of these services, so I have been fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of a free box of food quite a few times and I love them. The portion sizes are perfect, they make just enough leftovers (if you’re cooking for one), the recipes are creative and delicious without being too cumbersome, and I love not having to plan my own meals or go grocery shopping when I’m having a busy week! But after forgetting to cancel the subscription that’s required to obtain the free box on multiple occasions, I cringed when I was subsequently billed $50–$70 for a week’s worth of dinners without breakfasts, lunches, or snacks.
I’ll admit, I would be more than happy to budget $50 a week for having to never decide what’s for dinner if my income allowed it. However, as someone on a grad student budget who lives in a city where the cheapest rent eats up just over 50% of my monthly income, I just can’t afford that convenience. But one of the other great things about meal delivery services is that they post their recipes online for FREE. That’s right. You don’t need a subscription to browse through their vast variety of delicious recipes and try out whichever one you please; you just need to do your own grocery shopping. It’s certainly not as convenient as having it delivered to your door, but since you have to shop for the other meals of the day anyway it’s not so bad and it can save you a lot of money.
So, I spent some time looking through recipes from a plant-based meal delivery service (I’m a vegetarian, which also saves me money) and chose three meals that seemed tasty and had a few overlapping ingredients: Apricot Wheat Berry Bowl, Tofu Katsu with Broccoli Fried Rice, and Lemon Miso Pasta with Eggplant. Between the three recipes my ingredient list had 38 items, but most of these ingredients were pantry staples I already had on hand. In addition to oils, vinegars, and seasonings, I like to stay stocked up on grains, beans, and nuts. I try to buy these basics in bulk from Costco or when I see them on sale, which saves me money in the long run and ensures that I always have something to eat when I end up inadvertently stretching the time between my grocery store trips. With my well-stocked pantry, my grocery list for this week of dinners was short and cheap: 8 items that totaled $13.48.
By putting in the time to select recipes and shop for them, I spent only $13.48 on 3 meals (6 servings) that would’ve otherwise cost me $72. Granted this total doesn’t account for my on-hand staples that I previously spent money on, but what I used from those pantry items definitely didn’t come close to the $58 of savings I made from shopping for myself. For instance, I might’ve paid $6 for a 12.7 fluid ounce bottle of champagne vinegar, but the 1/3 of an ounce amount I used for one recipe cost me less than $0.16. Similarly, I paid $2.29 for an 8 ounce box of Panko breadcrumbs, and used up $1.74 of it between two of these recipes. As long as I use the vinegar and breadcrumbs in other recipes (which is a key part of the savings), these meals still come out much cheaper than if I had them shipped to me.
I should also mention that I shopped for these items at Sprout’s, which usually has great prices on produce and a wide selection of foods in bulk bins (need only 2 ounces of dried apricots? no problem!). You can also portion out your produce. One of these recipes only called for 4 ounces of asparagus, so I pulled some stalks out of a bunch and weighed them in the produce section’s scales — after all, that’s why the scales are there. Shopping at Sprouts for these small amounts also helps me avoid food waste because I get only the amounts I need and I don’t have to figure out what to do with any leftover ingredients.
Finally, when it comes to some of those specialized ingredients (like bbq spice) I just substitute them with something I already have that is similar enough (like chili powder). Instead of tamari almonds, I just used regular sliced almonds. And rather than Aleppo pepper flakes, I used my trusty red pepper flakes. I’ve bought specialized ingredients for a single recipe before and then felt intense guilt when I had to throw them away because they went bad. If you won’t use an ingredient for another recipe or two, make a substitute or save that recipe for later when you have a few dishes that call for the same ingredient.
I really enjoy several aspects of a meal delivery service, and when I have a better income I will probably subscribe to one. But until then, I enjoy being able to try out their new and exciting recipes in small portions (because I really don’t like leftovers more than once) and with a little effort I can do that for a fraction of the cost.
