Hello Fresh: Meal 3

Tonight was the last meal from our Hello Fresh box - Sichuan Chicken with orange peppers and roasted peanuts. I was really looking forward to this recipe so there were high expectations.

First things first. How did the ingredients look. Well the chicken still had three days left on it's use by date and looked really fresh and succulent but the veggies were another story. The spring onions were black at the ends and the skin on the orange pepper was shriveled and wrinkled. I was not impressed. I had some yellow peppers in the fridge bought from the supermarket the day before my Hello Fresh delivery had arrived and it was in a much better shape so i decided to salvage what I could of the orange pepper and add the yellow pepper to it. The spring onions I chopped down low so there wasn't much green stems to add when the recipe asked but they did the job.

This recipe was super easy to make but unfortunately it didn't live up to my expectations. I had to cook it for much longer than the 30 minutes stated as the brown rice just wouldn't cook. I ended up serving it after 40 minutes cooking time but the rice was still crunchy. The chicken was moist and tasty but there was no sauce to the dish so overall it was very dry. Husband summed it up stating it was like eating cardboard. Oh dear.

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The colour was also unappetising - the veggies lost their colour and became camouflaged with the chicken and sauce plus no spring onion tails meant we did not have the green kick to lift the dish. They say you eat with your eyes and lets face it husband's cardboard description isn't far off... Plates were not clean at the end of this meal which is hugely unusual in our house.

So to recap we enjoyed two out of the three Hello Fresh meals and we would repeat one of the recipes again. So a mixed bag but we will be trying the service for another week to give it a proper test. I admit this is in part because I didn't realise how far in advance you have to cancel/amend your box. You must do this the Wednesday the week BEFORE your box is delivered. That is 8 days before. A very long lead time and involves some quite serious planning in advance. An email from Hello Fresh reminding you of the cut of to amend your order would be handy but I guess busy, forgetful people like me is how they sell more boxes! We are paying the full £39 this week so we'll be even more critical.

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