How To Slack Your Way Through Adulthood's Most Tedious Chore

Written by someone who hates cooking and seriously lacks creativity.

My actual face when I have to prep food - Created by Canva AI, complete with random extra sink faucets.

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If you’ve ever taken the time to read my Hero post, you’d know that my definition of Wildhood involves running from adult responsibilities.

Aside from parenting and working for a living, cooking sits at the very top of the adulting list. Sadly, not all of us were born for this task.

I’m sure some people reading this are kitchen wizards. Some of you even have recipe blogs (

Cindy McDonough

and

Kelsey Abbott

, I salute you!) You’re the type who can probably make a five-course dinner appear out of thin air using a piece of bubblegum and a few matchsticks.

For you, reading this article would be comparable to Christian Grey reading up on 101 ways to tie up your wife in the red-velvet room of pleasure. It’s moot.

For some of us, tackling kitchen activities sits at #253 on the list of things we’d rather not do. However, kitchen haters still love to eat so we must do what it takes to survive.

How meal kit delivery came into my life

I wasn’t instantly sold on trying this type of service because it involves performing the very task I hate most — food prep. I would almost rather starve to death than do it.

In fact, I’m so against being in the kitchen that in the past I had turned down at least twenty coupon offers for FREE meal kits over the years because I knew I'd have to chop vegetables.

Instagram must have caught me on a particularly inspired day when a meal kit ad infiltrated my feed. The nerve.

In this ad, the company was offering a whole week’s worth of meal kits for something ridiculous, like five dollars, so I clicked through to look at their vegetarian options.

I’ve investigated several meal kit companies in the past and their veggie options looked “meh” at best with not enough variety. Just because I don’t eat meat doesn’t mean I should be banished to Fifty Shades of Salad for life.

Having said that, I do subscribe to a gourmet salad delivery system. Every single week I get six incredible, fully prepped lunch salads delivered to my door. It’s how I eat healthy and stay awake while working from home. My homemade hashbrown surprise just doesn’t cut it.

How meal kits work

Inside an app, kitchen losers like me can scroll through roughly fifteen meal options for the upcoming week. A decent number of options are vegetarian.

Users can either choose dinner kits for two or four people. I live alone so I choose dinner for two which leaves me with leftovers. This is a bonus for single people — three meal recipes easily carry me through a week.

Your weekly kit is delivered in a recyclable cardboard box with all the ingredients bagged inside a recyclable paper bag with ice packs.

Recipe cards for each meal come complete with instructions you can’t screw up unless you’re playing Candy Crush while cooking, therefore ignoring what’s on the stove.

Is it economical?

I pay roughly sixty bucks for a week’s worth of dinners.

For me, the cost is a no-brainer. As a vegetarian (who dabbles with bacon), I could spend sixty dollars at the grocery store and waste half the food because fresh food often goes bad before I can eat it all.

With meal kits, they deliver the exact portions you need so there is literally zero food waste.

You know how you have to buy a whole spice bottle just to make one recipe and the rest sits in your cupboard until Jesus’ second coming? Not with meal kit delivery because they send you only what you need for each meal.

You’ll never have “Indian spice blend” going stale in your cupboard ever again. You’ll never have to dump another half-carton of heavy cream.

And you’ll never have to throw out another half-bag of slimy spinach just because you couldn’t stomach another friggin’ salad this week.

Are the meals and variety any good?

I’ve been doing meal kits on and off for many months and this is how many recipe cards I’ve stockpiled. Only a few are duplicates.

I’ve been enlightened by more recipes in a few months than I’ve been exposed to in my entire deplorable kitchen life.

And yes, they all turn out exactly like the pictures.

Believe me, I wanted to fail just to debunk the whole system but I literally can’t screw this up. If I cared about Instagram I’d fake it and try to become a food influencer with photos of my creations.

You might be thinking that with this many recipe cards, I could just put them into a binder and reuse them without paying for the meal kit service. Yes, I’ve thought of that as well.

But it all comes back to portions, cost, and food waste.

For example, one package of Halloumi cheese in my grocery store costs upwards of $9.00. For a single ingredient that’s a significant dent in the budget for one meal when I can get a whole week’s worth of meals for $60.00.

Just saying.

Are there any CONS to meal kit delivery?

Yes, and it’s the same con I’ve seen over and over again in every single meal kit review that exists.

Packaging.

Sure, the actual boxes, bags, and cold food storage bags are recyclable. But the little packets and wrappers are not. They’re all plastic.

Fresh ingredients are not packaged which is great. But everything else is and it grates on me. It comes down to a personal battle between convenience and wasting money.

I sheepishly and shamefully choose convenience in this case.

However, I try to rationalize that there would probably be just as much packaging if I grocery-shopped because we just can’t seem to muster up the energy to buy a whole canteloupe and cut it ourselves, can we?

Society has created the packaging beast, not me.

My verdict

I will continue to occasionally indulge in this journey of fake cheffery because I enjoy running from adult responsibilities and it makes financial sense for me.

Plus, it feels slightly illegal to eat this well for someone who hates cooking.

Have you ever splurged on meal kit delivery? Did you love it or hate it?

And most importantly, have you ever screwed up a recipe? I selfishly want to hear about all the screw-ups so I don’t feel alone in my kitchen chaos!

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I have a little announcement! Because I’m a straight-up sucker for Substack, I’ve got a THIRD one underway. No surprise it’s about DOGS! I have a lot to say about dogs and I’m somewhat of an elitist (if my dog can’t come I’m not going) 😁

If you consider yourself a Dog Snob, please come join us for Mutt Mondays at my new publication…aiming to dogify the universe starting next week!