Hellobee Boards

I have so many questions about this service. I've been lusting after it for a while.

I'd love to hear from people that do/have use(d) it!

I do!
I use the Classic Plan. (Sorry this is really long).

Pros:
- Healthy ingredients, mostly whole foods. I'm trying to lose weight and I haven't done any special meal plan except for portion control. I lost 15 lbs in 2 months. My husband doesn't need to lose weight at all, so he just eats larger portions and is satisfied.

- Cheap membership fee. I bought it during black Friday and got half off for the year.

- We have really expanded our cooking skills. DH was awful in the kitchen, but now he can pull together a meal on his own. We also enjoy the time we spend cooking in the kitchen together. We turn on music and spend 10-20 mins (depending on the meal) hanging out and cooking. There are also plenty of times we make the meals on our own.

- There is a list of things to do ahead - marinades, chop veggies, etc. We do this on Sunday and it really helps to cut down prep time.

Cons:
- This isn't really a con for me, but if you are really picky it might be challenging to adapt. There is a wide variety of cuisines, ingredients, and flavors. The classic plan has one veggie meal (usually on Friday) one seafood dish, and one or two other proteins used in multiple recipes.

- We eat a lot of organic food, so we spend about $80-$100 a week on the food. This covers (for us) five nights of dinners for 2 adults and around 4 days of leftovers for lunch the next day.
We also buy other groceries (for breakfast, drinks, treats, "pantry items", etc.

- Sometimes 5 meals a week can be hard to make. We will often make the fifth meal to freeze. And we don't use the meal plan maybe one week every 6 weeks - if we are really busy or have plans to eat out a lot.

- It's low on carbs. There is pasta and bread every once in a while, but I LOVE bread. I'll usually bake a loaf, or buy rolls for DH to eat on the side.

Other:
- If you buy a year at a time, you get access to the archives, so if you don't love the meal plans for the week you can find another one you like more.

- I print mine out every week and file them in a binder which is essentially creating a cookbook for me for future reference.

- Most the meals are really good. There we love maybe 40% of the meals, like 50%, don't really like 10%.

Let me know if you have any specific questions!

I just signed up to get a feel meal plan, too. Gotta see what they send me.

ETA: I've tried Once A Month Mom back when it was a free service. It's now a paid service, so I haven't been back. I tried it for a month, but didn't keep up on it because it was a ton of cooking for a weekend. (Like to the point that you don't want to cook for a good 2 weeks) Some of the meals were great, but some of the meals weren't. Also, most of the food was freezer meals, which filled up my freezer and sometimes didn't thaw out as planned. I created a thread about it. http://boards.hellobee.com/topic/anyone-follow-once-a-month-mom

I did take the idea of making large batches of soup and freezing leftover in individual servings so we can have an assortment of freezer soups. Most soups froze really well.

I'm not sure how things have changed now that it's a paid service.

@grizz: The time it takes really varies throughout the week. It seems like Thursdays are usually an easier day sometimes as short as five minutes if everything is prepped. Mondays usually take more time because you often cook a protein to use for multiple meals. I'd say that 10-25 mins is a good estimate, but sometimes more for cooking times.

DH and I have really different cooking styles - he measures everything exactly while I'll fly by the seat of my pants. He sometimes wants reassurance that things are cooked through or when he can move onto the next steps, but he's gotten a lot better at being independent.

Also, one thing I forgot to mention was that they are really aware of what's in season and plan meals accordingly. Heartier stews and comfort food in winter. Lighter, crisp meals in summer. Also, DH loves that most of the meals in the summer can be grilled outside.

@grizz: What did you think? I'm thinking about signing up to get our meals in hand for the week. Indecision about what to eat kills us and then we eat chips and salsa.

@grizz: Do you find in general that it saves you money? I feel like I spend a fortune on groceries, and I do a pretty good job of sticking to my Ziplist recipe shopping list. And is it definitely enough for leftovers every day? Cuz if I could stop buying lunch meat and stuff for lunches, that would cut down on our grocery bill quite a bit.

I suppose I could just look this up myself, but what's the cost of subscribing to Fresh20?

@IRunForFun: I just paid $18 for a 3 month subscription. The only thing that stinks is you only get access to the archives with a one-year subscription. But I want to try it out before committing. I have seen them on Groupon though.

@IRunForFun: Yeah, I couldn't find a coupon or discount anywhere. If I do decide to go for a whole year I will definitely be waiting until I can find a deal! In the meantime I am going to be printing all my meal plans and putting them in a binder so I have them for the future.

@grizz: Nice! I think ours for this week was around $120, but I had to buy some staples too. Hopefully next week is better for us!

@KT326: I first bought it for $15/three months at first. It goes on sale on Black Friday, and I upgraded to the year plan. It was $26 for the year, I think. If you still like it then, keep an eye out!

ETA: I went overboard and downloaded/printed all the archives and put them in binders. I feel like I have meal plans for the rest of my life.

I don't, but after seeing you post about it and checking it out, I think I might have to find room in the budget for it. I figure I'll be saving money in the long run, because there won't be random ingredients in my cart.

@KT326: this is why I haven't bought it. Anything green and my husband isn't a fan, he's 1000 times better than he used to be but there's no way.

wow, this sounds really interesting! i'm looking into it. thanks for sharing!

We do the classic and it's good. LO loves pasta and I like being able to give him our food (sometimes). Would love to try GF and vegetarian sometime though!

Also, for those that use it, is it easy to make substitutions? Like if there's a fish meal, but fish is crazy expensive this week, would it be no big deal to replace the fish with a chicken breast?