Easier Homemade Meals with @FreshCanteen

Planning meals is something that many of us struggle with. When you combine the challenge of meal planning with lack of time to do the proper grocery shopping to enusre you have all of the ingredients, meal planning can be a dreaded disaster!

I don’t know about in your family, but in our house, dinner meals are often decided at the last minute and it is sometimes a challenge to come up with meal ideas with what we have in the house. You had better believe that I am NOT going to run out to the grocery store after school, in the “last minute dinner rush hour” WITH the cranky kids to pick up the needed ingredients.

This is why Fresh Canteen, a meal delivery service that caters to the Toronto area, with plans to expand in the near future.

How It Works:

1. You go online and select the meals you want from their weekly menu planner.
2. They gather all of the ingredients required to create the meals that you ordered.
3. They deliver a refrigerated box with all of the required ingredients plus a DETAILED recipe card, right to your door.
4. You prepare your meal without having to scramble for the ingredients.

I received a Crispy Panko Chicken meal with Dipping Sauces and Miso mashed potatoes delivered right to my doorstep.
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I was VERY impressed with how the refrigerated box was packed. The ice packs that were used stayed cold and partly frozen over night in the unpacked box which goes to show just how fresh and cold your box will stay until you get home. The items were labelled clearly and packaged well in order to maintain freshness and eliminate leaks. I was impressed that the chicken was vacuum packed. The recipe card was appealing to the eye, with beautiful photos of the ingredients as well as the prepared meal and was VERY easy to read and follow. The card was printed on heavy duty card stock so that it could be handled while in the kitchen without getting ruined easily.

I really liked how the step by step photos and instructions were laid out, this made the meal very easy to prepare. The instructions were very detailed in order to ensure success for even an amateur in the kitchen.

The only ingredients that were not included were staples like vegetable oil, flour, egg and milk. My family has quite a variety of picky tastes so it is often very challenging to meal plan in order to please everyone. What I liked about this particular dish was that it was easy to keep some of the more “unique” parts (e.g. the dipping sauces) aside for the people who would enjoy them, without sacrificing the entire meal.

After speaking with the friendly Fresh Canteen staff recently at the Delicious Food Show in Toronto, I have been reassured that they have plans in the works for more “family friendly” meals in the future.

The Pros:

• Time saver – it is amazing how much time it takes to meal plan and grocery shop, this service really allows you to spend more time with your family and less time doing the work!
• The variety – this service allows you to be introduced to some new meals that you might not have thought of before.
• The convenience – hands down, this service is ALL ABOUT making life easier.

The Cons:

• The Cost- of course, this serivce comes with a cost and that is, it costs more than it would to grocery shop for yourself, however, what you are paying for is the time that it would take you to find the recipe yourself, to do the shopping and to pull together all of the ingredients.
• Limitations – while the recipes change weekly, you are limited to the choices that are available to you each week. This would be challenging if you have picky eaters in your house, but as mentioned earlier in this post, they plan on making more “family friendly” picky eater choices available in the future.