Results may vary: When timesaving life hacks fail

meal delivery

I’m a big fan of timesavers, and life hacks, and anything that makes my life easier,which is why I’ve been experimenting with meal delivery services lately. You know the ones: Pay a fee and a big box of fresh ingredients and recipes arrive at your doorstep, guaranteeing you won’t have to think about what to make for dinner at any point during the week. Since dinner is such a fraught time in my house – there’s a reason the time between school pickup and bedtime is called “the witching hour” – I thought it would be a great help to me. And it has been… Sort of.

About half of the meal delivery recipes have been really yummy, except that there has been an overabundance of courgettes, which no one in my family eats except me, in the meals these past few weeks. And I never managed to make anything in the time frame specified on the recipe card. 30 minutes, you say? Forget it, I’ll be slaving over that stove for at least an hour. Perhaps if there weren’t three children hollering for my attention and screaming about how hungry they are while I try to dice vegetables and deglaze frypans, I might be able to cut down on time a little bit.

And then there have been some recipes that were just… Bizarre. Last night we had something that called itself colcannnon. It was supposed to be mashed potatoes with cabbage mixed in and looked delicious in the picture. What I whipped up in my kitchen was a lukewarm, lumpy mess that no one would eat. The potatoes, which were pre-diced (to save me time and energy!) never softened enough to mash, even after 45 minutes of boiling and swearing every time I checked them to find that they still had the texture of miniature bouncy balls. The cabbage was actually coleslaw which was to be mixed in with the mashed potatoes.

Well, the potatoes didn’t mash, so what we ended up with was a mess of warm potato cubes and cold coleslaw sitting in a pool of milk. It. Was. Gross. Inedible. Even the dog turned it down.

“What’s for dinner tonight, Mum?” Master Six asked me in the car on the way home from school pickup today.

I thought for a moment, then replied, “Hot dogs?”

“Great idea, Mum,” he said.

At least I know I can’t screw those up.

Katherine Granich

Scroll to Top