Meal Planning Services Part 1: Relish!Relish!, Nourished Network and TheFresh20

How did I ever survive without a meal planning service before? It has been over 3 years now that I have been trying various meal planning services across the web. Even the ones that have room for improvement make my life easier than "winging it" or making up my own meal plan. For the sake of brevity I will break the reviews up into multiple posts (yep, I have tried *that* many plans!). 

My meal planning service started in 2010 with Relish!Relish. 

Pros: Hands down, the best use of technology of all the services I have tried. Drag and drop, phone app for grocery list, create your very own meal plan with more than 5 meals per week. 

Best Feature: Freezer meals each month! 

Cons: Uses some processed foods, you purchase a LOT of groceries because none of the meals compliment each other. 

Affordability: The service is totally affordable but we spent the most using this plan out of any others...even the ones focused on whole chickens, bone broth and making everything from scratch--including raw milk yogurt! 

Family Approval Rating: Some meals were excellent (usually the ethnic ones) but many were bland. Desserts were amazing. 

Conclusion: Ehh- it has a lot of room to grow. If I could, I would mesh their technology with any of the other meal planning services I have tried. The freezer meals are hard to beat though... 

The next one Nourish Network 

Pros: Beautiful menu plan. Well laid out and fewer pages to print. Gourmet tasting meals. 

Best Feature: Beauty! 

Cons: Used less common meats (mussels, lamb, etc) without offering a complimentary substitution. Very restricted--5 meals so you either make them or you don't. She stopped offering new meal plans over a year ago and never came back it seems? I had just gotten started and it quit. 

Affordability: Rather pricey--the  recipes were gourmet-ish but still affordable. 

Family Approval Rating: I skipped at least 1 meal per week because I knew my family wouldn't like it. 

Conclusion: It is better for a 1-2 person adult only household...fun to try with a spouse or a boyfriend/girlfriend to woo them with stellar cooking. Unfortunately, it seems like you can't even sign up anymore. 

Third trial: TheFresh20

Pros: Seasonal, nothing is canned, focused on 20 ingredients per week, easy to substitute gluten free and make it vegetarian (you can choose the vegetarian meal plan too but I found them bland), uses very few grains--I can hardly recall using any grains actually!

Best Feature: Continuity of planning! Love that it uses up 20 ingredients each week. Huge cost savings with that and you can shop at the local farmers market and know that the ingredients you find will match your shopping list for the week. 

Cons: Hard to find a con here- sometimes the portions are really small. This works for my family but I am sure it wouldn't if I had a husband who ate more than I do! 

Affordability: Extremely affordable plan pricing and we save a ton of money following this plan. We use their 4 week lunch plan and rotate it. We can buy entirely organic/local produce and ingredients and still not break our food budget. 

Family Approval Rating: Very rarely did we find a recipe we didn't like. A few were just "meh" and we wouldn't make them again but overall, this one is a keeper!

Conclusion: Probably my top pick. It is really hard to beat. 

In the next post I will cover two "traditional" eating style services!