I’ve been a meal planner for many, many years. While we don’t always stick to our plan every single day, I really don’t know how I’d get through the week (or the grocery store) without a solid plan of what we’re cooking on which days.
With my meal planning experience, I wasn’t sure how different using eMeals would be from what I was currently doing. Well, let me tell you this: it’s a sanity saver and the meals are delicious. I’m seriously impressed.
eMeals.com provided me one year subscription to try out their service, but all opinions in this review are mine all mine.
Before I tell you why I like it so much, let me quickly tell you how eMeals works.
1. Select which meal plan you’d like. Some of the choices: Classic Meals, Clean Eating (what we use), Simple Gourmet, Natural & Organic, Gluten Free. You can even pick a plan based on your family size or favorite grocery store!
If you’re worried you’ll get bored of one particular meal type, you can switch plans once per month. However, we’ve had so much variety in our Clean Eating plan that we have no plans to switch it up anytime soon.
2. Get your week’s meals. Each week, you receive an email containing a complete meal plan in a PDF format. You can also see new plans from a phone app.
3. Pick the meals you want, then use the grocery list to make shopping easy.
4. Cook and eat!
I typically use 2-4 of the meals from eMeals, sometimes mixing in a meal from a past week too. We then fill in our week’s meal plan with some of our tried and true meals and sometimes a new meal I want to try thanks to Pinterest.
Why I’m Hooked on eMeals
Yummy Food
My hubby and I both like to cook. Before kids (and Pinterest), we used to scour cooking magazines and websites looking for new things to try. After kids, we try new things probably more than most people but meal planning gets to be more and more of a chore. I’m stoked we have great-tasting meals come right to us.
Some of the eMeals dishes we’ve made:
- Spicy Mexican Chicken with Steamed Broccoli and Brown Rice
- Roasted Vegetable Orecchiette
- Creamy Pumpkin Pasta with Sausage and Sage (one of my absolute faves that I wasn’t sure I’d like)
- Asian Baby Back Ribs (we used short ribs and it was uh-mazing)
- Taco Salad
- Sweet and Smoky Bacon-Wrapped Chicken
- Slow-Simmered Bolognese Ragu
I’m told that some of their chefs worked at places like Real Simple and Cooking Light, so these are GOOD, well-balanced meals.
Easy to Make
I was actually surprised how simple the meals were to make. While some of the meals sound complicated, they’re totally doable for a weeknight.
In the phone app, certain meals are labeled things like Slow Cooker, Marinate Ahead, Super Fast, Vegetarian, Kid-Friendly. I can scan the list and click on each menu item to see how long each meal takes to prep and cook. That way, I can plan the meals around our week’s activities.
Awesomely Helpful Phone App
Having the phone app is like the icing on the cake. Actually, it’s like the flour in the cake. You can make a cake without it, but it wouldn’t be the same!
The app lists meals by week. Within each week, all your meals are laid out. If you don’t want to make a meal, just skip it. They are still saved, but they won’t show up in your grocery list. Everything you need is pulled into a list for easy shopping. You can get the app for iPhone and Android.
Kid-Friendly
If you have kids, I found that most of the meals on our Clean Eating plan were kid friendly. For example, the kids were skeptical about the pumpkin pasta but devoured it (even my most-picky-kid-on-Earth eater). For the Roasted Vegetable Orecchiette, they didn’t like the butternut squash or onions but ate the broccoli and carrots. So far we’ve been pleased with how many of the meals they like.
Affordable
eMeals costs $58 a year if you purchase a one year subscription (making it not even $5 a month). With working part-time, kids in sports, and blogging, I just don’t have time to search out meals. It’s worth the $5 a month to have the meals come to me, then fill in with our family’s tried-and-true recipes.
Final Thoughts
Even though I’ve been meal planning for years, I find using eMeals is so much easier than doing it all myself. We’re actually looking forward to dinners instead of only sticking with the same old, same old. Once my subscription expires, I’ll definitely be renewing!
Question: Do you currently meal plan at all?
eMeals.com provided me one year subscription to try out their service, but all opinions in this review are mine all mine. This post also contains affiliate links.
