My box arrived on a Sunday morning, and I received text message notifications informing me when the box was on its way and when it had been successfully delivered. I received the 2-person plan, with 3 recipes:
- Korean Bibimbap
- Pasta with Creamy Miso Sauce and Zesty Salsa Verde
- Roasted Cauliflower, Cucumber Salad, Chickpeas & Tamarind Chutney
The box was well packed. I could immediately tell that sustainability was a priority for Veg Me Up. Each recipe was packaged in a brown paper bag and the cooling bag is made from 100% recycled paper. The recipe cards are also made with 100% recycled paper. If you live in Melbourne and Geelong, Veg Me Up also offers to pick up your empty boxes and ice packs which is a great initiative!
Each recipe bag had a label with the name of the recipe making it easy to identify. When unpacking the box, I nearly discarded the ice pack without realising all the fridge ingredients were inside – some additional labelling would be useful here to ensure others do not make this same mistake. The vegetables were free from plastic packaging, whilst the herbs came packaged. I love the limited use of plastic, however the freshness of some of the vegetables was questionable. The cauliflower had grey marks on it, indicating that it was not at its best quality. The carrots also had some signs of deterioration on them.
Despite being made from recycled paper; the recipe cards are excellent quality. To promote sustainability further, I would love to see a digital recipe card option made available. Dinnerly offers digital recipe cards which is a great option. The recipe cards provide comprehensive information on cooking time, difficulty, ingredients, nutrition per 100g, allergens, utensils required and method instructions. Whilst nutrition per 100g is helpful, it is not clear how many total grams each meal is, so it is unclear how much protein, carbohydrates and fat you are consuming with each serve. Nutrition per serve and per 100g is best practice when it comes to understanding the nutritional content of the food you are consuming, so I would like to see their nutritional information panel updated in line with this.
