Found! The Perfect Dinner Solution for Busy Parents

Proudly brought to you by Marley Spoon

Dinner. It happens every night and if your place is anything like mine, the reception when one of my meals hits the table can be hit or miss.

Do they really need to be fed every night?

Of course, food is a huge part of family life and I am a big believer that food brings people together. It’s an opportunity to share quality time together and to build memories and a family culture. Our family regularly eats with friends, neighbours and extended family and I love any opportunity to share a meal with others!

But… (oh yeah, there’s a but!) feeding kids can be exhausting. There’s the meal planning process, then the meal complaining process. Are you hearing me? Ugh!

This week I had the chance to turn this all around while trialling Marley Spoon, a new home meal service that delivers fresh, seasonal and locally sourced produce direct to your door – making meal planning and execution that much simpler and faster for you. I was excited about this process because it took a big part of the hassle of dinner (the meal planning, shopping, getting-my-head-ready-generally aspect) out of the equation and let me focus on the enjoyable part … cooking meals to share with my family.

Marley Spoon send ready-made meal kits of your choosing direct to your door complete with gorgeous recipe cards, so that all you need to do is open the kit and get cooking.

You can choose to have 2, 3 or 4 meals delivered for the week. Meals that can all be made in 30-40minutes, and are easy to prepare.

The timing was superb. With my husband travelling for a fortnight I’d been flying solo with the kids. After a week-long road trip I returned to find a box of Marley Spoon goodness on my doorstep. Ah-mazing!

For our meals I’d chosen:

Beef Satay Skewers with Lime Cabbage
Chicken Burger with Aioli
Tuna and Haloumi Nicoise Salad

I chose these meals because not only did they sound amazing, they also sounded like meals my kids would love. I was right!

As I prepared my three meals this week, these were the things I loved about cooking the Marley Spoon way.

No meal planning. Marley Spoon have 12 new meals each week that you can choose from (7 for families and 5 for couples with a range of meat, vegetarian and fish options). Once you’ve made your selection, your meals await.
Choose your own meals – you can select every single meal choice from those on offer that week which, when compared to similar services, gives you greater flexibility and more amazing meal choices.
For those of us who enjoy cooking, Marley Spoon makes it easy to enjoy your time in the kitchen.
I loved that the meals were so family friendly (AKA kid friendly) as well as seriously yum!
I loved how quick they were to prepare.
Tasty – I invited our neighbours to join us for the Chicken Burgers and they declared them “delicious”.
Varied – with vegetarian, meat and fish dishes there’s a good variety for all tastes!
No waste. This was a big one! As the ingredients are delivered just for the meals you need, there is nothing to throw out at the end. On average an Australian household throws out over $1,000 worth of food every year. Yikes! The Marley Spoon approach eradicates waste because you are only sent the quantity needed for the dish.
The meals were well packaged, environmentally conscious and they are darn good looking too!
Very convenient – come dinner time all I had to do was grab the ready-made-meal-kit from the fridge, open it and get cooking.
Healthy – all the meals we had were either very low or no sugar which got a big tick from me!
Marley Spoon only work with local suppliers meaning their produce is locally sourced and seasonal. This is something that is important to me and so I love that this is central to their offering!
Free Delivery – need I say anything more?

And of course, for those who already order groceries online, then why not go the extra step and get the meals delivered all ready to be cooked. No mucking around in the back of the fridge for the bag of carrots you were sure you saw yesterday!

Not to mention no more impulse buys at the supermarket!

The only thing I’d love to see them add is the option to scale up – to order more if you’ve got more people in your family or if you like to cook a bit extra at dinner time, for lunch the next day.

So what do YOU need to know about Marley Spoon to get in on the action?

Delivery is available to Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Wollongong, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Central Coast and Newcastle.
They also offer a fruit box to add a bit of sweetness to your week
In November they will be expanding their menu to include 4 ‘healthy choice’ options (though to be honest, the meals I received were already extremely healthy!)
Flexible subscriptions are available enabling you to skip weeks, and they offer an app (iOS with Android coming soon) for easy ordering on the go.
In-house chefs create 16 new recipes each week (7 for couples and 5 for families) to offer a range of meat, vegetarian and fish meals to suit their clients.
Each portion works out to be $8.95 per person
Every meal can be made in 6 steps, in 30-40 minutes