Summary

This meal was a massive disappointment. It was my first experience with Dinnerly, and it was not a pleasant one. Let’s get all the negatives out of the way.

• No bags in the box. You know I don’t like just a big ol’ box of mixed up ingredients. Send me each recipes’ ingredients sorted together in individual bags. This way I don’t have to dig through a bunch of ingredients to find the ones that I need for the meal. Plus, you know I like using the bags for my ingredient trash. Being able to throw leftover veggies stems, plastic wrapping, etc. all into the bag, makes cleanup quick and easy.
• No recipe cards! I had to download and print out my own card. Half the time I either don’t have any printer ink, or I’m running out of it, or I need paper. Asking me to print every recipe card is a recipe for me not cooking some night, that’s for sure.
• There were no individual, step by step pictures. I like to see what some of the actual process looks like. Sometimes a recipe tells me to cut something in a certain way, for example, and I might not be sure what they mean. But if I can see a photo of the item already chopped, I can confidently move on. No pictures, less confidence.
• The zucchini was funky. Look at the photos to see how some of the slices have soft dark edges, while other slices are bright white throughout. This did not make me happy.
• The taste was so boring and blah, Gail and I could have chewed on cardboard and had just as flavorful a meal as this one. The onions were really the only saving grace. They gave the dish a slight pop, but overall it was just bland on top of bland on top of bland.

Gail likes quinoa so she was okay with eating it, but she complained about how boring the flavors were. I basically ate it because I was hungry and I didn’t want to waste the food. I’d never bother to cook this one again though.

Is there anything to like about Dinnerly? Well, the price for one thing. It’s about half the price (or less) than other meal kit companies, so there’s that. And this is only the first meal of the box. There are two more to try, so maybe this particular dish was an anomoly. Maybe the next two will be fantastic. We’ll see.

As for this particular meal kit? HARD PASS.