Not So Hungry

Last month I ordered some food from a place called The Hungry Vegan. I really liked the concept of having some good, meat-free food delivered to my house. I'm a vegetarian, but I'm definitely not a vegan; I think animals can be used to make great seating surfaces, I just don't want to eat them. My main reason for giving the mail order thing a try was that I absolutely do NOT enjoy cooking.

The food came in a much bigger box than I expected.

Inside the box was a styrofoam cooler filled with vacuum sealed bags of food and a cold pack. I don't really know what I expected since they had to ship fresh food a few hundred miles by ground, but the idea of having a large, styrofoam box sent to me every week bothered me. They had a little note in the box that described all the food and made a point of mentioning that the dessert boxes used recycled cardboard. Who cares? You've just sent me a block of indestructible polystyrene! I'd rather have had the dessert encased in bulletproof plastic domes if I have to deal with a styrofoam cooler anyway.

These are all of the bags of food. I paid around $85 for that. The little block of bread (African Toasted Peanut Bread) in the lower-right corner may as well have been a block of sawdust. I took one bite of it, gagged, and then promptly threw it away. The rest of the stuff was pretty good, but it wasn't $80+ good.

And these were my desserts. On the left you see my blueberry pie and on the right is my pumpkin cheesecake. The flavor was good, but now you see why I didn't think so highly of those recycled cardboard boxes; they were almost smashed beyond recognition.

I won't be ordering again. It's not practical or cost effective to ship fresh food like this. Instead, I'll just go to my local Whole Foods and pick up some food from the gourmet, ready-to-eat, food area. In fact, I did that today. For $31 I bought the following:

1 terriyaki grilled tofu (think terriyaki chicken breast for vegetarians)

1 herb crusted tofu

2 spinach cakes

2 vegetable samosas with chutney

1/2 lb. smoked mozzarella pasta

1/2 lb. Greek salad

1/2 lb. mixed fruit

1/2 lb. szechwan frizzled green beans

For me this is a better option for enhancing the variety of my meals. It's still a bit pricey, but at least nothing is smashed.