If you’re new here, you might not know already that I live in rural Alabama.

Well, uh…… I live in rural Alabama. Grocery shopping here pretty much sucks. If I want to shop locally, I can choose from a few dollar stores or a couple of local grocers that are usually somewhat overpriced and not always stocked with the freshest produce. And selection is limited. Or I can drive 40 minutes one way to the nearest Wal-Mart. Also not a fun time.

Our meals, as a result, are pretty basic and very repetitive. Pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, tacos, chicken fingers; the kids absolutely love it.

I want to do better, I want to eat healthier, and I want more variety in our meals. But I also don’t want to blow our grocery budget (it’s high enough as it is) and I don’t want to have to drive all over creation just to put one meal together.

So I was just looking around online the other day and I found a HelloFresh offer that let me get a pretty good discount off of my first order. (You can get a discount, too.) HelloFresh is one of those meal delivery services where they send you all of the ingredients and a recipe, and you just put it together yourself.

(FYI, this is not a sponsored post or anything, I’m just writing it in case anyone is interested in trying it out with me.)

Without any kind of a discount, 2 meals per week on their family plan (that serves 4) comes right up to $70 (there are no added shipping costs). So it’s basically $35 per meal, which is less than we’d spend to feed our family if we ate out, more than I spend on a typical meal, but pretty comparable to if I grocery shopped to fix a “good/fancy” meal at home.

I went ahead and placed the order with the discount, and got two meals on the family plan for about $20 per meal, more in line with our typical spending.

Once we get our order I have to determine a few things: First, will this feed our family? The meal is for a family of four, and we are a family of five. But the youngest of us is not quite 7 yet and doesn’t eat nearly as much as his brothers, and I’m about to start working on better portion control for myself, especially in the evenings, so this might work out okay for us.

Next, is the food worth it: is the food tasty enough, fresh enough, and filling enough to justify spending $35 per meal on it?

Also: is it packaged well enough to still be fresh when it arrives. I’m hoping/assuming so, but we will find out for sure later this week.

All of that being said, I’m excited to get our first delivery. And if I don’t like it, I can cancel. That’s a big reason why I was willing to give it a shot: it’s not a contract, if you don’t like it, don’t keep it. And you can skip weeks too.

Since we don’t yet know if we’ll want to keep getting deliveries, I went ahead and opted to skip the next order. If we like it sort of okay, I can opt to get it only once or twice a month, and I can see in advance what meals will be offered, so I’ll know which weeks to skip and which ones to get.

Once I’ve had a chance to try out the food, I’ll post an update with my thoughts on the actual meals. The process itself is so far fantastic. Also, because I am me and managed to screw something up right off the bat, I had to get in touch with customer service so they could fix it, and they were on top of things. This was possibly the best and fastest customer service experience I’ve ever had.

If you want to try it along with me, you can get a discount off your first order by clicking on this link.

Just a heads up, you are charged based on when you place the order, not when you choose to get your first delivery.