Gobble baby, gobble baby, gobble

Gobble delivery review

So I'm not paid by any of these folks so I don't know if I'm supposed to call them affiliate links or whatever, but the HelloFresh links will give me a discount on my orders if you use them to make orders in the future so I'm doing my due diligence so y'all don't call me shady.

Pre pandemic I tried Blue Apron. The recipes got a little repetitive and the natives were both at a stage where it was extremely difficult to convince them to eat "different" food. And by different I mean anything other than pizza, mac & cheese, spaghetti, butter noodles, and nuggets. That might sound like a host of options but if you go back and read it its basically all carbs with a sauce of some variety. So when they went on eating strike one night and I found myself yelling, I stopped the boxes because it was no longer a way to introduce food enjoyably.

Flash forward to Spring of 2020 and Covid. I was the primary gatherer for real because hunter had Covid, and even after his safe recovery he was fairly weak. I remember mentally preparing him for his first trip to the store, because he hadn't seen the the one directional aisles, or masks, or wiping down the handles in the freezer section, or tp shortages, or being afraid to help a little old lady grab a can of peas (he really did catch it that early). I didn't want to shop anymore, we were literally eating the same things over and over again and it was 3 meals a day at home for 4 people instead of just dinner for all of us and breakfast for some of us. I made the decision to get HelloFresh. It's worked fairly well, we've only had a few issues but they were resolved. Summer 2020 rolls around and I'm starting to want to add a little more variety so I added in MarleySpoon upon recommendation. It was good, I mean really good. The food was great, but the deliveries were sus. They always showed up late but never by the same amount of late, the produce would come damaged (or not a all), and at least once I didn't receive proteins, or I got the wrong cards or the wrong stuff for the meals. So we broke up (actually we broke up twice but I'm not bitter...much).

I'm staring at the HelloFresh meal options a few weeks ago and decide I still need diversity... so I, upon recommendation, went with Gobble. In my area they use Fed-Ex so I was getting timely notices about shipping. The box arrived on time. I would consider it mildly smooshed, as compared to prior boxes from other companies but nothing of great concern. Upon opening everything looks fine and dandy packs are still frozen, good sign in Gatherer's opinion.

The first thing I notice is that there is definitely some plastic going on. I'm not exactly what one might call a tree hugger but I appreciate when companies try to keep the non-biodegradable stuff on the min side. I also order meals for 4. When I was making my first order I noticed you add the meals in increments of 2 so it looks like each "pack" is a 2 serving set. I have not tried adding just 2 of one and just 2 of another to see if it would make the system angry or warn me or generally tell me I can't do that Hal. Each pack has a recipe card which means I have three cards I don't need. Because Gobble has this 15 minutes to make a meal thing going on, it means that some of the sauces and produce are premade/cooked. So my potatoes are partially roasted and I won't learn how to make peppercorn sauce. I'm also thinking this is problematic if I ever want to recreate a meal. So I'd give away my extra cards but they don't seem useful with the premade ingredients. Also some of my sauces in the plastic packages had some minor leakage, will see if it is a continuing issue.

Bonus points for Gooble they threw in some cookie dough. I like cookies...but I like cookie dough better. I'm debating if I'm even telling the Natives or Hunter or if I'll just eat it all, Gatherer never claimed to be nice (she is getting a litttllleee fluffy again around the mid section so we might start cutting booze and desserts, so things might get a slightly grumpy around here kids). In looking at the price, I found Gobble to be the most expensive box I've ordered. I'm going to run with it for a few weeks to get an idea if it is worth the extra cost or just to stick with HelloFresh or try something else.

I have cooked the first meal I do have a rating for it...but I also need blog content and this one has probably reached the limits of what y'all want to read so stay tuned for tomorrow where I'll review the first recipe. Also, if you are brave want want to see how all this crud fits in my fridge, viewer beware lol.