Four boxes, four receipts, one cancellation email and a kitchen table covered in the lot at 9:15 on Sunday night. I did these sums on the evening of my 37th birthday, which tells you something about me.
We cancelled on Thursday 6 March. It was World Book Day, so I did it in the hall at 8:12 with a Gruffalo on one side of me and a Matilda on the other, and the confirmation arrived before Alfie had finished explaining that his tusks were not for pulling. No fifth box. Here is what we got for our money.
The four boxes
Each one was three recipes for four people, so twelve portions:
- 10 February: £24.79, or £2.07 a portion
- 17 February: £37.19, or £3.10 a portion
- 24 February: £42.98, or £3.58 a portion
- 3 March: £61.98, or £5.17 a portion, which is the full price with delivery
That's £166.94 in total for 48 portions, an average of £3.48 a plate. Notice how the price climbs. The first box has a big discount on it, the second and third a smaller one, and by the fourth I was paying what the box really costs. The £24.79 is the price that gets you to say yes. The £61.98 is the price of the habit.
Against my own shop
My own teas run at about £1.65 a plate, or £6.60 for the four of us. I counted everything in January and got £2.25, but a fair comparison has to be like for like: the box doesn't include oil, butter, salt or milk either, so the main-ingredients figure is the honest one to set against it. Forty-eight portions at £1.65 would have been £79.20. The boxes cost £87.74 more, over four weeks. At full price, four boxes would have been £247.92.
I also priced one of the recipes at Aldi, off the card. The pork and apple burgers: pork mince £2.69, an apple 22p, six buns 95p, a kilo of potatoes for the wedges 99p, plus an onion and the seasoning at about 55p. That's £5.40 for the four of us, or £1.35 a plate. In the first box, with the big discount, the burgers cost £2.07 a plate. At full price the same recipe would have been £5.17.
What the kids made of them
Twelve recipes across four weeks. The kids cleared their plates on seven of them. Alfie refused four outright, and every one of the four had a sauce he could see. He is entirely consistent about this, which is more than I can say for most of us. The chicken katsu and the pork and apple burgers went down best. A crunchy crumb helps, and so does a burger that looks like a big sausage in a bun.
On the work nights I'd hoped the boxes would save time. They didn't, much. None of the 30-minute recipes took 30 minutes, and once the first week's novelty wore off I began to notice the packaging: around thirty small bags per box, which I kept carefully rinsing and then sighing at.
The cards I'm keeping
I'm keeping three recipe cards, which is the best thing the boxes gave us. The katsu, which I now make with an Aldi curry powder and the same crumb. The burgers, with the grated apple. And a honey and mustard sausage traybake that fed all four of us for under £6 when I did it from the shop. They're in a plastic wallet in the kitchen drawer with the lunchbox kit, which is where the useful things go.
I wouldn't do it as a habit. In a mad week, with the car in the garage and no list, I'd order a box again now that I know what I'm paying for: about £1.83 a plate over my own cooking, which is £7.32 a tea. That's what not thinking costs us. For one week out of ten I might pay it. Four in a row, I won't.
The sums: four boxes £166.94; the same 48 plates cooked by me about £79.20; a difference of £87.74, and twelve teas I didn't have to think about.
