Thank Goodness Our Dinner’S Sorted

I like cooking. It’s the second-best part of dinner time – the eating is number one, of course. But instead of enjoying my time in the kitchen, the looming mealtime hangs over my head like a cloud. I dread the thought of the kids standing at my feet, Millie crying that she’s “soooo hungry”, while I stand with both the fridge and pantry open, hoping some inspiration – or better still, Jamie Oliver – will jump out at me.

To be able to prepare a tasty family dinner I would have to decide what to cook (I really don’t have the time to leisurely flick through recipe books), head to the supermarket with two energetic children (um, no), hope the supermarket has all the ingredients I need (it won’t), hope the fresh ingredients I find are, in fact, fresh (as much as I want to visit the fruit & veg shop, I will not drag my energetic children through there as well) and then hope the family will eat what I come up with. Sometimes they do not.

When I was offered a Dinner Sorted dinner box to try, I was in the middle of a food rut. Spaghetti bolognaise, rice paper rolls, stir fries and tacos are on regular rotation here and while there’s nothing wrong with the meals, they are the same week in, week out. They are simple, but boring. They are quick to prepare but lack variety. And variety is the spice of life.

Dinner Sorted creates the menus and recipes, sources the local ingredients and delivers to your door. All you have to do is enjoy the cooking. Bingo.

Our classic menu box arrived with all the ingredients for four, tasty, balanced and filling meals. Some of the ingredients used in tiny amounts  – olive oil, soy sauce, vinegar, salt and pepper etc – are listed so you can retrieve them from your own pantry but you will find everything else in the box.

An example of the fresh veg included in a typical Dinner Sorted delivery. Pork fillet with apple and greens – my hubby’s fave.

Our menu for the week included a Vietnamese chicken mince and rice noodle bowl, yaki salmon with stir fried veggies and rice, pork fillet with apple, patty pan squash and greens and a haloumi and warm basil couscous salad.

We all enjoyed the meals we made. My husband loved the pork dish and the yaki salmon was my favourite. Millie and Finn ate portions of each meal too, so I didn’t have to prepare separate meals for the kids.

Haloumi and warm basil and couscous salad, made by me! Millie has discovered haloumi is life.

Recipe cards with the ingredients and the method are included and these were easy to follow. The meals were a cinch to make – which is a priority when you have children shadowing your every move.

I loved that with Dinner Sorted’s help, about as much thought went into our meals as it does if I pull something out of the freezer – except it was fresh, healthy and far tastier. Every meal had a big vegetable component and the meals were very generous. We fed the kids as well while only making up the required dishes to feed two people.

One of the best parts is that there’s no food waste – you are given exactly what you need to make the week’s dinners and no more. There’s no throwing away half a bag of carrots, most of the bunches of herbs or leftover portions of cooked rice or pasta. I’m so particular about this and I love that you only get what you need. Watch ABC TV’s War on Waste and you’ll be keen to cut back too.

Dinner Sorted is based in Melbourne and is a family-operated business. The team sources all the fresh ingredients from Melbourne markets. Keeping food mileage low, most of the produce you receive is grown in Victoria, purchased direct from the farmer or at the market, then packed and delivered that day.

The classic menu dinner box includes combination of meat, chicken, seafood and vegetarian dishes served with potatoes, white or brown rice, pasta or grains. Meat and Chicken is always free range, grass fed and chemical free. A low carb dinner box is also available, where pasta and white rice is replaced with vegetable pasta, cauliflower rice, brown rice and other slow carb grains.

Dinner Sorted is offering $25 off the price of a dinner box by subscribing to the Dinner Sorted newsletter.

*MillieMummyMelbourne collab

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