The Purple Carrot: Review

For a growing number of Americans, these meal delivery services are a great resource as it has many perks - cuts out your grocery shopping time and waste, exposure to meals and ingredients that they might not otherwise have on hand/try, and helps those culinarily inexperienced population to learn the basics.

To be fair, I married up when it comes to that final benefit - Mr Champ can pretty much create or recreate any dish, with fairly little effort. I'm lucky in that way. I, on the other hand, love a good recipe. So, in our family, I'm usually the one who will follow the recipes and prepare these meals (while he cooks masterpieces the other nights of the week).

According to Consumer Reports, this trend started in 2012 and is now a $400 million dollar market, with over 100 meal services in the US. As we review several companies, we will touch on their "healthy" factor, their taste, their value (#comeuponomics) and our overall impression of packaging, ease-of-use, etc.

Prior to this quest, we'd tried Blue Apron on several occasions. (We will review them again in the midst of this project, looking at all those factors). Based solely on Facebook targeted advertisements, we began with The Purple Carrot. Their "schtick" is that they are Vegan. Upon stumbling onto their site, it was clear that it was a set menu for the week - with the option to get "The Perfect Pair" - three meals for two people or "A Whole Bunch" - two of those meals for four people. The price per meal difference is $11.33 vs $9.25.

Once the box arrived, it was easy to unpack, because each meal was portioned out into its' own plastic bag, with pre-measured ingredients neatly labeled. One downfall (although I assume it was an oversight) was that the kit did not contain Recipe Cards. In order to prepare the meals, we (read: Champ) had to search online to find and follow the recipes. I contacted Customer Support to ask if this is common practice.

Our first dinner, prepared by Mr Champ was Crispy Avocado with Date-Glazed Vegetables over Cauliflower Rice. Due to time constraints, Champ opted to make regular rice in place of the cauliflower rice. It was delicious, we were both pleasantly surprised. I'd never eaten avocado with that sort of a preparation but it certainly won't be the last time that I do.

The other two meals were similar in their ease of use but a little less appealing in terms of taste. I have not ordered from Purple Carrot again, but if you are Vegan, I would recommend giving it at least a week trial.