PeaceMeals: Delivering weekly meal plans, recipes, and groceries to your door

So my sister (oakling) started up a little business (PeaceMeals) where she ships a week's worth of meals and cooking instructions to those who sign up for $40-60.  The boxes contain enough food to make 7 breakfasts+lunches+dinners, and don't have anything perishable.

"We focus on buying you sustainable, organic, fresh ingredients wherever possible. Your weekly meal box will include a healthy balance of mainly proteins and vegetables, exciting recipes from different cuisines around the world, and a suggested schedule of meals which lets you cook at peaceful intervals. It will also include a special treat or two! You might find a bar of rich chocolate or a small kitchen gadget to help you through the week."

She also travels to the store to buy the foods in her biodiesel car, purchases carbon offsets for electricity use and shipping emissions, and sends 10% of the profits to PeaceAction, Heifer International, and UNICEF.

So that's all pretty green, so I figured I'd so a little shameless familial promotion and give her business a little plug here on Huddler.  And here's the menu.

All for $40 or $60? I wish we had that kind of shopping ability!

I loved her post about buying Yoghurt at Whole Foods, it's so true.

Good luck to her.

Yeah not bad right?  I'm giving her a shot for next week's menu, so we'll see how it goes!

So....how does it work?  How can there be nothing perishable?  And yet still be fresh?  I tend to think of fresh things as highly perishable.

I don't really know the details.  In next week's menu she's got some salmon and pork sausage - not sure how 'fresh' the salmon will be.  There are fruits and veggies and such which will more easily meet the freshness criterion (i.e. garlic, broccoli, etc.).  Maybe I can get her to come here and clarify, or otherwise when I get the stuff I'll have a better idea.

Sounds really interesting.  Going to get 2nd opinion from hubbie and hopefully order some!

Cool!  I talked to her the other day, and she said the salmon is Trader Joe's canned salmon, which is supposed to be quite tasty.  So we'll see.  I also told her to come here and talk about it.  Hopefully she'll remember to...

I know, right? It depends on the item. Like, I've found that a lot of greens wilt before they get there (but would be fine for local customers), while of course something like a squash or a potato or a banana or even peaches can sit out for a week without much problem.

If it (or WHEN it?) totally takes off, I would love to find some kind of eco-friendly insulated packaging so I can broaden what I send even more. But there's such a wide variety of produce available here that it's not much of a problem anyway. (Next week's premium box has organic baby greens in it, which I fear might be pushing it. But the store has them sitting right out without any refrigeration even, so I don't THINK they'll wilt.)

LOL! Thanks Dana :-D   I think about it every day but I haven't had much time till now.

hee! Thanks, kiwi! I figure if I have all this practice learning to gauge how much everything around here costs and make it into the most streamlined and affordable possible healthy meal plan, I might as well get some use out of it by offering that service to others :)

Boy, wait till you hear me start in on Safeway. I am working myself up to a good rant on them, especially after I tried to bend my (personal) no-Safeway rule to get some peppermint extract and they tried to charge me almost five freaking dollars for it. And it wasn't even organic. Even Berkeley Bowl has organic peppermint oil for three dollars, damnit. But I digress.

Ah ha!  That's very cool.  So instead of doing the work myself and going to your website...I figure I'll just ask your opinion.  How do you think it'd work out for a one person mouth to feed?

I always find my problem is that I end up with too much food and only me to eat it (although sometimes I manage to pawn it off on the officemates or my roommates).  And of course I'm not so keen on wasting things.

Well just as a quick response, the meals are currently designed for one person, and the website mentions that meal plans for couples and families may come in the future.

As for the sizes of the meals, each one is usually slated to last 4-5 days (i.e. such-and-such pasta for 4 meals, such-and-such salad for 5 meals), so I suspect having too much food won't be a problem.

I think the website explains it pretty well.

Haha, yeah, I figured...I was just being lazy.  Thanks, Dana!

I'm glad you think that, cause sometimes I worry that I am just rambling all over the website :-) 

Yeah, I figure out how many meals each recipe should make, and if something makes too much food for you (since not everyone eats the same amount all the time, or the same amount as I do!) I recommend inviting someone over for dinner. (That's also my answer to "what if I want to go out to eat once in a while, damnit?" Which no one has ever asked, but I figure it must come up eventually!)

Sidebar: it's not telling me when people reply, even though I subscribed to the thread. Is that because I deactivated notifications in my preferences somewhere? I thought that subscribing to one thread would override that for that thread. I do not envy you the job of trying to figure this stuff out :)  Maybe I need to be a little more shades-of-grey with my preferences.

As an update, the first week's meals were pretty good.  Tasty pasta dish, yummy smoothies, nice salad, and pretty good soup.  The canned salmon for the salad was actually pretty tasty.  I signed up for it again next week.

Ok, question.....Unbiased opinion....Do you feel that you got your money's worth?  I know that Oakling has to earn a living and that isn't a problem.  I just have to justify the money to the hubbie.  Its hard for him to spend the money on something of an unknown.  What do you think dana1981?

I think that's fair to say.  21 meals for $40-60 is pretty good.  It's nothing super fancy, but it's good healthy food and recipes.