HelloFresh, HelloTimeConsumingSmallDinner

What are you guys up to today? Sitting at home in social isolation? #SAME. I wanted to entertain you for a bit with a blog post. I solemnly swear that I will try to post as least one blog a week while we are in these crazy solitary times! I actually wrote this blog more than a month ago, but it seems like the perfect time to share it, since we are all cooking from home, scrambling for groceries, and ordering in. I got a pleading email from Seamless to support your local restaurants from ordering in. If you DO order in, please remember to pay ahead, and let the delivery person leave the food outside!

If anyone wants to video-chat me, please feel free! Also, if you have specific requests for blogs, leave them in the comments! Want to know what I’m doing to stay active while the gym is closed? How I’m staying sane? How I’m doing on my 2020 goals so far and what I’m able to accomplish of them from home? Let me know! Be safe out there. ❤️


If someone gave you a Christmas gift that involved staying at home for an 8 hour delivery window and then cooking elaborate meals by yourself, would you jump for joy? Probably not. Well, neither did I, but that’s what happened in 2018 when my bf and I were gifted a one-week subscription to HelloFresh.

In theory it was an adorable idea. No grocery shopping, new recipes, fun activity to do together as a couple while not having to leave the house in the middle of winter. Unfortunately, I knew that is not how it would pan out in our household, since I’m the only one who knows her way around the kitchen and I’m the only one home from work before 8 pm. I wasn’t looking forward to it, so I never used the gift certificate. When Christmas 2019 rolled around and we still hadn’t used it, we got some heavy-handed reminders from the gift-giver (my bf’s sister), and she told us the gift was going to expire. I put it in my bullet journal to order for the next week. Easy, right? NO.

The gift card had been sent to my bf’s email address he no longer used. I spent 20 minutes chatting online with their customer service representative to place the order, until they said they couldn’t help me and told me to call instead. 40 minutes on the phone later (one hour total), I finally placed an order for three meals, two servings each, and I had an 8-hour delivery window on the following Saturday.

Oh, also, they required a credit card for the “free” order, so that they could charge me for the recurring service. There was no way to order only one week. They said I needed to cancel the next week’s order one week before I received the next box, but after I received the current box, which was one week prior. Catch 22, no? I had a feeling I would be calling their customer service people again a week later to request a refund.

As I am sure you are realizing, by the time the box actually arrived, I wanted to throw it directly in the trash. But I am a good not-yet-sister-in-law, so I didn’t throw it in the garbage – I reworked my regular meal-prepping and grocery shopping so I had three days to make the meals I received: Gouda Pork Burgers with Caramelized Siracha Onions and Potato Wedges; Cheesy Beef Tostadas with Long Green Pepper, Tomato Salsa and Hot Sauce Crema; and Parmesan-Crusted Chicken with Creamy Lemon Tomato Spaghetti. In theory, you can go on the website and make substitutions for meals or pick different ones. But after the hour I had already spent on the phone with them, I just told them to send me any three.

The meals arrived in a box with ice packs, with the meat separate, and then a big brown bag with the rest of the ingredients for each meal. I was scared to open or separate anything, so I rearranged everything in our fridge to fit these huge brown bags. Living in NYC, we have a VERY small fridge. We barely had room for the 3 bags and a Brita pitcher and a dozen eggs. In hindsight, I probably should have taken everything out and repacked it in gallon-size Ziplocs or something else so we would have more room. Anyway, the time came for me to make the first meal, and I was ready. I took the meat & the brown bag #1 out of the fridge and started following the directions step by step.

Step 1, Meal 1 (pork burgers), I looked at the recipe card, which told me what to “bust out.” These are items you’re meant to have in your house. Unfortunately, living in an NYC apartment with a minuscule kitchen, the first two items they called for (a zester and grater), I didn’t have. They also called for olive oil and butter, which I had, and sugar, which I didn’t have. In addition to the ingredients, they tell you which pots and pans to “bust out.” Spoiler alert, it’s like, your entire kitchen. or at least an entire NYC kitchen. For each meal. Usually when I make burgers it’s a one pan meal. For these HelloFresh burgers I “busted out” a baking sheet, a medium pan, a large bowl, a large pan, and a small bowl. WTF?

Meal 2, tostadas, required a medium bowl, small bowl, large pan, and baking sheet. Meal three, the parmesan chicken and pasta required a large pot, baking sheet, zester (still didn’t have one), strainer, and medium bowl. I ran the dishwasher after every meal I made! Also, there was barely enough of each meal to make my fiance and me satisfied. It was 2, small-sized servings, and if I was eating after the gym, which is pretty much every dinner I have, it was not enough food. Plus, it didn’t leave any food for leftovers to bring for lunch. I like to mealprep for lunch, but I was cooking so much for these dinners, I didn’t have the energy (or dishes left) to cook for lunches. I ended up spending far more on food for the week than I usually would have.

I know what you’re thinking… were there any pros of this meal plan at all?? YES. The food was DELICIOUS. Honestly very, very good, restaurant-quality food. Also, I was pushed to try cooking things I had never made before, and I kept the recipe cards, so I could make them again on my own. Who knows if I ever will, though, because it would mean buying all of the ingredients. Which brings me to the next good part – it came with all of the ingredients. As I said in the “con” section above, it was just enough of each ingredient, so we had no leftovers. But the good part was, it was just enough of each ingredient, so I didn’t need to run out to the store to buy anything, except sugar. When the recipe called for sugar that I didn’t have, I just left it out of the recipe and the caramelized onions were not so caramelly, but still delicious. I liked that I could eat different recipes I had never thought to make, or never knew how to make.

Another pro was the timing. Each meal only took 35-40 minutes. If I was making more servings and I would have had leftovers for lunch, this would have been a good amount of time. Since it only fed each of us one meal (and left us a little hungry), it felt like too much time. I think I would get a bit quicker if I did it more often. For example, I learned the hard way that I should read the entire recipe card and instructions before beginning the meal. In Meal #1, step 2 called for paprika, and step 4 called for “the rest of the paprika.” But I hadn’t known that, and I had used it all in step 2. Oops. I learned to read the whole thing first, which made the recipes go much faster. If I had more practice with it, I think I would learn even more tricks to make the meals quicker.

I learned some things I will definitely use in the future, like that crema is just hot sauce, water, and sour cream with a touch of salt. Or that you can put tortillas in the oven with a sprinkle of olive oil and fork piercings to make them into tostadas. Or that anything looks more instagrammable with a lime wedge on the side.

As soon as I had my box in hand, I went online and canceled my subscription so I wouldn’t be charged. Overall, I doubt I would order it again, especially in such a small serving size. If I did it again, I would double the serving size so I could have leftovers or lunch, with the same amount of cooking time. I liked learning new things, and I would like to eventually have a whole binder of Hello-Fresh recipes I could whip up at a moment’s notice. Maybe someday if I win the lottery and I have a lot more time on my hands. And sometime between now and then, I’ll get a much larger, full-size fridge to fit the big brown bags of ingredients, and I’ll buy all of the things a person needs in their kitchen so they can “bust them out” when necessary, like sugar and a zester.

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Ikea Delivery Service, XPO, Is THE WORST

Good Morning Blog-Subscribers! How was your day yesterday? Was it sunny? Was it cloudy? Did you do lots of cool things? I’d love to tell you how the day was here in New York City but I can’t. Because I was homebound for 9 hours thanks to Ikea’s delivery service, XPO. THEY. ARE. THE. WORST.

I don’t generally use my blog to complain about things unless it really irks me to my core. Example: Soulcycle. But one of the things I hate the MOST in this world is wasting time. I am a born multi-tasker. You may know this since I have a full-time job, a part-time side-hustle, I upkeep 3 Instagram accounts, braid 2-3 people’s hair/day and post on two twitters. The twitter upkeep I don’t do so well. Anyway, as you can see, I am a busy person. I don’t have time to sit around and waste, especially not when I am paying someone specifically to not waste my time. I think I aged 50 years waiting for this delivery.

Let’s start at the beginning, on July 9th, I ordered one dresser. Since I hate wasting time, I decided to pay Ikea to deliver it instead of trekking to the store. Also, I don’t have a car #NewYorkCityProblems. Delivery was scheduled for July 19th. On the 19th, they didn’t deliver. Why? Well, they said it was because I wasn’t home. Here’s the problem with that: I HAVE A DOORMAN. WHO WAS THERE! It would be one thing if Ikea had a “no delivering to doormen” policy, but they never said that. Also, I know for a fact that they do not have this policy because they have delivered to my doorman before. In April. Of this year. But whatever. They didn’t deliver so I had to go online and reschedule the delivery.

I rescheduled the delivery for yesterday the 24th. Already, I was upset because in the age of Amazon I am not used to waiting more than 2 days for a delivery, and I had already waited 15 days! Also, OF COURSE, the only delivery options were Monday through Friday.

The XPO website said I would receive a call with a “delivery window” the day prior to delivery. I was scared I would miss the call. Beginning at 8:30 am, I had my phone on me the entire day. Literally. I brought it in the bathroom with me. Don’t worry, I sanitized it. Do you think they called me at 9 am? 10 am? Maybe 1 pm?? NO. I tried calling the XPO number listed in the email confirmation: (888) 888-4532. Guess what? IT ISN’T IN SERVICE.  I tried looking for a direct Ikea phone number. SAME NUMBER. Fantastic. So I waited.

They didn’t call until 4:32 pm. I should have taken this as foreshadowing for the next day. Hindsight is 20-20.

They gave me a delivery window of 1-5 pm. It could literally not be any more inconvenient. It couldn’t be the morning so I could just go to work after it arrived. It couldn’t be late afternoon so I could leave work early. No, it had to be in the middle of the day so I left work at 12 noon, because god forbid they came 30 minutes early and I wasn’t there. So, I got home at 12:30. And I waited. And waited… and waited some more.

At 4:45, I still had no delivery. I decided I should probably call Ikea or XPO, in case they closed at 5 pm. I had very low expectations for them at this point. However, as I said before, none of the listed numbers were valid. But I did have the phone number they called me from the day prior!

I tried it and after 3 automated menus I got a real person! I told her my order number and she told me I had a delivery window of 1-5 pm. At this point it was 4:55. I informed her of this fact. She told me she would “check on the status” and put me on hold. And I waited… and waited.

34 minutes later (yes, this is an exact number), another woman picked up. She asked how she could help me. I was barely containing my anger at this point. I told her that I had already spoken to someone and asked her to promise not to put me on hold again. She told me she would check on my order, and SURPRISE, she told me that I had a 1-5 pm delivery window. It was 5:33. I informed her of this fact. She told me she would try to check in with the driver. True to her word, I didn’t hear any hold music but I think she put herself on mute. 4 minutes of complete silence later, she told me that my truck had “mechanical issues in the morning” and that they were running on an “extreme delay.” THIS MORNING?? I lost it.

I asked her why, if they had problems this morning, I was never informed of it before I left work. She said she didn’t know.

I asked if by “extreme delay” she meant 7 pm or 9 pm. She said, “9 pm… hopefully.”

I asked, isn’t this delivery coming from Elizabeth, NJ? She said yes. She blamed traffic. I told her that traffic will account for a 1 hour delay. Maybe 90 minutes. Not 8 hours. I told her I could WALK to the store in New Jersey faster. This is a fact, I checked on Google Maps.

I asked to speak to a supervisor. She told me she WAS a supervisor.

She told me that she could tell them to hold the delivery and deliver on another day. I hysterical evil-laughed at her. I asked her how she thought that was possibly a solution.

She told me she would call me again in an hour with an update. She did not call.

I tweeted at Ikea (multiple times). They did not reply.

https://twitter.com/LongLegsBigCity/status/1021899474942271489

https://twitter.com/LongLegsBigCity/status/1021899962697875456

7:26 pm: I get a call from an unknown number. SURPRISE it’s my delivery guy. He is “2 minutes away.” How in the world is that helpful? If I wasn’t home, I couldn’t get home in 2 minutes. And if he had the ability to be calling me, shouldn’t he have done that in the morning? Before I took off of work? I was livid.

Also, they weren’t 2 minutes away, they were 20 minutes away.

When they arrived, I tried very hard not to take my anger out on the delivery guys. It was probably not their fault. But then they asked me how my day was. I couldn’t hold it in. I told them I had a terrible day because I was homebound waiting for them, and I had to order in dinner because I couldn’t go to the grocery store. I had to miss work. One of the delivery guys tried to one-up me by saying he had been outside since 5 in the morning. To which I said, “Ok, well are you getting paid for that? Because I am specifically NOT getting paid because I am here waiting for you.” That shut him up right quick.

They brought in the boxes and left. And I fumed. And I wrote this blog. And now, I will work on my SEO for this piece, so that every person who thinks about using Ikea delivery in the future will find this in page one of their Google searches and will think twice about using XPO. They have a monopoly directly with Ikea, but you can hire someone else to pick it up AND assemble it! Use Taskrabbit! They are more reliable AND have better customer service because their business literally depends on your rating and feedback. Many of them have 5 stars.

I will also be writing to Ikea, attempting to get compensation for the HOURS of my life I will never get back. Hopefully an update will come soon. Although I do not have much hope, as I was retweeted by an account that is literally call “IKEA fucked me too.” Seems like a common problem. They even asked me to sign a petition.

 

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