I have spent almost two weeks dealing with HelloFresh’s customer support over my billed-but-possibly-not-shipped order.  They can’t answer simple questions.  They don’t pay attention to any dates you mention in your emails.  And they never, ever answer all your questions.

I’m done.  I’ve put all my meals on hold through the end of March, and once I’ve resolved this issue I’m cancelling my subscription.

My next subscription box will come from Plated, the only other meal subscription box that delivers to my area.  Plated is more expensive and the meals look more involved.  I’m very hesitant about this, but the subscription box concept is working for me so I don’t want to give it up completely.

I am celebrating Hello Fresh’s failure — namely their inability to send me a box of food — by recreating their bibimbap this week.  Hopefully my new understanding of mushrooms and my new microwave rice cooker will make this session less trying.  But equally delicious.

Before I rant about Hello Fresh, I wanted to mention the “art” part of this blog is taking a backseat to my part-time job.  Hopefully by Thursday I’ll be in shape to make stuff again.

No, I didn’t recieve my last HelloFresh package.  They’re claiming the shipping address wasn’t correct, despite me getting two other packages from them at the same address.  Hmmmm.  They also 1) never alerted me to the problem, and 2) took several days to respond to an email.

I’m not fond of how they time things.  My shipment should arrive on Thursday, but the last day I can pause a shipment for the next week is WEDNESDAY.  So if there is a problem, like this supposed shipping address problem, then by the time I know it’s a problem the next week’s shipment is in the queue and can’t be cancelled.  There should be a small window between the shipment and the next-week-deadline so we can address these problems.

No word yet on a refund.  They’re pretty strict about refunds, but I don’t think the package ever shipped as I didn’t get an alert from UPS.  This is starting to smell.  I’m not saying all the negative feedback is warranted, but I’m not happy.  There are other companies doing the same thing.  Can we say Hello Plated?

BJ Fogg’s TedX talk on habits, behavior and change is fascinating.

My big takeaway is that long-term change isn’t dependant on motivation.  That shocked me.  Think how many articles you’ve read on how to get motivated to diet.  I, personally, have read dozens over the years.  According to Fogg’s talk, motivation helps for short-term change, but not so much for long term.

Long term needs a change in environment — social or physical — or develop new habits.  I think I’ve changed my environment by using Hello Fresh and Amazon to minimize my exposure to the grocery stores and restaurants.

The idea of building tiny habits by stacking them on other habits is also interesting, but I’m not sure I can carry out the idea.  It’s a little embarrassing to admit this, but I don’t have many daily habits.  For example, some mornings I will brush my hair.  Other mornings I like how it looks (or I’m in a hurry) so I don’t brush it.  Or I’ll brush it at work instead of at home.  Some days I eat breakfast at home, other days in the car, sometimes in front of my desk, and occasionally not at all.  I fall asleep in a recliner at 9:00, or I’m up until 2:00 AM and sleep in a bed.  Since I’m consistently inconsistent, I don’t have many base habits to use as a springboard to new habits.

Also, the few reliable habits I have are centered at work, but my two issues — food habits and personal creativity — mostly happen away from work.

I have to think about this.  Maybe I need to do remedial work and establish baseline habits that normal people have first, then somehow build those small habits into new food preferences.

I can at least start taking vitamins when I log into my workplace computer.  That’s a start.

Hello Fresh subjected me to two mushy dishes this week.  I managed to eat at least half a serving of each, but I didn’t enjoy them.

One featured beans.  Yuck.  Yuck.  Yuck.  Mushy and fart-inducing, can we say no thanks?  But I started cooking the dish anyway, and it dish smelled so good I thought maybe I could eat it.  As a bonus, this One-Pot Mexican Quinoa was by far the easiest HelloFresh meal I’ve cooked to date.

Still . . . beans.  I had serious doubts about this meal.   I scooped some of the stuff on a spoon, scrunched my nose,  and carefully took a small taste.  It wasn’t bad as I thought it would be, but I wouldn’t choose make this myself.  This morning I added some of the leftovers to an omelet, and although the omelet turned a very unattractive color it didn’t taste bad.  I could also see eating the stuff with tortilla chips, so I froze the leftovers.  We’ll see if it’s still there in six months.

The next dish, Stewed Okra over Cheddar Grits was also mushy, due to the stewing and the grits.  I ate about half the stewed okra, but only a few tablespoons of the grits.  The grits were bland in color and flavor, but the stewed okra stuff was not horrible.  After dinner I “enhanced” it with more cayenne, some roasted garlic, and more salt.  It’s in the freezer now, and I plan to try some this weekend with a double helping of saltines.  I’ll skip the grits, thank you.

So I’m discovering mushy doesn’t necessarily equal inedible.   This is an improvement, but it isn’t a pinnacle achievement.  That would be finding a mushy veggie dish I like enough cook on a regular basis.

HelloFresh sent me a scary soup recipe this week. Curried Freekeh Soup with Kale and Sweet Potatoes. I’m not a soup fan, and the kale makes me very apprehensive. I’ve tried kale chips in the past, and didn’t enjoy them at all. They tasted like a garden died in my mouth. I also learned when making Hearty Minestrone last week that I don’t like mushy potatoes. They are disgusting, but I ate around them and survived.

I started cooking this week’s soup by heating olive oil in a large pot to cook the onions and potatoes. Next I needed to add 5 cups of water, which is when I discovered my idea of a large pot is not the same as HelloFresh’s. I frantically dug through my cabinet looking for something that would hold everything, and finally pulled out a slow cooker. Initially I was thrilled — isn’t soups what slow cookers are made for?

I transferred the ingredients I was working with to the slow cooker and turned up the heat. Next I jumped online to find out how to convert the stovetop recipe to a slow cooker recipe so I’d know when to add the other ingredients to the pot, and realized I can’t eat for another four hours. According to the chart below from One Good Thing by Jillee, my soup (with its 13 minute simmer) will need 4 – 6 hours in the slow cooker. (Jillee’s article has lots of helpful tips for stove to slow cooker conversions. She also has the conversion chart available as a PDF.)

One Good Thing by Jillee

I’m trying to decide how to handle this. Do I wait several hours before eating?  By then I’ll be starving and if the soup is horrible I know I’ll use that as an excuse to run to Whataburger.

Maybe I should have cold cereal now and another meal late tonight. Or maybe I should just quit now and order a pizza, because I’d rather have pizza now than Whataburger later. See how I’m justifying pizza by using a soup that may or may not be edible?

I hate it when my plans fall through like this because it’s so easy to fall back on old habits. HelloFresh was supposed to save me from this hell.

(Over four hours later)

The soup is finished, and I’m finished with it. It’s very bland, yet peppery thanks to the red pepper flakes. Nothing helped, not garlic, not a ton of salt. I managed to choke down about half a serving with the help of 35 saltines. The remainder is going down the drain. I can’t see myself eating this dull pepper water two nights in a row.

Tonight I prepared bibimbap.  As part of my program to change my eating habits I’ve subscribed to Hello Fresh.  Every week the company sends me a box containing pre-measured food, recipes, and seasonings.  I’m eating a vegetarian box this week.

Hello Fresh ships me three veggie meals for two people (six meals total) every week for $60. It isn’t exactly cheap, but I have to break my horrible eating habits, and Hello Fresh is a powerful tool for this kind of change.  They send me food I would never purchase, and recipes I would never bookmark.  The cost represents a large portion of my grocery budget, so I can’t afford to call Pizza Hut if it’s a disaster.  (If I gave myself that escape route I’d call The Hut and skip cooking altogether.)  It’s eat Hello Fresh or go to bed hungry.

So far I’ve cooked Hearty Minestrone (OK), the Forbidden Rice Salad with Roasted Butternut Squash, (worth a repeat), and tonight the scary-looking Bibimbap with Carrot and Zucchini Ribbons.

While the bibimbap tasted great (YEA!!!!!) the cooking process was not so easy.  This is mostly my fault.  My skills for cooking vegetables are  . . . um . . . I don’t have any.  Due to my general incompetence, every recipe takes at least two hours to prepare, including You Tube time.

My biggest bibimbap failure was that I couldn’t get everything finished at the same time, so the rice at the bottom of the bibimbap was cold, while the eggs and mushrooms on top were hot.  Guess I have something to work on.

Rice cooking is giving me fits!!!  I can’t get it right.  It’s always too wet, or too sticky, or gummy.  I’ve watched videos and read tons of suggestions, but I’m still missing something.

The other difficult part were the mushrooms.  I read the label “wash before using,” so I washed them, only to later find out from UptownGroupFood’s YouTube video that using water is a mistake because they absorb all the water like a sponge, which increases the cooking time.  (Not to mention wash water would be dirty, which negates the cleaning process.)  When I cooked the mushrooms I started to think they might stick to the pan, so I stupidly added olive oil.  Olive oil that was absorbed into the mushrooms and quadrupled the cooking time.

I learned how to peel ginger with a spoon!  New skill!  Thank you, Miranda Valentine video.

The most difficult — heck, most dangerous — part of the recipe involved thickening a sauce, which seems like a simple process, but Hello Fresh didn’t bother to warn me that placing a sauce containing garlic, ginger, soy sauce and sugar in a hot pan would result in a fume cloud causing burning eyes and choking!  I could barely stir the sauce.

Given all my mishaps I didn’t have high hopes for the meal, but I’m pleasantly surprised.  I ate my one serving, and I’ll try to eat the other serving for dinner tomorrow night.  (Eating leftovers is also a skill I need to acquire.)