Freshly Review

Facebook advertisements occasionally actually entice me. Not all ads do. Thankfully, I own some Facebook stock so I'm okay clicking on the occasional ad if it interests me. That's how I found out about Freshly and actually Blue Apron and Green Chef as well, although that was through friends on FB.

What is Freshly? It's a meal delivery service that delivers cooked meals ready to be heated. They are not frozen and you keep them in your fridge until it's time to eat. 

Here's how Freshly comes packaged.

So convenient, right? It also says it only takes 2 minutes to heat up. I found that the meat and sometimes the veggies were not cooked enough at only 2 minutes. 3-4 minutes turned out better and we have an amazing microwave that is only 4 years old, so it is on the normal range of cooking. I compare Freshly somewhat to getting freshly prepared foods at places like Central Market or Whole Foods.  The first week I ordered 12 meals, 6 different ones, so we'd have six dinners ready for the week. Each comes with 1.5 serving. I only got pictures of 5 and I'll explain why below. Here's what I got.

Homestyle Meatloaf

 

Grilled Flat Iron Steak

 

Coconut Lime Salmon

Beef Provencal

 

Moroccan Chicken

I also ordered Chicken Rustica with Roasted Cauliflower. We just ended up not eating it and throwing it out. The reason being was, it would expire before we had time to eat it. Hopefully it was just because they try to use as few preservatives as possible. I just would have liked to have known that the food would not last a week before going bad.

I was hoping to get the meals delivered early enough last Friday to serve our first meal on Friday. However, they did not arrive until after 7pm, which is no fault of Freshly. Since we have little kids, we eat around 5-5:30. The meals were overall, okay tasting. Some better than others. We liked the steak probably the best. We didn't fully enjoy the others because my husband and I got sick, we think food poisoning. We're trying to decide where it came from and hope it wasn't from Freshly. We think it might have been the tea from a Mexican food restaurant since our kids eat everything we eat, except for a few meals from Freshly they just refused. Which honestly, that saves me no time if my kids won't eat it and they are actually really good eaters. Some have some interesting spices and some were a little unusual in taste.

Before we got sick and were unable to keep anything down for over a day, I had already ordered food for next week. Although my husband said he'd rather me just cook from now on. He does like food we make from Blue Apron and Green Chef. A few of the meals had a hospital-like taste to them. If you've ever eaten hospital food, you know what I'm talking about and I haven't eaten hospital food often. I'll come back and write another review after next week. I'm trying a few breakfast items as well. I LOVE this idea but the food has to taste good. I also am not saying Freshly made us sick, we really don't know, but when you try something new and end up sick, you always wonder if it was because of that. If you do want to try Freshly, let me know and I'll give you a coupon code to get some free meals. 

Camping at Fort Griffin

Truth be told, I am really not a camper. I might be a glamper but even that may be pushing it. Frankly, I'm more of a B&B girl. I like clean bathrooms, nice beds, and climate control. However, I LOVE the outdoors! I just don't like bugs or trying to use the restroom outside! However, I married a man who loves to camp and so on occasion, we will camp or glamp as a family.

Last Fall we went camping for the first time as a family. My husband and I went camping around 11 years ago when we were first married and got rained on. Blue Rock is in Trail Life which is kind of like boy scouts but a Christian scouting group. They had a family camp out last Fall at Fort Griffin. It was fun. We more or less glamped and stayed in the climate controlled shelter rather than in a tent in the 40 degree weather. A good friend of mine glamps there every year and she gave me the heads up and I felt it was fine to try with the two little kids. Blue Rock would love to stay in a tent next time and probably will have lots of fun tent camping experiences with his dad in the future. 

The stars were pretty at night. The night sky brings a lot of people to this area. There is also a nice museum and lots of rich history. We had a great time.

I stayed in the shelter most of the time with Blue Knight and some with Princess while Blue Knight napped. That's the one hard thing about traveling with little kids and babies is how much they need to nap and rest. The car ride was not the most enjoyable experience as Blue Knight does not like the car but we made it and he didn't cry too, too bad. We just stopped more than if he loved the car. 

Blue Rock's favorite part of the camping trip was the campfire and smores. He also enjoyed hiking with the guys. My husband and Princess went hiking with them while I stayed with the baby. Friday night we had smores and let Blue Rock hang out with his troop while we tried to put the little kids to bed. We only stayed one night, instead of two. When we were almost done packing up it started raining. I was really glad we decided to go ahead and head home. We had a packed day on Sunday. 

Blue Rock had an encounter with a barbed wire fence. He's okay, thankfully! His troop also did some community service while they were there. They picked up the trash all around the camp ground. 

I recommend Fort Griffin. It's a smaller campground, you could probably walk around the tent/rv/covered shelter area in about 30 minutes. There are two bathroom facilities with showers and they are clean. There is only one covered shelter. There's a big playground in the middle of the campground. There is also lots of nice hiking around the campground and outside the camping area. That's where most of the hiking took place. We saw some Indian ruins and they have golf carts you can borrow for free to drive around if you have a little kid or are unable to walk it.

It was really nice to get away from the city and unplug from cell service and the internet. I see more camping or family glamping trips in our future. I recommend Fort Griffin and thought it was a nice place to camp in Texas.

His poor nose!

He loved exploring

Our climber!

 

The shelter

We set up two queen air mattresses

 

There was even a picnic table inside

At night

Car ride home. The first and probably only time all three kids will nap at the same time!

Sweet baby!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone!! I hope you and your family had a wonderful Easter. I love Easter. As a child, we didn't put any extra emphasis on Easter and the Passover since we celebrate Christ every day and take the Lord's Supper every Sunday. But as an adult, I'm enjoying adding a little extra fun during Easter and adding some special things that remind of us Jesus' resurrection, so it's more than a fun bunny holiday.

This was Blue Knight's first Easter. He was so cute and is such an awesome baby! Truly a happy and laid back baby. We hosted lunch for my family at my house. Our kids got an Easter basket on Easter morning. The baby was the first up and crawled right to his basket. I was amazed he knew which one was his. Princess was up next. She had two baskets, she really wanted a bunny basket so she got that one too and it had a pink bunny in it. When she saw it, she ask, "is this mine?" I said yes and she said, "Oh thank you!" What a sweet and cute girl I have! Blue Knight was up last, and he liked his basket too.

We did a neighborhood Easter egg hunt that I started a few years ago. I also got smaller plastic baskets for my niece and cousin's daughter who came over for our lunch as well as my kids. So the kids got to go on another Easter egg hunt. Sadly, we didn't make it to the Easter egg hunt at church. We were all worn out. Blue Rock was disappointed but I think he was understanding as well.

I didn't do everything I wanted to do with the kids this year but we did dye eggs, went through the dozen resurrection eggs, I made toddler resurrection eggs, and we read lots of Easter stories, about Christ, the Easter bunny, and spring. I also made an egg sensory bin and Princess did great identifying colors and sorting the eggs. I hope you all had a great Easter!