Prep Dish Review: Paleo and Gluten-Free Meal Plans

*Disclosure: The following is a sponsored post on behalf of Prep Dish. All thoughts and opinions, as always, are my own.

I love to cook but admit my meal planning skills are far from perfect. I have a hard time plotting and planning out our weekly meals sometimes, and  if I don’t have a plan to follow our shopping can get derailed. A couple weeks ago my husband and I went to Trader Joe’s for our weekly grocery trip and I didn’t have any recipes for the week planned out. I wanted to “wing it.” Big mistake. It was pure chaos. We ended up buying way more than we needed and not even knowing what we were going to cook for the week by the time we got home.

I was recently introduced to Prep Dish. They offer gluten-free and paleo meal plans that are sent to your email each week. You receive a month’s worth of meal plans broken out by week and everything is broken down by the following:

1. Grocery List – It has everything you need for all your meal for the week broken down by category
2. Prep Day – A list in order of what to prep
3. Dish Day – Simple instructions to cook your dish on the day it will be served.

When I first received my Prep Dish meal plan by email, I was really excited by the grocery list. I never organize my shopping list by category like this and clearly I need to get with the program:

I used my phone and pulled up the grocery list in my mobile browser while I shopped. Shopping like this really cut down on our time in the grocery store. My husband and I divided and conquered and we were out of Trader Joe’s in about half the time it normally takes us. Normally we spend a lot of time in the grocery store just figuring out what to cook which is an incredibly inefficient use of time. I’m shopping like this moving forward!

After we got all the ingredients we came home and began the prep work. The meal plan says that the prep takes two hours which seems to be accurate based on my experience. I think it would be quicker if you had two people dividing and conquering the prep work.

The first meal we made was the taco salad. It was delicious and had cilantro lime dressing we made from scratch. It was BOMB. And so, so easy to make.

The next meal we made was stuffed chicken with potatoes and mushrooms. The recipe called for swiss chard, but I modified this and used spinach instead. We also used sweet potatoes instead of regular ones. I had never made stuffed chicken before. I don’t think I did a great job at stuffing the chicken so it was a bit of a learning experience.

Some of the other items we made were eggplant and ground beef lasagna and almond butter brownies. The lasagna had an option to add dairy if you wanted by adding greek yogurt mixed with cheese as one of the layers. We did not do that, but we decided to top off our lasagna with some parmesan cheese (not paleo) because we wanted to. It turned out great!

The Prep Dish meal plans also include dessert! We made almond butter brownies. They stuck together much better once they were in the fridge and I’m sure that has to do with not using any flour.

• Ease of Use- Breaking down the grocery list by category made shopping so much easier. It also helped to know that was all I needed to buy and then could add in snacks or other foods accordingly
• Accurate Timeline- I found their timing of 2 hours for prep time on all the food to be fairly accurate
• Variety of Ingredients- I was happy with the ingredients used in all the recipes and didn’t feel like I had to modify anything. This is big for me because normally I modify most recipes I come across. The meals were designed by a Registered Dietician, so you know you are getting a fully balanced meal

There were a couple things I would recommend you think about when using Prep Dish or meal planning in general:

• Buy what you need – Most of these meal recipes were for four people. Since it is just my husband and I (Baby Awesome eats solids, but we make specific food for her), we had 2 meals out of each dish. We should have accounted for leftovers!
• Follow the plan, but make your own rules – I think these meal plans serve as a great guideline, but you should feel free to modify recipes. Also, if you aren’t going to eat at home for all 4 weeknights then skip a meal on the meal plan and don’t buy the ingredients.

Overall I was very happy with Prep Dish and think it’s something that will be useful for people. I also read that they have partnerships with companies like Instacart in certain cities where you can send over your grocery list and they will do the shopping for you. I love the idea of something like that because as a new mom I’m always finding way to cut down on time spent running errands. I also really enjoy finding new recipes, and Prep Dish made it easy for me to try new recipes that fit our lifestyle.

Prep Dish has two different plans you can sign up for – a monthly plan at $14 per month and an annual subscription of $99 per year. I think that is very reasonable given all the recipes you will receive. It really takes all the guesswork out of planning to eat healthy meals at home. The kind folks at Prep Dish have also offered a special rate of $4 for your first month subscription for Fit & Awesome readers. If you try it out be sure to let me know what you think!

What about you? How do you shop for groceries? Do you plan all of your meals for the week on Sunday? Post in the comments and let us know!