Thirty Four: Hello Fresh

The venue: Freshness through the front door

The website: Hello Fresh

The Sunday dinner: CHOOSE FROM A RANGE OF DELICIOUS OPTIONS – DELIVERED

The price: £9.90 for three meals through the introductory referral, which you can access here.  The regular price is around £34.

This week, I’m going to review Hello Fresh. Hopefully, it’ll make them rethink their decision to not let me use Mr Jus’ referral code to get £25 off my first box, just because we live at the same house. They’ve missed a trick there. We should both be allowed accounts.  We’re likely to order more from you if we’ve both got our hand in the game. Think about it, Hello Fresh.

After this rave review, I hope they make me an honorary Hello Fresh member and send me boxes to review for free. I am also quite willing, and able, to be a brand ambassador the company, travelling the world reviewing their recipes, although I am unsure how the travelling element comes in. Doesn’t quite fit with the product’s home delivery situation, but I’m extremely keen to be permanently on holiday and I just thought I’d put it out there for their social media team to consider. Think about it, Hello Fresh.

I shall even refrain from swearing this week, so that Hello Fresh can see that I can be respectful, and show them how I could brand ambassador the fuck out of their excellent company. Perhaps they’ll just award me a week’s holiday in Spain, while it’s still warm, as the first place prize in the ‘Hello Fresh Blog Post Review Competition’, which is a contest they’re not actually running. Think about it, Hello Fresh.

Mr Jus and I have used this home delivery service, which provides all the carefully measured ingredients you need to knock up a tasty meal, for the past two weeks.

Our first box cost just under £10, for we had a discount code. And you can have one too. Perhaps you’ll use ours when you place your first order. Here it is, just in case.

And yes, I know I’m being pushy, but you have to remember that Mr Jus is out of work and times are hard. I’ll just stop this paragraph here, and start a new one, affording you a bit of time and space to consider our predicament.

Sobering, isn’t it?

‘Maybe she does need our help with getting her Hello Fresh discounts,’ you’re probably thinking to yourself, or maybe saying aloud to your partner, or to your cat, or to a doll that you talk to and pretend is alive.

I’m just sure none of you want to see us go without and would like to support us in our hour of need.

I don’t like to make a fuss, or exaggerate, but if we can’t afford to order next week’s King Prawn Risotto with Tender Asparagus Spears and Dukkah Spice, we’ll have something akin to a humanitarian crisis going in this household, and you lot will have blood/rice on your hands. Once you pop Hello Fresh, you can’t stop Hello Fresh. Not that it’s like a weird cult, or you just get delivered Pringles for your tea, but it’s so good you’ll never want to let it go.

I apologise for the capital letters in the recipe title above. It’s just Hello Fresh’s house style. They also use too many exclamation marks in their material, which is the only off-putting thing about this clever culinary concept that is taking our house – and our tastebuds – by storm. Here’s a prime example.

 

Seriously, if they don’t give me at least one free meal box and a weekend in Bath (with breakfast) for this review, I’ll be livid. I truly believe I can help Hello Fresh reach a new customer demographic: decent, vibrant northerners, with working class ideals, who can sniff a rip off at a mile off. Here’s an example I saw in the piss-taking part of Peckham today:

£12. I ask you. AND ARE THESE FLOWERS EDIBLE??!!??!!!

You can enjoy three romantic, yet healthy, Hello Fresh meals with a loved one for less than that. If you use our introductory code. Remember – you’re not under any kind of contract and you can pause your order at any time. Mr Jus finds the Hello Fresh app particularly useful for account management and has spent a lot of time exploring its contents, rather than doing any fucking dusting.

Hey, I have another creative idea. I could work with Hello Fresh on a refined Sunday dinner recipe, with brilliant gravy, that would become Hello Fresh’s signature meal selection. The Sunday Dinner Selection.

The chefs and I would probably need to spend a week in a kitchen, working up ideas, perhaps somewhere like Mauritius. The possibilities for brand fusion, if that’s even a term, are endless. Why wouldn’t a successful company want to hook up with a foul-mouthed blog writer with a social media reach of 12?

Anyway, let’s quickly review the week, so that I can get back to blowing smoke up Hello Fresh’s arse. Anal smoke which it thoroughly deserves.

At 2am on Monday morning, I was rudely awakened by three new insect bite blisters, who wanted to demonstrate how painful and itchy they were. I suppose because the others had started to heal, God, or the universe, decided I must continue to suffer, even though I have done fuck all to those little bastards and had no quarrel with them until now. I will punch those cunts out of the sky if I see them approaching. Psst. Hello Fresh – I’ll take this paragraph out if you want to publish this in your employee magazine or wherever – it’s not a problem. I’m flexible. Like your meal boxes. I’d like to go to Hawaii too.

Tuesday brought me this Facebook memory from 1 August 2015, which only served to remind me that my hair was, and has remained, an absolute mess for two long years. And an additional 40 years before that too.

Still, at least my legs, with all their lumps and bumps and open, weeping sores, looked like two out of date Lion Bars, so things didn’t seem too bad. People enjoy Lion Bars.

On Wednesday evening Justin of ‘BASIL BRUSH IS A SQUIRREL’ fame, cooked curry for his colleagues, of which I am one. I don’t think I can claim overtime for attending, which is a shame. I’d already spent eight hours in their company that day and it’s frankly draining at the best of times. Still, it was a very kind offer and I was happy to accept. He’s asked whether I’ll be reviewing his meal in this week’s post several times, which came across as a mixture of annoyingly repetitive curiosity and neediness, which wasn’t attractive.

Here’s Justin preparing our food. On Wednesday, 2 August.

That’s right. He tried to poison us with out of date broccoli, the sinister bastard. Here he is at work again, where he is simultaneously cooking, DJ-ing and smiling with battered glee, no doubt at something witty I’d just said.

The curry was superb. Here it is. He sloshed a bit up the plate, so a point removed for presentation, but look at him above. He’s wrecked. Let’s give him some credit.

Justin was a great host, who cooked a delicious meal. Despite being as rat-arsed as the rest of us, he delivered. I could barely stand, let alone use a hob. Our glasses were never empty of wine and our hearts were never vacant of love and laughter. Or perhaps just tolerance.

The Uber ride home lasted forever. I started to feel anxious that the driver was planning to murder me, throw acid in my face, or just drive around until he’d earned in excess of £1,400 for the trip.

I sat up straight in the back so that he thought I was a high-ranking police official, and wouldn’t attempt any funny business. I don’t imagine they slouch, apart from Columbo, but he’s fictional, and just a detective, whereas I saw myself more at commissioner level. I then spent time typing on my phone, so he’d think I was in constant contact with MI5, but I was actually just writing a status update on Facebook.

On Thursday afternoon, I finally got dropped off at home. I’m lying. I was safely home by midnight, where I promptly had a midnight mass (poo) which was a bit weird. I blame the broccoli.

Work was harrowing, and not helped when Mr Jus sent me a photo of him having a pint near the swimming pool at Shoreditch House, where he’d been poncing about, and not dusting.

He asked what sort of film I’d like to watch.

“Something easy going,” I replied, work-weariness etched in my voice. “Something uplifting, perhaps. Maybe a quirky romantic comedy. You know, a pleasant, feel-good sort of vibe. Relaxing. Light-hearted. You know.”

He chose Alien Covenant.

On Friday, Mr Jus and I stayed up until 3am, which is crazy, because remember when we were in Jamaica at Christmas and he phoned to complain the music was too loud at 10.30pm, even though it was Christmas and people were on holiday?

He’d been out drinking, so was all lively and jolly when he returned, with a touch of slurred arrogance. My companion for the evening had been this guy:

Not even Ralgex. Just a dirty, Wilko muscle rub. That’s how little I care for myself. My self-loathing means my aching shoulders and neck suffer.

We chatted away for hours on all manner of topics, and even though I was wincing in pain, and he was still doing ‘slurred arrogance’ at times, it was lovely.

We ended the night, as many people do, by watching Lionel Richie’s ‘Hello’ video. Neither of us realised that Lionel was her teacher, so were horrified at this blatant abuse of power/gross misconduct situation, passing itself off as an entertaining pop video. It was weird. Sinister, even.

I did a bit of research on it today, which is Saturday, as Mr Jus slept, and came across this quote from Lionel:

 

I laughed. And then I saw this post on Facebook, and I laughed again, because my nanna was insulin dependent, so I don’t think my slobbering gob could have lessened the impact of her diabetes.

 

After I’d stopped laughing, I remembered that I was supposed to be reviewing food. Let’s have two collages. In one shot, you’ll see that I’ve used the packaging as a cushion for the garden chair, upon Hello Fresh’s helpful packaging suggestion.

 

And now let’s have a Hello Fresh review poem, to show how versatile I can be. I hope to prove to Hello Fresh that I deserve a high paying part-time job, or at least an overnight stay in Cleethorpes, with a meal at Steels thrown in. And breakfast. My poem is called ‘Hello’.

Hello

Hello, Hello Fresh, here’s why I think you’re so great:

Top-notch, tasty dishes, delivered straight to my plate*

Particularly the duck dish – so deliciously divine

And the steak’s pepper sauce was pretty sublime

Creamy linguine? Well, I don’t quite mind if I do

Roasted broccoli? No, not after Wednesday night’s poo**

I love you, Hello Fresh, as there’s no messing and no fucking***

And I love you too, Mr Jus, thanks for doing all the cooking.****

*front door or maybe at an agreed point – possibly with a trusted neighbour.

** I did have it and it was really good, but I wanted to make a joke about Justin’s broccoli again. And my witching-hour bowel movement.

*** We can change this bit, Hello Fresh, if it’s too coarse for our brand partnership. I wrote it in eight minutes, which I hope demonstrates that I am a fast, creative worker, who deserves a chance. To be honest, I’ll take a free bag of carrots pushed through the letterbox at this stage. Whatever.

**** To be fair, I shouldn’t be expected to get involved, because I’m at work all fucking day.

Final score: 29/33

The link to the great discount again: HERE. IT’S HERE.