Relish!

If there’s one thing that I love more than my family, it’s cooking for my family. I love making a meal that makes my husband smile… After all he’s the one bringing home the proverbial bacon, the least I can do is cook it up for him right? Unfortunately for me there’s only so many days in the week, and hours in the day to plan these things. I typically find myself designing a weekly menu around tried and true favorites that I know will please us all. Sometimes though, even the tried and true…get old. So when Parent Bloggers Network offered up a two month free trial of Relish! I jumped at the chance. After a bit of research I found out that Relish! is an online menu planning service. According to their website “We dish out everything you need to prepare distinct, creative dinners, every night, with ease. Relish! serves up affordable meal planning and we supply all of the essentials from easy-to-follow grocery shopping lists to customized menu selections.”

I was eager to get my account started and take a look around…What I found was mesmerizing. A myriad of new recipes, tantalizing ingredients, and even shopping lists to make my grueling trips to the grocery store a little easier on me. The layout is fairly simple; You have a number of different options, you can choose something as simple as the Express Menu, where 5 delicious meals are preselected for you. Ranging all the way to a Kid Friendly, Dinner & a Movie combo, where all of the food is themed with the movie du jour. I was immediately enamored by the slow cooker section, I’m constantly on the prowl for new and delicious selections for our crock pot. Relish! was able to add a few faves to our repertoire.

One of the problems that I had with this service, was that the meals were almost a bit too good! If that’s even possible… Jon has really simple tastes, he’s your true meat and potatoes kind of guy. So offering him Chicken Breasts stuffed with tomatoes, artichokes and goat cheese, along with a side of couscous? It’s one of the few times that Jon has laughed at me. Unfortunately I did have a bit of a difficult time finding recipes that I thought would be crowd pleasers. I was able to tweak some of them, and make them my own, but that’s beside the point…

So would I pay the $7 a month fee for the Relish! service? Probably not… But not because I didn’t like it. In fact I really enjoyed what it was all about, I just really needed something more simplified… Less cloth napkin, more plastic fork, know what I mean? But the ideas behind the service were great, I’m looking forward to the upcoming weeks that I still have left, and for all of you that are interested? There’s a free trial available on their website, you should go check it out!