I headed back to Global TV this morning to talk about the weekly meals and mealkits from Bon C Bon, Crealunch and HelloFresh this morning. The amount of food I had for Laura could taste could feed a small army, and she was a real trooper about giving all the pasta a shot. As usual, there wasn’t enough time to say everything, so here’s all the info on the food and how to order it yourself.
The idea behind the segment was that the arrival of fall means less time to cook, but that’s no reason to stop eating well. From meal kits to local companies delivering fresh and frozen homemade food, there are some healthy and affordable options to make your back-to-school or back-to-work transitions that much smoother.
What are some local options?
- The weekly menu of fresh meals from Bon C Bon, a company out of Lasalle
- The week’s menu of frozen meals from Crealunch, a company in the Mile End
- The weekly meal kit from HelloFresh, the world’s leading meal kit company, which just came to Quebec in April.
Let’s start with Bon C Bon.
It’s comfort food with a twist for busy people and families. The owner and executive chef is Caroline Ross, who’s been working in catering since she was 16. She started the company just with her husband preparing and delivering all the meals themselves 11 years ago. Word spread and they’ve expanded three times to a staff of 8 people preparing between 700-800 meals a week!
This week’s menu is a salmon fillet with an herb mayo, edamame and green beans; Thai fish cakes; grilled piri piri chicken; vegetarian pasta with wild mushroom sauce; chicken with corn salsa and pico de gallo on rice; Caesar salad; a mango noodle bowl; a Persian chickpea salad; a lightened up potato salad; sweet potato shepherd’s pie; chile con carne; braised beef with sundried tomatoes; broccoli cauliflower mac ‘n’ cheese; and two desserts: a raspberry rhubarb crumble and ginger-molasses cookies.
So it’s a huge menu that changes every week.
How does ordering work?
You set up your account online and you get an email every Wednesday when the menu comes out. You get a week to place your order, and you’ll get a reminder. Then the food is delivered by the next Sunday, so a week-and-a-half after the menu comes out. Everything’s freshly prepared with no preservatives added. They use as much local as possible and they deliver across the island and off-island.
What about prices?
These main dishes cost between about $9 and $17 depending on the protein and ingredients. The salads were $6.50 and the desserts were $6 for the half dozen cookies ($10 for a dozen) and $9 for the crumble. You can order single or double portions or a family pack for 4 and you get a 10% discount on the family packs.
Next, Crealunch
It’s a similar idea to Bon C Bon but the dishes are all frozen, so you don’t have to eat them within a week (though you can freeze some of the Bon C Bon dishes if you want). I reviewed this meal service on my blog in June, so you can read the whole review and get more info at multiculturiosity.com
Today we have a braised beef marsala, cheese-stuffed pork meatballs, beef-stuffed vegetables, tilapia with mango-pink peppercorn sauce, macaroni with lardons, chicken with cilantro-lime-Parmesan pesto and chicken satay with peanut sauce.
Crealunch was started by friends and co-founders Valentin and Chef Najib. Najib makes one homemade meal a day, four days a week in the company’s Mile End kitchen. He freezes it using a blast freezing technique that freezes it quicker and colder than a normal freezer and keeps it fresher and more nutritious. The meals are sold in generous single portions to mostly students, seniors and young professionals who want a homemade meal. Every meal comes with nutritional info.
What about prices?
Prices start around $7.95 for tempeh with grapefruit and ginger on rice noodles to $9.25 for couscous royale with lamb merguez sausage and homemade meatballs. There’s a $20 discount on your first order of more than $65 – and you don’t have to worry about ordering too much, because the food’s not going to go bad. And there’s also a subscription discount on 10 lunches
There’s no cross contamination in the kitchen because they only make one meal a day, so it’s safe for people with food allergies. And the company delivers to the Greater Montreal area in microwave safe containers, so you can heat the dishes up quickly, or transfer them to another dish if you prefer.
How do you order?
There’s a new menu every Wednesday online. And they offer a B2B service for companies where they come in regularly and stock your office freezer with frozen meals. Ingredients are also local when possible and they have desserts, a couple healthy snacks and juices. The only caveats are that because the food comes frozen, some things like reheat better than others, like braised meats are going to be tender (though more pale and dry than if they’d come from the oven), but fish is easy to overzap. And you have to be in the delivery zone, which you can find on the crealunch website, or pick up your order at kitchen at 4520A Avenue du Parc.
And HelloFresh?
Meal kits are getting really popular right now, and I’ll be honest, I was never a big fan, because of all the packaging waste, but I’ve tried them out and they’re really convenient when you want to make a homemade meal fast by yourself. HelloFresh delivers from coast to coast, from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island. What’s unique about the company is that all the ingredients come pre-cut and individually packaged for freshness. So you can make a “cook from scratch” meal from an easy-to-follow recipe with photos, which cuts down on prep time.
I have a friend who told me their kids walked into the kitchen while she was making a HelloFresh meal and they were like, “Mom! You’re cooking!” And then when the picky eaters ate the meal, they actually liked it. So I think it’s a great way to get people into the kitchen, like training wheels. And then you have the recipes and the techniques and you can either keep ordering more meals or eventually take off the training wheels and prepare the whole meal yourself.
What’s the ordering process?
There are three box choices every week, which gets dropped off at your home or work every week: a pronto plan, a veggie plan and a family plan. I tried the Pronto Plan, which this week includes baked fusilli with beef, homemade marinara sauce and ricotta; a mustard and herb-crusted pork; and a turkey burrito bowl with cilantro-lime rice.
It’s a flexible service, meaning you can skip a week or easily change your delivery day or meal plan choice. You also choose your 3 or 4 meals from 5 recipes each week, so you’re more likely to find meals you really want. All the meats are raised without antibiotics or hormones and the seafood comes from Hooked Inc., which integrates sustainable practices and traceability of its products.
How much does it cost?
The pronto plan comes with 3 or 4 meals for 2 or 4 people for $11.67 per meal (that means per plate, so twice or four times that much per brown paper bag of ingredients depending on whether you want two servings or four servings); the veggie plan has 3 meals for 2 people for $12.33 per meal; and the family plan has 3 or 4 meals for 4 people from $10.83 per meal. If you’re getting 3 recipes with two servings each, it’ll be at least $66 a week.
This week I had a baked fusilli with homemade marinara sauce and ricotta; an herb- and mustard-coated pork with roasted potatoes, broccoli and sweet mustard butter sauce; and a turkey burrito bowl with avocado-cherry tomato salsa.
The fact that dishes start at less than $11 per plate is impressive because they have to pay their prep chefs to chop those vegetables for you and package all the ingredients, but they get their ingredients directly from producers whenever possible instead of wholesalers and other middlemen, so they can keep prices down. That direct sourcing also means ingredients can be fresher, because they spend less time in a warehouse or supermarket.
Some caveats are that they say no meal should take more than 30 minutes and is tested by their kitchen, but I’ve found that if I get distracted or waste time somewhere in the recipe, it can take a bit longer. Most meals say 30 minutes on the recipe, but they took me 35 to 45. And if you’re really not comfortable using a knife, give yourself a bit more than that. But onions come pre-chopped, most things are pre-measured, and so there’s less running around looking for something. It really depends on the recipe. The turkey burrito bowl took me 30 minutes and was really easy while the herb-crusted pork was more complicated and gourmet.
Another drawback is that you have to order a meal plan, not an individual meal, even though you can skip a week when you want. And although the box, ice packs and insulation can be recycled, there’s still a lot of packaging. It’s cool that the special bag that the meat comes with at the bottom of the box with the ice packs is compostable (it’s made from corn), but it all still gets thrown away.
I’m not sure about the total carbon footprint compared to buying all the ingredients yourself at the grocery store, though, because if you’re driving to the store and buying things in plastic there, that can add up too. Plus the time it takes you and the gas to do your own shopping. It’s be really interesting to do a breakdown of that.
So which one’s best for you?
Bon C Bon is great if you don’t want to cook but you want family-friendly, fresh and healthy meals.
Crealunch is great for individuals, like students, seniors or busy professionals
And HelloFresh is for people who want to cook something themselves but need a little help, either in terms of time or preparation. Maybe you don’t feel like schlepping to the grocery store some weeks or you know you’re going to be really busy.
I love Crealunch because you can keep the food frozen as long as you like, and just pull it out when you want something delicious. The price is also the lowest.
I love Bon C Bon because you get great side salads and desserts and everything’s so fresh. And Caroline is also one of the nicest people in the world, I’m convinced, so if you have a question or a problem ordering, you can call her directly. Now that’s customer service! She doesn’t have a bot online ready to pretend to help you.
Vegetarians: All of the companies will have vegetarian options, but HelloFresh might be the best if you’re a picky eater, because you can leave out any ingredient you don’t want when you make the recipe yourself.
HelloFresh also has the most delivery time options because it’s a larger company, and the food can be left outside if you’re not home. The FedEx delivery guy said to me this week, “You got two boxes this week?” Holy judgement…I didn’t explain that it was for TV. I don’t think he likes my stairs…I can understand how dragging around those heavy boxes is no fun. But if that’s his train of thought, he has the wrong job.
My job, on the other hand, is delicious.
https://www.boncbon.com/
https://www.crealunch.com/
https://www.hellofresh.ca/
Leave a Reply