Just Add cooking week 1

Ok so my first week of Just Add Cooking was good but they still need some work. 

Compared to Plated they have 7 recipes to choose (Plated has 9 but you have to pay extra for 2 so I think its about the same).  You have to choose between 3-5 meals (Its nice you can get just 2 with Plated).  I feel like they have a good mix of quick and easy stuff and some more complicated stuff.  I feel like their recipe cards could use some work.  It looks like a chart, there is lots of white space that could be filled with pictures or more directions (they only have the one picture of the finished product).  I feel like their recipes need a little rechecking.  I felt that there were times when I should have lowered the heat and when they said to slice a couple things they never indicated how thick or thin.  As far as the packaging goes that has some good points and bad.  The good is that there is less packaging, as they are delivering stuff that day from their warehouse they only include one small cold pack (vs about 3 large ones with Plated), and there is no inner liner only a small cold bag.  The bad is that in the box everything is lumped together, no separation of ingredients for different dishes (ingredients are not even labeled for what recipe they belong to), so I did spend some time unpacking the ingredients to ziplock bags for each recipe.  They also don't have an app, and their mobile site isn't that great.  Like Hello Fresh you can see the recipes before you choose what meals you want.  But my favorite thing about them is that they are local (around Boston, MA) and source a lot of local foods and with each order they give a list of some of the foods that were local to New England, I am all for supporting local companies. Another drawback is they only deliver to me on Sundays, I actually like to cook these meals on the weekend so this isn't that great for me.  As for the food it was good here are my reviews of what I got.

Couscous Marrakech - This was a turmeric heavy mix of couscous, chicken, sausage and green beans.  I thought the flavors were really good but that it was kind of dry (I tried mixing in the yogurt to make it moister but it just clumped up).  I still liked it but probably wouldn't get it again.

Pasta with Blue Cheese and Walnuts - I loved this dish and loved that it took almost no time at all to make.  Perfect for a weeknight meal.  I did make a change and added the spinach that was meant for the salad into the pasta dish itself, plus added some garlic to the cream/cheese mixture.  Would definitely make this again.

Pork Loin Africana - I loved the first bite of this dish, subsequent bites not as much but still good.  I really like fruit and pork and this had a lot, raisins, pineapple, plantains (maybe too much).  I loved the amount of sauce for the rice to soak up.  WHat I would change is that you sliced the pork, but since it went into kind of a stew like preparation I would have cut it into bite sized pieces.  Also I felt that the heat should have been lowered after the cream was added, cooking a sauce with cream in it at med high for 10 minutes seemed excessive.   I would get this again, but maybe less pineapple.

I think I will stick with them for a while at least.