So you’d like local, organic produce bought at the farmers’ market to be diced, sliced, and prepped from scratch to create gourmet healthy dishes — but don’t have the time, energy, or cooking skills to make that happen. Lucky for you, a whole bunch of sustainable meal delivery services have popped up to meet your dining needs.
Here they are, listed from most to least diet-specific (juice fast deliveries would’ve topped the list, but I didn’t include them because juice doesn’t qualify as a meal in my book). The dollar amount in bold is the cost of 10 meals — or 5 lunches and 5 dinners for your work week — so you’d have some basis for price comparison.
Rawvolution’s The Box: Raw vegan
Going raw and vegan in 2009? The people behind Euphoria Loves Rawvolution, a raw food restaurant in Santa Monica, can make it easier for you via The Box. Each box includes 4 entrées, 4 side dishes, 2 soups, and 2 desserts — which Rawevolution says is enough for 2 meals for 4-5 days. I remain slightly dubious about this — mainly because after I eat a raw meal, I get hungry like 10 minutes later and need more food…. This may explain why so many serious raw foodies are frightfully thin, however.
Menu items include dishes like Greek Pizza, Spinach & Cheese Quiche, and Homemade Apple Crumble — but having dined at Rawvolution, I can guarantee you that none of those will actually taste like their conventional counterparts, because they’ll be, you know, raw.
Delivery: Once a week to the greater LA area. FedEx delivery available throughout the U.S.
Cost: Each box costs $120, which Rawvolution says should feed you 2 meals for 4-5 days. There’s a $10 delivery fee in L.A., though you can either pickup the box yourself for free or get it FedExed for a lot more money.
Order: Buy online.
Seedling Organic Catering: Vegan
Chef Kristina Brindley makes vegan dishes using organic, local ingredients — including produce from Tierra Miguel, a local community supported agriculture farm. Vegan doesn’t mean boring; Seedling delivers everything from empanadas to Japanese macrobiotic entrees to citrus vanilla layer cake.
Each week’s menu includes 5 entrees, 2 soups, and 2 desserts — so if you want both lunch and dinner, you’ll need to make a double order. Kristina says she’s currently reworking the menu a little to try to make larger sizes of less variety and hopefully lower the price a little, so check back in February if the prices are too high for you right now.
Delivery: Once a week to the greater Los Angeles area.
Cost: A week’s order costs $120, but if you want 10 meals, you’ll need to get the double order, priced at $200.
Order: Call 310.309.7152 or email kristina@seedlingcatering.com
Vegin’ Out: Vegan
I’ve tried this vegan delivery service — and liked it, for the most part. Vegin’ Out gets much of its produce from the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market; about 75% of the ingredients in Vegin’ Out’s trans fat-free meals are certified organic.
Each delivery includes multiple servings of 3 different entrees, 4 side dishes, 1 soup, and 5 cookies — enough for 9-10 meals. The one downside to this is that if you don’t like one of the dishes, you’re stuck with a bunch more of it. On the upside, Vegin’ Out’s super cheap.
Delivery: Once a week to the greater Los Angeles area.
Cost: At $110 for 9-10 meals, this service is a real bargain. DHL shipping in Socal outside the L.A. area costs $15.
Order: Buy online.
Clean Plate Meals: No dairy / eggs
If you shun dairy and eggs — but dig sustainable seafood and free-range, hormone-free meat, Clean Plate’s for you. Is there a name for a pro fish and meat but anti eggs and dairy diet?
In any case — Clean Plate Meals’ meals sound more gourmet and upscale — with dishes like stuffed sole with sweet pea puree and topped with a fresh herb gremolata, over jasmin rice — and uses at least 90% farm-fresh organic, local, seasonal ingredients. All food’s also wheat and gluten-free and can be veganized upon request.
Delivery: Once a week to West L.A. and surrounding areas.
Cost: A 5-day week of lunches and dinners (10 meals) costs $285 a week ($410 with snacks). Half-week and kid packages are also available.
Order: The web order form doesn’t seem to be working, so call 310.908.4753.
* From here on, the meal delivery services get very meat heavy — the carbon footprint of which has got to be quite considerable, even if everything’s organic, grass fed, and free range.
Club Gourmet: Zone diet
This company’s basically a Zone meal delivery service — with an organic and local bent. (via YDT) Would-be thinner environmentalists can sign up to get 1200-1400 calorie meals (1800 to 2000 for men) delivered to their doorstep every morning.
Dieting doesn’t come cheap though, since the meals at Club Gourmet really do appear to be very gourmet. Menu items include fennel-crusted duck breast, orange-scented natural veal osso bucco and other meaty stuff, so vegetarians should steer clear.
Delivery: Daily to the greater Los Angeles area
Price: 5 lunches and dinners will cost you $50 a day or $250 a week; the “optimum health menu” which also includes breakfast and 2 snacks will set you back $80 a day. Longer package deals are available. The bare minimum you can order is $50 a day, at least 3 times a week.
Order: Call 310.598.6640.
This personal chef meal delivery service can get you 3 meals plus 2 snacks for all 7 days of the week — delivered six days a week (Sat. and Sun. deliveries arrive together). Paleta boasts about its LEED-certified commercial kitchen featuring local, seasonal, and organic ingredients.
Most meals (including breakfasts!) are meat-centric — Mustard Tarragon Glazed Pork Tenderloin, Mediterranean Turkey Meat Loaf, and the like.
Delivery: 6 days a week to the greater Los Angeles area
Cost: Each lunch or dinner costs $18, so 10 meals would cost $180 — except there’s a $39 daily minimum. Snacks cost $6 a pop, so if you added one of those on you’d get 10 meals and 5 snacks for $210.
Order: Sign up online, call 301.396.7820 or email info@paleta.com.
JAM.
Like Paleta, most of JAM’s main dishes are based around meat. JAM uses local and organic ingredients to make dishes like chicken pot pie and braised short ribs.
JAM boasts a 7-day menu, but only one meal’s created per day. So if you were hoping to get both lunch and dinner delivered, you’ll need to order 2-people’s worth of every dish — and eat the same meal twice each day.
Delivery: Twice a week to the Greater Los Angeles area.
Cost: 10 meals (2-person portions of 5 different meals) costs $208 — plus a $10 delivery charge. If you just want to try out the service, you can order as little as 2 meals for $50. Want all 3 meals plus 2 snacks? That’ll cost $59 a day, or $413 a week.
Order: Call 310.403.5638 or email jen@jamgourmet.com
I don’t know about the other services butI’ve tried RAWvolution and it’s awesome! The food is so fresh and tasty and it’s ALL organic! The price is very reasonable too!
Comment by Anonymous — January 19, 2009 @ 4:42 pm
Oh my god, I’ve tried RAWvolution too and it is good. I like that the food is all raw- it seems like it maintains more of its nutrition that way.
Comment by Anonymous — January 19, 2009 @ 4:43 pm
Great article. I’ve been thinking about ways to get better foods into my regular ramshackle life.
Glad I found you on Twitter.
Cheers!
Q’
Comment by Quin — January 19, 2009 @ 5:40 pm
The first 2 comments come from the same IP address — Some misguided and overenthusiastic raw foodie’s pretending to be 2 people to promote Rawvolution. Further comments from that IP address will now be blocked.
Glad I can help, Quin :)
Comment by Siel — January 19, 2009 @ 5:48 pm
Nice round up! Now I’m thinking about putting one of these on my baby registry/wish list =)
Comment by Summer — January 19, 2009 @ 10:11 pm
I am on a great service in LA called The Fresh Diet. (thefreshdiet.com) The Fresh Diet delivers 3 gourmet meals & 2 snacks daily to my doorstep. I have tried many of these diet deliveries & The Fresh Diet is the best by far. Check them out!
Comment by Alex McGraw — January 20, 2009 @ 5:29 am
I have tried Vegin’ Out. I shop at the Hollywood Farmer’s market and cook most of my own meals, but for those nights when my boyfriend and I are just too busy or tired to spend an hour making dinner, we want healthy and convenient things in the freezer. I’m vegetarian and he’s omni, but we’re working on more vegan meals overall. Anyway, Vegin’ Out is pretty decent, though the dishes themselves can be a little bland. Nothing some sea salt or hot sauce won’t fix though. I had a nice Caribbean jerked tempeh from them once. I’ve gotten delivery from them 3 or 4 times (about once a month). However, I discovered Seedling a week or two ago and we got their delivery service yesterday. I have yet to try them (well, except the cookies, which would good – and you get a dozen instead of the 5 you get with Vegin’ Out). Probably I’ll have a meal from them tonight. We opted for the double portion size, which is obviously more expensive than Vegin’ Out, but it looks great.
I noticed in your LA times review you were skeptical about the packaging Vegin’ Out uses. It’s all cornstarch-based plastic that is recyclable – but it’s still plastic. And I find their containers a bit flimsy. Seedling has a $35 refundable container deposit and your meals come in nice tupperware-like containers with snap-on lids. Our delivery guy told us that if we order again, we can just switch them out. If we don’t, I assume we can drop them off or something and get our refund. They even dropped the food off in reusable, insulated Whole Foods bags. :-)
The other thing I’ve noticed is that Vegin’ Out is totally mix and match. Just choose a main, two sides, and maybe a serving of soup or a fresh salad. Kristina’s meals are labeled to all go together. For example, one meal I got this week is brown rice sushi, which comes with a daikon salad (labeled: For sushi) and some other kind of side. I also have lentil croquettes with a homemade salsa, again, labeled that it’s supposed to go with the croquettes. So meal prep is really easy. There’s a spaghetti squash pasta dish with seitan sausage sauce, and the sauce is packaged separately from the noodles, which is also nice. Vegin’ Out puts the rice or pasta in with everything else. I wish I had more control over that (like making my own fresh-cooked rice). So again, Vegin’ Out is super convenient, but Seedling seems a little… classier.
I’ve also heard of something called Susan’s Healthy Gourmet, but it looks pretty pricey, and I wasn’t overly impressed with the vegetarian options. You can get delivery for 3-4 meals a week or all 7, breakfast or not, and 1200, 1500, or 1800 calories. She does twice-weekly delivery.
Comment by Meredith — January 20, 2009 @ 3:11 pm
Siel,
I’ve never tried any of these as I’m not in LA (and probably would opt to enjoy a night out at a restaurant or just stay in and make food rather than get delivery), but I wanted to add my two cents about raw foods. I’m not fully raw, but I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting lately, and I have to say, contrary to your experience at Rawvolution, I’ve had some raw meals that not only match their traditional counterparts, but exceed them. Especially deserts, some raw deserts are absolutely amazing, not only are they filling and satisfy a sweet tooth, but are totally guilt free. I will say that some raw foods take an acquired taste, but there are some that I would take any day over their cooked counterparts!
Comment by Russ — January 20, 2009 @ 4:34 pm
Meredith — Thanks for the detailed review of the programs! I agree with what you said about Vegin’ Out — It’s a great value, but definitely not as upscale / gourmet as some of the others :)
Russ — I too have had some good raw food — I especially like the “sushi rolls” and yummy chocolate mousse at Juliano’s Raw. I didn’t mean to imply that raw food’s always inferior — I just meant that they are inevitably different!
For ex, a “pizza” at Juliano’s or a “burger” at Rawvolution doesn’t even look like a regular pizza or a burger, much less taste like one. That’s why I specifically pointed out the items I did — Greek Pizza, Spinach & Cheese Quiche, and Homemade Apple Crumble — because those are all things people generally associate with bready toasty warmness, among other characteristics, that’s just not gonna translate well into a raw dish.
Sometimes, I think the raw restaurants would do well to call their products something else altogether, so as to avoid the disappointment of newbies who order pizza and are given what’s essentially a salad instead :P
Taste aside, I’m wondering — Do you have the same feeling hungry a few minutes after eating raw food issue that I do?
Comment by Siel — January 20, 2009 @ 5:05 pm
Ok, I agree with you there Siel. There’s no comparing a raw pizza with a cooked pizza, and a different name would certainly do it more justice and probably keep people from being disappointed with the raw version. If you are new to raw and someone tells you there are raw pizzas, I can see where the disappointment comes in. A name change would help :)
After I have a raw meal I don’t have the same feeling of fullness, but I also don’t get hungry right away either. Things like cold pressed olive oil, avocado, and raw nuts goes help. And a lot of raw meals incorporate nut “cheeses” which help a lot too. It seems like the more fibrous greens like kale and chard are more filling than plain lettuce. And depending if you go raw vegan or not there are some great raw cheeses out there.
Comment by Russ — January 20, 2009 @ 5:21 pm
Well, there’s a definite limit to how much kale I can ingest in one sitting — Leaf’s super kale-heavy wraps get no love from me. I agree if I force fed myself a whole buncha kale, my stomach wouldn’t feel hungry so much as uncomfortable….
Comment by Siel — January 21, 2009 @ 6:32 pm