This post is not sponsored or solicited. We paid for our own meals. 

I love cooking and I often miss it, but working full-time and having a baby leaves us with limited time.

Especially during the work week – we want to spend time with the baby before bed and prep for the next day. I’m fine saving any cooking for the weekend.

We decided to try some meal delivery services. The first one I found was Origins Meals. Their focus is scratch-made, healthy, gluten-free meals that you can order in different quantities. They also claim to source grass-fed beef, free range turkey and antibiotic free chicken and wild caught salmon (didn’t see any fish options during the weeks we ordered).

For two weeks, we ordered three family-size meals a week. Each week, we chose from about six new options, and three static. Each tray could provide four generous sized meals or six smaller ones. Including the delivery fee, the total was $136/week.

The meal options are creative and influenced by different flavor profiles and cultures. The calorie count on these trays is around 2,000. Instructions direct you to heat the hot meals in a 350 degree oven for an hour. Some of the meals are cold, such as salads.

Upon ordering, you indicate your preferred delivery date and then the company will text you when they are on their way. You can leave a cooler for them to place the food in, or they can provide one, but would charge a $20 deposit.

Edit: We don’t have the right sized cooler for the family sized meals so I just met them at the door since I work from home. 

Here are photos of a few meals we ordered:

Chicken Biyrani on a squash and cauliflower rice pilaf with cucumber yogurt sauce:

Grilled steak on seasoned brown rice with chimichurri sauce:

Italian Sausage and Kale Stew (with gluten free noodles. More like a casserole):

Pluses: The meals are very filling and the ingredients taste fresh. The meat tastes of high quality and there is an abundance of it. For example, the turkey in one dish tasted like moist, fresh roasted turkey. The sauce/cheese garnishes included with each dish are a nice touch. These meals make prep and clean-up after work extremely easy and the takeout containers they come in are high quality enough to use again.

It’s easy to pause orders week by week (as long as you follow the Wednesday at midnight deadline) and the email customer service is responsive.

Possible limitations: If you are hoping for very authentic versions of certain international dishes, some may taste more inspired. We found the dishes needing salt and pepper, an easy fix. Dishes that we expected to be saucier or soupier were actually dryer. There weren’t vegetarian options on the weeks we ordered. These are meat-heavy dishes.

In conclusion, we’re glad we tried Origins meal delivery for a few weeks. For now, we have paused ordering. The three family-sized meals a week was too much food for us and we ended up freezing a couple for later. We’d consider ordering smaller portion sizes again, someday. There are also a couple other meal delivery services I’m interested in trying. If someone has the money to budget on this type of service and wants meat-filled, gluten-free, lower calorie meals, this could be a good option.