Cooking With Gousto – Or How I’m Dealing with Weekend Bingeing

One thing I’ve been trying to “fix” ever since I started this blog is my diet, and I can finally say I feel like I’m starting to be in a place where I’m mostly in control and feel that I eat well. I posted weekly food diaries back in 2013 and 2014, and I’m planning another one soon, but in the meantime I thought I’d post about a one of the ways I’m trying out to keep the weekend excesses at bay!

I’m pretty good at tracking my food Monday-Thursday. I use My Fitness Pal and I track my Carbs, Fat and Protein daily on a plan that gives me about 1800 calories a day whilst trying to lose the few pounds I put on while on holiday, but weekends are a perpetual battle zone for me. I’m not prepared to give up all the things I enjoy in life, and a busy social life and lack of time means I frequently end up ordering takeaways I don’t really need or eating ready meals picked up on impulse.

It’s nice to feel like you have a bit of treat at the weekend, so when a friend of mine posted a discount code for Gousto I decided to give it a go. (Code GEMMA81995 gets you £20 off your first box, and me £15 off my next one, there’s no obligation to get another box after your first, so it’s worth a try!)

Gousto are a recipe delivery service, and even at full price they’re cheaper than a takeaway. So I ordered a box containing 2 meals for 2 people, to be delivered on a Friday. The idea being that I don’t have to be imaginative with recipes and shop for complicated ingredients, but we can still have something feels like a treat at the weekend without reaching for the takeaway menu.

The meals on the website are all pre calorie counted, though they don’t all claim to be healthy, so you can pick your meals in advance and be as healthy or unhealthy as you chose, though even the unhealthy options are still made from scratch from fresh ingredients, so at least you know they’re not packed with sugar and salt!

My first week I chose herby pork steaks with mustard mash, and chicken burgers, which were promptly delivered on Friday in a cardboard box lined with ice packs and sheeps wool that will keep it fresh till midnight on delivery day if you’re not in.

All the ingredients are pre measured out, and each one comes with a little recipe card. The instructions were easy to follow, and the timings all worked out perfectly for both recipes, so there was no stress!

I was delighted that both meals turned out delicious, looked almost like they did on the cards and were decent sized portions. Although the meals were simple they had little touches like the herbs and spices that I would have ended up not using as I wouldn’t have had them in the cupboard that really added something to each dish, plus the convenience of just having everything there can’t be over stated!

I am hoping I have found the solution to those weekend binges! I am away the next couple of weekends, so will have to just rely on will power and planning, but I have kept my subscription live after my first discounted box and will keep trying it later on in the month as some of the recipes look delicious!

The first box cost me just £7.50 for 2 meals for 2 people as I had a £20 discount code. The full price for the box is £27.50, which works out cheaper than ordering takeaways at the weekend! Their website says that the cost is similar to buying at a Supermarket. I haven’t priced it up, but my feeling is that it would be cheaper to go to the Supermarket and buy the ingredients individually, however, I would then have more than I needed of some items, which I end up throwing away (which I hate) and the cost of lots of indvidual herbs and spices soon add up as well. The cost of a full price box doesn’t seem excessive seeing as it includes delivery, and the recipe cards that you can also keep for later, should you want to try buying the ingredients and making it yourself!

If you fancy giving Gousto a go then you can use discount code GEMMA81995 to get your £20 off, like I did when I first tried it! That code will also earn me an extra £15 off my next box if you use it, which I would be delighted with!

Let me know how you get on!

Note: This is NOT a sponsored post, I paid for my box myself and all opinions, as ever, are my own!