PlateJoy (2022)

ExistingFish

First I did try the search and the most recent post was a year ago, so I'm making a new one.

Has anyone used PlateJoy? I'm on a free trail.

I decided to cut out dairy for my skin/digestion and see if it makes a difference. So I told it to avoid dairy and added sugar.

It's my first week of meals, I'm overwhelmed and it's a lot of work. My "15 minute prep" lunch today took 45 minutes to prep. My 10 minute breakfast took 15+, so the time estimates are a little off or I'm just a really bad cook.

Without dairy or added sugar there are a lot of fruits and veg, like we could barely fit the food in the fridge.

The portion sizes are high for my kids, I have me AND my kids all set on the smallest portion size (5yr or petite woman [or woman cutting calories]) and it suggests chicken salad with 0.25lbs of cooked chicken for a 4 year old! I initially had it set for "6-12 year old" for the kids but the portion sizes were giagantic. I may just have to leave the youngest off the "plan" and divide the other two kids portions into 3.

Thoughts?

ExistingFish

We've now done our first full day of meals!

A few things bugged me - 3 english muffins "make 4 servings". 3 rice cakes "makes 4 servings".

THAT SAID - the food was good. The recipes were not complicated.

I've already tried things I've never tried before - like sauteing green beans. That was certainly different.

ExistingFish

So second day - the breakfast wasn't as big of a hit. My kids love apples but somehow dislike pears. they were delicious!

Lunch was another chicken salad - the kids did not like as good, neither did I.

Dinner was steak with roasted potatos and broccoli. I was supposed to eat half the steak today and half another day... I ate it all today. I had no idea NY strip steak was so high calorie compared to sirloin. It was good but I'd rather enjoy more steak.

The kids did not like the roasted broccoli, but the potatoes were good.

I think I need some kind of food chopper if I'm going to keep this up.

ExistingFish

I'm going to cancel after the free trial.

The recipies are more complicated than I'd like, and the kids don't appreciate the change. I do - and I'll carry that into my eating in the future.

If it were just me and my husband I'd probably keep using it, but with the kids - not worth it.

Toviathan

So my husband and I have been using it for a few weeks now and I think it works so well for us because it's just us, no kids. We have to play with some portions in the recipes. It always wants to make waaaayyyyy too much of sauces. But the way we made it work is to select 3 batch meals and we just eat off of that all week. So we spend like 3-4 hours cooking on Saturdays and then we don't need to cook during the week. It's the only thing that works for us since we get too tempted to eat out during the week since we both hate to cook after a long day.

I don't think we'll keep it after the year we paid for, but it helped us think about different ways to meal plan and implement that, so it was worth it for that.