Personal Chef To Go

I have been looking into meal delivery plans in my never ending quest to lose weight. I read up on Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, Ediets (Deliciously Yours), Bistro MD (same as the Biggest Loser meal service), Personal Chef To Go, and some others. I had previously tried Diet to Go since I could pick up the food, but the food was hit or miss so I wanted to try something else.

I decided on Personal Chef To Go because the food is made fresh and shipped in a cooler. Nothing comes frozen or freeze dried so I thought the freshness and lack of preservatives would make it taste better than the others. Unlike other plans, it is not meant to be a "diet" program, but all the meals are low in calories, high in fiber, good carbs and protein and low in refined sugars. I ordered the "Busy Singles" plan which included 5 dinners and 3 lunches for a total of about $112, including tax and shipping. This works out to about $14 per meal, which seemed expensive, but worth it if the food is good. The food arrived on a Friday, but I did not plan on eating any of it until Monday since I wanted it for lunch at work and easy dinners after work.

I brought the 3 lunches with me to work on Monday. I ended up going out to lunch (had just soup and bread), but got out one of the salads in the late afternoon to eat as a snack. The salads were supposed to last until Wednesday, but all the lettuce was already turning brown. I decided on the teriyaki salmon salad with garlic soy ginger dressing. It was a large piece of salmon, lettuce, grape tomatoes, red bell peppers and the dressing. There was something weird about eating a big piece of cold fish you know was cooked many days prior. I had a hard time getting thru the fish and didn't eat much of it so I decided to focus on the salad part while pretending the lettuce wasn't brown. The dressing was just way way way too strong in flavor. I ended up throwing most of this away and I never even looked at the other salads except to throw them away. Monday night I was excited to try one of the dinners. I couldn't decide between the jambalaya with chicken, shrimp and chicken sausage or the crab cakes. I went with the jambalaya since I was pretty hungry and it looked like more food. It started out ok. Rice was fine, but reminded me of a frozen meal. Then the odd flavor hit me..maybe cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice? It got worse as the meal went on because this flavor built up in my mouth and I couldn't stand it anymore...and the chicken was weird. Way too much seasoning in this meal. I had to eat something else after to try to get the taste out of my mouth. Tuesday night I really didn't want to eat any of these meals, but felt I needed to give it one more try since I spent the money. I made the crab cakes which came with a side of green beans and carrots. Minky, my meat loving cat, got excited as soon as I took the package out of the fridge, so I thought this might be good. I first gave Minky a little bit before I tried it and he approved. The first few bites I had were good, but then that same spice hit me. Do they use it in everything??? I managed to eat the entire meal, but the spice built up my mouth again to the point where I decided I couldn't eat anymore of these meals. I left them in the fridge until Sunday when it was time to take the trash out to the curb.