Trying HelloFresh Again

Last September 2020, I wrote a post on why HelloFresh doesn't work for my household. This week we gave HelloFresh another shot because I'm on a "diet," and HelloFresh provides nutritional information that helps manage my food intake.

I address each counterpoint below.

1. Hack to make HelloFresh feel less expensive

This time I ordered 3 meals per week for 2 persons. I still think it's expensive, but I found a hack that will make it more tolerable. The serving portion and calories for each meal are big (when you're on a diet), so I divide each meal into four instead of dividing each meal into the recommended two. We eat half for dinner, and the rest I put in the fridge for lunch the following day. This technique allows me to stay under my calorie intake, making spending for HelloFresh more acceptable. 

It solves both lunch and dinner! If you're working from home and have to think about meals and household chores between calls with customers, it's quite stressful and overwhelming, so solving both lunch and dinner definitely helps.

3 meals for 2 people

Price per serving: $11.49

Shipping: $9.99

Total Price: $78.93

When you sign up using this link, you will get $90 off.

2, 3, and 4. Choose better recipes

In the previous post, I said it's too much effort. However, I realized that if I choose dishes that don't need many utensils, the effort is not too bad. Plus, hubby helps with cutting the vegetables and our way to bond in the kitchen.

The recipes we chose this week were delicious. Better than the experience a year ago, so I am excited to try more dishes.

Cantonese-style Noodles with Beyond Meat
I love the sauce and the crunchy vegetables. It's delicious!

Not Nonna's Chicken Cacciatore with Cavatappi and Basil
My favourite part of the dish is the chicken!

Summer Turkey Bolognese
My least favourite of all the three dishes this week.

5. Packaging

They have improved packaging a lot. For some reason, it felt like there's less waste this time around. Or I just chose recipes that don't have a lot of plastic.

I will continue using HelloFresh, but I need to balance using it and our weekly grocery run. Also, I have a small fridge and don't have an oven, so managing my limited space is always a concern.

Lunch at Viet Flavour Restaurant

One of our after-work entertainment is watching Mikey Chen and Strictly Dumplings on YouTube. In the most recent video we watched, he enjoyed a bowl of pho and other Vietnamese dishes. Thus, we decided to go to the closest Vietnamese restaurant to our place: Viet Flavour Restaurant.

We used to have Express Pho a couple blocks away, but it has closed down to give way for the new sky train station.

Today, we ordered two main dishes, an appetizer, and a dessert.

Pho Dac Biet
Special beef noodle soup (pho) with rare beef, brisket, beef balls, and tripe

Delicious!

It's so delicious I want to cry. I tried adding Sriracha to see its flavour, and I am not a fan of adding it to my pho. It adds heat, but that's about it. I love my pho bowl as is.

Com Suon, Cha, Cha Gio
Grilled lemongrass pork, chicken, and spring roll on rice

This is hubby's order. Of course, I would order my favourite beef stew if he ordered pho, but that's just a good reason to come back.

Cha Gio
Vietnamese deep-fried pork spring rolls

It's hard to go wrong with spring rolls. It's crunchy outside and porky inside.

Kem chuoi Chien
Ice cream fried banana

The dessert is like our turon from the Philippines, but without the sugar coating on the spring roll wrapper.

Overall, Viet Flavour Restaurant is a great source of Vietnamese food. I'll come back to try their Vietnamese beef stew.

The Brownie Bakers at Thank Granville It's Food trucks (TGIF)

The South Granville Business Improvement Association (SGBIA) organized Thank Granville It's Food Trucks (TGIF). Every Friday and Saturday from 11 in the morning until 8 in the evening from June through Labour Day, there will be a rotating lineup of food trucks located along West 10th Avenue at Fir Street in front of the Vancouver School Board building.

Trying to catch a food truck is always a challenge. We went to TGIF today in hopes of enjoying dinner from The Jerk Shack. Unfortunately, when we got there at 6:30 PM, they're already gone. That said, we saw The Brownie Bakers. Thankfully, they have more brownie flavours still available, so I ordered one of each available flavour.

Three different brownie flavours from The Brownie Bakers

I mentioned in my previous, and I will reiterate that their brownie is fudgier (cake-like?) and quite different from brownies from stores. I should bring some for my youngest sister since she bakes brownies just to see what she thinks.

Plain Chocolate Brownie

We can only eat two bronies tonight, so as suggested by the nice lady selling at The Brownie Bakers, we placed our Plain Chocolate Brownie in the fridge. I can't wait to put it in the microwave tomorrow.

Classic Toasted Walnuts Brownie

I love desserts with varying textures - fudgy browny and chewy walnuts are a good combination.

Oreo Brownie

My favourite so far from The Brownie Bakers is surprisingly the Oreo. It's slightly better than the Classic because some Oreo cookies are still crunchy while others are creamy. Every bite has a different texture. It's so exciting to eat.

TGIF is almost over, and I'll miss the food trucks, but I can't wait to slowly eat my way around South Granville and along West Broadway.

Lunch from Kulinarya Filipino Eatery

Today is my third time ordering from Kulinarya Filipino Eatery, and we have enjoyed all their dishes so far. Today we ordered three dishes and two desserts.

Lunch delivery from Kulinarya Filipino Eatery

For lunch, we enjoyed the fried Daing na Bangus and Kaldereta. Then, we'll have the Batil Patong in the next couple of days. For desserts, we ordered Ube (purple yam) Brownie and Cassava Cake.

Batil Patong
Menu Description: From Roy's hometown, Tuguegarao. Stir fry egg noodles, pork belly, egg, cabbage, carrot, bean sprouts, and ground beef

It is the reason I love trying new dishes. Batil Patong is so delicious, and I hadn't heard of it before hubby pointed it out in the Kulinarya Filipino Eatery menu. It's saucy, and as you can see from the picture, the serving is tremendous - definitely good for sharing.

Daing na Bangus
Boneless milkfish with tomato and onion Ensalada

The Ensalada is so delicious, and of course, boneless milkfish is my favourite fish from the Philippines.

Beef Kaldereta
Hearty beef stew in a tomato-based sauce with potatoes and vegetables

The Beef Kaldereta is spicy and delicious, but the serving size is the smallest among all the things we have ordered from Kulinarya Filipino Eatery. But what it lacks in serving size, it makes up in flavour.

Ube Brownie
Purple yam brownie

Hubby and I can't decide if we liked it or not. It does have a nice ube flavour, and it's not overly sweet, but it feels more like a pudding than a brownie, and I think they should serve it with ube ice cream.

Cassava Cake
Pudding made of freshly grated cassava, egg, coco milk, and sugar

I enjoyed the cassava cake. The top has the texture of egg pie, while the cake itself is moist. The inside is filled with cassava. It's delicious. At this point, we have tried four out of the five desserts that Kulinarya has to offer. I'll wait for Leche Flan to be at DoorDash, and we'll order that next.

I also can't wait to visit them in person.

Food Daddy Persian Cuisine at Thank Granville It's Food trucks (TGIF)

The South Granville Business Improvement Association (SGBIA) organized Thank Granville It's Food Trucks (TGIF). Every Friday and Saturday from 11 in the morning until 8 in the evening from June through Labour Day, there will be a rotating lineup of food trucks located along West 10th Avenue at Fir Street in front of the Vancouver School Board building.

Happy Saturday! I am going to let you in on a little secret. I started dieting again, and do you have any idea how hard it is to diet when you love good, delicious food? That's why the number of posts has slowed down this August because preparing meals at home would allow me to control portions and ingredients.

That said, it's my goal to try as many food trucks as I could that's part of TGIF. Yesterday, they announced on Instagram that a new food truck is going to be participating today. Hence, we had lunch from Food Daddy Persian Cuisine.

Food Daddy Persian Cuisine

We ordered Food Daddy Plate, which means we get to try all meat on top of fluffy, soft, perfectly cooked rice and a Falafel Plate.

Food Daddy Plate

Hubby and I shared the Food Daddy Plate. The portions are perfect for sharing. If I wasn't on a diet, I would eat the Food Daddy Plate all by myself, even though there's a lot of it. 😂 I highly recommend the beef out of all the three meat, but they're all delicious.

Falafel Plate

The Falafel is a bit dry but perfect with rice. I weighed everything, and the most surprising thing is there's half a kilogram of white rice in the Food Daddy Plate. It's essentially close to two cups of rice, and on a normal day, we only eat a half cup of rice.

Overall, the food is delicious.

We went to TGIF last night too, but it was at 7:00 PM, and Cazba already left. 😞 Oh well, it was good for the diet, though, since we end up having oatmeal and banana for dinner instead.

Dinner with former colleagues at The Wicklow

It's been 2 years, 5 months, and 5 days since I last saw my former colleagues in the office because we started working from home at the start of the pandemic. We had dinner today because one of them is also leaving the company.

As an immigrant, my first friends in Canada are my former colleagues turned friends and I couldn't be happier to see them again after more than two years and catch up.

For dinner, I had my absolute favourite from The Wicklow Pub: Yorkshire Pudding Bowl. It's so delicious. I am already planning on when to come back with hubby to try their other items.

Yorkshire Pudding Bowl
Certified roast angus beef, house gravy, garlic mash potatoes, and horseradish aioli

Before dinner view at around 5:30 PM

After dinner view of the sunset at around 8:30 PM

I can't wait to plan a reunion with them around Christmas time.

Lunch at Japadog

Happy Saturday! Hubby and I went shopping today at McArthurGlen Designer Outlet Vancouver Airport, then for lunch, we decided to enjoy a meal at Japadog.

We ordered two Japadog.

Ebi Tempura

Shrimp tempura, seasoned rice, and seaweed

It's so unusual to see rice between hotdog buns. The only reason we ordered this is because we're going through their menu and this is the next one on the list.

Love Meat Japadog

Arabiki pork, torched cheese, special meat sauce (beef) 

The Love Meat Japadog is perfect for those who wants a more familiar American hotdog. It's not as "out of this world" like other flavours.

Plain Takoyaki
Japanese octopus dumplings

Butter & Shoyu (Soy Sauce) Shaked Fries

The takoyaki and fries is pretty standard. If you crave for takoyaki or fries, this will hit the spot.

Omatcha Parfait

We ended our delicious meal with Omatcha Parfait. It has green tea ice cream, red beans paste, Japanese mochi, corn flakes, vanilla ice cream, and Japanese matcha jelly. It's perfect after walking around the outlet mall during a hot summer day, just like today.

For future me, here's a list of Japadog based on the menu in the McArthurGlen location with a link to which ones you've tried.

1. Kurobuta Terimayo
2. Okonomi
3. Oroshi
4. Love Meat (today)
5. Spicy Cheese Terimayo
6. Yakisoba
7. Ebi Tempura (today)
8. Tonkatsu
9. Hot Spicy
10. Yakiniku Rice
11. Croquiette
12. Karaage
13. Wagyu Terimayo
14. Avocado
15. Cilantro

• Goma Miso Turkey Hotdog (not in the McArthurGlen menu)

Lunch at RedBeef Noodle Kitchen

Once a quarter, hubby and I do a Costco grocery run with my parent's membership card. We usually buy hand soap, paper towels, toilet paper, tissue boxes, detergents, and other things that usually don't expire quickly.

After the trip, we treat them to lunch as our way of saying thank you. My dad loves Redbeef Noodle Kitchen, and we do too. So hence, we had lunch here today.

Redbeef is my second favourite restaurant in Vancouver, right after Suika. I also have a dish that I consistently order: Chicken Cutlet Rice and Salt & Pepper Popcorn Chicken. 

Steamed Pork Soup Dumplings

I prefer the ones from Lin Chinese Cuisine in West Broadway.

Fried Spareribs with Rice

Well-seasoned and tender. I enjoyed the pieces hubby shared with me.

Malay Sponge Cake - if you want not sweet and extremely soft sponge cake, this is it!

Chicken Cutlet Rice

Salt & Pepper Popcorn Chicken

I will always get the chicken cutlet rice and salt & pepper popcorn chicken - so good! Happy Saturday!