Life

5 Days. 5 Different Meals. 2 Satisfied Kids.

A daily food diary.

by Eric Alt
Updated: 
Originally Published: 
Five different meals for kids placed on various white platforms

I had Daily Harvest all wrong. When I first heard the name, I immediately pictured a meal kit filled with tiny containers of just the right amount of breadcrumbs, creme fraiche, and some insane vinegar made from a citrus fruit only grown in remote regions of Sulawesi. I pictured myself, sleeves rolled up, dealing with ingredients spread out across my counter, propped recipe card, and oven timer going. I pictured good food, but also too much work.

But Daily Harvest isn’t here to make you make food. It’s here to make sure you have great food handy whenever you want it. It’s actually that simple.

The folks at Daily Harvest describe their offering as a sort of “anti-meal kit.” While it’s a romantic idea to cook for 35-40 minutes at the end of a long day and sitting down in an idyllic family meal, that’s just not a reality for most of us.

In reality, Daily Harvest is here to provide food that’s actually good, and good for you — to replace the frozen pizzas or overly processed and high-sodium frozen dinners in your freezer. Daily Harvest freezes fruits and vegetables right on the farm (within 24 hours of harvesting), preserving freshness and reducing waste – ensuring there are no cartons of fresh fruit in your fridge just waiting to spout fur.

Daily Harvest now works with over 400 farms which have been vetted for such things as organic and regenerative farming practices, as well as supply chain sustainability. While the intentions are good and the process certainly innovative, it all comes down to taste. If you’re going to try to usurp the frozen pizza, you best not miss. I received a box of Daily Harvest featuring an array of items from lunch bowls to smoothies to snacks, and dug in to see if convenience and health-consciousness could finally get together.

DAY ONE

The box arrived and I unloaded the items into the freezer, I was excited to see that all the packaging was actually compostable. I pulled out a small container that had the look and feel of a pint of full-fat, sugary ice cream, and my two kids (ages 11 and 9) quickly snatched one up and then recoiled in horror.

The container said it housed “Ooey, Gooey, Midnight Fudge” Scoops but there was a huge slice of avocado pictured on the front and, well, to my children such things had no place anywhere near ice cream.

Since we had already had dinner, we decided to start our Daily Harvest adventure with the two “Scoops” varieties: The aforementioned fudge, and one called “Rich, Rippled Berry Compote.”

Both were delicious. The Fudge option had a nice creamy texture, and my son admitted he liked it, but warned, “Just don’t ever tell me what’s in it.”

While my kids preferred the chocolate variety (truth be told, they prefer chocolate ice cream in all circumstances), my wife and I liked the Berry Compote. It had a nice texture and a stronger coconut flavor than the chocolate (which also had coconut), and didn’t feel heavy like a brick in your stomach like some ice cream can.

DAY TWO

We started our first full day with one of the Mango + Papaya smoothies. You pour the cup into a blender with your liquid of choice (we opted for almond milk) and whip it up. Although ours came out nice and thick – almost but not quite too thick for a straw – it’s clear that you can easily adjust the liquid to find your ideal texture.

The smoothie was delicious and tasted like fresh fruit. If commuting ever becomes a thing again, I can absolutely see whipping one of these up into a to-go cup and taking it on the train.

Later that evening, with dinner, we heated up Daily Harvest’s Artichoke + Spinach and a Kabocha + Sage Flatbread — a great clean, no-junk alternative to the 30-ingredient-vegan frozen pizza varieties.

As easy to make as a frozen pizza, they came out of the oven with a good consistency – flatbread (especially frozen) can often have the consistency of a Saltine, but these veggie-based breads were tender and crisp without being crumbly and dry (also, Daily Harvest leaves out the fillers, preservatives, and partially-hydrogenated oils). The most striking thing was the unique flavor.

My wife and I spent 11 years as vegetarians, and during that time we experimented with a lot of alternatives to “regular” convenient food items, like tofu hot dogs or eggless frozen breakfast burritos. As anyone who has also eaten some of these can attest, they often have what I can only describe as “health food store aftertaste.” It’s hard to describe, but the best I can do is say that it tastes like a health food store smells.

Both the flatbreads tasted distinct, and flavorful in a way that was genuinely surprising. The Kabocha (which, I looked up, is a type of Asian squash) was particularly good, its subtle sweetness mixing well with the fennel.

They were surprisingly satisfying, delicious, and no more difficult than a frozen pizza.

DAY THREE

For lunch, I opted for one of the bowls – the “Broccoli + Cheeze” (yes, with a ‘z’). The directions suggest either stovetop or microwave, but it leaves some room for your own touches. You can opt to heat the bowl up with water or you can substitute veggie (or even beef or chicken) stock if you felt like it.

I heated the bowl with just a little veggie stock, which made it a little thicker – more of a stew consistency than a soup. Again, the mix of broccoli, cauliflower, sweet potato, and tomato was full of flavor. I particularly liked the sunflower seeds, which gave it a nice texture and made the whole thing feel more filling.

Later, we had the “Tart Cherry + Raspberry” smoothie that really tasted like we had stuffed a blender with fresh fruit – kind of like how you can tell fresh squeezed Orange Juice from bottled instantly.

DAY FOUR

For breakfast, my wife and I shared the Mulberry + Dragonfruit oat bowl. The best part of this – in addition to tasting great – was that we were able to “prepare” the bowl the night before by adding some milk, then letting it chill in the fridge. It was great cold, and I could see this becoming a great oatmeal alternative in the warmer summer months.

For lunch, I heated up the “Sweet Potato + Wild Rich Hash” Harvest Bowl that was good, but I would highly recommend doing what I did and being generous with some hot sauce. I can see this being great with some leftover rotisserie chicken or something mixed in, but on its own, it was filling without feeling like a burrito bowl bomb.

DAY FIVE

Getting down to the end of the box, I started the day with the “Mint + Cacao” Smoothie, which is made with bananas, spinach, cacao, cashews, peppermint, and chorella (a vitamin-rich algae). To say it felt way more decadent than it did healthy is an understatement, and this may be one of the best stealth health foods I’ve had in a long time.

Learning my lesson from the Scoops, I had my kids try it without telling them what was in it. I may have even just said, “Try some of this chocolate mint milkshake” because, as a parent, I am also a liar. Good lies only, of course.

Later, I treated myself to one of the “Cacao Nib + Vanilla Bites” – basically a small snack that resembles a piece of frozen cookie dough. It tasted not unlike a ball of frozen cookie dough – in other words, delicious.

Daily Harvests’ mission is to make clean, nourishing food not only accessible but also realistic for the go go go world of parents. And I can see these “Bites” easily replacing sugary fruit bars or even cookies as a later afternoon snack. They are surprisingly hefty, though, so I don’t recommend eating more than one at a time.

And with that, my Daily Harvest experiment came to an end. A lot of the problem with eating healthy is that you have to work for it. You either need to find your own ingredients and make things yourself, find a meal kit that has good ingredients, and then…make it yourself, or you have to choke down bland, cardboard frozen “health food.” I found Daily Harvest to be easy, flavorful and fulfilling…even if my children now eye every carton of ice cream with suspicion lest they try and Trojan Horse in avocados or Dragonfruit.

Get $25 off your first Daily Harvest box with code FATHERLY.

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