e-mealz Review

I recently tried out e-mealz.com. This is a website that sells weekly meal plans for the main meal of the day. You can choose meal plans that use ingredients from a specific store or according to your dietary needs. I really liked the variety of meal plans that they offered, and that is what made me decide to choose e-mealz originally. The Dave Ramsey endorsement had plenty of sway in convincing my husband it was a good idea to try it also! Basically, you pay $5/month (although you have to pay for three months at a time) and you get a dinner meal plan that includes seven meals for each week. A shopping list is also included.

I really, really liked that the menu and recipes were all on one sheet of paper. The recipes were all fairly easy and the recipe for each meal was included on the same sheet as the menu. It was nice to not have to search here and there for a recipe or flip through several pages -- it was all neatly posted on my refrigerator. I was also very pleased with the numbering system on the grocery list which made it very easy to find the ingredients for a specific meal if I decided to eliminate or double it.

I didn't like that I had to log into the website each week to access my menu. It would be nice if the PDF could be emailed to me each week. I also found that the grocery list made my shopping take longer because of its small font and organization. Although the setup of the shopping list made sense to me before shopping, I found that I could shop easier if I copied it off onto my own list. And sadly, I was disappointed in the cost of the meals. I must make a disclaimer that I am a very frugal shopper and meal planner, and that is perhaps why these meals were too expensive for me. The website (as well as each shopping list) does include approximate prices for each week, if you want to know if it will fit in your budget. I would have liked to see the recipes a little more season appropriate also. For me, I can't imagine using my oven in July to slow cook chicken for 6-8 hours; I try to limit oven use during the hot summers! Additionally, a trial period or the option of paying one month at a time would have been better for us, since I had to pay for the whole three months even though I found it wouldn't work for us after a couple weeks.

I can't give e-mealz a bad review, because I think that it would work well for many people. If you are not in the habit of making a regular meal plan, I think it could help to get you into that habit. However, if you are accustomed to preparing your meals rather inexpensively it might not be a great help to you. If they only had a trial period, I would recommend that everyone give it a try!