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Good heavens, I couldn't believe how many pre-packaged food companies there are out there. It would take me a month of Sundays to go through them all.

Just curious if anyone has tried a company, and how well did you like the food? Hubby needs low-sodium so TV dinners are out of the question as their sodium levels are through the roof.

By the way, I hate to cook, and any recipe that has more than 3 ingredients has me running screaming into the night :)

ff, hubby hates onions or garlic? In my family he would have the corner cut off his Italian card 😵‍💫

You got my attention with German "spaghetti sauce"... what's in it?
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FF. Laughingly, I still have the original recipe booklet that came with the first crockpot I'd gotten in 1980! Honest to God! You should see it, it's all stained and torn up, a real mess. There are 2 recipes I use in there to this day though, Chicken Cacciatore and Manhattan Clam Chowder. The inner crock is still very heavy, even in the new model I have. They do make easy, simple recipe books for crockpots these days. For example....

Mexican shredded chicken for tacos :

3 lbs boneless skinless thighs
1 large jug Pace Picante sauce.

Mix together sauce and chicken.

Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours.

Pull apart and serve with tortillas and toppings of your choice.

See what I mean? 🤣😂😁
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Yes, igloo, thanks, Factory, I've had and they are good. Was making me so annoyed, because I couldn't remember the name!
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FF, if you want meal delivery and don’t need really truly frozen, FACTOR is the full meal refrigerated products division of Hello! fresh. (Hello does the ingredients driven cook your own meal kits). Some meals you could freeze but many come with extras in their own packaging so that you would have to remove the extras and the place the now opened meal on its own freezer grade ziploc. Fwiw this company loves green beans…

For more speciality ingredients full meals delivered, perhaps see if UNITY aka COOKUNITY does delivery in your area. They don’t do near the advertising of the all those others out there. It is a local chefs driven menu concept done nationwide. The meals are local chefs recipes done in a commissary or ghost kitchen. So the ingredients are local resourced. Delivery texts you as to delivery schedule too. They do dietary restrictions meals. Choices are really good and most could be frozen if need be. As an aside, Unity are pretty green / sustainable for their packaging and delivery comes in an insulated foldable tote bag with a fit to fill the bag base frozen cooling brick and then the top has bubble with smaller frozen cooling bags atop it. I mention this bc a lot of the others do their delivery / shipping in styrofoam boxes and the cooling packs seemed to be way less than optimal.

Home Chef and Blue Apron were dreadful. Our son & his gf have run through all of these and couple others. When they come to visit, they bring over whatever still in the frig so it isn’t wasted. That’s how I got to sample these.

I cook but if I was out of commission and hubs had to take care of meals, and not need to use UNITY for a delivered meals service, I would go with Trader Joe’s frozen items, like pick a dz then times 2 and Trder Joes packaged in a clamshell salads (not bagged mixed salads). The baby green with blue cheese crumbles, pecans, cranberries with vinaigrette dressing is the bomb! TJs portions imo are really perfect for a couple.
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Thanks everyone for your suggestions, I've booked marked the links so I can study them later. Lealonnie1, thanks for the link for the review. Geaton777, I quickly checked the menu for MagicKitchen and it looks really good, and if one's Italian Aunts like it, that good enough for me. Hubby is 100% Italian (parents came from Italy), yet he hates onions and garlic. Use to kid him that he must have been adopted or was frighten by an onion as a child :)


I found cooking way too stressful for me. After standing at the kitchen counter trying to prepare something, my back starts to complain, then I can't enjoy my meal. I do make a really good "German" spaghetti sauce but only if hubby helps, that I freeze for later.


lealonnie1, oh how I wished I had kept my old crockpot recipe book from 40 years ago. It came with the old crockpot, remember how heavy those inner bowls were? Needed a crane. The newer recipe books I had bought are too complex for my food-recipe-challenged mind :P


AlvaDeer and cwillie, we have Whole Foods here, and numerous chain grocery stores that sell ready made meals, but the sodium level is still too high. Was surprised at the sodium level for Whole Foods.
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I was looking over the meals that Geaton recommended and it occurred to me that they really would be super easy to replicate at home and they would cost a whole lot less. I get that you don't want to cook but recreating those kinds of meals isn't really cooking - the veggies are nothing more than what you can pick up by the bag or box from your grocery freezer section, and the protein sections include things which are also readily available, like battered fish. Our biggest grocery chain has many "blue menu" labels which are lower sodium and fat, including things like lasagna and other frozen meals.
If you and he are willing to eat the kind of meals that come pre-made on a tray then the expectation shouldn't be that you must churn out fine dining full course meals KWIM?
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I am BIG on Trader Joe. I love the bagged frozen like Fettucine Alfredo and Gorgozola gnocchi, and on and on and I. I ever like the small box of lasagna which feeds me three days. Love their prepared salads. Make a pizza with their dough once a week, roll it out and load with olives, mushrooms and capers. Just a Trader Joe far BIG TIME. And they are so much less expensive for everything--eggs, cream, butter, bread, etc. They make a great fried rice I often soup up with extra veggies. My head is in their freezer section long enough for my chin hairs to grow ice!
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I have ordered from here in the past:

https://www.magickitchen.com/frozenmeals.html

My picky Italian Aunts liked it, and you don't need a subscription. I haven't ordered in a while only because now my cousin cooks for the remaining Aunt. The meals were easy to microwave and offered a good variety. They offer menus for all sorts of dietary needs.
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Freq, there is some really good ones out there , I'm actually not sure the brands sorry. If I remember I'll let you know, but they make them much better than they use to. Which is really good meals for people that are only cooking for one or two, my hubby, is 6"5 and often only eats one meal a day. Strange farmer type of eater, I don't understand, so they are not enough to fill him up.
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https://comparemealdelivery.com/frozen?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&tid=&agid=&cid=20912030522&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwm5e5BhCWARIsANwm06hUAU7aLZ762fTxdw_djjQ_1_oy0sWyy5t8oLQeLyp8_PTRhUcrXq4aAm00EALw_wcB

Above is a list of the delivery companies that provide frozen meals, and their reviews. I haven't tried any myself, but Blue Apron caters to specific food requirements.

I use the crockpot a lot because it's foolproof. Add the ingredients in the morning and dinner is cooked in the evening. The last thing I made was Minestrone soup, meatless, with low sodium chicken broth. Great for someone like you who dislikes cooking and needs low salt. Much less expensive than pre made delivery services too.
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