allplants-review.mp3

Chances are you’ve heard of allplants, but if not, they sell frozen vegan ready meals prepared with fresh ingredients by chefs and the best part is, you can enjoy them from the comfort of your own home because they’re delivered straight to your door!

Now you might be thinking, aren’t you all about cooking?

Yes, I do like to prepare freshly cooked meals – but there’s often a day for one reason or another my wife and I don’t have something to eat.

In which case we’d likely reach for a takeaway or throw something together that really doesn’t constitute a meal.

If a day comes when we don’t feel like cooking, we know we have something both tasty and healthy stashed away in the freezer.

And with my wife going back to work after maternity leave, we thought it would be the perfect time to give them a try and share our allplants review with you.

When it comes to buying something new I’ll always see what the company’s commitment is to the planet.

And with allplants you don’t have to look far before you find out where they stand.

allplants entire ethos revolves around the planet, they:

These vegan ready meals are not only easy and tasty, but they’re also planet-friendly!

If you’re after a more detailed look, make sure to check out the allplants 2022 impact report.

We have publicly committed to Net Zero by 2030 with over 500 other B Corps and as part of the Tech Zero taskforce. Decarbonising our economy is a focus of allplants.

allplants ready meal unboxing – Stryve

As I mentioned above, allplants meals are frozen, so that might have you thinking that they only sell meals for dinner and lunch.

But in fact, they also sell sides, breakfast, treats and smoothies – all plant-based.

So with that information to hand, you have 2 options – you can pick the exact dishes you’d like to try or you could choose one of allplants bundles – which might all be mains or a combination of mains, breakfasts, treats and smoothies.

Also, there’s a lot to choose from, and with a menu of 100+ vegan dishes, you shouldn’t get bored of their meals quickly.

Sometimes plant-based ready meals may not hit the spot when it comes to taste – but not allplants!

It took a little while to decide, but for my first order I decided to go with:

Miso roasted tofu, coconut and edamame smash, with power grains, sweet chilli broccoli, sesame cabbage, and a pea and edamame medley.

Buttery bechamel, lightly steamed spinach and caramelised leeks are generously layered with a creamy almond ricotta in this rich and more-ish lasagne.

So good they named it twice. Peri peri sauce coats roasted tempeh, garnished with a peri peri rub, served with spicy rice and a vibrant pea crush.

Fluffy potato gnocchi mixed through a cheesy sauce with baby spinach, leeks and broccoli, topped with a nutty garlic crumb.

Layers of roasted aubergine, courgette and lasagne, covered in a rich, sweet red pepper tomato sauce and a creamy garlic bechamel, topped with red pepper flakes and basil.

Honestly, every meal I had was tasty, there weren’t any that I felt like I wouldn’t happily eat again. Some maybe needed a little bit more salt (but that’s an easy addition).

I also found myself having one of these meals for lunch at the office, I cooked two meals the night prior – one for dinner and one to take to work, I simply reheated it in the microwave and it was still yummy.

One thing that really bugs me about ready meals is that they’re usually very unhealthy as a lot of them have high levels of salt, sugar and fat.

But with allplants, that’s not the case. All their meals are prepared from scratch, by chefs and nutritionists – working together to find the perfect balance between micro and macro nutrients all whilst using fresh ingredients!

And before a meal even lands on your doorstep you’re able to check out what ingredients it uses and its nutritional information – so if you’re after some high-protein vegan meals you don’t have to guess.

allplants recipe showing nutritional highlights

With allplants ready meals, you don’t have to worry about meals taking much longer than stated on the box.

Simply take a meal out of the freezer, remove its packaging and whack it into a preheated oven (or the microwave if you fancy).

Of the recipes I tried, they ranged from 35 minutes up to 55 minutes, but generally, the recipes fall around the 45-minute mark.

allplants recipe cooking time and instructions

Serving sizes will vary depending on what you’re buying, but here’s an idea of what to expect.

This is going to depend entirely on what you’re buying and how many servings each meal has. But to give you an idea, for a single-serving meal:

You also need to spend a minimum of £25 to place an order.

So you’ve figured out what you want to buy, and now you have the choice of a one-off order or a subscription.

I know what you’re thinking, not another subscription, but let’s take a little look at what a subscription offers you:

I’ll be honest with you, I have a bad taste in my mouth from some subscription services (cough no reminder email cough).

But so far allplants have been really good – I’ve not felt like they’re trying to use any dark patterns to trick me into buying another round of food.

Let’s take a minute to talk about deliveries because most of us have jobs and aren’t sat at home 24/7.

With allplants selling frozen ready meals, you might be worried about your delivery sitting on the doorstep whilst you’re out.

Well not to worry, each box comes with a liner inside and a dry icepack so your meals will stay frozen until 10 pm on delivery day.

So don’t worry – allplants home delivery makes a plant-based lifestyle much more accessible.

allplants review verdict – would I buy it again?

I have to say, I’m really impressed with allplants. The meals are not only super healthy but also really tasty (they’re not like a typical bland vegan ready meal). Plus, there’s so much variety to choose from.

As for the packaging, allplants have some killer branding but more importantly, it’s easy to recycle or reuse! The box is a guaranteed hit with small children and cats alike.

With a lot of these things, the price is usually the sticking point. But when compared to a takeaway (which is what we’d typically have instead), allplants work out to be much cheaper.

So the real question is, would I buy allplants again?

Definitely, I’ve already ordered a second round of food and I’ll no doubt be buying a third.

I’d say on average my wife and I have 1 allplants meal a week – shared between the 2 of us.

It’s a massive relief knowing we have a tasty, healthy plant-based meal stashed away in the freezer for those days we don’t feel like cooking or we don’t have the time.

Looking for something a little more hands-on? Check out my review for Grubby the plant-based recipe kit.

Enjoy tasty, whole-food plant-based ready meals delivered straight to your door and what’s best, you can enjoy weeks after buying them.

allplants frozen vegan ready meals review

allplants – frozen vegan ready meals that are good for people and planet

At the start of the month, I set myself a goal to develop a more consistent walking habit. This was for several reasons:

Before this, how often I walked fluctuated from week to week, but it’s something I enjoy doing so I figured it should be a relatively easy habit to develop.

There were a couple of things that made this easier for me:

Before covid, I’d regularly listen to audiobooks on my commute to work (I completed ~25 books between 2018 and 2020 which I wouldn’t have otherwise).

Since working from home from early 2020 (now self-employed), I haven’t been able to find a place in my schedule where listening to audiobooks works for me.

So I decided to try and stack my walking habit with listening to audiobooks.

I had the proof is in the plants on my radar from months prior so I grabbed a copy on Audible.

The proof is in the plants provides such a great overview of how a plant-based diet impacts our personal and planetary health. Simon also tackles the question of why there is so much conflicting information out there and uses science to back it up!

If you want to try listening to audiobooks, choose subjects you’re interested in, it could be;

Don’t choose a book you’ll end up hating, just because you think you should – this should work as an aid and not a deterrent.

The best time to walk is what works best for you. For me that is:

I’m more of a morning person and like to get out when things are quiet.

On top of this, it’s great to achieve something early in the day and not have to worry about it later.

Failing or in addition to a morning walk, next up would be lunchtime. Lunchtime walks have saved entire afternoons of work for me – as the break and fresh air helps to clear my head.

There’s also evidence that being out in nature helps to improve our mental health as mentioned in plant therapy.

Being surrounded by nature is both good for our mental and physical health. The evidence shows a clear link between being in nature and better sleep, reduced stress levels and much more.

A little incentive goes a long way, you can choose to either:

Loss aversion (preferring to not lose what you already have, instead of gaining something you don’t have), is a very strong motivator.

I decided to download the Treekly app – where they plant trees if you hit a certain step count (even on the free plan).

I chose to upgrade to the plus account, which meant I paid £3.99 a month, and for each day I did 5,000 steps they’d plant a tree.

Weather you stick with the free plan, or upgrade to the paid version – you can turn your steps into trees all whilst creating a healthy habit.

When we look at starting new habits (especially exercise related), there’s often a lot of equipment and gadgets you could buy, but I’d encourage you, to try and use what you have.

There will be exceptions to this, depending on your circumstances and what you’re doing, but you can often do a lot with what you already have.

And once it’s become a habit, you can then reward yourself with some of those things you know will really help you.

If I keep my walking habit come April, I’ll reward myself by upgrading my shoes to something like Vivo Barefoot shoes – designed to be more like our natural foot.

Vivo barefoot shoes aim to provide protection to your feet and then get out of the way so your feet can do what they’re meant to.

If you want to build better habits, like walking, consider changing some variables (depending on how new you are to it);

Don’t overextend yourself in the beginning, start small and work your way up. These principles can be used for developing any habit.

If you want to learn more about building habits and sticking to them, I’d recommend grabbing yourself a copy of Atomic Habits. James talks about habit stacking, the compound effects of habits and much more.

After starting my walking journey at the end of 2021, I thought it’d be good to update this post.

Surprisingly, everything I’ve discussed in this article still holds true, after almost 3 years of walking. I’ve:

So what helped make this walking habit stick?

Truthfully this will be different for everyone. 

But with everything, the most important thing above anything else is; turning it into a habit.

And the only way to create a habit is to do something consistently.

This will be harder in the beginning, but after time things will get easier.

What helps me show up almost every day is the way I feel after:

Although I don’t go for a walk to plant a tree (through Treekly), I can’t deny that my brain fires off a sense of accomplishment every day I take 5,000+ steps.

A few months after making my walking habit stick – I did in fact buy a pair of Vivobarefoot shoes (and never looked back).

So if you can, I’d highly recommend their shoes, you might go through an adjustment period, but being able to strengthen my feet through my walks has been great.

In 2023, I also started adding weighted walks to my routine.

This was a concept I came across in the book Outlive – where Dr Peter Attia talks about ways to improve your life as you age.

He talked about this concept of "rucking" – which originates from military training, where soldiers would walk with heavy gear to build strength and endurance.

It also acts as a time machine, showing you how walking will become more strenuous as you age.

All in all, I honestly can’t recommend developing a walking routine enough.

For something that doesn’t require a lot of physical effort, it packs a punch when it comes to mental and physical health.

How I used habit stacking, incentives and finding the right time to walk to build a consistent walking habit.

I built a consistent walking habit, here’s what helped

planthood-review.mp3

I love a good plant-based recipe kit, but finding the right one for you can be tricky.

You need to consider taste, how much work is involved, whether it’s healthy and most importantly how much does it cost?

The big selling point of Planthood compared to other recipe kits is time and effort.

They boast a mere 15 minutes to cook a meal – and I mean cook, not just warm something up in the microwave.

But how does Planthood make it possible to prepare a freshly cooked meal in just 15 minutes?

Simply, they do all the heavy lifting – by cooking sauces, preparing dressings and garnishes all from scratch so when it comes down to it, all you have to do is add it in while cooking.

I’ve tried my fair share of plant-based recipe kits and ready meals, and whilst Planthood isn’t perfect, they’ve found a happy middle ground – which I’ll cover in this review.

As always when picking out one of these recipe kits I like to know what they do to help the planet (besides selling plant-based meals).

And it’s good to see Planthood doing their part too, they:

This plant-based recipe kit doesn’t only taste good – they do good too.

If you’re after some more details, make sure to check out Planthood’s sustainability page.

We donate 1% of all our sales back to the planet and work closely with environmental charities to protect nature and boost biodiversity.

Planthood recipe kit unboxing – Stryve

Each week you can choose between 3 to 5 meals (from a choice of around 7). You’re also able to select whether these meals serve 2 or 4 people.

Your Planthood meal kit will be delivered on either a Monday or Thursday – which you can choose on the website and you’re able to change this from week to week.

If your circumstances change you can skip a week or change the delivery day.

Once your recipe kit arrives, you’ll find individual bags with the ingredients of each meal pre-measured to get started.

This is an easy one to answer, simply put – yes.

It’s hard to believe the meal is going to turn out so well, I really had my doubts whilst cooking a couple of them – especially as you’re only dealing with like 6-7 ingredients for the meal.

But it shows how much of the heavy lifting is done by the sauces and garnishes that are freshly prepared for you.

Planthood don’t just understand flavour, they also manage to get that perfect blend of textures in a meal, which simply elevates it to another level.

Creamy kimchi macaroni with roasted broccoli & garlic panko breadcrumbs

Tahini miso ramen with crispy chilli tempeh, pak choi & brown rice noodles

Crispy mushroom shawarma with garlic tahini sauce, pickled radish & fresh mint in soft flatbread

Picture this, you’ve finished a long day of work in the office – having survived only, on your carefully prepared meals for the day, you shoot off to fetch the kids from nursery, drag them home, and give them something to eat at which point it’s your turn to throw a meal together.

By now, you’re so ready to eat, and eat you shall.

Of course, this is what happens to me, but funnily enough, I must be a terrible judge when it comes to portion size as on multiple occasions whilst cooking one of Planthood’s meals I thought to myself – what am I going to eat after this to fill me up.

But to my surprise each time, I sat down to eat the meal, it’s a far more generous size than I first expected.

So to answer the question, are Planthood’s meals filling – yes. At least they are for me.

Time to see if Planthood lives up to its claim – do meals really only take 15 minutes to prepare, and are they as easy as they say?

Each time I entered the kitchen to cook one of the meals it ended up taking me longer than 15 minutes to cook… by like a meagre 5 minutes.

20 minutes though, to cook a tasty meal is a massive win in my eyes.

And to say they were easy to prepare is an understatement – I fully expected to be running around frying one thing, boiling another and so on, but that just wasn’t the case.

So up until now, everything sounds pretty great. But I’d argue this is the point where it falls down (just a teeny weeny bit).

There are a lot of different ingredients that go into making the delicious sauces and garnishes – but these largely all seem to be A-OK.

But to make recipes quick and easy something has to give. And that thing is a smaller variety of plants per meal.

What I mean by this, is that your meal might have 1-2 key vegetables in it and if more were to be added this would impact the simplicity of putting a meal together and how long it takes.

So that’s it – all things considered, these meals are still really good for you! Especially if the other meals throughout your day have various plants in them.

Planthood recipe instructions and nutrition

I’d say Planthood is on the pricier side (compared to some other recipe kits, but only slightly).

You’re ultimately paying for that convenience of being able to quickly and effortlessly throw a meal together that tastes great and is good for you.

Again pricing will depend on what you’re buying, but if you’re looking to buy meals that serve 2 people per meal you’re looking at £6.99 per serving:

And if you’re looking at getting meals that serve 4 people per meal, you’re looking at £5.95 per serving:

When you break it down by serving size, these meals are quite competitively priced.

If you’re someone who gets takeaway regularly throughout the week – Planthood is a great alternative, you’ll likely save some money and they’re better for you.

And if you’re a little bit more like me, Planthood can simply take the pressure off during the week!

Planthood verdict – would I buy it again?

Truthfully, to date I’ve only ordered a single box from them – but this shouldn’t reflect the offering of Planthood.

I think what Planthood are offering is fantastic and it’s great to see someone tackle the time/effort problem of recipe kits – which is what I love most about them (other than the taste of the food of course).

Come 2024, I can see myself ordering more recipe kits from Planthood – maybe once a month to take the pressure off from cooking.

If you’re in the market for a plant-based recipe kit, I would highly recommend you check out Planthood.

If you’re looking for something more hands-on that not only tastes great but is chock full of plants make sure to check out my review for Grubby the plant-based recipe kit.

Planthood’s on a mission to create the most mouthwatering plant-based recipes that are incredibly fast and convenient to prepare.

Discover the deliciousness of Planthood’s plant-based recipe kits

how-to-meal-prep-for-the-week.mp3

If you’re looking to make healthier food choices and save money in the process then meal prepping might be for you.

I’ve been prepping my meals for well over a decade and have learnt a thing or two along the way.

So I wanted to show how I prep for the week and share some insights that should help others get started.

For lunch and dinners, you’ll need a good number of large food containers. I’ve been using these for 6+ years and they’re still in great condition.

For breakfast and snacks, you’ll need to have some small food containers. Again, I’ve been using these containers for 6+ years and they show very little wear.

When starting, it’s perfectly fine to use what you already have – if you have plastic containers, use those.

First things first, you need a plan. And by plan, I mean a meal plan.

Now your meal plan is going to depend on how many people you’re cooking for:

Whichever the case, use this to decide how many meals you’re going to cook and how many servings.

Here’s an example of what I’d look to cook for the week:

For breakfast, my go-to is overnight oats or granola.

With enough food containers you can easily meal prep the dry ingredients for overnight oats for the entire week (that’s what I do).

I often do some variations of these two recipes:

You can create a simple base of oats, chia seeds, flax seeds and cinnamon and top with whatever you fancy when it comes to eating.

If you’re anything like me, this one’s not to be forgotten. You need to consider the things you’re going to eat around your meals – snacks!

For me, this will include some unhealthier options like; chocolate, crisps, crackers etc. but largely consist of healthier options like:

Every day I have a mixture of different nuts, usually consisting of cashews, almonds, walnuts, pistachios and Brazil nuts – it’s a great way to increase the number of "plants" in your diet which has so many health benefits.

Don’t feel like you have to plan everything you’re going to eat for the week, allow some flexibility to eat something you’re craving.

With your meals to hand, add all the ingredients, you need to a list.

This could be a paper list, a note-taking app or a dedicated shopping list app.

I prefer using an app, so I can remove the items I’ve added to my basket as I go through the shop.

A shopping list is a surefire way to save money and avoid unhealthier foods as you’re more likely to stick to the things on your list.

Once you’ve created your shopping list, check your cupboards, fridge etc. for ingredients you might already have.

This will stop you from buying excess food that’ll either get thrown away or fill up your cupboards to be forgotten about.

This one doesn’t need much explaining, go to the shop and buy what you need.

My approach is; to go to my main supermarket (Aldi) to do the bulk of my shopping.

If there’s anything that I can’t get from Aldi, I’ll then head on over to Morrisons to get any remaining bits.

Don’t go shopping when you’re hungry, this will help prevent you from impulse buying food because you’re hungry.

The idea of tidying your kitchen just as you are about to mess it up sounds a little counterintuitive – but don’t skip this step (especially if you have a small kitchen like me).

All of this will make the cooking process far less stressful.

When it comes to cooking, there’s one rule I have and that’s to avoid multi-tasking.

By having everything ready, it means I’m not running around trying to do 10 things at once, whilst my onions are burning because I haven’t chopped up the carrots yet (maybe you’ve been there).

I’ll go through this process for up to two recipes on a Sunday – opting for more time-consuming recipes now and saving easier, quicker meals for later in the week.

You can also prepare parts of a meal, such as chopping up veggies or preparing a filling/sauce that can be used later in the week.

The hard work is over, but don’t stop here.

Now it’s time for the easy bit, prepare breakfast and snacks.

This way I’ve fully prepared for at least 2 days into the week.

If you’re new to meal prepping, don’t feel pressure to do everything all at once, instead try preparing your breakfasts or snacks for the week and build from there.

Are you looking to eat healthier, and save money and time? Then meal prepping might be for you. Learn how to meal-prep in 7 easy steps.

Blog

How to meal prep for the week an easy guide for beginners

Discover the deliciousness of Planthood’s plant-based recipe kits

allplants – frozen vegan ready meals that are good for people and planet

Is a plant-based diet affecting my health? I did a Thriva blood test to find out

Grubby, the plant-based recipe kit that doesn’t cost the earth

6 ways to get a better night sleep

I built a consistent walking habit, here’s what helped

New plant-based recipes & articles every month