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I signed up with Hello Fresh, two portions, three meals, every other week. With beginner coupon, these first three meals, including shipping and taxes, cost 28.93$ which works out to 4.82$ per meal.

Here is the first one I picked to make:

The delivery comes in a fully recyclable box (no compound materials) and includes two ice packs at the bottom as well as ~5mm thick corrugated insides on all six sides to act as insulation. I do not know if the ice packs are purely water frozen, or if there is anything else to it; for now I just put them in my freezer.

The ingredients for each of the three meals comes in its own paper bag; this next photo shows that bag behind all of the ingredients provided for this meal:

It is nice that the garlic, green pepper and onion are just loose like that and not wrapped up uselessly in plastic. The three flat pouches on the top right are these:

To the left, crumbled feta, in the center Italian seasoning and on the right some thick cream.

I followed easily the provided instructions; it said it ought to take 25 minutes. I did not time myself but probably I took a little bit longer. Of all of the tasks I had to do to prepare the meal, cutting up the chicken thighs into pieces was the one I found the least pleasant. I think if I had a better knife it might have gone better.

Here are all of the ingredients having been cooked and put together into the pot as the final step before serving:

And here it is served with the feta sprinkled on top:

I quite enjoyed this meal and would be happy to prepare it again. It isn't clear that I could get this down to 4.82$ per meal if I bought all of those ingredients and made it outside of Hello Fresh; however, the price per meal beyond this beginner coupon probably brings the Hello Fresh and my own grocery price much closer. If I was to make it, I would also probably double or more the recipe so that I could make and freeze multiple meals of it, rather than just two. Doing this ought to make it easier to use grocery store ingredients.

So my idea is to stay subscribed to Hello Fresh for a few months and get used to preparing meals, picking out ones that I would be happy to make again, and then I would eventually cease the subscription, but continue to make use of the recipes.